[EAS] More questions for the list...

[Bill Ruck]

Some answers to Richard's questions


>1. Of all the new features announced in new CAP-EAS devices you have 
>looked at, which one or ones are the most important to you?

Only those that are mandated by the FCC Part 11 that does not exist yet.

>2. Are there any features you can think of that you have not found 
>in literature on new CAP-EAS devices?

See above


>3. Do you believe that CAP Converter devices that will be connected 
>to original EAS devices are a good idea, or not?

I am looking for the cheapest way to implement only the minimum requirements.


!!WARNING!!

RANT MODE ON

I believe that the latest version of EAS has got to be near the top 
of a list of unnecessary federally unfunded mandates.  Second only 
slightly to the whole Part 90 rebanding mandate.

Perhaps the President still needs a way to tell us that Soviet Bear 
bombers are crossing the North Pole so there may still be some 
federal reason, although the whole PEP program appears to me to be a 
federal program that has enough inertia that it continues to spin.

We all know that disasters are predominately LOCAL.  And there is no 
carrot or stick to encourage local participation in any form of 
EAS.  Hasn't been in the past and I see none in the future.

Note that on one hand we are told that radio and TV broadcasters are 
reaching a declining audience and that's why EAS / CAP / IPAWS / etc. 
needs to expand to other forms of communications but at the same time 
broadcasters are the ONLY ones that are mandated to purchase and 
install and implement to standards that DO NOT EXIST 
yet.  Participation by cellphone carriers is optional.  If this is so 
important that broadcasters are mandated to participate why is 
cellphone carrier participation optional?

Perhaps in some part of the USofA there is serious local involvement 
in EAS but nowhere around northern California.  For a while I was at 
KNBR, at the time CPCS-1, and tried to get the Bay Area Counties 
interested and I didn't even get a yawn in response.  Finally when 
the plan was amended and I was asked to get the manager's signature 
on the new plan my GM refused to do it.  He never was interested in 
it anyway and his decision relieved me from trying to get anything to 
work here.  (Remember, I went through the '89 Loma Prieta Earthquake).

I see lots of reasons why in theory and on paper CAP is a great idea 
-- I like it ! -- but in implementation there is a significant amount 
of disconnect with reality.

How does one expect an IC to send a CAP message from his vehicle at 
the scene of an incident?  Maybe he has Internet access and maybe he 
is provided with the hardware to do it and is trained to do it.  Then 
tell me how the IC will format a .wav and .mp3 file and send that, too.

We may remember what text to voice sounded like with NWS Perfect 
Paul.  Was that acceptable?  No, they had to dump Paul and upgrade 
the whole system.  Now take an English Perfect Paul and feed him 
Spanish text.  ?Que pasa?  Even more fun to watch, feed him Mandarin 
or Hunan.

Has anybody fed a text to speech converter with the sample CAP texts 
floating around?  What did it sound like?

In general, free form text is very hard to automatically convert to 
intelligible speech.  That's why the NWS changed to a system with 
pre-recorded words and phrases.  They had the benefit of a limited 
number of words and phrases.  CAP doesn't.

My thought right now is to set the audio file time-out at 0.1 seconds 
and default to only SAME burps.  If text to voice conversion is not 
mandatory I'll skip that feature.

Another point.  A few months ago I made a CAP presentation to the 
Northern California chapter of APCO.  At the end one question was 
asked by a dispatch supervisor with a very panicked look "Who is 
going to pay for the training for my dispatchers to do this?"  My 
answer was that in the perfect world the message would originate from 
an IC on the scene.  The next question came from a guy in the fire 
service.  "Who is going to pay for the IC training necessary to do 
this?  And provide the necessary connectivity and hardware?"

Answer?

Maybe when the economy was booming there might have been money to 
spend.  But even then emergency services were last at budget 
time.  E.g. "We haven't had a disaster in years, why do we have to fund OES?"

Today the police chief is looking at keeping his patrol cars for 
another year even though they are falling apart and the fire chief is 
looking at whether he should replace leaky hoses or failing SCBA's 
but not both.  Where are those guys going to find the money to fund 
CAP implementation?

I think our discussion is interesting but (1) we are at the wrong end 
of the food chain and (2) while we recognize that there are details 
missing we're mostly arranging the deck chairs in neat rows on the Titanic.

Regards (1) the whole community needs to focus now on origination and 
not transmission.  Until that happens and we see serious and 
committed local participating my recommendation to stations is to 
implement CAP in the cheapest way possible with the only functions 
that are absolutely required in Part 11 -- right now EAN, RWT and 
RMT.  Who knows what will be mandated if/when the FCC issues an NPRM 
and goes through the whole rule making process.  Maybe in 2013 we 
might know a little more.

It is clear to me that APCO and SBE are in the middle of this without 
a lot of support from the ends.  Until Mayors and County Supervisors 
and Governors support AND FUND emergency public information there is 
no point in fine tuning the system.  And until the entire 
communications industry -- not just broadcasters -- participates in 
it I expect push back from local government.

I have serious concerns about Governor Must Carry.  The FCC is 
prohibited from dictating what programming goes on a radio or TV 
station.  The President signs a finding each year excepting him from 
the law.  It has never been tested.  My amateur reading is that the 
Communications Act of 1934 does not support "must carry" of any 
kind.  I would expect and encourage a legal challenge to this and I 
expect the challenge to win.

I will now get off my soapbox.

Bill Ruck
Curmudgeon
San Francisco

PS.  One of the new CAP / EAS boxes being heavily pushed by vendors 
today has a fatal hardware flaw.  The OEM computer and power supply 
has a tiny SCREAMING fan.  It is extremely annoying in a radio 
control room with a live microphone.