RadioBanter - View Single Post - Ham-radio is a hobby not a service

March 21st 04, 11:29 PM

In article ,
(William) writes:

JJ wrote in message
...
Len Over 21 wrote:

emergency.

Hint: They will if it is useful for them to do so. Should the
network fail, they will resort to other means.

The military and civil authorities don't even consider the cell network
in there emergency communications plans, they know it is too unreliable,
they do consider Amateur Radio.

How do the civil and military authorities intend to be initially
notified that there is an emergency?

There are several ways for military authorities to notify military
units. For long-distance notification there are "hard" circuits
which route through very dedicated, few-user systems via
military satellites, fiber-optic lines, copper lines, or microwave
radio relay. The VLF alert system for submarines is one such,
not using any morse code but rather encrypted data means.
The USAF has its own network as does the USN and USA.

Lower-level alerts can be issued through the DSN or Digital
Switched Network, in clear or encrypted, voice or data, to most
parts of the world where fixed or semi-fixed bases exist. Most
of the operation and maintenance of the DSN is done by USAF
and USA Signal units. DSN is a combination of plain old
telephone system (POTS in the unofficial acronym) and an
Internet-like data exchange. DSN is what fiction author Tom
Clancy calls "the invisible second telephone system." In that
regard the label is very close to the truth except that it is not
"invisible" on any military base or larger government installations.
Older DSN number directories appear on the civilian Internet
and DSN contact numbers are published openly on military and
government websites. DSN telephones and terminals can call
out to the commercial-civil telephone system with setup
authorization and firmware authenticators but the reverse is
seldom implemented.

NORAD has its own hardened system tied to many and
varied sensors, plus the DSN, as a specific example. Details
on the North American Defense Command are sensitive.

For civilian notification there are many and varied means,
beginning with the commercial-civil telephone infrastructure.
Beyond that is a very large assortment of communications
capabilities that varies with the urban complex arrangement
and local government organization. The fire departments of
the Greater Los Angeles area (all 24/7 professionals) have
dedicated circuits bypassing switch centers to each fire
house carrying alarm signals, voice, and some data to back
up voice sent as primary mode (time, destination, etc.).
Police departments in this Greater LA area also have
dedicated circuits not passing through telephone switch
centers, are not blocked by sudden telephone use.

Send a runner?

In the military that is still the final back-up "system." :-)

A form of this, ususally via land vehicle, has been done in
civilian sections. In the Northridge Earthquake here ten years
ago, utility companies had to send company cars to workers'
homes located in areas of severe damage since the POTS
lines were damaged; many off-duty utility workers were needed
for a quick, massive repair task of restoring utilities. A few
police cars aided in such "runner" duty. Notification that an
earthquake had occurred was NOT needed, however. :-)

Public safety vehicles equipped with PA (all police patrol cars
in this area, the PA also being the siren) are useable as wide-
area, mass notification. Most fire department engines also have
PA facilities onboard. That was done in 1971 in the San
Fernando Valley of Los Angeles after the Sylmar quake to warn
residents in the "downhill" side of the Van Norman Reservoir
to evacuate; officials feared the three earthen-wall reservoirs
might be breached by aftershocks and inundate a large area.

The old, "classical" means of widespread notification through
broadcast stations is still done. Both civil airways FAA centers
and USCG plus Harbor Control bases have done announcements
to all aircraft in the vicinity or all watercraft in the harbor area.
There are several private communications networks of larger
corporations here which can be used for alerting distant
locations of their installations and have done so in the past.
As an example, Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International
had several kinds of links to the Santa Susanna Field
Laboratories (mostly for test telemetry) as well as to Atomics
International (plant a few miles away plus labs also at Santa
Susanna).

I always had to carry a pager. Cellular telephones have mostly
replaced pagers.

That depends on the local area. Here there is a mixture of both
plus private/commercial paging services. Pager base stations
are relatively narrowband and semi-automated, are relatively easy
to equip with uninterruptible power supplies. Those are quite
common in larger companies that have employees who must
normally work in many areas of a building complex.

Teledyne Electronics in Newbury Park, CA, was (still is,
presumably) rather far northwest along Highway 101 and had
capability to tie into the beginning of the big Condor Net in
1977-1978 on the 222 MHz ham band. Ostensibly that was
for "fire (brush firestorms) safety of the company" but the two
hams (John Memmen, manager, Harry Terraneau, Sr. Tech)
really had "other" uses for the several HTs. :-) That Net
had non-computer tone signalling and switching-routing, still
does. Harry had at least one HT on-charge with the receiver
open some of the time.

HTs in PDs and utilities are quite numerous and some of those
have varied alerting means such as tone signalling or actual data
sent over mobile terminals. The LAPD here has an "extension"
of patrol car radios in the personal body-worn HT with combination
speaker-mike sometimes clipped near the collar. Many LAPD
patrol cars carry data terminals for long, detailed announcements.
Usually used in ID of vehicles and drivers, those are useful for any
information that needs to be kept handy for referral.

Back a few decades when RCA Corporation was still in existance,
they had dedicated corporate lines locally tying four local RCA
complexes, one of them NBC western headquarters in Burbank.
Those were used for Teletype and a special PBX tie-in to the
telephone system for communications with RCA locations in the
eastern USA. Since RCA was also under contract to Bank of
America for data handling, they also had dedicated lines to San
Francisco B of A Hq. "Dedicated" lines do not pass through the
switch centers of POTS. That was in 1975 and some time in the
past but other corporations of today have extensive private
network facilities that are all useful for notification in real
emergencies. The General Motors assembly plant (last used
for Camaros and Firebirds) in the middle of Van Nuys, CA, had
its own network to component assembly plants elsewhere in order
to expedite manufacturing logistics. [closure by GM was due to
other economic reasons, nothing to do with communications, the
location is now a new mall area referred to as "the plant" - :-) ]

The number and variety of communications means, all useful in
an emergency of today is large and extensive. Details of the
civilian side of it can be discovered by anyone who cares to look.
The Auxilliary Communications Service (ACS) of the California
state Office of Emergency Services takes that into account as
does the OES itself. Any and all means of communications that
survive the onset of any emergency are all useful.

LHA / WMD