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Old 05-07-2009, 05:30 PM
  #94  
RamItOn
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Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Anchorage, AK
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Default RE: Reason for not upgrading to 2.4

Hi Dirtybird,

From what I was told, the 2.4 GHz band runs from 2.39 GHz to 2.5 GHz. Of that, the city utility in question uses from 2.4 GHz to 2.483 GHz @ 20 watts (or so, including antenna gain), and the distance between nodes isn't more than a few miles. Depending upon where our RC systems lie in that band, we could have up to 100 MHz of bandwidth on the lower side, and about 15 MHz on the upper sidemore than enough to accomodate our radios. To complicate things, however, is that competing power companies in the area also run on the same band, but possibly not on the same wedge that this utility does. Furthermore, I've been told that Ham radio operators have priority over all others on this band, and can run up the power to 500 watts...anywhere on it. The aforementioned coupled with the wireless networks, microwave ovens, wireless phones, and whatever the hell else the FCC decides to place here gives this guy pause when considering make the switch from 72 to 2.4. He's been doing this for awhile, so it gives me pause, as well.

I acknowledge that with any new technology, there is a learning curve. However, this guy's opinion and the problems that I've read about on this site (Spektrum recall, anyone?) combined with the fact that the pro-2.4 guys' arguments consist of nothing more than name-calling and statements of "that can't happen" in response to user problems that did happen give me pause. Even the guy who wrote the article that onewasp worships stated in black and white that there have been problems in the past.


SCADA = Supervising Control And Data Acquisition (I didn't know, either. Apparently, SCADA is process control).

Thanks for keeping it civil, DB.

-RamItOn