HollyKing's Journal

This weekend I attended the 2008 Communications Academy that was held at the South Seattle Community College. It was two days of talks on a variety of topics related to emergency communications (emcomm). I was originally going to write up a much longer post about my time but instead I’ll hit the highlights and if anyone wants to know more I’ll add some details.

There wasn’t much new information for me on Saturday. The sessions I attended only covered areas of the topics I already knew. I was hoping that with 90 minutes there would be some deeper discussion, but such was not the case. I did enjoy the lunchtime talk by Dr. Charles Simonyi about his time on the International Space Station as a space tourist.

The last session on Saturday covered Radio Mobile, a free software package for predicting radio propagation. Radio Mobile can download digital elevation model (DEM) data from a variety of sources. This allows the software to add in the effects of terrain to produce very accurate predictions. I’ve been having some problems contacting a few repeaters in the area and I with Radio Mobile I can experiment with different antenna configurations without actually installing them.

Sunday held a lot more interest for me starting with the keynote talk about coming attractions in emergency communications. For instance there are approximately 9,000 amateur radio operators who regularly report emcomm activities. Of those about 1,900 are in the Western Washington Section which is 17% of the total across 71 sections. Go us!

In the break after the keynote I was approached by a member of Bellevue EARS and asked if I would be willing to begin a weekly radio net* for the group. I was a bit surprised but as we talked it was clear that they thought something of my abilities and so I said I would consider it. I’m not an official member yet as the city is still processing my background check, so I wasn’t comfortable bringing up the idea to the Emergency Coordinator (EC) directly. I suggested that they should bring up the idea to the EC and that I was willing to serve.

After lunch I had a chance to talk with N7SIC, the EARS EC, and he was supportive of the idea. He has wanted to have a weekly net for the group but has been overloaded with his EC responsibilities. My next step is to verify that I can reach the repeater with my radio setup and if not to find a place to setup a portable station. There is the possibility of running the net out of the Bellevue Emergency Operations Center if I can pass the double deep inspection to get an access badge.

We also talked about me running a training on NTS traffic handling and the proper way to pass messages back and forth. If this happens I hope some of you will help by coming up with some messages to send to friends or family. I’ll post more about this when the time comes and ask for messages.

Another interesting section was about customizing Joomla! for ARES groups. This talk included a demo of what the Seattle ACS group had created and the lessons they had learned from attempting to customize Joomla! instead of creating a plug-in. The best bit was the news that the group is creating a plug-in of their customizations and will make it available so none of us have to reinvent the wheel.

The last session of the conference was about the new wireless alert system that is a result of the Warning, Alert and Reponse Network (WARN) Act the president signed into law as part of H.R. 4954 the SAFE Port Act. A part I like about the WARN Act is that it included specific timelines for implementation and while the individual mobile service providers do not have to implement the system they are required to notify consumers at the time of sale of that fact. Here are a few notes from the talk:

• The current recommendations specify a 90 character English text message. This is the minimum amount of text that can be sent and reach all current mobile devices.
• Alerts are a one-way notification only and not an information service. There is no guarantee of reception.
• If you look at the US as a whole Spanish is spoken in only 1% of households. If you break this down by counties there are 37 languages and 16 character sets spoken in 1% or more of households.
• There are various levels of alert messages. Consumers can opt-out of all levels except Presidential alerts.
• At the beginning alerts are specific to a county. They will be sent several times an hour so that people travelling into an effected area will receive the alert. The mobile device is responsible for supressing duplicate alerts.
• The audible alert and vibration pattern used for WARN Act alerts can not be set by the consumer or used for any other mobile device function. The consumer can choose audible or vibration notification.
• Alerts can not interrupt a voice call in progress although the consumer may be notified by a beep or screen update.
• There is no fee to subscribers for the alert service, unlike 911 services.

I for one think that these can be useful alerts. The problem is folks who will take down the mobile network as they all try to call 911 or family when they receive an alert. Of course this isn’t a new problem. Just try to make a mobile call at the scene of an accident now.

* A net is a scheduled time for people to meet on a given frequency. Some nets are informal and hams just have a friendly chat. I will be running a directed net which is has formal procedure and policies. This will be a chance to practice the skills that are used during an actual emergency, so that during an actual event everyone will know what to do.

P.S. That ended up pretty long even after I skipped some topics. Oh well... Hi Mom! I think she's the only one who would have kept reading this far.