[Milsurplus] Speaking of Conelrad-

[Facility 406]

> On 9-11, the most powerful BCB broadcast stations
> suddenly had a lower-level data burst, IIRC,
> either near the top of the hour or every 15 mins
> during a second or two of otherwise "dead air."
> Makes sense that some sort of nation-wide data
> stream easily available.  It continued for
> many months.
> Does anyone know what I'm describing
> or any details?

First I heard of this.  I'm curious, especially since the gov't is still 
trying to get some sort of broad EMS system up and running, over two and 
a half decades later.  It seems unlikely anything was in the works, or 
operational enough to send a consistent signal every 15-60 minutes, and 
hardly "suddenly", or for months, as a test or two a year nowadays is 
mostly a no-go.

Personally, what I recall, was the near 100% failure of digital 
cellphones in what as now a fringe area, due to high level cell sites 
getting cut off.

Analog phones just got a little scratchy, like an AM radio in a fringe 
area, but digital systems just dropped out at a fraction of the 
distance, and signal strength.

Hard to say how many lives were lost due to a known to be bad system 
that just failed when the going got tough.

I speculated it to be the end of a garbage technology, especially as the 
limitation was demonstrated over and over, on radio, and TV shows for 
several more weeks, but, now we have consistently bad digital service 
everywhere.

Kurt