[FADCA] Some observations RE: Charlie- A retransmission ofmessage
from 8/14/04.
JDaughtry
ke4ini at earthlink.net
Sun Aug 15 11:59:29 EDT 2004
to be honest I neved did figure why 6 meters didnt catch on it has the
range and the equiiptment is getting cheaper
and there is plenty of old surplus antennias laying around that will work
with just a little tweeking
but thats just my oppinion
John
----- Original Message -----
From: "Russell Oder" <oderr at bellsouth.net>
To: "Chuck Hast" <wchast at gmail.com>; "Florida Amateur Digital Communication
Association" <fadca at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2004 11:24 AM
Subject: Re: [FADCA] Some observations RE: Charlie- A retransmission
ofmessage from 8/14/04.
> 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."
> > _______________________________________________
> > FADCA mailing list
> > FADCA at mailman.qth.net
> > http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/fadca
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> FADCA at mailman.qth.net
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/fadca
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