[BC] Point-to-Multipoint EMCOMM

[Ronald J. Dot'o Sr.]

Question:  Does the NWS have back up power for their transmitters, or will 
they fail during an emergency too?

I have a BayGen wind up radio, and a CC Radio w/ NWS as well as several 
scanners and a NWS radio that get the NWS broadcasts.

I agree that the SW feature is useless for local emergencies, but the local 
NWS station may be too if it doesn't have a genny.  I can receive the local 
Salem, OR. NWS station, Portland 50 miles to the north and Eugene 60 miles 
to the south.

I wonder if we had a wide spread power outage or other local "All Hazards" 
emergency and lost the Salem NWS TX if any info concerning our local 
situation would be on the PDX or EUG NWS stations.  I doubt it.

If we had a regional power failure like back east a few years ago I think 
our best bet around here (Salem) would be the PDX AM stations as none of the 
Salem AM stations have a backup generator.  Only one AM station (KBZY) is 
live with a traffic reporter on the streets who could report on a local 
situation.  Other than that the automated stations couldn't respond to an 
emergency even if they were on the air ("in the public interest").

The local FM station has a genny @ the remote TX but if the studio here in 
town loses power we're out of business there too.

I don't know what the backup power situation for the EUG stations is but 
their coverage, even from their 50Kw on 1120, is very poor in Salem, so 
they're out of the game and seldom if ever report on anything going on in 
Salem where as PDX does.

I guess my best fallback position would be my scanner that has coverage for 
the Ham and CAP 2 meter frequencies, although there isn't much activity on 
either 2 meter band around here that I know of.  Note:  A lot of scanners 
that get the Ham 2 meter band won't program the CAP 2 meter frequencies on 
143.9 or 148.15, so if you're interested in that coverage make sure the 
scanner will handle it before you buy a new or used one.

Just my $0.02.

Ron D




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rich Wood" <richwood at pobox.com>
To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 06:20
Subject: Re: [BC] Point-to-Multipoint EMCOMM


> ------ At 08:30 AM 4/29/2007, WFIFeng at aol.com wrote: -------
>
>>information. Now they also have those hand-crank genset radios and/or 
>>solar powered
>>sets for emergencies... but they're all analog!
>
> Just be careful which one you get. I get a kick out of the ones that have 
> shortwave instead of NWS. I doubt the BBC is going to be much use in a 
> disaster in CT.
>
> Rich
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