Hams have gone P25? Really? That's a lot of expense for equip and overhead assigning NACs etc.
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Hams have gone P25? Really? That's a lot of expense for equip and overhead assigning NACs etc.
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Magic how all this stuff pays for itself.
When power to the repeater dies, how long will the repeater work?
Batteries? Magic Batteries
Tower? Magic
All FM (Magic)
Teach your children well
To survive without, away from you
When power to the repeater dies, how long will the repeater work?
Batteries? Magic Batteries
Tower? Magic
All FM (Magic)
Teach your children well
To survive without, away from you
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As a rule, the transceiver hardware will continue to work as long as it has power. It the antenna system is compromised, the transceiver will continue to work but may be severely degraded rendering it unusable. Most shared sites will have contingent power for some period of time and somebody can always drag a generator trailer up the hill if they have too.
The commercial systems I worked on had battery arrays that were between the transceiver and shore power allowing for some time period of continued use after a loss of shore power. The microwave hubs, cells sites, and switches I worked on all mostly had backup generators that would kick in once shore power was lost for more than 60 seconds. Average cell sites have ~8 hours of life in them while on battery as long as facilities (landline or microwave interconnectivity) is still present. That time period is based on the expected erlangs for a given site so some of our sites died after less than 2 hours following the Northridge earthquake due to a huge spike in traffic (1800% increase in traffic in the first 24 hours). All but a few of our sites were microwave interconnected with a self-healing network design (circular routing) so facilities were fairly consistent even with major landline switch failures. Our competitor fell over due to heavy reliance on landline interconnect.
As mentioned throughput this thread, if you aren't a member of the HAM community and figure you'll just bootleg off other peoples work you may be locked out when SHTF. The knowledge, camaraderie and assistance you'll get from that community will benefit you in everyday life as well as a dooms day scenario. This association will also put you in regular contact with the local Gov agencies that will need your help during a disaster (and that is priceless when you need to blow a roadblock or access a restricted area). HAM and CAP (Civil Air Patrol) were extremely active during every disaster I worked when I ran our disaster response team for a wireless carrier in So Cal.
Nothing beats preplanning though so assume the worst, communicate your plan to the entire family and you should be all set. YMMV.
The commercial systems I worked on had battery arrays that were between the transceiver and shore power allowing for some time period of continued use after a loss of shore power. The microwave hubs, cells sites, and switches I worked on all mostly had backup generators that would kick in once shore power was lost for more than 60 seconds. Average cell sites have ~8 hours of life in them while on battery as long as facilities (landline or microwave interconnectivity) is still present. That time period is based on the expected erlangs for a given site so some of our sites died after less than 2 hours following the Northridge earthquake due to a huge spike in traffic (1800% increase in traffic in the first 24 hours). All but a few of our sites were microwave interconnected with a self-healing network design (circular routing) so facilities were fairly consistent even with major landline switch failures. Our competitor fell over due to heavy reliance on landline interconnect.
As mentioned throughput this thread, if you aren't a member of the HAM community and figure you'll just bootleg off other peoples work you may be locked out when SHTF. The knowledge, camaraderie and assistance you'll get from that community will benefit you in everyday life as well as a dooms day scenario. This association will also put you in regular contact with the local Gov agencies that will need your help during a disaster (and that is priceless when you need to blow a roadblock or access a restricted area). HAM and CAP (Civil Air Patrol) were extremely active during every disaster I worked when I ran our disaster response team for a wireless carrier in So Cal.
Nothing beats preplanning though so assume the worst, communicate your plan to the entire family and you should be all set. YMMV.
There are 3 APCO P25 capable repeaters in Oregon:
Eugene
Salem
Cottage Grove
All running toned but Open currently. Under P25 grouping, they could be closed to all non-essential personnel during an emergency. Would be interesting to know if there is an administrator in the Association that has this as a plan.
Eugene
Salem
Cottage Grove
All running toned but Open currently. Under P25 grouping, they could be closed to all non-essential personnel during an emergency. Would be interesting to know if there is an administrator in the Association that has this as a plan.
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Yep, you can buy a P25 crypto-capable radio for about $200 for a mono-bander. a lot of PSA's (Public Safety Agencies) have had to go to narrow-band, and are dropping 25khz equipment (which is fine for ham bands in most areas).
I still keep my credentials in a ID-carrier in my bag. Invaluable.
Not magic. I have personally installed a number of repeater sites that operate off of batteries and solar power. These should last for the duration.
Narrowband was required many years ago, I forget which year. We had to reprogram, and relicense, a bunch public safety and business radios. Some folks had to buy new because their radios were not narrowband capable. For the layman, narrowband is not the same thing as P25, which is a digital voice encryption standard. Narrowband only means changing the bandwidth of channels from 25kc to 12.5kc. Full P25 plan means a lot of organization due to assignment of groupings. It is desireable for Public Safety due to the ability to lock groups of NACs out of the system.
We sold a lot of MICOR 25kc radios to ham orgs, they are treasured for the reliability.
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@bbbass, it sounds like you and I have chewed the same dirt performing the same kind of tasks, even if mine was in So Cal. I left that industry 18 years ago when I moved north and I still miss it.
You are absolutely correct. A well designed and implemented hilltop site can hum along with no human intervention almost indefinitely. As long as it doesn't take a direct lightning strike and you can keep the mice and rats from nesting in or chewing on your equipment.
The smell of burnt rat just seems to take way too long to leave your sense memory. J
You are absolutely correct. A well designed and implemented hilltop site can hum along with no human intervention almost indefinitely. As long as it doesn't take a direct lightning strike and you can keep the mice and rats from nesting in or chewing on your equipment.
The smell of burnt rat just seems to take way too long to leave your sense memory. J
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As most repeaters don't work off trunking you can only have one person at a time talking. Now imagine all of the HAM operators in the portland metro area all trying to utilize the repeater at the same time during an emergency.
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Narrowband was required many years ago, I forget which year. We had to reprogram, and relicense, a bunch public safety and business radios. Some folks had to buy new because their radios were not narrowband capable. For the layman, narrowband is not the same thing as P25, which is a digital voice encryption standard. Narrowband only means changing the bandwidth of channels from 25kc to 12.5kc. Full P25 plan means a lot of organization due to assignment of groupings. It is desireable for Public Safety due to the ability to lock groups of NACs out of the system.
We sold a lot of MICOR 25kc radios to ham orgs, they are treasured for the reliability.
Most of the radios I'm seeing people running are Motorola XTS-2500's. The narrow banding had two effects: going from 25 to 12.5, and they also changed the channel spacing to 20khz IIRC. A this caused a lot of upset just a few years ago and new radios had to be purchased.
We learned the hard way and rat proofed all our company owned sites in the early 80s. It took quite awhile longer to get customer owned buildings done.
I started in commercial 2-way just after release from the USCG (Avionics) in 1980. It was fun learning about the world of Land Mobile Radio. Moved to Brookings where I worked on a lot of mobile radios, but also microwave, a full phone board, and was the backup engineer for the AM and FM broadcast stations owned by BEECO. Moved back to La Grande, operated a biz for 14 years, and then went back to work for RACOM. We had lots of remote sites that had solar or gas gen. Also a number of customers that were ham licensed but that is really not my world.
In 1989 I said cellular would never catch on due to cell station costs. Boooooooyyyyy was I wrong!!
Racom, expanded the tower site buildings we had, 3 sites, and installed extra towers. Then we leased space on the towers and in the buildings to the cell companies. Never did like hanging out on the end of a horizontal at 120' to put up panel antennas but that is way better than what they have to do elsewhere.
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Although HAM radios would be great in a "routine" power/cell-grid failure. Wouldn't they also fall prey to (for instance) a simple above ground EMP from N Korea?
After that, we're back to smoke signals.
After that, we're back to smoke signals.
Respectfully, going from 25 to 12.5 and changing the channel spacing is the same thing. At 12.5kc channel spacing, ie narrowband, the FM deviation/modulation needs to be limited to 2.5kc instead of 5kc. The radios that weren't capable of narrowband had to be switched out for new radios and the FCC license changed from the old 20K0F3E to 11K2F3E. (of course that's not the whole story) This represented considerable costs for farmers and such, public agencies, or those with large fleets that hadn't yet been updated at the time of the law coming into effect. Because of this, there are some ranchers and at least one local public agency that did not switch over. Those systems still work but they interfere with licensees that are on the new channels.
The next FCC change is to ultranarrowband. Oh joy!!!
XTS2500 Motorola portable (5Watt) radios were good equip. No longer made. They were one of the first P25 capable radios but they were P25 analog. Very few of the public agencies had gone P25 digital by the time I retired and those that did had poor audio, and poor range. It's just different. For big city 900Mhz departments it works fine but in rural counties with many sq mi hardly at all.
We saw a lot of Astro Mobiles put into fire dept and the local PD eventually went with Kenwood radio brand IDK why. Somebodies brother I think. When the county changed out equip to comply with narrowband, the went with Motorola Quantar repeaters and base and Motorola cut Racom out of the deal. T'd us off so we got an ICOM dealership. The new comm plan for the county was very complicated and modeled after requirements of some of the big city 900Mhz systems for interconnectibility. I forget the name of those plans so don't ask.
The great thing about digital NACs is that you can plan it all out, and then dispatch to groups or a single person and nobody else can hear. But it takes a lot of planning, organization, and maintenance.
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I agree! Although they would be good in earthquake or general SHTF situation, if an EMP hits, you better have had your BAOFENGs shielded. So read up on Faraday cages eh?
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Respectfully, going from 25 to 12.5 and changing the channel spacing is the same thing. At 12.5kc channel spacing, the FM deviation/modulation needs to be limited to 2.5kc instead of 5kc. The radios that weren't capable of narrowband had to be switched out for new radios and the FCC license changed from the old 20K0F3E to 11K2F3E. (of course that's not the whole story) This represented considerable costs for farmers and such, public agencies, or those with large fleets that hadn't yet be updated at the time of the law coming into effect. Because of this, there are some ranchers and at least one local public agency that did not switch over. Those systems still work but they interfere with licensees that are on the new channels.
No worries, I'm ambiguous on some of the details (I know people who work in the commercial radio industry) mostly due to time, and somewhat due to disinterest in some of the specifics. I seem to remember most of this was due to be finally implemented in ~2015 (IIRC) my understanding about it was there were two issues, the first being the bandwidth, and the second was a shift in channel spacing that caused a second bout of headaches (it wasn't part of the original change and required a lot of firmware to be flashed and older radios to be sold surplus). Most of my interest the last few years has been SDR, HF, and Ku-band and this isn't the normal purview of the cult of mot (group of people I know who can't shut up about motorola radios). I meet with them for dinner every week, and my eyes glaze over when they start talking about how cool that 10 year old motorola is. So perhaps my disinterest has somewhat tempered my ignorance on the subject, however my standard response has been to start going off about traffic analysis and SNA in R, and their lack of good voice procedure.
I also like pulling out my baofeng BF-F8 HP, and de-sensing their radios while we're at the table and they're trying to show off some feature.
I love this!!! God bless you!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm retired with memory issues, so I'm really stretching my mind in this thread. Thanx for the workout!!!
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Steel sharpens steel... what advantage I have in youth and brainpower I squander on distraction and energy drinks.
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Comms and ham radio is a "black hole" of learning; just when you think you are peering over the edge into the abys, you may realize you've only reached the outer rim and cannot see the "hole". Scratching the surface so to speak....
Please remember that listening to the radio is much safer than talking on it.
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Not while reloading I hope.
pfft, right now I've got solidworks, carbide create (a CNC G-code editor), a rockstar, youtube and this all going at once. I barely get any time to do any reloading these days, too busy fixing everyone elses loading machines.
