NEWS: Up to 2 years for even small panel cell antennas to be approved in San Francisco
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From: Larry on 30 Jul 2010 02:15 John Navas <spamfilter1(a)navasgroup.com> wrote in news:7f34569u76jp5tnjuv67bqkgq36rchniat(a)4ax.com: > For which ham wouldn't have helped. > First responders were and are in a different service category. > > What great fun! The controversy about ham radio got me looking around for remote receivers across the planet I could control and play with. It's 2AM, suddenly! I've been using an Icom 706 receiver at a ham's house in UK, who is, I'm sure, quite asleep but leaves his receiver on 24/7 as many do. I threw up a wire over a tree limb out in the dark and ran a little coax into my ham station tuned for 20 meters to see if I could hear myself across the Atlantic. That got me to wondering if I could make a PSK31 data contact to myself with such a horrible antenna, so had to jury-rig an audio cable into the mic jack of my little Yaesu mobile rig, the first rig I stumbled upon for this quickie project. Not only could I hear myself in Sussex, other stations, hearing someone knew on started calling me about 11PM and I've been on the air ever since! My transmitter running about 30 watts to a 16' piece of wire thrown over a dead tree limb (insulator??) about 25' up and the ground plane the metal skin of my mobile home which has 18 screwed-in hurricane anchors. The furthest stations I worked were in the Ural Mountains of Russia and one station in India! Not bad on 30 watts of Phase Shift Keyed 31Hz bandwidth (PSK31) tones fleaclipped to a mic jack hanging apart....(c;] The crazy thing about this link was I was STILL using the 14.070Mhz USB receiver IN SUSSEX, UK! Talk about SPACE DIVERSITY! Way cool!..... Anyone doesn't like ham radio can just suck eggs!..... 73 DE W4CSC....Charleston....er, ah, Sussex....er, ah, Earth! -- iPhone 4 is to cellular technology what the Titanic is to cruise ships. Larry ET, call me!
From: Larry on 30 Jul 2010 02:17 sfdavidkaye2(a)yahoo.com (David Kaye) wrote in news:i2sni8$rt1$1 @news.eternal-september.org: > I'm not > asking companies to limit their antennas, just make them pleasing or > invisible. > But, just like invisible sellphone antennas on smartphones, invisible antennas that look like trees and birdhouses SUCK AS ANTENNAS and cannot provide us the level of service of a proper panel antenna on the side of a proper tower. -- iPhone 4 is to cellular technology what the Titanic is to cruise ships. Larry
From: John Higdon on 30 Jul 2010 02:35 In article <i2sntq$udo$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, sfdavidkaye2(a)yahoo.com (David Kaye) wrote: > In the 1989 Loma Prieta quake the phone system did not collapse. Remember, I > was working in the call center business at the time. Secondly, 2-way did not > collapse, either. Now, I'm not making any bets that the trunked systems in > use now won't collapse since they're dependent on central coordination that > wasn't needed when simple 2-way was the norm. I was in SoCal when the quake hit. I tried for six hours to get through to ANYONE who could give me the scoop on my radio charges. I was able to reach NO ONE, including my own home, anyone at any of the stations, any friends, relatives, or anyone else. No calls would go through, wireless or wired. Yes, the phones failed...whether you were aware of it or not. I ended up hitting the road about midnight and driving back to the Bay Area. For all I knew, everything I owned or serviced was destroyed. > This didn't happen in Loma Prieta, even though the entirety of SF lost power > for 36 hours. Yes, it did...whether you want to believe it or not. -- John Higdon +1 408 ANdrews 6-4400 AT&T-Free At Last
From: John Higdon on 30 Jul 2010 02:37 In article <i2sptd$7nj$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, jcdill <jcdill.lists(a)gmail.com> wrote: > David Kaye wrote: > > John Higdon <higgy(a)kome.com> wrote: > > >> "communications companies" need to get a reality check. The first thing > >> to go in our modern society after a major catastrophe will be the > >> commercial communications that we depend upon for everyday existence. > > > > This didn't happen in Loma Prieta, even though the entirety of SF lost > > power > > for 36 hours. > > As earthquakes go, Loma Prieta was not all that big. Odds are very high > that when (not if) the Hayward fault finally goes, it's going to be a > lot worse than Loma Prieta. Actually, it did happen. I was in the thick of it. For several days, I used various stations' two-way gear because the phones were so unreliable. -- John Higdon +1 408 ANdrews 6-4400 AT&T-Free At Last
From: Larry on 30 Jul 2010 02:50
John Navas <spamfilter1(a)navasgroup.com> wrote in news:852356ll1lmbiddjln1gbcr66esl8qa652(a)4ax.com: >>If hams truly want to serve the public that they're always talking >>about serving, then they should erect disguised antennas or at least >>those that are somewhat pleasing to look at. > > Amen! > > Man! What could be more beautiful than a wonderful 900' tall HF Sterba Curtain pointed at some rare DX station on an island noone you know has ever heard of talking to a ham whos name you cannot pronounce! http://hawkins.pair.com/voanc/voanc14.jpg You'll need a 500 kilowatt Continental beast to feed it: http://hawkins.pair.com/voanc/voanc08.jpg It uses water-cooled tubes that look like this: http://hawkins.pair.com/voanc/voanc12.jpg I just don't understand how anyone can find a beautiful Blau-Knox like this one at country station of the nation WSM in Nashville is "ugly". How silly! It's BEAUTIFUL...and very old! http://hawkins.pair.com/wsm/wsm_bulb01.jpg http://hawkins.pair.com/wsm/wsm_bulb02.jpg http://hawkins.pair.com/wsm/wsm_bulb03.jpg AND WHAT A VIEW FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE BULB half way up it! For you environazis, the photographer of these pix on the tower and the guy painting it to make it more beautiful for the airliners, FAA and FCC inspectors are both being subjected to 50,000 watts of 650 Khz AM from the Harris DX50 solid state blowtorch in the building of bulb03.jpg. This guy paints ENERGIZED radio and tv broadcasting towers for a living, probably 60 hours a week. Does he look unhealthy or roasted or dying of cancer? Of course, not. If you doubt the amount of power and RF voltage at the point he's standing on, look at the massive insulators in the guy cables on bulb03.jpg that keep the transmitter from arcing down the guywires to ground! They look like this close up: http://hawkins.pair.com/wcbs_wfan/cbsfan_twr20.jpg Those insulators are old ones at WFAN, and WCBS AM stations in NYC. These towers sit on a little insulator to isolate them from ground where the power is fed to them that looks like this: http://hawkins.pair.com/wcbs_wfan/cbsfan_twr14.jpg The entire weight of the 528' WFAN tower, all its antennas, insulators, guy bridge cables and the wind torque are sitting on that brown ceramic insulator under the grey corona ring. That copper ball near the ring is for the lightning to arc to the massive ground system the green copper straps across the broken concrete base is wrapped in. That looped copper tubing coming out of a massive insulator in the tuning house has 100,000 watts of AM radio from BOTH 50,000 watt transmitters on it. They share this tower to make you greenies happy in New Jersey across the Hudson in the swamp with a very complex tuning system that keeps WFAN's transmitter from seeing 50KW from WCBS and vice-versa. The signals going back up the other transmitter's feedline is balanced out, while 100KW races up the tower making a huge RF field hundreds of miles from the transmitters. Speaking of tiny, this module: http://hawkins.pair.com/wabcnow/wabcn14.jpg is one of many that make up the 50,000 watt transmitter's OUTPUT POWER AMPLIFIER, these days. Those tiny transistor switches on the little heat sink on this module put out 2000 watt square waves to a tuned circuit. All the modules energized at any instant in time add their RF together to make the output blowtorch power zapping the children. I kind of miss the old tubes, their massive cooling systems and spray- water cooling ponds out in the yard. The Harris DX50 is so efficient it's cooled with 4 muffin fans! To put 50,000 watts on the antenna only requires 55,000 watts from the power company, compared to 250,000 watts of the old tube transmitter monsters. The electric bill went way down! Computer controlled, noone even sits at the transmitters any more. If this module fails, the red LED lights up to let you know which fuse is blown and the computer uses a spare module until you change it. That hole allows you to snatch this module out of the cabinet while still running 50,000 watts of dangerous RF, never taking the station off the air which costs a million dollars a minute in lost revenues. ......and you think your .2w sellphone is cooking you?....HA! -- iPhone 4 is to cellular technology what the Titanic is to cruise ships. Larry |