Andrew VK3BFA wrote:


And tell him to buy a text book on - well, just about anything except
self-promotion - he doesnt seem to know very much. Probably why hes a
consultant. Is he an accountant?

Nope, my brother is a geophysicist. I'm the electronics person.

The Eternal Squire

wrote:

wrote:
wrote:

Let's see, all you have to do is find a bunch of laptops with 12V
adapters,

12V power is standard power jack for laptops

Funny, the last laptop I bought doesn't include a 12V cable. As a
matter of fact, neither did the one before it. You had to ask for
it as an add-on.

a bunch of CB radios with documentation on the mic input,

The docs could be on the CD-ROM. Squad leader or designate
could read that using the laptop.

And just where do you get this CD-ROM in a deserted, destroyed building
after the catastrophe?

Oh yeah, you've got the schematics of every CB radio ever made on
CD-ROM already and you are taking it with you.

Right,

a soldering iron to make up a mic/laptop interface cable (assuming
you can use the existing mic cable connector).
Shouldn't be too hard.

Of course every squad made up of random troops from the motor pool and
the rifle squad has a portable soldering iron, knows how to solder
and has solder.

Or or all these troops going to come from the Signal School?

Oh, wait, they are going to commandeer the soldering irons and solder
from the destroyed businesses and plug the irons into the none-functioning
AC grid, and learn how to solder from a CD-ROM.

How could I have been so stupid with only 30 years in the Army?

Maybe from teaching soldering classes?


The only problem left is how to get the abandoned automobile to the
top of the 3 story office building (if any are left standing in this
disaster).
The feed could start at street level and connect to a dipole on the
rooftop.

So where do you get the custom power cable or antenna cable to go
up three stories?

Three stories worth of cable is going to weigh a lot more than most
radios these days.

Might as well bring the radios with built in antennas and battry packs.

--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

wrote:

And just where do you get this CD-ROM in a deserted, destroyed building
after the catastrophe?

Clearly you are only skimming my posts rather than reading them.

Starting at the beginning:

1) Squad leader carries a mini-CDROM in his/her pocket. That's the
nucleus
for everything else. With luck, nothing else need be carried into
the field.

2) The CDROM would contain schematics and part numbers of everything
necessary
to forage to create a datalink.

3) SSB CB Radios (funny, my RS always carries the SSB CB radio as the
high end
model) would be one of several pieces of RF equipment
that could be foraged off the street (i.e. Radio Shack stores,
truck stops, etc).

4) Most new laptops carry 12V power input. Older ones don't. There
are plenty
of sources to forage a laptop from: Target, Walmart, and K-mart
come to mind
as well as Radio Shack.

5) The laptop, radio, and car are all at street level. People can
take plain old copper
wire and make a dipole or inverted Vee with it, hanging it from the
roof top. The only actual ground to antenna connnection comes
between the radio and the center of the dipole or inverted Vee.

Caught up now?

The Eternal Squire

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 23:10:14 GMT, **THE-RFI-EMI-GUY**
wrote:

SSB CB radios are pretty rare items in most circles, in fact the troops
trying to commandeer CB's might not be aware of the difference and will
try to use standard CB's and they won't work in the "net". Secondly, SSB
CB's have a clarifier control that has to be adjusted. This is easy
enough with voice, but with data, it is not as easy to do by "ear". You
will have to incorporate some sort of tuning scheme in your software.
You are better off with AM because of these limitations. Are you going
to have a field expedient handbook so that the troops can figure out
which mike wires are which? It is not that easy to figure out if you are

Thats funny! Actually CB radios are very diverse with their mic
wiring and switching schemes as in if not done correctly they will
not transmit _or_ recieve.

It's a bad idea and deserves to die an expedient death.

It would be far easier to mass produce a UHF FM radio based on
GMRS chipsets with a digital interface. Then give everyone
a box of them and a box of batteries.

Allison

unfamiliar with radio. Your idea of a software solution reminds me of
the BAYCOM TNC modems of the 80's. You might want to research those. You
should be able to get 3 to 5 times that rate in the consulting world by
the way.

wrote:

Brian 2W0BDW wrote:


wrote in message
egroups.com...


All,

I've got a brother who works for a consulting firm whose main customer
is Homeland Secrity.

What the feds want to do is to be able to communicate mil-spec digital
packets over low power links in the middle of a disaster-hit area
between squads of Guards deployed across a destroyed city.

They cannot assume that hams and ham equipment will be available, and
they do not want to carry heavy equipment into a city. They want to be
able to use equipment that they can readily commandeer from stores such
as Radio Shack.

That pretty much means CB radios. I have heard of hams working DX
using 5 watts of PSK on 10 meters using poor antennas, so that gives me
the idea that Guard units could form medium range mobile networks using
5 watts of PSK on 11 meters using wires dropped off bridges.

Eventually the hams that do get on the scene could set up a CB to HF
gateway so that the packets could make it out from the Guards to the
NGOs.

While I am more than willing to test this setup out for my brother on a
pair of CB radios, I told him I might need an STA from the FCC to
communicate data on CB channel 40. He tells me that in an emergency,
anyone can use any frequencies they want, any power, any mode. I told
him true, but that does not help me as an OEM getting fined for testing
out an emergency scenario in a nonemergency situation.

Suggestions?

The Eternal Squire



IMHO The feds have plenty of radio equipment with comms operators that could
be shipped to disaster hit area faster than your average guards unit could
adapt/setup a purloined unit.




Thank you all for your suggestions.

This is not a hoax. But I too find the need sufficiently implausible
that I feel a little bit queasy taking R&D fees for a cause like this
at $50 per hour. The only reason that I'm not mentioning the
consulting firm is that I could stand to get paid... and any money is
better than no money. And if I'm the king's coin then I ought to make
it work.

I agree, Truck stops are a very good idea for commandeering CB's, but
you only find those in the exurbs.. Yes, other commercial radio
services could and maybe even should be drafted into this. The squad
lead could then determine the tradeoffs based on the availability of
foraged equipment.

Allison, your idea of using the dummy loads to simulate fading over
distance is OUTSTANDING. I'll do it!

Using dummy loads as a demo, I could then get the consulting firm to
ask the FCC for an STA for field tests.

For my test rigs, I'm intending to plug in a laptop sound card I/O into
the SSB mic and headphone jacks. Therefore no type acceptance needed
because no mods.

My brother says ideally in the scenario, each squad leader should only
need to carry a mini-CDROM in his or her pocket. The squad lead could
then commandeer a laptop, an SSB CB radio, and then use an abandoned
automobile as an electric generator for the laptop and radio. Antenna
would be flung over a 3 story office building.

One of the reasons for this scenario is to lighten the overall squad
load and thereby increase the speed of response. That way each squad
could break into an abandoned store and then set up a first responder
posts.

On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:24:04 UTC, Jim Higgins
wrote:

About all you're going to commander from Radio Shack is cell phones.
I smell a hoax...

That's close...

though it wouldn't surprise me to find an absolutely
clueless consulting firm sucking up Homeland Security money and
Homeland Security tossing money around to every clueless Tom, Dick and
Harry like it was water.


I bet that's it. I'm in WAAA-shington and it is incredible how
absolutely clueless the folks who staff the consulting firms are.

They'll seize upon a buzzword or a weird concept and, bing, the word
processors and powerpoint presentations are running full time,
filling the air with blather.

Handwaving, spewing the jive.

Let's be clear. The concept makes no sense at all. Others have
detailed the technical and practical issues.

What does work is standard military comm gear, ruggedized, charged
up and ready to use.

This is America. The guard or whoever already has comm gear, likely
as good as stuff used by 14 year old mall-kids.

If they don't, then it's a simple matter to deliver it to them from
a depot.

In the absense of a problem, a consulting firm will imagineer one
and, let the spew-games begin.

This is WAAA-shington. Blather and cluelessness abound.
They might be filing for a proof-of-concept, stage one,
small-business-innovative-research contract, twenty-five or fifty
grand of your money pays for a lot of USENET trollin' and wacky
verbage.

Even scarier, if they make the first cut, the next level is a
quarter million to a half million dollars of YOUR money.

-c

--

wrote:
All,

While I am more than willing to test this setup out for my brother on a
pair of CB radios, I told him I might need an STA from the FCC to
communicate data on CB channel 40. He tells me that in an emergency,
anyone can use any frequencies they want, any power, any mode. I told
him true, but that does not help me as an OEM getting fined for testing
out an emergency scenario in a nonemergency situation.
STA are temproary and not supposed to be granted for perment possible
ops the people ask in this case would the FCC iself but I an STA would
allow protype testing and such but deployment authoity would need some
mondo rulling to be legal

wrote:

wrote:

And just where do you get this CD-ROM in a deserted, destroyed building
after the catastrophe?

Clearly you are only skimming my posts rather than reading them.A

Actually, I was reading them and comparing them against my real world
experiences with combat boots in the dirt.

Starting at the beginning:

1) Squad leader carries a mini-CDROM in his/her pocket. That's the
nucleus
for everything else. With luck, nothing else need be carried into
the field.A

A military force that goes into the field depending on luck is doomed
to failure.

It doesn't matter if it is a combat situation in foreign land or a
simple training exercise within sight of a major US city.

If you don't have everything you need going in, or at least a supply
chain that can get it to you quickly, someone is going to be hurt.

This comes from bitter experience.

2) The CDROM would contain schematics and part numbers of everything
necessary
to forage to create a datalink.

You are going to supply an up to date CDROM containing all the info for
all the CB radios in the US?

Yeah, that's going to happen

3) SSB CB Radios (funny, my RS always carries the SSB CB radio as the
high end
model) would be one of several pieces of RF equipment
that could be foraged off the street (i.e. Radio Shack stores,
truck stops, etc).

Assuming there were such stores in the first place and they aren't
flattened/flooded by whatever the catastrophe was.

4) Most new laptops carry 12V power input. Older ones don't. There
are plenty
of sources to forage a laptop from: Target, Walmart, and K-mart
come to mind
as well as Radio Shack.

Getting a laptop is a minor problem. Getting a 12V DC connector and
someone that knows how to wire to a field expediate power source
correctly is a major problem.

5) The laptop, radio, and car are all at street level. People can
take plain old copper
wire and make a dipole or inverted Vee with it, hanging it from the
roof top. The only actual ground to antenna connnection comes
between the radio and the center of the dipole or inverted Vee.

Where does the antenna feed cable come from? The collapsed/flooded
store?

Where do you get the person that knows how to wire up an antenna
and feed cable?

Where do you get the person that knows how to cut a dipole or
inverted-vee, or even what those terms mean?

Most troops are really good at what they are trained for. Few troops
have been trained in anything to do with electronics or even electricty.

Special Forces troops are probably the most veratile of troops (and
the smallest in number), but without the training they would be
useless.

You want them to parachute in during the dark of night, take and
hold a tactical position, no problem.

You want them to cut and connect a diplole, big problem

Upon what do I base these statements?

Years spent teaching such subjects to troops.

Caught up now?

I never was behind.

You, however, have no concept of what it is like to have boots in
the dirt.



--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

wrote in message
...
wrote:

wrote:
wrote:

Let's see, all you have to do is find a bunch of laptops with 12V
adapters,

12V power is standard power jack for laptops

Funny, the last laptop I bought doesn't include a 12V cable. As a
matter of fact, neither did the one before it. You had to ask for
it as an add-on.

I guess it is the new laptops that use 12v, the only laptops I have here
have an 18v adaptor for the Zenith or 120v input for the Toshibas. I guess
noone will be borrowing mine to use in an emergency. What sort of emergency
responders are going to be sent in with no equipment?

With the right soundcard software a laptop could emulate a bell 202 or 103
modem over AM radio, even with packet error checking to reduce transmission
errors. What no one has mentioned yet is channel usage, one simplex data
channel for an entire disaster area with no provision for collision
detection between users other than just listening for someone else
transmitting? With the central data collection point high enough to cover
the entire area, you will be in the position that each transmitter may not
hear another but the reciever can hear both while transmitting at the same
time. The data collector would spend quite a bit of time acting as net
control determining which remote site was allowed to transmit at any
particular time. Just my $.02 on this poorly thought out idea.
thanks, John.
KC5DWD

On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 10:41:25 -0700, eternalsquire wrote:

All,

I've got a brother who works for a consulting firm whose main customer is
Homeland Secrity.

snip

It's against the law for feds to use freqs not assigned to them. At least
by design.

wrote:
Andrew VK3BFA wrote:


And tell him to buy a text book on - well, just about anything except
self-promotion - he doesnt seem to know very much. Probably why hes a
consultant. Is he an accountant?

Nope, my brother is a geophysicist. I'm the electronics person.

The Eternal Squire

Then what is he doing consulting? - has his academic discipline got
ANYTHING to do with the subject?

And you, sir, have been told, repeatedly, by ex military comms people
(amongst others) thats its just a plain downright, stupid, time
wasting, idiotic, non feasible "idea".

Does it need to be spelt out any clearer than that?

What dont you understand?

Andrew VK3BFA.