On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 14:13:45 GMT, "Dee D. Flint"
wrote:
"erniegalts" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 00:53:44 GMT, "mad amoeba" wrote:
were i am none of the public phones worked and most of the cellular
phones
didnt worked either--ie verizon.
"Tim May" wrote in message
t...
Just to clairify in my mind, neither analog nor digital [CMDA, etc] ?
Rather limits the usefulness of mobiles if a mere power failure can
take them out.
However, is 2 metres any better?
Yes 2 meters is better as, if necessary, we can relay messages ham to ham to
the final destination if our repeaters are out. Plus of course we hams can
use other frequencies. If 2 meters isn't getting the job done for relatively
local communications, we can go to something that has a good ground wave
(such as 80 meters) and cover quite an extended local area very easily.
Dee D. Flint, N8UZE
True, but was thinking more along the lines of carrying a 2-metre
handheld, which a lot of hams here tend to carry around. Haven't seen
any 80 meter handhelds, although if had a mobile covering all amateur
bands would no doubt be very useful in an emergency, especially if had
one of the old ones which would transmit outside amateur bands.
To save time will quote one of my earlier posts to misc.survivalism.
--------------------------------------
From:
Subject: Survival test failed
Date: 2000/08/10
Message-ID:
X-Trace: ozemail.com.au 965832566 203.102.215.100 (Thu, 10 Aug 2000
00:49:26 EST)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 00:49:26 EST
Newsgroups: misc.survivalism
7== Some of you may have seen a TV series called "Eye of the Storm".
One episode dealt with the destruction of Darwin, Northern Territory,
by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Eve/ early Christmas morning 1974.
No services including power and phones. Darwin had a huge Radio
Australia shortwave transmitter, an RAAF air base, and a RAN navy
base...but guess who got the first message out to the rest of
Australia. A radio amateur, of course. :-)
The peak of the destruction was around 0330 to 0400, and from memory
it wasn't until 0600 or 0700 that the media in the rest of the country
announced the story. Not sure when the first message actually got
out. Remarkably enough, death toll was only around 70.
The city was pretty well flattened. At the time of the cyclone,
population was around 46,000 people and area was 233 square kilometres
[about 90 square miles]. Depending on just where draw the boundaries
of the city have the choice of two damage reports. One says that
3,000 houses survived out of 12,000, the other says that only 400
survived intact out of 8,200.
Unlike the US, Australia doesn't have a lot of cities or towns. The
nearest towns of any size would have been Alice Springs to the south
and Mt. Isa, Queensland to the southwest, both about 1,200 km [745
miles] away by road. So a massive airlift had to be organized.
30,000 people were airlifted out in first 8 days, women and children
out in first 6 days.
No choice, really. No power, no phones, no city water, not much
undamaged food. Darwin is tropical, being 12º27' south of the
equator, and, since seasons are reversed here, was midsummer. Posted
a bit on the evacuation in item #5 Newsgroups: misc.survivalism ///
Subject: severely wounded, administering morphine /// Date: Fri,
16 Jun 2000 09:36:39 +1000 ///
Message-ID: ]
One of the reasons damage was so great is that most homes were built
in what was then a very popular tropical style. Most of the house was
on columns or pilings about 8 feet off the ground. At ground level
was usually a brick bathroom and laundry, with an internal staircase
up to the house. Rest of the area under the house was used as a
carport. Main reason for this style of construction was for
protection against tropical termites, which would even eat through the
lead sheathing on telephone cables. Was also cooler than a building
on ground level.
Not too great for resisting a cyclone such as Tracy, though. City has
since been completely rebuilt, no sign of the cyclone damage.
------------------------------------------------
erniegalts