[FADCA] Some observations RE: Charlie- A retransmission of message from 8/14/04.

[Russell Oder]

I forgot that the mail reflector at Mailman did not pass attachements. So
here is the rest of my message (Chuck received it but he may be the only
one.)

Chuck, you addressed some very critical points.

When these events leave us time to consider what we have in place and how
they could be venerable (when we are not personnally involved in fighting
back the tiger we can surmise the situation from atop the elephant). I also
have been running through some similar scenerios and observations and put
them together in the folowing notes.:

- Few of our links are at locations with back up power.

  - Our links in North Florida to Central Florida (where the exists) have
both "commercial" or "government" and personal (home) sights that are not
"hardened."

  - Our antennas are, for the most part, light weight (cheaper). , hollow
aluminum antennas, that are very long (compared to commercial antennas) that
are not capable of surviving the type of wind a hurricane can inflict.  But
we use them because they have more gain and allow us to have our layered
network sites further apart.

 - Our sites are too far apart to provide 24/7 connections under "very
adverse"  weather (noise) conditions.

  - We have little if any "back up" links between major areas

  -  Some clubs and we as individuals have limited financial resources to
improve out system and little political or commercial clout to make better
site available.



What do we need to do?

  -  Make sure our "corporation" is active as a "not for profit corporation"
with the Florida Secretary of State's Office

   -  Secure 501 c(3) Tax Exempt Status for FADCA!!!!!!

   -  Sponsor and conduct Ham Fest Clinics, attend and present to local
Clubs, meet with ARES (r) ECs and DECs

   - Secure Political Support from local county commissioners, city counsel
members and legislators (go to public meetings, get on the agenda, call
elected officials, invite them to review the system, provide well developed
"educational" packages, talk to civic and church groups.

   - Meet with every County Emergency Manager and Communications Officer in
every County Sheriff's office, police department, and rescue agency in the
state every month (weekly as necessary.

   - Meet with, provide a presentation to and volunteer to work with and
participate in local disaster response planning groups (examples are:
Jacksonville Hospital Disaster Council, Regional Domestic Violence Task
Force (there is one for every area of the state of Florida on which
Communications Officers and Emergency Management agency officials serve.)

  -  Develop and Implement a Plan to secure funding or equipment at EOCs,
Served Agencies, and remote county sites.

     - Identify public and private sources of funding

     - Prepare universal funding application material

     -  Seek public funding support of a system that will be in place for
public agency and disaster response agency use in a disaster

  -  Install redundant systems to increase the chances of insuring
communication links:

     -  Multiple Telpac Nodes in each county

     - PMBOs in each EOC and one alternative site in each County (one with
an active 24 hour HF Winlink PACTOR III equipment.)

     - Develop and install "parallel" layered network links (with some on
paths not on the coast with storm exposure) using "commercial" or
"government" towers and "commercial" heavy-duty UHF antennas.

     - Install "HF" PACTOR systems that will saturate their signal out to
100 to 250 Miles (it is 350 miles from Miami to Jacksonville and 368 miles
from Jacksonville to Pensacola) as well as support "long haul paths" to
allow for propagation and sites outside of affected areas

    -  Install PSK/Pactor or other "tropo" UHF, VHF, and Low Band (6 meters)
point to point links (Chuck has a very good idea - something we have talked
about but not really acted upon - (Chuck do you still have access to a 6
meter 500 W or better Transmitter and gain antenna - I have a 2 watt in and
1 KW out Amplifier on 43.92 Mhz with a Scala commercial 5 element antenna
for transmit and an 8 element 6 meter beam for receive and am willing to
install a preamp for 6 meters as well as a TX/RX switching network (or a UHF
or 802.11 g link between TX and RX sites)  I can use to set up my end of an
experimental Tropo Scatter system...) (I also may have a 1 KW UHF amplifier
and I do have two 20 ft dish antenna steel poles and four (4) 18 element 435
beams, frame and a 4 port power divider for a UHF Tropo system.)



  - GET TO WORK NOW!!!


Chuck wrote back:

"I would really like to try the tropo link on 220MHz. I think we are going
to find that 220 may give us the best elements of what we need to do the
tropo links."

I have limited equipment on 220 and certainlly don't have high powered
Amplifiers.  However, if we could put together some equipment it could be
tried.

Russ



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chuck Hast" <wchast at gmail.com>
To: <fadca at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2004 12:57 PM
Subject: [FADCA] Some observations RE: Charlie.


> Folks,
> Having sat at the Hillsborough, Co EOC thinking I was going to return
> to something similar
> to what we see down in Charlotte, Co. I went over network issues in my
> mind and also some
> issues we discovered here in Tampa that had never surfaced before.
>
> Looking at the damage and wind speeds, we really need to think about
> how large of a size
> the radiators need to be in order to provide the services we want to
> provide but at the same
> time survive such a event.  Watching the footage from the passage of
> the storm through
> Charlotte Co was a stark reminder that the same forces that can left a
> large aircraft and
> allow it to fly also can totally destroy anything that is in the wind
> stream of such a storm
> I know that small is not  something we associate with the antennas of
> our network devices.
> But we need to think about both antennas and bands used for both links
> and access points.
>
> Also we need to look hard at HF and tropo as alternative routes to get
> data out of the
> disaster areas, indeed HF is being worked over quite well, and I had a
> chance to test it
> out using  'Airmail' while at the  EOC (Bud we tried to connect to you
> but no joy) our
> link was through a station in TX, but regardless it did the job and we
> were there and ready
> if needed.
>
> Now, on to something that I have beat on every so often and that is
> tropo links. For some
> reason I can not figure out why, but we seem to avoid this one like a
> plague yet I have
> found that unplanned for sold tropo paths have in many cases been a
> after installation
> issue in many data systems I have worked on. If these things without
> planning them
> appear and work solidly without planning, why can't we take advantage
> of them and
> make them work for medium haul links out of say targeted sites on a area
by area
> basis.  As I see it the normal paths will be point to point and will
> of course link neighboring
> switch sites. I believe if we had enough tropo links that we could use
> them to cover
> distances that HF may not handle well at higher speeds and with much
> higher reliability.
>
> Now the question is how to get started on some testing of such links.
> Obviously many
> sites will not be able to support a tropo link, but key sites will.
> The idea would be to
> space them such that when a even such as the last storm takes place,
> we will loose
> some of these sites or the tropo piece due to the size of the
> antennas, but if the link
> antennas are small enough to get the data out of the immediate area,
> then it can be
> routed to a site that has a functional tropo installation that can
> then in one or two hops
> get the data on to the final location such as the state EOC or
> whatever. That combined
> with the Telpac access points should give us a very well covered and
> linked network.
>
> We really do need to look at what is needed to harden a site so that
> it will live through
> a even like the one we just lived through. At least the local access
> port, the links to the
> neighboring switches and associated Telpac access point. Add to that
> enough tropo
> and HF links and we would have a very robust network that would be
> able to pass data.
>
> Each working link out of a trouble area represents bandwidth, and the
> more of them we
> can keep alive the better we will be respected in this as a viable
> solution for events such
> as that we just went through.
>
> Another point that needs to be really looked at in depth is power, our
> Tampa site in
> the county building down town went off the air  due to a programmed
> power outage in
> preparation for a 14 foot surge which would have submerged all of
> downtown Tampa.
> TECO rather than let the underground infrastructure fill with water
> and short out pulled
> started pulling the plug on the downtown area, the building in
> question has power plants,
> but the whole of downtown was being evacuated including the people who
> would operate
> the power plant, so a system that should have had backup was not so.
> This we hope
> will make you think about other sites that may be 24X7 emergency, but
> does not take
> into account such issues as the one we ran into which curtailed 24X7
operation.
>
> Yesterday at the EOC we were discussing how to correct this problem,
> either moving
> the equipment to another site or build a emergency power system for
> all the gear up
> on that building roof. The locaton and access make it quite attractive
> and as we found
> out we are not the only ones affected, and I believe that in this case
> we have something
> we can work together with the county to correct (the county WAN also
> went down as
> all of the routing and access is based out of that building.
>
> -- 
> Chuck Hast
> To paraphrase my flight instructor;
> "the only dumb question is the one you DID NOT ask resulting in my going
> out and having to identify your bits and pieces in the midst of torn
> and twisted metal."
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