On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 02:26:11PM -0600, Howard Mark wrote: | Now to my question. Is it possible that this is pager interference?
Of course. But there's no way to tell for sure. You said that people were trying to locate the signals with scanners. Do you know what kind of scanners they were using? If you're using one that you can listen to, the data transmissions sent by a pager have a very definite sound. Also, they're not usually on all the time -- instead, they may last only a few seconds, and happen only every few minutes, making them hard to track down. Of course, R/C receivers aren't known for their awesome abilities at rejecting interference. Depending on how they're designed, they're not only vulnerable to interference on and near their designated channel, but may be vulnerable to interference at other totally different frequencies as well. Good design reduces their vulnerabilities to other signals, but it's difficult to remove them all and yet keep your receiver small and cheap. Probably the best way to determine if a specific receiver is getting hit is to get another, identical receiver, with the same crystal, and crack it open and put an amplifier in right before the signal is decoded, so you can hear it. That way, you'll have a scanner that will pick up the same noise as your receiver. Of course, the downsides are that this requires some electronics skill, and that it's tied to that one type of receiver, on that one channel. And you've ruined a perfectly good receiver :) http://www.bergent.net/SC-DC.pdf has a good talk about the types of interference that R/C receivers deal with. | Our field is on the high plains just east of the foothills near | Denver. The pager antennas are located in the foothills above - and | in the plains to the east below. A hi-gain antenna (yagi...) Yagis are only one of many different types of high gain antennas ... not all high gain antennas are Yagis. Also, the pagers used by restraunts and the like are often on 72 mHz. (I've looked -- they often have the frequency marked on them.) I seriously doubt these use 300 watts (1-5 seems much more likely), but if your plane is closer to a restraunt than it is to you, maybe ... | I've read that repeaters can use 300W of power! I don't see why a pager tower couldn't use more -- it depends on what they have a license for. As for repeaters, 1000 watt repeaters are not unheard of on other bands. As for what these people should do to catch the interference, if that is in fact what it is, is keep scanning, even before there's a shoot-down. Even if nobody is flying. Scan the entire band, and keep doing it. If a signal appears and they can't track it down, ask the local hams for help -- they often love a (useful!) challenge like that. -- Doug McLaren, [EMAIL PROTECTED] If something can go wrong, it w fortune: segmentation fault. core dumped RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off.
