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[Nenene]

Both Ruhn and I are amateur (HAM) radio operators. In addition Rhun was an electrical engineer before he became a geologist and guide. This is also a subject talked about at length so I shall (with Rhun's help) pass on what I know about RF energy in the home. Please start with this concept. Cell phones and wireless laptops and routers are nothing more than very sophisticated two-way radio systems that can change frequencies to maintain communications. Historical note, the actress Hedy Lamar, a pinup girl, was responsible for the theories and early hardware that made this possible in the mid 1940s. She was very moe <moh-ay>. That is also very similar to our 2-way radios scanning a set of frequency pairs (channels) and locking on to them. If you are familiar with what a repeater is, that's it in a nutshell. The ability to carry on two way communications without having to press a microphone button is called full duplex. 2-way radios like a CB are PTT or half duplex. Cell phones and routers full duplex.

First there is no positive evidence that radio frequency (RF) energy causes health problems under normal use in the real world. Yet a lot of people believe different things with no evidence to support them. The reason for a lack of a proper answer is; there are no real world studies of the effects of RF emergy (not to be confused with nuclear radiation) since no one is exposed to enough of it to gather sufficient data. There have been lab studies that show certain parts of the living organisms including our bodies are subject to heating by RF energy depending on the frequency and distance to the source. That''s one reason to use a hands off device. Cell phones operate in the 830-930mhz or in the 1.0-2.4ghz? range and with enough power behind the transmitter (>1watt) it can heat your eyeballs up (why has to do with the frequencies wavelength). However the power output in a cell phone is measured in tenths of a watt or milliwatts (mw) and the radiated energy halves with the square of the distance traveled.

Same thing applies to WiFi in your home only it operates in the 2.4ghz or 5.8ghz spread spectrum band at very low power generally around 400mw (cell phones at 350mw) and, as said, power drops off by half with the square of the distance. The two-way FM HAM radios in our cars are capable of transmitting with 50 watts of power and radios in the radio shack are capable of 1500 watts of power. Add in the high gain beam antennas that gives effective radiated power of over 15,000 watts at the antenna or the same as that of a small TV station. I am in more danger from the RF energy in my car when transmitting than I am from my cell phone or the wireless router in the house.

Because we live away from the road beyond the range of laptops Full diplex radios and the router we really have no worries about anyone picking up our router. Nonetheless Rhun took all of the proper security precautions that can be had for a wireless system in addition to going through the steps of turning off the wireless if aren't any laptops in use. For security purposes we have chosen to accept the inconvenience of having to plug in to the net hardwire most of the time.


Still...




...it will eventually kill you. But then again so does food. After all everything that eats food dies. So we should stop eating as well.