The Storm [FADCA] Interesting Reading

Thu Dec 9 10:19:12 EST 2004

I will need to read that article but I must say that I will also take all of
the information with a grain of salt. Based on the two "facts" you
mentioned below which are inaccurate on the authors part I would need to
question the rest of the article. Here is some real first hand information.

I work for one of the carriers mentioned, several on the FADCA list know
who... and I worked 16-20 hour days for 8 weeks without a day off during 2
of the 4 storms, we have others that actually worked all 4 storms with only
3-4 days off between all of them, what it is to be single!!! I could have
doubled my salary in a matter of 2 months, some did! Even though the major
carriers compete in this cut throat business, the field runts are usually
friends and we all know each other's system quite well. We all usually have
equipment at the same locations and we quite often help each other out at
the least keep an eye out for each other.

Altel and Verizon are not fully microwave and actually only a very small
portion is microwave. Nextel is also not fully T1, but has an even smaller
microwave footprint. The T1's were not the major factor in these storms even
though it was significant(I can't speak about the Charlie storm area), a T1
is no good if you do not have power and there were many sites with no power
or many Bell South/Sprint Slicks or unmanned CO's without power. Cingular
and ATT, now one and the same have more microwave than everyone else put
together but considering morale was low, not knowing if they had a job after
the storms well....let's just say they were not very visible during or after
the storms. The big problem with Nextel was not only their T1's but also
capacity. Nextel has capacity issues in many areas due to heavy use but add
to that all of the extra users who come in from outside of the area for
storm support, the increased business that contractors have in storm
stricken zones with increased talk time, and the fact that Nextel has become
more of a cell phone than 2-way radio that even kids are using now and you
have the makings for a nightmare. Just because you get that busy tone does
not mean that the system is out of service, it also can mean that there is
no capacity to handle your additional call on that cell near you. Since many
of the cells were also out of service due to T1 problems that also put
another additional load on neighbor cells you could reach maxing out the
capacity many times over.

I am one of Sprint and Bell South's biggest thorns, I think their quality of
service is rock bottom and I let them know that. BUT I got to admit one
thing, they did an impressive job during one of the worst times in their
history. Many T1's in the SE portion of the state stayed in service while
others were back in service within 1-2 days. The #1 thing was the deployment
of their yellow trailer generators at repeaters and slicks. There were a few
outages that lasted more than a week but most of those were along costal
sections where NO ONE even utilities were even allowed to enter for some
time and at some condemned structures that were not safe to enter. Once
generators were deployed by them the T1's came back up.

Florida Power and Light, along with some of the smaller Co-Op's were the
one's who did a very poor job and a lot has been learned. One important
thing was that air cooled generators are worthless for more than 1 day of
service at a time and propane tanks need to be sized for at least 5 days of
fuel. Depending on the number for customers your propane company has you may
not be able to get fuel more than once in a 4-5 day period since it takes
that long for them to service all of them with the number of trucks they
have, and believe me they will all need service in a disaster like this.
Diesel is GREAT since the drivers are not wimps and will drive a muddy road,
propane drivers refuse to drive any dirt road that is wet but Diesel is
almost impossible at many locations since 99% of Florida is a DEP wetland! A
generator with no propane is a worthless generator...so bigger tanks and
also try to license and swap out to diesel where possible. You can also get
diesel trucks from as far as Houston and VA to come and service you for
weeks at a time, when they run out they just drive far enough to re-fill and
come back, propane companies do run out of fuel at their main offices and it
takes much more time to get them to reload and come out to you. Never use
natural gas on a generator, always use your own propane source since natural
gas can and usually is shut down after a disaster until all service lines
are checked.

As far as LMR goes...all I can say is that there was significant problems
with one public safety system (and I actually think more than one but have
no first hand knowledge there) that will remain nameless and one public
safety agency actually started using my Ham UHF repeater since they had no
other communications. Yes...some were hams but I also question if others
were...That is a ball of worms that I would rather not go into but something
that will be dealt with in the near future due to legal concerns. What it
did prove was that microwave is not to be trusted in the "hurricane belt"
and that their old VHF/UHF conventional system should have never been taken
out of service but maintained as a backup system. It's just common sense,
any of the Northerners will know...do you bother to use an umbrella during a
Nor'easter ? no way all it's going to do is catch the wind and go in all
directions or break. Well should you use big microwave dishes in an area
where you get hurricanes ? no all it's going to do is move and you will lose
your path. It does not take much movement and just think of the forces that
a 8 or 16 foot dish at 120 feet or more would create in 100+ MPH winds.
Steel is bent, heck with enough dishes of the right size the whole tower
will twist! I know...I saw. It will take a tower crew some time to be able
to climb and re-align, it had stopped raining but winds were still high
enough where OSHA would not allow a climb for 2 days I think after Jeanne,
and 1 day after Francis. We were lucky we had a crew waiting to help us,
others were not as lucky and had to wait some time before a crew was
available and came in from outside of the area.

Just a few thoughts and reality...Lesson lived and learned.
Rich

-----Original Message-----
From: fadca-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:fadca-bounces at mailman.qth.net]On Behalf Of Chuck Hast
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 9:19 AM
To: FADCA; fpac at f6fbb.org
Subject: [FADCA] Interesting Reading

Folks,
If you do not get the paper version of Mobile Radio Technology you can
also read it on the web.

They had a very interesting article on our hurricanes and how well the
radio infrastructure weathered the storms.

Among other things NexTel took a big hit because they rely totally on
t1 and T3 links to their towers, whereas Verizon and Altel recovered rather
more rapidly due to the fact that the towers are linked using microwaves.

Also the LMR side of the house responded much more rapidly than any
of the commercial stuff in terms of getting back on the air.

http://mrtmag.com/mag/radio_miracle/

The idea of having RF as primary (as it should be for amateur radio at
least) appears to be more than just a "ham thing" and as you all know
I like the wire line paths when there is nothing else there, but this
article
drives home something that we have been discussing, wire vs rf, and if
we can get the RF up and linked, AND properly hardened then we have
a much better posibility of picking up and starting to pass traffic after
the
disaster event.

--
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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