Posted: 4/16/2012 11:27:06 AM EDT
So we had a Texas Army MARS exercise last Saturday. Went to a park and set up a comms trailer. These trailers have an onboard diesel generator, airconditioning, and a pneumatic antenna mast.  This shows one of the TXSG Air Guard guys setting up the mast-head. They covered the sat comms side of the exercise. You can see part of their sat dish on the far right.  This shows the mast deployed with a sloping dipole and VHF antenna on top. The dipole has an SG-230 at the feedpoint. Power over coax. Works great. We, Texas Army MARS, finished our mission tasking list huckity buck...and got rave reviews from the CCG.  Wish I'd have taken more pictures.  |
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So we had a Texas Army MARS exercise last Saturday. Went to a park and set up a comms trailer. These trailers have an onboard diesel generator, airconditioning, and a pneumatic antenna mast. Just goes to show you, you can buy performance! And it clearly can't be an emcomm trailer because it's not orange or green or camouflage 
And screw the radios. Let's see the pic's of the top secret expresso machine, popcorn maker and DirectTV installation
BREAK On a more serious note...what is the rationale and/or conop for HF when there's a perfectly good satcom link? 
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On a more serious note...what is the rationale and/or conop for HF when there's a perfectly good satcom link?
Satcom doesn't always work. Or it takes a while to setup and get a lock. At least that's what the local guys have told me. Of course, that's if they can find 'em.  I think we have 5 or 6 in the county but nobody ever seems to know where they all are. 
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Quoted: Quoted: So we had a Texas Army MARS exercise last Saturday. Went to a park and set up a comms trailer. These trailers have an onboard diesel generator, airconditioning, and a pneumatic antenna mast. Just goes to show you, you can buy performance! And it clearly can't be an emcomm trailer because it's not orange or green or camouflage And screw the radios. Let's see the pic's of the top secret expresso machine, popcorn maker and DirectTV installation BREAK On a more serious note...what is the rationale and/or conop for HF when there's a perfectly good satcom link? That assumes the satcom link is viable. Their router went down rendering their satcoms: voice only. Our HF passed digital traffic including photographs and scanned documents. |
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So we had a Texas Army MARS exercise last Saturday. Went to a park and set up a comms trailer. These trailers have an onboard diesel generator, airconditioning, and a pneumatic antenna mast. On a more serious note...what is the rationale and/or conop for HF when there's a perfectly good satcom link?
That assumes the satcom link is viable. Their router went down rendering their satcoms: voice only.
Our HF passed digital traffic including photographs and scanned documents.
So why the wink emoticon? Was the router casualty simulated? |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: So we had a Texas Army MARS exercise last Saturday. Went to a park and set up a comms trailer. These trailers have an onboard diesel generator, airconditioning, and a pneumatic antenna mast. On a more serious note...what is the rationale and/or conop for HF when there's a perfectly good satcom link? That assumes the satcom link is viable. Their router went down rendering their satcoms: voice only. Our HF passed digital traffic including photographs and scanned documents. So why the wink emoticon? Was the router casualty simulated? I'm not sure, however, I believe it went down for real shortly after it was brought online. We had 0 issues on our side. Our HF nets and VHF packet are deployed as backup just for such failures. Bear in mind that there is a big difference between satcoms that only comprise voice over sat radio/sat phone -and satcoms that put up a duplex link to the internet. The latter has many more potential fail-points....such as the wi-fi routers which allow the signal to be used by incident command personnel on their laptops. |
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I'm not sure, however, I believe it went down for real shortly after it was brought online. And that's the part that our City people have a problem with. Too many of them think that their radio and satellite systems are invincible. Unfortunately they've forgotten what happened when a Cat 1 storm blew their antennas off the roof. Suuuure, invincible. |
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The can-do attitude is all well and good, gent's, but it still doesn't pass my "goofy test". I'm the chief engineer on a UHF satcom program and we talk around the world at the drop of a hat with a much smaller equipment footprint than any HF station. Not to mention that other than the occasional dropped call I've had extremely good success with Iridium also, and that's a very, very small equipment footprint.
After thinking about this for quite a bit, it would seem that the only real incentive for deploying amateur radio is cost. It certainly isn't technology driven. So from a cost perspective I guess it passes the "goofy test", i.e. as in it's "not goofy". Nevertheless it continues to amaze me that in this day and age any serious agency or organization would deploy to a comm's denied environment with anything less than ubiquitous and reliable portable L-band satellite commo for voice and data, be it Iridium, INMARSAT or another carrier. Add to that a portable repeater system or, even better, a portable cellular network-in-a-box (NIB) with say 2 or 3 dozen handsets ready to go. And let's not forget that "two is one". Never bring just one of anything if you plan to be successful for any length of time. Thinking about this some more, I don't want my taxes to go any higher. So please keep it up, and/or be prepared to take over the arriving media's equipment, which is generally outstanding. That would work good, too, since nobody wants to listen to the media's left wing blather anyway! |
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Quoted: The can-do attitude is all well and good, gent's, but it still doesn't pass my "goofy test". I'm the chief engineer on a UHF satcom program and we talk around the world at the drop of a hat with a much smaller equipment footprint than any HF station. Not to mention that other than the occasional dropped call I've had extremely good success with Iridium also, and that's a very, very small equipment footprint. After thinking about this for quite a bit, it would seem that the only real incentive for deploying amateur radio is cost. It certainly isn't technology driven. So from a cost perspective I guess it passes the "goofy test", i.e. as in it's "not goofy". Nevertheless it continues to amaze me that in this day and age any serious agency or organization would deploy to a comm's denied environment with anything less than ubiquitous and reliable portable L-band satellite commo for voice and data, be it Iridium, INMARSAT or another carrier. Add to that a portable repeater system or, even better, a portable cellular network-in-a-box (NIB) with say 2 or 3 dozen handsets ready to go. And let's not forget that "two is one". Never bring just one of anything if you plan to be successful for any length of time. Thinking about this some more, I don't want my taxes to go any higher. So please keep it up, and/or be prepared to take over the arriving media's equipment, which is generally outstanding. That would work good, too, since nobody wants to listen to the media's left wing blather anyway! I agree...up to a point. I'm an All Hazards Type III COM-T and I'm familiar with the satcoms stuff that is in the Federal radio caches. Most is only satphone/satradio gear like pictured below. There are tons of vhf gear and portable repeaters with the gear too, but long-haul falls back to either satcoms or HF to bridge the gap out of an affected area.   This stuff works great...for voice. I'm sure there are ways to TX/RX digital data like photos and document scans...but with the gear in the FEMA and the National Fire caches....I haven't seen any ancilliary gear that can be used with that particular gear. It seems that the satcom gear that allows portable networking with internet connection is mainly attached to active duty military units. It has neither a small footprint, nor is it man portable. We're just an adjunct backup. I have seen, however, that there are a limited number of satcom/network/internet units available and given a large enough response...there won't be enough gear and trained operators to deploy it. We'll be back to using the HF digital modes. I spent 5 days deployed on a hurricane a couple of years ago. It wasn't until the third day that an AF unit came and deployed satcom internet at our location. 18 hours later they were redeployed...and we were back to being the primary link into the State Operations Center. I'm aware there are portable cellular trucks that perform cellular RAN backhaul over sat....but the cost to the government is 50 to 100 grand a day when deployed. They are used sparingly. Anytime you navigate the ICS system and requisition high tech backhaul gear and such...procurement and deployment takes time. We just try to act as an adjunct stop gap measure for the first 72 hours....until all the follow on infrastructure can arrive and be set up. We're equiped, trained, state credentialed and can be on scene within 24 hours. We aren't ARES.... |
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PC: it seems you simply haven't been exposed to any of the small terminals available from Iridium and INMARSAT. Go peruse their web pages. 128Kbps or more in a backpack, 9600bps in a pocket. They are very reliable, easy to use and set up in minutes. Iridium still trails a bit in form factor, but is catching up fast, and you don't have to (indeed, can't, it's a LEO system) point an Iridium terminal. Iridium will be coming out with a BGAN to WiFi router product in a short time. It's cable modem/router simple. You may want to seriously think about getting a fed or state grant for your group to own something like this (and don't forget to have the monthly service funded). It would be kick ass. Most of these products support simultaneous voice/data. I wouldn't necessarily get a mobile unit, go for a portable unit and a big tent to use as a radome and set up in the tent, that way you are more flexible.
And you pretty much confirmed my theory that it's all funding driven! Man, that Skyterra stuff is crap  No surprise they got bought by Lightspeed, who are even bigger dolts!
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Quoted: PC: it seems you simply haven't been exposed to any of the small terminals available from Iridium and INMARSAT. Go peruse their web pages. 128Kbps or more in a backpack, 9600bps in a pocket. They are very reliable, easy to use and set up in minutes. Iridium still trails a bit in form factor, but is catching up fast, and you don't have to (indeed, can't, it's a LEO system) point an Iridium terminal. Iridium will be coming out with a BGAN to WiFi router product in a short time. It's cable modem/router simple. You may want to seriously think about getting a fed or state grant for your group to own something like this (and don't forget to have the monthly service funded). It would be kick ass. Most of these products support simultaneous voice/data. I wouldn't necessarily get a mobile unit, go for a portable unit and a big tent to use as a radome and set up in the tent, that way you are more flexible. And you pretty much confirmed my theory that it's all funding driven! Man, that Skyterra stuff is crap No surprise they got bought by Lightspeed, who are even bigger dolts!Thanks. I'll check out the small terminals.  |