From: Michael Coslo on Wed 14 Sep 2005 16:23


Dave wrote:
wrote in message
Michael Coslo wrote:
wrote:
Michael Coslo wrote:


it seems like the key is that there is no bridge between the various
agencies that can coordinate the activities. the red herring is that their
radios can't talk to each other.

Yup. It is a function of bandwidth, distance, congestion and other
stuff like that.

Disagree. It is PLANNING AHEAD for contingencies. Case in point
is the so-called "Tactical" channels used by the LAPD. Normal
operation of radio units uses a common working frequency. Where
more than one group of radio units need to work together, they use
a "TAC" (for tactical) channel that is preassigned...such as "TAC
ONE" or "TAC TWO." LAPD has the planning on what to do if a base
station is suddenly inoperative. The same goes for the LAFD.

In the workload of public safety radio services, they are NOT
playing radio games or "working weak signals" or the other
radio-only activities done by amateurs. They have their regular
duties NOT involving playing with radios.


what would appear to be needed is a way for fema, national guard, coast
guard, etc to get coordinated with the local authorities... and to do that
there are really 2 or 3 levels of coordination needed:

There is a way. Exists right now. The problem in this particular
disaster is that the emergency services lagged way behind the disaster.

PLANNING AHEAD sometimes lags behind...but that is NOT due to
the alleged "lack of spectrum" as a reporter wrote.

With NO fall-back on contingency planning the agencies fall down.

That's an ORGANIZATIONAL PLANNING thing, something to be done way
ahead of time. A small part of that is radio use. If worst comes
to absolute worst, "communications" can be effected by runners
(couriers, hand-carrying messages between operations bases as was
done in ancient military times)...individuals who carry messages
by hand or by mind or whatever to keep the bases in touch.

Let's look at what was observed and uncovered by news services
about New Orleans. That city has been on the edge of the Gulf
of Mexico for well over a century and has expanded such that
over half of it is BELOW sea level, BELOW lake level. They
depend on a dozen-plus huge pumps to continuously drain the
city. Do they have a fall-back plan in case of pump failure
or levee breach? Doesn't seem so. Centralized communications
bases with no secondary bases planned, not enough some small
boats to get around, not enough "high-rise" vehicles to get
through shallow flooded areas. No interconnecting streets
from above sea level areas to other above sea level areas...or
dedicated communications lines that would be above sea level.

Anyone who has looked at TV news coverage should have seen
dozens and dozens of big yellow school busses sitting in a
flooded motor pool (apt name, "motor pool") EMPTY and unused.
"High rise" types which have greater-than-average-vehicle road
clearance and could have gotten through for evacuation before
the flooding was complete. UNUSED in the one-day pre-storm
evacuation order issued by the Mayor. Each of those school
busses would have been more than adequate to hold portable
radio base stations with operators after transporting evacuees
to higher ground.


The problem as I see it is that the radio comms are kind of like a
swimming duck. Above the water line there is not a lot of stuff going
on. Below the line is all kinds of activity.

What in the world are you trying to say there?


Are the emergency organizations going to employ pay and train competent
radio operators who are capable of figuring out where they need to be
frequency wise? I doubt it. If so, I wanna apply for that job.

You want to be in a group that was inept at planning ahead?

Clue: MANAGEMENT of a city is SUPPOSED to do that PLANNING AHEAD
(of some sort) to handle emergency contingencies. It is NOT "up
to the 'radio operators' to seek out 'new operating locales.'"


In this group, we've discussed the contesting issue, in which others
and myself have claimed that it is practice for emergency operations.
One regular poster in particular heaps a lot of scorn on those who
believe it is practice. But it is.

"Scorn?" No. IMPROPER ANALOGUES, yes. Have YOU EVER worked in
any sudden emergency situation? Explain how that is "comparable"
to radio contesting.

These operators would have to be frequency agile, as well as know what
frequency that they should use in a given situation. They need to be
able to copy weak signals, and be patient.

No, those operators MUST KNOW THEIR LAND TERRITORY and ORGANIZATION
of all the First Responders. They MUST KNOW and be ABLE TO
IMPROVISE IMMEDIATELY if part of that pre-esisting organization
becomes incommunicative or inoperable or cut off by such things as
impassible roadways.

A sudden emergency/disaster condition involves LIFE and DEATH.
NO radio contact contest is about life and death.

But I can just about wager a months salary that whatever "new" system
we end up with, it will be heavily infrastructure dependent, and
designed so that someone who knows nothing about radio and electronics
will just mash their PTT button. And it will work perfectly in drills.
And it will fail miserably when the "big one" hits it.

Make your one month salary amount payable to the American Red Cross.
You lost BIG TIME. I'll just cite a near-"big one" incident that
happened 11 1/2 years ago...precisely at a little past 4:30 AM on
17 January 1994. The Northridge Earthquake. TOTAL primary
electrical power failure for 10 million residents. Several building
collapses. 53 died directly. One natural gas distribution main line
fractured and on fire. Some freeway overpasses collapsed, blocking
all vehicles there.

The Emergency Communications Center for Greater Los Angeles was
functional, ramping up as more and more personnel arrived. PDs had
emergency electrical power for base stations, as did FDs. FDs were
alerted and informed through leased telephone lines that did NOT go
through telephone switching centers, thus remaining open, working.
LAFD was rolling on many fires, one I could see from my high back
yard vantage point (hard to miss against total blackness). Even
the utilities were equipped with emergency power. Mobiles kept on
working and rolling; one LAPD vehicle went face down a collapsed
overpass when unable to stop in time. Utility workers were called
up on the infrastructure telephone system, told were to report for
work. The infrastructure communications system WORKED and the First
Responders responded and started on their enormous work load, all
by just "mashing their PTT buttons" and communicating.

Then the hams with their "old technology" will come out of the woodwork
again.

They did NOT do so here 11 1/2 years ago. This terrible infra-
structure that was supposed to "fail" did NOT fail.

Yes, NORMAL telephone service was bogged down AT FIRST by panic.
That settled down. Utilities could call through their leased
lines OUT to workers; that plan was in place and working. There
was adequate EM spectrum allocation for all concerned to do
First Responding. PLANNING and drilling and ORGANIZATION done
well before the event tied everyone together. The enormity of
the repair workload ahead rather put a damper on "playing with
radios" or "fooling around, tuning a band for new contacts."
There was NO warning, NO time to prepare ahead. For any sudden
emergency event a PLAN - with sufficient drilling and training -
MUST exist beforehand. If radio amateurs are a part of that
plan, fine. They can help. But, such a PLAN must concern the
FIRST RESPONDERS first. THEY are the ones ON THE SCENE first.

Now all you easties can bitch and moan and call names of "six
land" people and all that, but we DO have plans that have been
PROVEN by ACTUAL TEST to WORK. In a sudden emergency with
absolutely NO warning.

The Gulf Coast region had over three days warning to prepare.
Did they have an adequate PLAN of how to handle anything? Ask
them. If you need some ideas on what to do and how to plan,
come west. We've done it and survived. Or maybe you can go to
the storm-ravaged, disaster-prone region south of Hartford and
learn all there is to know to be prepared? Your option.

wrote:
From: Michael Coslo on Wed 14 Sep 2005 16:23


Dave wrote:
wrote in message
Michael Coslo wrote:
wrote:
Michael Coslo wrote:


it seems like the key is that there is no bridge between the various
agencies that can coordinate the activities. the red herring is that their
radios can't talk to each other.

Yup. It is a function of bandwidth, distance, congestion and other
stuff like that.

Disagree. It is PLANNING AHEAD for contingencies. Case in point
is the so-called "Tactical" channels used by the LAPD. Normal
operation of radio units uses a common working frequency. Where
more than one group of radio units need to work together, they use
a "TAC" (for tactical) channel that is preassigned...such as "TAC
ONE" or "TAC TWO." LAPD has the planning on what to do if a base
station is suddenly inoperative. The same goes for the LAFD.

In the workload of public safety radio services, they are NOT
playing radio games or "working weak signals" or the other
radio-only activities done by amateurs. They have their regular
duties NOT involving playing with radios.


what would appear to be needed is a way for fema, national guard, coast
guard, etc to get coordinated with the local authorities... and to do that
there are really 2 or 3 levels of coordination needed:

There is a way. Exists right now. The problem in this particular
disaster is that the emergency services lagged way behind the disaster.

PLANNING AHEAD sometimes lags behind...but that is NOT due to
the alleged "lack of spectrum" as a reporter wrote.

With NO fall-back on contingency planning the agencies fall down.

That's an ORGANIZATIONAL PLANNING thing, something to be done way
ahead of time. A small part of that is radio use. If worst comes
to absolute worst, "communications" can be effected by runners
(couriers, hand-carrying messages between operations bases as was
done in ancient military times)...individuals who carry messages
by hand or by mind or whatever to keep the bases in touch.

Hand carry is still done in some cases for security, or as a back up

Let's look at what was observed and uncovered by news services
about New Orleans. That city has been on the edge of the Gulf
of Mexico for well over a century and has expanded such that
over half of it is BELOW sea level, BELOW lake level. They
depend on a dozen-plus huge pumps to continuously drain the
city. Do they have a fall-back plan in case of pump failure
or levee breach? Doesn't seem so. Centralized communications
bases with no secondary bases planned, not enough some small
boats to get around, not enough "high-rise" vehicles to get
through shallow flooded areas. No interconnecting streets
from above sea level areas to other above sea level areas...or
dedicated communications lines that would be above sea level.

Anyone who has looked at TV news coverage should have seen
dozens and dozens of big yellow school busses sitting in a
flooded motor pool (apt name, "motor pool") EMPTY and unused.
"High rise" types which have greater-than-average-vehicle road
clearance and could have gotten through for evacuation before
the flooding was complete. UNUSED in the one-day pre-storm
evacuation order issued by the Mayor. Each of those school
busses would have been more than adequate to hold portable
radio base stations with operators after transporting evacuees
to higher ground.


The problem as I see it is that the radio comms are kind of like a
swimming duck. Above the water line there is not a lot of stuff going
on. Below the line is all kinds of activity.

What in the world are you trying to say there?


Are the emergency organizations going to employ pay and train competent
radio operators who are capable of figuring out where they need to be
frequency wise? I doubt it. If so, I wanna apply for that job.

You want to be in a group that was inept at planning ahead?

Clue: MANAGEMENT of a city is SUPPOSED to do that PLANNING AHEAD
(of some sort) to handle emergency contingencies. It is NOT "up
to the 'radio operators' to seek out 'new operating locales.'"


In this group, we've discussed the contesting issue, in which others
and myself have claimed that it is practice for emergency operations.
One regular poster in particular heaps a lot of scorn on those who
believe it is practice. But it is.

"Scorn?" No. IMPROPER ANALOGUES, yes. Have YOU EVER worked in
any sudden emergency situation? Explain how that is "comparable"
to radio contesting.

These operators would have to be frequency agile, as well as know what
frequency that they should use in a given situation. They need to be
able to copy weak signals, and be patient.

No, those operators MUST KNOW THEIR LAND TERRITORY and ORGANIZATION
of all the First Responders. They MUST KNOW and be ABLE TO
IMPROVISE IMMEDIATELY if part of that pre-esisting organization
becomes incommunicative or inoperable or cut off by such things as
impassible roadways.

A sudden emergency/disaster condition involves LIFE and DEATH.
NO radio contact contest is about life and death.

But I can just about wager a months salary that whatever "new" system
we end up with, it will be heavily infrastructure dependent, and
designed so that someone who knows nothing about radio and electronics
will just mash their PTT button. And it will work perfectly in drills.
And it will fail miserably when the "big one" hits it.

Make your one month salary amount payable to the American Red Cross.
You lost BIG TIME. I'll just cite a near-"big one" incident that
happened 11 1/2 years ago...precisely at a little past 4:30 AM on
17 January 1994. The Northridge Earthquake. TOTAL primary
electrical power failure for 10 million residents. Several building
collapses. 53 died directly. One natural gas distribution main line
fractured and on fire. Some freeway overpasses collapsed, blocking
all vehicles there.

The Emergency Communications Center for Greater Los Angeles was
functional, ramping up as more and more personnel arrived. PDs had
emergency electrical power for base stations, as did FDs. FDs were
alerted and informed through leased telephone lines that did NOT go
through telephone switching centers, thus remaining open, working.
LAFD was rolling on many fires, one I could see from my high back
yard vantage point (hard to miss against total blackness). Even
the utilities were equipped with emergency power. Mobiles kept on
working and rolling; one LAPD vehicle went face down a collapsed
overpass when unable to stop in time. Utility workers were called
up on the infrastructure telephone system, told were to report for
work. The infrastructure communications system WORKED and the First
Responders responded and started on their enormous work load, all
by just "mashing their PTT buttons" and communicating.

Then the hams with their "old technology" will come out of the woodwork
again.

They did NOT do so here 11 1/2 years ago. This terrible infra-
structure that was supposed to "fail" did NOT fail.

Yes, NORMAL telephone service was bogged down AT FIRST by panic.
That settled down. Utilities could call through their leased
lines OUT to workers; that plan was in place and working. There
was adequate EM spectrum allocation for all concerned to do
First Responding. PLANNING and drilling and ORGANIZATION done
well before the event tied everyone together. The enormity of
the repair workload ahead rather put a damper on "playing with
radios" or "fooling around, tuning a band for new contacts."
There was NO warning, NO time to prepare ahead. For any sudden
emergency event a PLAN - with sufficient drilling and training -
MUST exist beforehand. If radio amateurs are a part of that
plan, fine. They can help. But, such a PLAN must concern the
FIRST RESPONDERS first. THEY are the ones ON THE SCENE first.

Now all you easties can bitch and moan and call names of "six
land" people and all that, but we DO have plans that have been
PROVEN by ACTUAL TEST to WORK. In a sudden emergency with
absolutely NO warning.

The Gulf Coast region had over three days warning to prepare.
Did they have an adequate PLAN of how to handle anything? Ask
them. If you need some ideas on what to do and how to plan,
come west. We've done it and survived. Or maybe you can go to
the storm-ravaged, disaster-prone region south of Hartford and
learn all there is to know to be prepared? Your option.

an_old_friend wrote:
wrote:

From: Michael Coslo on Wed 14 Sep 2005 16:23



That's an ORGANIZATIONAL PLANNING thing, something to be done way
ahead of time. A small part of that is radio use. If worst comes
to absolute worst, "communications" can be effected by runners
(couriers, hand-carrying messages between operations bases as was
done in ancient military times)...individuals who carry messages
by hand or by mind or whatever to keep the bases in touch.


Hand carry is still done in some cases for security, or as a back up

"Colonel Morgan, I want to take this message from our headquarters in
New Orleans and swim to Baton Rouge with it. Be back in fifteen minutes."

Dave K8MN

From: on Thurs 15 Sep 2005 03:43


Jim Hampton wrote:
wrote in message


What I think that blurb is really all about is the desire fo some to
turn off their NTSC TV transmitters. And I can't say I blame them.

Okay, so you DON'T understand the coding system of DTV that
evolved through MPEG and the Grand Alliance. Use all those
"IQ smarts" and that double degree to understand it. The
Grand Alliance test program was long and thorough (8 years?)
and has plenty of literature to eddicate you.

Most TV stations here in Philly are simulcasting DTV and NTSC. That's
expensive, both in tower rental, power and labor costs, and because the
NTSC stuff is all going to be worthless when they finally shut it down.

No, it won't be "worthless" sweetums. You've never worked in
any TV station and don't know what's involved. The NTSC video
transmitter is basically a linear AM type and can transmit
ANY digital signal fed to it. Yes, it will require a few add-
ons to meet whatever DTV specs there are, but it can be made
compatible. The basic ham HF transmitter is really a SSB (AM)
linear yet it can do on-off keying with just a few circuit
changes built-in. Same, same.

The NTSC aural transmitter is straight Class C for FM. It can
be altered and retuned to FM BC or any other FM transmit
frequency in VHF or UHF.

ALL of the RGB camera/film/slide/tape "studio" equipment is the
SAME for either system. That's what is being used NOW for all
those simulcasts. Video and audio control consoles are the
Same. Same = Same in math terms.

The major thing added between NTSC and DTV is the ENCODER for
DTV and the necessary "air monitors" to monitor the transmitters.

All those Tektronix (and others') "vector scopes" will be
obsolete. So are things like the Local Subcarrier Generator
and Synchronizer for NTSC. Not major cost items.

Philadelphia is NOT the center of United States television
production...just one of many major market areas in the USA.

The migration to DTV has taken a long time and it's going nowhere fast.

On the contrary. New DTV transmitters for locales requiring
channel reassignments have been sold and installed for some
time. They ARE working out fine.

The stores keep selling NTSC TVs, VCRs, etc., so the 'installed base'
isn't shrinking.

Those same stores (Circuit City, Best Buy, et al) are doing
just fine selling LCD/Plasma/Projection DISPLAY units that are
COMPATIBLE. You need to read the advertisements more often.
Check out the DVDs which are rapidly REPLACING mag tape.

DTV sets still cost a pretty penny, and if someone
doesn't watch that much TV it's not a high priority to replace an NTSC
set.

I just don't see any marketing person coming to you for
"customer insight" on what to sell! :-)

How many more years and dollars before they can shut off the old NTSC
transmitter? That's the big issue.

How many years before YOU decide to go solid-state in a ham
transmitter you "designed and built for yourself?" :-)

One solution is to distribute set-top boxes that convert DTV signals to
NTSC, so that you can watch the DTV transmissions on your NTSC set,
tape them on VHS, etc. But who is going to pay for it?

Real customers is who. [not you, of course...]

Get a clue. DVD has replaced magnetic tape for recordable TV.
Check any TV rental store. Read those ads you ignore. DVD
RECORDERS are available. My wife's computer has a DVD recorder
built-in as well as DVD playback through the computer. With a
thin flat-screen display the linearity is superb and so is the
"gamma" (linearity of contrast/brightness).

DTV Coupled with DVD recording and thin flat-screen displays
is a whole order of magnitude BETTER than Betamax ever was.
VHS mag tape recording got excellent a decade ago and the
prices have been dropping while the general economy has grown
more expensive. VHS is doomed, has been doomed by DVD, just
as much as CDs doomed the vinyl disc recording. CDs and DVDs
are BETTER than the old media.

Cable TV is now the leading TV input to households nationwide.
Cable TV is cutting over to digital transmission from the
head end to neighborhoods, the neighborhoods having ALREADY
added a second cable line in many service areas. Nearly all
Cable services offer rentable set-top-boxes to decode digital
into analog TV visual-aural or NTSC RF. My wife and I have
one of those with its own remote and extra services such as
"view-on-demand" (a bit like TiVo, but only in general).
We get MORE free channels plus more premium channels plus
some two dozen free audio-only "channels" just for listening.
Superior picture, no RFI as was once seen on analog service.
Yes, it costs more. Yes, there is more pleasure with it.

Wife and I bought a little palm-sized still/motion-picture
camera (with image stabilization) that records in a 512M
or 1Gig memory chip. Costs less than $200. The Panasonic
still camera that records on a SuperDisk (size of a 3 1/2"
floppy, holds over 450 images in hi-res) cost $600 in 2000.
Still works fine. Technology just keeps getting better.
Maybe you want to make that some paranoic charge to defeat
Eastman Kodak? Sorry, Eastman is doing digital cameras too.

By wrapping the issue in disaster-communications bunting, the whole
thing can be made to look as if it's in the national interest to shut
down NTSC broadcasting ASAP. The red herring is that the freed-up
spectrum will somehow enhance disaster comms.

Tsk, tsk. You should take your anti-paranoia pills REGULARLY.

The DTV channel reassignment FREED UP SPECTRUM for MANY radio
services. If you had followed the Mass Media Bureau and OET
at the FCC you would have seen that...and the several auctions
for users ALREADY past. Lots of information there, just look
around to see what is what...or indulge in meaningless
paranoia. Your choice. Both ways are free.

A Revision of the HUGE Part 2, Title 47 C.F.R. frequency
allocation table appeared last week in the Federal Register.
You might want to check it out and compare it with old
tables from 1995 to see the differences on what happened
to all those big UHF TV bands.

The DTV channel reassignment problem was complex yet the FCC
(through OET?) did a masterful job of figuring it all out.
You can even download the computer program that figured it
all out from the FCC website. You DO know how to program
a computer, don't you?

You get down to the museum yet? They have a working pre-NTSC B&W/color
TV set complete with color wheel...

That was the old "CBS System." Saw one in Chicago around
1948 at an NAB demo. Pretty at the time. But DOOMED from
the beginning on display size plus flicker to some viewers.
Anything larger than 15" diagonal needed a projection
system...the color wheel couldn't be made stable or reliable
at 32" diameter or larger and certainly not quiet enough.

Have you examined the Texas Instruments "micro mirror" chip
that is used for digital light projection. Thousands of
little deformable mirrors, one per pixel, that replacing the
projection CRT. Technology advances, gets on the market and
customers buy it. Nifty system, ey? But you aren't in the
loop. Too bad. Just play with your morse code radios and
be happy.

Dave Heil wrote:
an_old_friend wrote:
wrote:

From: Michael Coslo on Wed 14 Sep 2005 16:23



That's an ORGANIZATIONAL PLANNING thing, something to be done way
ahead of time. A small part of that is radio use. If worst comes
to absolute worst, "communications" can be effected by runners
(couriers, hand-carrying messages between operations bases as was
done in ancient military times)...individuals who carry messages
by hand or by mind or whatever to keep the bases in touch.


Hand carry is still done in some cases for security, or as a back up

"Colonel Morgan, I want to take this message from our headquarters in
New Orleans and swim to Baton Rouge with it. Be back in fifteen minutes."

of course true to form dave decideds to be stupid in his attacks

Dave K8MN

an_old_friend wrote:
Dave Heil wrote:

an_old_friend wrote:

wrote:


From: Michael Coslo on Wed 14 Sep 2005 16:23



That's an ORGANIZATIONAL PLANNING thing, something to be done way
ahead of time. A small part of that is radio use. If worst comes
to absolute worst, "communications" can be effected by runners
(couriers, hand-carrying messages between operations bases as was
done in ancient military times)...individuals who carry messages
by hand or by mind or whatever to keep the bases in touch.


Hand carry is still done in some cases for security, or as a back up

"Colonel Morgan, I want to take this message from our headquarters in
New Orleans and swim to Baton Rouge with it. Be back in fifteen minutes."


of course true to form dave decideds to be stupid in his attacks

I think you've mixed up a few of the words. I've decided to attack
stupid comments. You quoted an entire multi-paragraph post just to
insert your gem. Now that you've had time to digest my response, do you
think hand-carrying of messages between two distant points, with flood
waters all around is a good idea? Do you think there was any necessity
for a high degree of security for most messages being passed in the wake
of Hurricane Katrina?

Dave K8MN

Dave Heil wrote:
an_old_friend wrote:
Dave Heil wrote:

an_old_friend wrote:

wrote:


From: Michael Coslo on Wed 14 Sep 2005 16:23



That's an ORGANIZATIONAL PLANNING thing, something to be done way
ahead of time. A small part of that is radio use. If worst comes
to absolute worst, "communications" can be effected by runners
(couriers, hand-carrying messages between operations bases as was
done in ancient military times)...individuals who carry messages
by hand or by mind or whatever to keep the bases in touch.


Hand carry is still done in some cases for security, or as a back up

"Colonel Morgan, I want to take this message from our headquarters in
New Orleans and swim to Baton Rouge with it. Be back in fifteen minutes."


of course true to form dave decideds to be stupid in his attacks

I think you've mixed up a few of the words. I've decided to attack
stupid comments. You quoted an entire multi-paragraph post just to
insert your gem. Now that you've had time to digest my response, do you
think hand-carrying of messages between two distant points, with flood
waters all around is a good idea? Do you think there was any necessity
for a high degree of security for most messages being passed in the wake
of Hurricane Katrina?

gee I did exactly as you did but I did not quote a multi paragraph post

Never said it would be, however Hand carry esp of list of stuff at a
given site to another site using the driver of the turck moveing the
fright seems entirely practical either as primary or as back up

also Never claimed security was an issue with Katrina stuff, merely
that security is a prime reason why Hand carry is resorted in commo

Indeed I was correcting Len on a matter of fact, Hand carry is still
used today, not merely in ancient times as he claimed.

Indeed I never mentioned katrina in my correction of Len you decided to
make a stupid attack of a statement that was rock solid in in
truthfullness

showing you don't deal with issues instead you deal in personal
attacks, and stpuid ones at that

OTOH sending some one by boat with a message from NO to Batron Rouge
could not have worked worse than what WAS done in the aftermath of
Katrina, but again 15 mintues doesn't cut it

Dave K8MN

From: K=D8=88B on Sep 15, 12:20 pm


"Michael Coslo" wrote

Design the system that will always be up, will allow anyone to communica=
te to
anyone anywhere with no knowledge of anything by the users, aside from t=
urning
the radio on, adjusting the audio, and mashin' that button.

You have it precisely correct. I knew you'd catch on!

Takes Michael a LONG time to catch on. I doubt if he'd make a
good First Responder. :-)


You suggesting reactors for power supplies?

Where did I suggest that?

You didn't, Hans, but Michael may be hyped on "cold fusion." What
he seems to be fusing is dissent.

ANY startable emergency electric power generator is good if there is
STORABLE fuel at the ready. It was so in the 1950s and the good old
PE-95 truck-transportable diesel motor run generator. [used to fire
one up on the bimonthly readiness check at FEC Hq in Tokyo, in the
blockhouse at Pershing Heights, now the Hq of the Japanese Self
Defense Force]

In the FIRST east coast electrical blackout, one NYC hospital didn't
do good planning. They had a good electric power generator, but the
compressed-air STARTER (big diesel engines for that usually used
compressed air) was operated from 230 VAC! Luckily they were able
to borrow a roll-around gasoline-powered compressor to start their
electric generator. :-)

Back then in the 60s the FAA had air regs that all airport runway
lighting had to have emergency electric generation. The FAA had
forgotten to include regs for all the ATC radios! Pilots in the
air managed to "direct" their own traffic and nobody in the air was
hurt. FAA added/amended regs to include generators shortly after.

A couple decades later, another generation of beaurocrats later,
they didn't plan well enough on the Los Angeles Center ATC
"upgrade" in Palmdale. Result was an outage of several hours
due to a not-fully-tested auto-start-generator computer tie-in
system. Some folks just don't want to listen to what had already
been experienced, thought they had all the answers, didn't TEST
all the "innovations."


The hyper complicated system that you describe only adds to the infrastr=
ucture
needed to support the system.

Actually, the EDACS at New Orleans was pretty compact, simple, and
straightforward compared to most major metropolitan areas. Certainly wasn=
't
"hyper complicated".

The Greater Los Angeles area could be described as having a "hyper-
complicated" public safety radio area. Thing is, every one of
the 84 cities and suburbs got together, including the County and
State, making a workable system with fall-back provisions and
contingency accommodations. It got the acid test nearly a dozen
years ago and PASSED. The lessons learned were incorporated later
to improve it.

New Orleans, mostly built on ground BELOW sea level (I didn't know
that before Katrina hit), should have had enough small boats for
all those First Responders. Did they? Didn't seem like many on
the TV news. Most radios don't float well. Neither do the folks
(First Responders) who "just mash their PTT buttons" NOR the hams.

Your ideas are good

Of course they are. I made my living for many years in telecommunications
planning/configuration.

Your ideas are good to me even if you didn't have the background.
Logical thinking and consideration of ALL factors are necessary.

Contingency thinking, being able to do work-arounds for the
unexpected, is an absolute necessity of managers. Case in point
occurred locally at the Burbank Airport (now Bob Hope Airport)
nearly four decades ago. The FAA control tower in the old
terminal building was above the main restaurant at the airport.
On a Saturday there was a big grease fire in the restaurant
kitchen requiring evacuation of all, including tower personnel.
FAA had no plans for any backup. Neighboring airport towers
advised all of the situation, a few air carriers diverted to
land elsewhere. Meanwhile, Pacific Airomotive, a big aviation
service company at BUR, grabbed some of their radio gear and
set up a makeshift tower communications place on one of their
large trucks now emplaced near the runway intersection. FAA
was happy and rules changes by telephone made it "legal."
That was completed within three hours of the evac order. That
temporary "tower" functioned for over a week afterwards until
the regular tower was deemed habitable and a few toasted wires
replaced. I heard most of it over a civil aviation band
receiver, including a radio news helicopter hovering near the
temporary "tower" getting the news data for live feed on BC.

The FAA didn't throw up their hands and vamoose. Pac Aero was
neighborly and responsive, had enough radio gear to make it
happen with the aid of two other local aero service companies.
The only ones hurt were the owners of the restaurant suffering
bank account attacks; it never opened again. Flights resumed
though there was more airfreight then (Flying Tigers). Those
involved "knew their territory" and managed work-arounds. A
decade later a new FAA tower was built very near the site of
the temporary one. Folks in management positions acted
positively, innovatively, and MADE IT HAPPEN.

From: on Thurs 15 Sep 2005 03:43


Jim Hampton wrote:
wrote in message


What I think that blurb is really all about is the desire fo some to
turn off their NTSC TV transmitters. And I can't say I blame them.

Okay, so you DON'T understand the coding system of DTV that
evolved through MPEG and the Grand Alliance. Use all those
"IQ smarts" and that double degree to understand it. The
Grand Alliance test program was long and thorough (8 years?)
and has plenty of literature to eddicate you.

Most TV stations here in Philly are simulcasting DTV and NTSC. That's
expensive, both in tower rental, power and labor costs, and because the
NTSC stuff is all going to be worthless when they finally shut it down.

No, it won't be "worthless" sweetums. You've never worked in
any TV station and don't know what's involved. The NTSC video
transmitter is basically a linear AM type and can transmit
ANY digital signal fed to it. Yes, it will require a few add-
ons to meet whatever DTV specs there are, but it can be made
compatible. The basic ham HF transmitter is really a SSB (AM)
linear yet it can do on-off keying with just a few circuit
changes built-in. Same, same.

The NTSC aural transmitter is straight Class C for FM. It can
be altered and retuned to FM BC or any other FM transmit
frequency in VHF or UHF.

ALL of the RGB camera/film/slide/tape "studio" equipment is the
SAME for either system. That's what is being used NOW for all
those simulcasts. Video and audio control consoles are the
Same. Same = Same in math terms.

The major thing added between NTSC and DTV is the ENCODER for
DTV and the necessary "air monitors" to monitor the transmitters.

All those Tektronix (and others') "vector scopes" will be
obsolete. So are things like the Local Subcarrier Generator
and Synchronizer for NTSC. Not major cost items.

Philadelphia is NOT the center of United States television
production...just one of many major market areas in the USA.

The migration to DTV has taken a long time and it's going nowhere fast.

On the contrary. New DTV transmitters for locales requiring
channel reassignments have been sold and installed for some
time. They ARE working out fine.

The stores keep selling NTSC TVs, VCRs, etc., so the 'installed base'
isn't shrinking.

Those same stores (Circuit City, Best Buy, et al) are doing
just fine selling LCD/Plasma/Projection DISPLAY units that are
COMPATIBLE. You need to read the advertisements more often.
Check out the DVDs which are rapidly REPLACING mag tape.

DTV sets still cost a pretty penny, and if someone
doesn't watch that much TV it's not a high priority to replace an NTSC
set.

I just don't see any marketing person coming to you for
"customer insight" on what to sell! :-)

How many more years and dollars before they can shut off the old NTSC
transmitter? That's the big issue.

How many years before YOU decide to go solid-state in a ham
transmitter you "designed and built for yourself?" :-)

One solution is to distribute set-top boxes that convert DTV signals to
NTSC, so that you can watch the DTV transmissions on your NTSC set,
tape them on VHS, etc. But who is going to pay for it?

Real customers is who. [not you, of course...]

Get a clue. DVD has replaced magnetic tape for recordable TV.
Check any TV rental store. Read those ads you ignore. DVD
RECORDERS are available. My wife's computer has a DVD recorder
built-in as well as DVD playback through the computer. With a
thin flat-screen display the linearity is superb and so is the
"gamma" (linearity of contrast/brightness).

DTV Coupled with DVD recording and thin flat-screen displays
is a whole order of magnitude BETTER than Betamax ever was.
VHS mag tape recording got excellent a decade ago and the
prices have been dropping while the general economy has grown
more expensive. VHS is doomed, has been doomed by DVD, just
as much as CDs doomed the vinyl disc recording. CDs and DVDs
are BETTER than the old media.

Cable TV is now the leading TV input to households nationwide.
Cable TV is cutting over to digital transmission from the
head end to neighborhoods, the neighborhoods having ALREADY
added a second cable line in many service areas. Nearly all
Cable services offer rentable set-top-boxes to decode digital
into analog TV visual-aural or NTSC RF. My wife and I have
one of those with its own remote and extra services such as
"view-on-demand" (a bit like TiVo, but only in general).
We get MORE free channels plus more premium channels plus
some two dozen free audio-only "channels" just for listening.
Superior picture, no RFI as was once seen on analog service.
Yes, it costs more. Yes, there is more pleasure with it.

Wife and I bought a little palm-sized still/motion-picture
camera (with image stabilization) that records in a 512M
or 1Gig memory chip. Costs less than $200. The Panasonic
still camera that records on a SuperDisk (size of a 3 1/2"
floppy, holds over 450 images in hi-res) cost $600 in 2000.
Still works fine. Technology just keeps getting better.
Maybe you want to make that some paranoic charge to defeat
Eastman Kodak? Sorry, Eastman is doing digital cameras too.

By wrapping the issue in disaster-communications bunting, the whole
thing can be made to look as if it's in the national interest to shut
down NTSC broadcasting ASAP. The red herring is that the freed-up
spectrum will somehow enhance disaster comms.

Tsk, tsk. You should take your anti-paranoia pills REGULARLY.

The DTV channel reassignment FREED UP SPECTRUM for MANY radio
services. If you had followed the Mass Media Bureau and OET
at the FCC you would have seen that...and the several auctions
for users ALREADY past. Lots of information there, just look
around to see what is what...or indulge in meaningless
paranoia. Your choice. Both ways are free.

A Revision of the HUGE Part 2, Title 47 C.F.R. frequency
allocation table appeared last week in the Federal Register.
You might want to check it out and compare it with old
tables from 1995 to see the differences on what happened
to all those big UHF TV bands.

The DTV channel reassignment problem was complex yet the FCC
(through OET?) did a masterful job of figuring it all out.
You can even download the computer program that figured it
all out from the FCC website. You DO know how to program
a computer, don't you?

You get down to the museum yet? They have a working pre-NTSC B&W/color
TV set complete with color wheel...

That was the old "CBS System." Saw one in Chicago around
1948 at an NAB demo. Pretty at the time. But DOOMED from
the beginning on display size plus flicker to some viewers.
Anything larger than 15" diagonal needed a projection
system...the color wheel couldn't be made stable or reliable
at 32" diameter or larger and certainly not quiet enough.

Have you examined the Texas Instruments "micro mirror" chip
that is used for digital light projection. Thousands of
little deformable mirrors, one per pixel, that replacing the
projection CRT. Technology advances, gets on the market and
customers buy it. Nifty system, ey? But you aren't in the
loop. Too bad. Just play with your morse code radios and
be happy.

Len:

I have given "free power" quite a bit of thought. Even if a method
existed, all govt's, indeed, all peoples would almost be fools to allow it
to be unleashed. (and my "conspiracy theory mentality" notices a few
strange deaths of individuals evolving themselves with such efforts--but
probably just a coincidence grin)

Think about a muslim terrorist (or a group of them!) with an unlimited
energy supply, perhaps we would be wise in what we wish for--I can easily
imagine a scenario which makes the new orleans disaster look mild...

John


.... MAJOR SNIP! ...