[BC] uplink ERP - RF hazard?

John Lyles jtml at losalamos.com
Sat Jan 12 21:29:41 CST 2008


I've finally given up on a pair of copper wires nailed to a tree, were 26 Kbps had been all I could get for service out here in the sticks from Qwest - for the past 15 years. I bought a Ka band setup via Wildblue, which uses a 0.6m Raven Corvus Range dish. This provides sub-DSL speeds, and there are limits to the amount of gigabytes I can download per month. Not a problem for us out here, as even 10 - 20 x over our modem will seem like science fiction to us. 

Question is: 
The dish has 44.4 dBi gain at the transmit frequency, 29.75 GHz. One can imagine the pencil beam out of this thing at Ka band. I am going to guess that the transmitter is 1 watt or less, based on the price of the setup ($250 for the antenna, T/R and modem). There is no feedline loss as only downconverted freq is shipped down to the modem.  With this gain, I figure I have about a 20 kW ERP out in front of this thing. Am I doing something wrong calculating this? Does anyone know the actual value for this satellite internet system?

Is this level at 29.75 a hazard? I can check the IEEE/ANSI standard myself, but just wanted a general collective opinion. Since this is a home environment, I would have to set my own safety standards such as turning off the modem when working on the roof (it is flat and the dish is being placed there Thursday). I have VHF, television, amateur, UHF, yagis, you name it, already up there. 

Regards,
John 





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