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Update on PAVE PAWS for April, 2009
Last updated on April 25, 2009 by The C.A.R.L.A. Team | This article is Archived | Permalink
It was purportedly about a year ago (April 2008) that the USAF performed another round of testing at Beale AFB. The results from those tests didn't come to the attention of most of the affected repeater owners/trustees until sometime in the 4th quarter of 2009. It was done by a phone call from a person in the FCC that was dealing with this issue since Riley Hollingsworth had retired. When you do the math that's 5-6 months later. As you can see the sense of urgency is just not there which tells us that we really aren't causing a serious or 'service affecting' problem to their radar system. It's thought by some that they are simply scraping the bottom of the barrel as it may be to find anything and everything they can pick up whether it's really causing them an issue or not and targeting those repeaters. The FCC is not giving official orders but rather informal phone calls or e-mails. None the less we have tried to cooperate and reduce power levels towards BAFB as requested but feedback from our efforts is never immediate or forthcoming.
When we received the results from their testing in April of 2008 it was apparent that there were still problems and inconsistencies with their data. We sent a letter to the ARRL to ask why we were getting different and inconsistent data from them. The answer(s) were numerous and basically said it is what it is and challenging it was not going to be a worthwhile effort unless it was just completely out of the realm of possibility.
Sometime in early April of 2009 the ARRL apparently gave NARCC the information needed to run the Longley-Rice propagation tests that they had been running in their lab based on information they perceived to be tolerable levels received at the radar site from repeaters in the region. The DoD and USAF will not make that information known to us even though you could figure it out with all the information found on-line and from their reduction requirements of individual systems. Regardless, we will work with NARCC to see if our systems will likely fall within the estimated tolerances to the radar system as each repeater comes up re-coordination. All that will do is give NARCC information to begin coordinating repeaters again with the knowledge that the DoD/USAF could come back with a different answer at any point.
As of the writing of this update the following C.A.R.L.A. systems have been targeted and their power and/or antenna (coverage) patterns have been modified either moderately or drastically.
- System 5
- System 6
- System 9
- System 11
- System 16
Essentially, coverage in and around the Northern & Central Sacramento Valley has been significantly reduced from all of these repeaters.