Re: [AV Media Matters] Magnetic fields

[George McBride <gmcbride@maxell.com>]

Hello Cheryl,

My suggestion to you would be to purchase a low field strength
Magnetometer and record the magnetic field strength in the immediate
area of the cassettes at scheduled intervals during several 24 hour
periods and use SMPTE RP-103 as a reference document for storage of
your tapes.

Radar is typically extremely high frequency, near or in X Band, and
is normally scattered over a large area, except in military
applications where the transmitted beam is narrowed for "Lock On and
Tracking" operations such as intercept aircraft and radar tracking
"surface to air", "air to air", missiles. Also, the transmitted
power is dispersed across the entire "look" area which significantly
reduces the energy that strikes a target and is reflected back to
the receiver.

While I am not 100% sure, I will go out on a limb by stating that I
doubt the radar used by passing ships would have any cumulative
effect on your library considering that the X-Ray units (in the same
frequency band) used in airports do not usually affect magnetic
recordings.

Hope this helps a little,

George McBride