02-10-2021, 12:33 AM
When we first got FTTC NBN, it was on VDSL 1 and you could see the cutoff on an SDR at around 18MHz. So all of the bands below that were pretty much wiped out, regardless of whether I transmitted or not. When they moved to VDSL 2, I also lost up to 10m, although the noise wasn't quite so bad there. Now that we've gone to VDSL 2+ with it's higher frequencies again, I'm even seeing some noise up on 6m, and 10m is now completely gone.
As the lead-ins to all of the houses in the suburb are 50+ year old copper that comes out of the pit, then up the nearest pole, and into each house, the WHOLE suburb is now a no-go zone for HF operation. We have all of these bloody great big inverted-L antennas spewing their signal out across the spectrum. There's no point trying to fix any individual lead-in or pole, it's EVERY one of them. With HF in the car, I have S9+ noise anywhere in my suburb, and that drops back to almost nothing when I drive out of the suburb, into areas that have either FTTP or underground FTTC lead-ins.
So obviously this is a widely experienced problem, and we could fap around trying to fix individual sites, but we really need a nationwide, policy-level fix for this BS situation. Where are the WIA and RASA on this? HF has become totally unusable for so many people now, even on digital modes. I think a lot of people don't realise what the broadband noise is that's wiping out their HF, usually they simply write it off as "the rising RF smog of suburbia". Surely we can get WIA and RASA onto this? Even if it were to get NBN to notch out the Ham bands on their VDSL services? I'll rejoin the WIA (or even join RASA) if one of them can effect a solution to this.
The flow on from this, of course, is that we are never going to get those newcomers to the hobby that've traditionally come in via CB or HF SWL, as unlike the old days, they simply can't hear a bloody thing on HF, so they're never going to progress to listening to our bands, and onto joining clubs, becoming licensed, etc.
As the lead-ins to all of the houses in the suburb are 50+ year old copper that comes out of the pit, then up the nearest pole, and into each house, the WHOLE suburb is now a no-go zone for HF operation. We have all of these bloody great big inverted-L antennas spewing their signal out across the spectrum. There's no point trying to fix any individual lead-in or pole, it's EVERY one of them. With HF in the car, I have S9+ noise anywhere in my suburb, and that drops back to almost nothing when I drive out of the suburb, into areas that have either FTTP or underground FTTC lead-ins.
So obviously this is a widely experienced problem, and we could fap around trying to fix individual sites, but we really need a nationwide, policy-level fix for this BS situation. Where are the WIA and RASA on this? HF has become totally unusable for so many people now, even on digital modes. I think a lot of people don't realise what the broadband noise is that's wiping out their HF, usually they simply write it off as "the rising RF smog of suburbia". Surely we can get WIA and RASA onto this? Even if it were to get NBN to notch out the Ham bands on their VDSL services? I'll rejoin the WIA (or even join RASA) if one of them can effect a solution to this.
The flow on from this, of course, is that we are never going to get those newcomers to the hobby that've traditionally come in via CB or HF SWL, as unlike the old days, they simply can't hear a bloody thing on HF, so they're never going to progress to listening to our bands, and onto joining clubs, becoming licensed, etc.
Alan VK3DXE