On Mon, 3 Oct 2005 11:28:32 -0400, Ari Silversteinn
wrote:

Yes, the budget is rich with expected legal expenses. Since DHS has become
a player in this, we are hopeful that we can get the necessary punch to
overcome FCC and statutory issues.

Hi Ari,

The various pieces of this jigsaw puzzle is beginning to reveal a
picture here. With the introduction of two governmental
organizations, and their regulations, your "plan" has all the
appearances of being suitably crafted to work on paper. It responds
to the individual issues that any squinty-eyed bureaucrat would demand
be satisfied for his postage sized turf, but in the overall it would
fail miserably, or drive costs so high as to be tainted with the plea
that "aren't people's lives worth the price?"

Let's see, the original spec calls for a disaster situation that is
confined to within 1 mile; that demands the local population be
informed; that over-rides their usual paths of communication; that
reaches them even when they are not engaged in listening.

As already pointed out, big sound trucks do wonders, and have worked
well since the beginning of the last century for this purpose. That
kids inside their home can hear the ice-cream truck a mile away is a
testimony to this simplicity.

Knocking on the door of the local broadcasters and commandeering their
air-time has a time honored tradition of working quite well too. This
involves no more time than getting that expensive mobile power plant
rigged with wide band transmitters working into hugely lossy antenna
systems into the same danger area. After-all, you could as easily
call the first most obvious radio station as them, and you could be
calling the others before they even got on the road.

The solution demanded is that all radio stations respond to a disaster
network alert and citizens tune to the Civil Defense frequency when so
warned by them. Is this another administration cut-back that was
shelved as one of those unnecessary "entitlements?" Have they clipped
all the wires to those old Air Raid sirens? When did the lights go
out in FEMA?

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC