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SAFE Ark Two Newsletter
September 9th, 2012
Radio Report
Once again, I am pushing down the scheduled subject for this newsletter,
(which was Reconstruction in the Cities), because of current events -
and some priority information about the radio.
As I write these newsletters, sometimes throughout the week, events
often happen so quickly, that they change what I have written earlier in
the week. At this moment there are four substantial pieces of news.
1. Canada announced on Friday that it is closing its Embassy in Iran. I
can tell you that this is a MAJOR dot! No matter what reasons may be
given publically, as my wife said when I told her about it, - this means
they (the Canadian Leaders) are expecting war. It does not mean that
war has definitely been planned - but because of the VERY CLOSE
diplomatic relationship with the US, it means that they have been given
warnings that make it look very possible. This is not being done out of
threat/punishment to Iran but out of concern for the embassy personnel.
The UK and US have already closed their embassies there, as well as have
some others or greatly reduced their staff. In Syria also.
2. Very highly placed Russian leaders have made very formal and open
public presentations WARNING the US to not take action. (TOTALLY
UNREPORTED in the US Press, of course.) These warnings have been
presented in ENGLISH. They could hardly make themselves clearer. The SOURCE
that I can give you on this has a particular political axe to grind and
it is part of a lengthy political ad - but you can look at it yourself
if you wish. As usual, I am taking no political side regarding the
presentation.
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3. There have been major announcements in the Financial Press that both
Russia and China are making MAJOR gold purchases - as quickly as they
can in a manner that does not completely skyrocket the price of gold,
which nevertheless appears to be increasing. It is obvious that in the
face of the possibility of an approaching war that one would want to get
out of the paper currency of their potential adversary and into gold. I
have read several lists lately entitled such as: "Twenty signs of
approaching war", and I don't remember whether this was one of the signs
- but I would certainly make it one.
4. For many weeks we have been observing massive increases of armaments
in the Middle East. This week there is another surge of aircraft carrier
in that direction. As pointed out in the source above, there will
probably never be the opportunity for such a massive surge again.
Last week in the newsletter, I pointed out that Russia was withdrawing all of its vessels from Syria. There is certainly a countervailing view to that report
and in the last hours I have received a copy of an email passed along
personally from an individual in Israel, purporting to be an eye witness
to the build-up, and who says he is immediately sending his family out
of the country. The email also says the Israeli military are visiting
the Wailing Wall in unusual busloads.
I am not going to reiterate the many such signs from recent weeks
because it is not my intent to make this newsletter one of 'twenty
signs'.
Enough said on this subject, as I have previously given the reasons that
many think mid-October, and I realize that there are great numbers
expecting something to happen in 2012 while I personally think the BIG
one will be late 2014 or 2015. I think that in February 2013, people
will be re-evaluating their survivalist attitudes just as in 1999 I
warned them that they would be doing in February 2000. Sometimes I am
right - but so often I am wrong, we will just have to wait and see.
I have come to the idea that if Israel were to make a strike against
Iran that it would be an EMP HAND (High Altitude Nuclear Device). This
would be so that it would be borderline, and that they could say -
"Well, we didn't really nuke them (in the Hiroshima/Nagasaki sense)."
This could, however, soften up Iran enough so that the conventional MOBs
(Massive Ordinance Bombs) could do their jobs on the specific targets.
There are multitudinous ideas on this subject and there is no reason to
give more credence to mine, than anyone else's. So enough for this
subject also.
And now about radio.
I goofed late Thursday afternoon and missed a tiny time window to get
the latest update on the engineering status. We think we are in the wrap
up portion of the engineering phase. Earlier in the week a test was
completed of the new power transistors that demonstrated a 20 watt
transmit capability, which was our initial goal. However, we then
exceeded the capacity of the power supply being used and a different
bench power supply was going to have to be implemented to determine
exactly the upper limit of our transmit capability. This, and choosing
between some alternate types of toroids that we have available, is all
that is left in the engineering phase. Neither of these decisions
prevents us going forward with board layout. The restraint there is now
Adam's time, but he has made considerable progress also.
There are numerous non-electronic design decisions still being made as
we proceed. Because of the higher transmit wattage, the decision was
made a few weeks ago to go with a metal chassis to serve as a heat sink.
The engineer this week has said that even then he feels that we will
need to put some heatsink fins on the exterior of the case and he would
like to see an internal fan. Heat is the greatest liability to
electronic equipment. Adam has said that there will be no problem in
adding a little 12 volt fan to the board.
To further increase the sturdiness of the device we are discussing about
going with an extra thick PC Board. This is not a consumer item in
which cost minimization or size is a priority. In addition we may make
the pc board a bit larger so that we can have extra thick runs - and
space them further apart. All this will add to the reliability of the
unit. We will not be advocating that people drop them or throw them
around - but it happens.
I get many suggestions, quite understandably because of the length of
time it has taken us to develop our unit, that we go with another
design. A very good example, and one of the best suggestions so far, has
come this week, so I am going to take a few minutes and explain why
not.
Look at the excellent site:
http://www.preparedham.com/
and at this source:
http://www.verotelecom.com/Dualband-Two-Way-Radios.htm
You can also read eleven pages of reviews at:
http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/9749
This will tell you about the Mark II. There appear to be several
manufactures. The sources listed here are Chinese knock-offs for about
$50. Better manufactures are usually around $200.
The devices include:
Built in Flashlight
Dual Watch
VHF/UHF and FM broadcast
RX 68-108 136-174 400-470 MHz
TX 136-174 400-470
Scanner with Time out or Carrier
Personal Siren device
Computer programmable
And so much more
so, why in the world not just go with this?
The reason is that it doesn't do what we want -
even those from the more reliable quality manufacturers.
You still need a Ham license to transmit with one of these units on the
Ham frequencies but they are rated with only 2-5 watts of power. Their
performance may be less. The one that we are redesigning was rated at
10w but actual performance was 3.5.
With 3.5w (which is called QRP - low wattage) you can talk to the world -
but not reliably. It all depends on 'skip' and you can end up talking
to anywhere. Great fun for Hams but pretty useless for our purposes.
The neat thing about these little radios, (and I have used them a number
of times) is that they will reliably get you to say a car that you are
convoying with nearby or to a nearby repeater. And there is the rub. In
the disaster that we are talking about, it is highly unlikely that the
repeaters will be working.
Another drawback is that they usually require special batteries that
won't be available - but accepting all that and other deficiencies, the
main thing is that they won't hook into your computer to handle PSK31,
the more reliable and much simpler to use, digital signal with message
storage capabilities, that we are building our system around.
They do look snazzy - and have all those features that we have listed
above, including a flashlight and siren - but they are NOT going to
provide reliable communication (or for that matter any communication at
all) in the 300 mile range that is the defined goal of our system when
the power grid has failed.
Now mind you, with our system, you have to go find a car battery and you
have to stretch out the $10 80m antenna 12 feet above the ground, and
you have to have a computer with batteries or that you can power off a
car battery with an inverter, and it will operate only reliably during
the daytime and at night you will skip off to who knows where in the
world like with any Ham system - but as a part of the SAFE Ham Net you
will have reliable 300 mile daytime communication unmatched by any other
type of system.
The key will be in establishing the net. Any Ham, that implements PSK31,
will be able to communicate with you but you will only be able to
communicate with them and others in the SAFE Ham Net. Ideally, we are
going to need 30,000 participants - and we haven't even begun. In fact -
we aren't even yet ready to begin. This, however, will hopefully give
you more insight as to where we are - and to where we hope to go.
A new IMMEDIATE NEED just as I am getting ready to send this out. An
email came in which we have lost one of the co-authors on our TEN SHORT
NOVELS project. If anyone out there has aspired to be a writer - please
let me know so that I can discuss the possibility with you.
Victoria has up this week's new YouTube on "THE PAPER". There are 10 videos available at the video list link on
www.webpal.org
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