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

[Chuck Hast]

On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 11:24:39 -0400, Russell Oder <oderr at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> 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.

We found something out after the fact, here in Tampa TECO had decided to
pull power on the downtown areas because the system is underground and
when the surge was to come in they were calculating that the whole of down
town, Davis Island, Harbour Island and other ares would all be under water so
in order to avoid short circuits on the subterrainian gear they were going to
pull the plug (indeed they did) on down town. The Tampa switch site and
several repeaters and other facilities are on the county building down town.
This building has internal power and is supposed to be up 24x7, BUT the
county was evacuating everything including the building, so there was no
one to run the power plants so NO POWER. We have to re-think the use of
that building and how to keep power on the site when such a event happens
again. Do not think that your 24x7 power is truely 24x7 power unless it can
and will run unmanned...

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

This was a 'government' bldng, no one took into account that it might be totally
left empty of minimal personel to operate the power plant. By way the county
also lost the WAN, and some of their stuff too so I suspect that there will be
a lot of hard looks at this one.

We need to look hard at all of the sites both 'hardened' (assumed) and non-
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.

We need to look at other ways around the antenna issue, I fear that a long yagi
is NOT a optimal structure to have hanging out in tropical storm level winds let
alone hurricane level. Either we move our links to higher frequencies where we
get more gain for less antenna (a chimera as capture area comes into play too)
or look at more repeater sites, either bent pipe or digi that are
strictly network
devices. Perhaps a "simple" dual port digi along the path may be all
that is needed
to get over the hump, I would figure that in many cases the device
could be a low
power one with two radios one for each leg of the link. It would have
line of sight
with both ends, and be at the point where the horizon becomes the issue from
both ends. This could be a simpler device made just as either a two port digi
or switch.


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

See above..

>   - 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?

Take a look at a map and see if I am wrong but I believe that most of
the EOC's are
about 30 miles apart, if they have hardened facilities they would be
ideal places to put
hardened switch sites. We could then offer a direct wire link into the
EOC and even
a low power system inside the EOC. Indeed a LINUX switch would allow 802.11.


> 
>   -  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:

Amen brotha, preach on, so far soo gooodddd...

> 
>      -  Multiple Telpac Nodes in each county

Link them directly to the switches, also if the switch is located with IP
access use AXIP to link to other switches, and even to fixed sites at EOC's.

> 
>      - 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.)

With regards to modulation, if the signal level is reasonably good, use FSK.
Remember that the system that they build to do the links out to the trucks used
9k6 AFSK which is less efficient than FSK. We can fiddle with the speed as the
radios go from DC to 10KHz audio pass band, so 4k8 b/s (low freq componente is
about 11Hz) or 2k4 b/s (about 5 Hz low freq component) will pass just fine.
Since the radios roll off in such a way as to pass 12k5 b/s we can
look at higher
speeds without any changes to the radio. As soon as the ones we have ordered
get in (they were sent from NZ and arrived in at Tait America last week but we
told them to hold them until this week so they would not get lost if the storm
came through here.

> 
>   - GET TO WORK NOW!!!

-- 
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."