By Bill Park & Collin Mcintyre
over the past three years, a development program has been undertaken to design, construct and calibrate an equipment package suitable for airborne signal leakage measurement. The Final Report of the Federal Communications Commission, Advisory Committee on Cable Leakage, issued November 1, 1979, outlined the basic parameters in testing cable television systems for cumulative leakage. The conclusions and recommendations of this report were based on airborne test results primarily from small cable systems. This paper will focus on a practical approach to airborne testing. At the time of writing, systems ranging in size from 2,000 subscribers in 6 square miles of plant, to 250,000 subscribers in 400 square miles have been tested. In the final development stage, more than 100 hours of flight time was logged in verifying equipment performance, calibration and methodology of airborne testing. A specific calibration method and testing procedure has been documented, to ensure standardization of airborne measurements. These airborne signal leakage measurement packages are now being used on a regular basis to test cable plant. Test results from selected flyovers will be presented with this paper.