League seeks Texas BPL pilot shutdown

The ARRL has requested that the FCC immediately shut down an Irving, Texas, BPL pilot project and fine its operator for causing extensive harmful interference to Amateur Radio communications.

The League's March 15 filing to the FCC's Enforcement Bureau, the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology and the system's operator comes in the wake of - and supports - a complaint from ARRL member Jory McIntosh, KJ5RM, of Hastlet, Texas, who regularly commutes through the BPL test zone in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The FCC has yet to respond to a formal complaint he filed last fall.

"The results of tests conducted by ARRL Laboratory Manager Ed Hare are that this facility, which has been the subject of an unresolved interference complaint dating back to November, 2004, is still regularly causing harmful interference to Amateur Radio stations and must be required to cease operation immediately," said the League's complaint, signed by ARRL General Counsel Chris Imlay, W3KD. Hare visited the Texas site last October.

The ARRL said the levels of interfering BPL signals Hare measured and documented "are sufficient to obscure virtually all Amateur Radio received signals and preclude Amateur Radio communications in the areas and on the
bands identified in the report."

McIntosh personally documented some two dozen instances of harmful interference from the BPL test stand on 11 days between July and October 2004, the ARRL complaint noted. He logged serious interference on 40, 20, 17, 15, 10 and 6 meters. McIntosh says he's experienced interference "so bad
that even with full filtering and digital signal processing engaged, I am unable to continue my communications until I am one mile away from the system."

This week's ARRL filing, which included a summary of Hare's measurements, recounted McIntosh's complaints last summer to utility TXU and BPL equipment provider Amperion. TXU and Amperion representatives accompanied McIntosh on interference demonstrations and made some unspecified adjustments. But, the League notes in its complaint, "Nothing has changed since the complaint was
first lodged." As of March 9, 2005, the ARRL said, the system was producing the same amounts of interference within and outside the amateur bands that McIntosh already had reported.

Test results attached to the complaint "are sufficient to demonstrate that this BPL test site should be shut down immediately," the League said. The ARRL also called on the FCC to impose monetary forfeitures on Amperion.

The ARRL's test report points out that the interference is not confined to Amateur Radio spectrum but covers a wide swath of HF as well as low-VHF and "various aeronautical, commercial and government spectrum." The report noted
that many of the bands the FCC's new BPL will require to be notched are not now protected.

A copy of the League's filing is on the ARRL Web site

Source: ARRL Letter - courtesy of The American Radio Relay League

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