Friday, October 31, 2014
Shortwave's revenge!
Polistra has been hoping for a return of the shortwave bands, which have been effectively abandoned in the rush to Appleize everything.
Now it appears that one useful shortwave service may be about to return, at least in sane countries. BBC briefly notes that GPS systems, like everything else in the digital world, are fragile and hackable. This has reached a dangerous level in Korea, where North is jamming South's reception of GPS and thus ruining the navigation of South ships.
The obvious solution is to bring back LORAN, an analog system that worked for many years. Strictly speaking LORAN's frequencies are medium-wave, not SW. Just above the usual AM broadcast band, sharing the 160 meter ham band. Very little skip in this range; high-power transmitters and mainly groundwave propagation, which means it's harder to jam or spoof.
This article describes the attempt to bring it back under the "new" title of eLORAN. Silly name because LORAN is already electronic, but I guess you need to have a new label for marketing.
It's a classic Parkinson case study. The agencies that should be working on the return are afraid to grab onto a proposal that might distract from their urgent need to expand bureaucracies without expanding operations. The Coast Guard is now part of DHS aka The Deep State, so it's immune from earthly concerns like navigation. Instead, it is continuing to tear down the old LORAN sites.
National suicide rolls on.
This article describes the attempt to bring it back under the "new" title of eLORAN. Silly name because LORAN is already electronic, but I guess you need to have a new label for marketing.
It's a classic Parkinson case study. The agencies that should be working on the return are afraid to grab onto a proposal that might distract from their urgent need to expand bureaucracies without expanding operations. The Coast Guard is now part of DHS aka The Deep State, so it's immune from earthly concerns like navigation. Instead, it is continuing to tear down the old LORAN sites.
National suicide rolls on.Labels: infill
¶ 3:15 AM
