Light Squared Won't Give Up

 

I thought they were dead already

I guess their bankruptcy filing didn't slow them down too much. It seems like they're throwing good money after bad, just cut your losses and move on! At least this time they're talking about messing up frequencies used by NOAA rather than GPS.

Poor Article BUT

There is a likelihood that "Weather Balloons" really are the device which carries radiosondes aloft two times a day all over the world. These are the fundamental measurements with surface observations that go into numerical models which predict national & international weather. Radiosondes have been around more than 100 years & their spread has ushered in remarkable improvements in weather forecasting. That spoken as an retired Director of a development lab at NOAA, a person who worked on objective analysis schemes many moons ago which utilize all the available data & process it as input to the numerical models, & the guy who developed the automated national radar summary chart.

Light Squared should be told where to go!

Fred

I know what does are

FZbar wrote:

There is a likelihood that "Weather Balloons" really are the device which carries radiosondes aloft two times a day all over the world. These are the fundamental measurements with surface observations that go into numerical models which predict national & international weather. Radiosondes have been around more than 100 years & their spread has ushered in remarkable improvements in weather forecasting. That spoken as an retired Director of a development lab at NOAA, a person who worked on objective analysis schemes many moons ago which utilize all the available data & process it as input to the numerical models, & the guy who developed the automated national radar summary chart.

Light Squared should be told where to go!

Fred

In the early 60s I worked at a factory in Philly back then called VIZ and we made radiosondes for the government, I imagine the ones today are more sophisticated.

--
Garmin 38 - Magellan Gold - Garmin Yellow eTrex - Nuvi 260 - Nuvi 2460LMT - Google Nexus 7 - Toyota Entune NAV

VIZ

Yes, those were the guys who were building them for us back then. The one I'm looking at now iuses the 1620 MHz frequency & it's labelled with the Philly address.

I haven't looked at it in years. It was made of cardboard & white plastic & had a note to return it to the National Weather Service if found - possible since it had a parachute when it reached top altitude & the balloon burst. Ah - those were the days.

There are still Vaisala & Lockheed Martin sondes. They are likely a bit more accurate but significantly simplified electronically.

Fred

Hard to tell...

Hard to tell if it's a warning rattle from the snake, or a death rattle...

My guess is that they're trying to keep their options open, hoping for a new administration that will bludgeon the FCC into giving them what they want.

The problem with that is even if there is a change of administration, it just replaces a few folks in the upper political layer at the FCC. The technical mandarins who have been there for years and know how things work will still be there, and given what they've been through so far with LightSquared, I would expect them to dig in pretty solidly...

I think they'll be kept out of the weak-signal bands.

--
Nuvi 2460, 680, DATUM Tymserve 2100, Trimble Thunderbolt, Ham radio, Macintosh, Linux, Windows

that was a sweat shop no A/C in the 60s

FZbar wrote:

Yes, those were the guys who were building them for us back then. The one I'm looking at now iuses the 1620 MHz frequency & it's labelled with the Philly address.

Fred

Here are the coordinates for the VIZ factory on Price St. one fact you may not know the place was owned by a Russian immigrant with very poor English skills, we also made bayonet scabbards for the Army during the Vietnam war among many plastic products for the automotive industry.

40.040803,-75.171939

--
Garmin 38 - Magellan Gold - Garmin Yellow eTrex - Nuvi 260 - Nuvi 2460LMT - Google Nexus 7 - Toyota Entune NAV

Thanks

Thanks flaco.

I never visited VIZ. The contracts with VIZ were maintained by the NWS Office of Technical Services OTS).

I'll be in Philly in November. If I have time, I'll use your coordinates.

Fred

the problem is

k6rtm wrote:

Hard to tell if it's a warning rattle from the snake, or a death rattle...

My guess is that they're trying to keep their options open, hoping for a new administration that will bludgeon the FCC into giving them what they want.

The problem with that is even if there is a change of administration, it just replaces a few folks in the upper political layer at the FCC. The technical mandarins who have been there for years and know how things work will still be there, and given what they've been through so far with LightSquared, I would expect them to dig in pretty solidly...

I think they'll be kept out of the weak-signal bands.

The problem is all the bureaus and most divisions at the FCC are headed by political appointees from the party in power. It was the technical people at the FCC that truly blew the whistle on what the political appointee at the International Bureau did when it was directed LightSquared be granted their waiver with the proceeding being open for comment for just a few days across the Thanksgiving weekend.

The FCC isn't run by technical people any longer, those making the decisions are all lawyers with no experience outside of a law book in communications.

--
Illiterate? Write for free help.

NO DON'T (WARNING)

FZbar wrote:

Thanks flaco.

I'll be in Philly in November. If I have time, I'll use your coordinates.

Fred

Don't even think about visiting that place, the neighborhood is not what it used to be, the area is called Germantown based on the people who live there way back when, I was in that area in 2005 and didn't see a single German and made a hastily retreat (I was taking the family for a tour of where I used to live).

--
Garmin 38 - Magellan Gold - Garmin Yellow eTrex - Nuvi 260 - Nuvi 2460LMT - Google Nexus 7 - Toyota Entune NAV

are the receivers for the sondes that sloppy?

In a nutshell the GPS problem with LS arises in considerable measure because in the quest for the last little bit of receiver sensitivity many of the later consumer models use front-ends which let in more adjacent-band leakage than would otherwise be prudent.

The incentives were powerful--as the original system design was not really generous with reception margin. Is there some evidence that the Radiosonde application is listening anywhere near that closely out of band?

I actually don't have a lot of sympathy with LightSquared--they should have realized how big a harm their proposal would wreak and backed away much earlier. You don't get to poison the well for a multitude just because you own it. But they have gotten a bum rap when folks neglect to mention the outright element of squatter's rights behavior in the GPS community, and a very considerable exaggeration of the ill effects of their proposal.

--
personal GPS user since 1992

Thanks

Thanks for the heads-up flaco.

I guess you can't go back in this case.

Fred