On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:55:58 +0900, "Brenda Ann"
wrote:

I keep hearing on the news about the massive failure in communications after
Katrina (and they're also talking about the same thing after 9/11).

My question is... are these people completely clueless? Don't they have
engineers that they can talk to?

In the case of 9/11, where were the repeaters for the fire/police/etc? On
top of the WTC towers... and those lost power when the planes hit (at least
the upper floors), ergo, no comms. And they certainly weren't working after
the towers fell.

Now, I may be in error about the location of their repeaters, these may have
been elsewhere (the only other real choice would be the Empire State
Building), but again, walkie talkies don't work well inside of concrete
buildings.. range would be spotty at best.

They're talking about needing more spectrum for comms. Under those
conditions, no amount of additional spectrum space would make a whit of
difference.

This goes double or more for New Orleans. They could have all the spectrum
space in the world, but if the infrastructure to run it (electrical power,
antenna systems, etc.) is destroyed, it would avail them not at all. One of
the problems with UHF and VHF two way communications is that the antennas
need to be as high as possible, which makes them prime targets for hurricane
force winds. There are locat tactical frequencies that allow on scene
personnel to talk to one another, but those are very limited in range, and
furthermore the chargers for those handie talkies are sitting back at the
station which has no power, or limited time on generator power. Maybe
satellite coms are the answer, get away from terrestrial linkups that are
more fallible. And you can stuff a lot of PS comms on a single 72MHz wide Ku
band transponder.

So much for my little rant.. I just can't believe they're griping about the
government not doing enough to insure comms during an emergency, when in
some emergencies, such as a hurricane, tornado, or terrorist bombing, the
comms infrastructure may be the first thing to go, and there's not a hell of
a lot you can do about it.


Would you PLEASE stop confusing the issue with the facts!!!!!
Everyone knows it's Bush's fault.