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Question About Commercial Transmitter Interference with the VLA

-- Thomas | October 24, 2020

Question:

Hello VLA!
Assuage my guilt: I occasionally fly a small single engine Cessna 3-5 thousand feet over the VLA. The engine uses two magnetos, and aircraft does have a number of transmitters. I don’t key the mike (118-136mhz), but there is a 1-200 watt transponder that operates at 1090 MHz and 978 MHz at every 3-60 seconds. Also local very low power oscillators and cpu clocks for on-board avionics….
Am I undermining some grad student’s Nobel prize work?
Thanks. Y’all do awesome work!

-- Thomas

Answer:

The frequency ranges that the VLA operates at are designed so as not to overlap with most commercial transmitters. The aircraft communications frequencies you are concerned about are not likely to be harmful to the science measurements that the VLA regularly performs.

-- Jeff Mangum

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