ARRL, FCC, Department of Defense Review New Developments in PAVE PAWS Interference Mitigation

The FCC, ARRL representatives and agents of the various US Air Force units working on developing a plan to mitigate alleged interference from 70 cm ham radio repeaters to PAVE PAWS radar systems on both coasts met February 20 via conference call. The purpose of the conference was to review the status of the mitigation plans at both sites: the Massachusetts Military Reservation on Cape Cod and Beale AFB, north of Sacramento, California.

Thanks to the cooperation and assistance of the involved repeater owners on Cape Cod, ARRL Regulatory Branch Manager Dan Henderson, N1ND, said, “I am pleased to be able to pass along that at this time that the Department of Defense has determined that the levels of harmful interference to the PAVE PAWS radar site on Cape Cod have been sufficiently reduced. As part of this determination, they are not rescheduling additional follow-up testing for that area until sometime in 2009.”

Henderson said that this decision doesn’t mean New England is back to pre-mitigation repeater operation: “Any mitigation steps that have been taken should remain in place. A repeater that has gone off the air should not be simply turned back on at its original power level - its previously determined mitigation standard still applies in order to protect the primary user from harmful interference.”

Henderson stressed that the entire process is ongoing. “The high degree of voluntary cooperation shown by the owners of Air Force-identified repeaters has helped demonstrate to the DoD that the amateur community takes its responsibility seriously. This should help us retain access to the band in the long run.”

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2008/02/27/101/?nc=1

This entry was posted on March 6, 2008 at 2:34 pm and is filed under ARRL Letter, ARRL Web Extra. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.