The FAILED EAS EAN Test Tuesday

[Phil]

Your gumment has adopted the old British adage, "No news is good news".

Phil M1GWZ



On 11 Nov 2011, at 05:36, Chip Fetrow wrote:

> We have had a system that was supposed to notify the public in the event of a national emergency since 1950.  There have been three different systems, the first was CONELRAD, which was COOL.
> 
> CONELRAD was replaced by the Emergency Broadcast System, which was followed by the Emergency Alert System, which is what we have today.
> 
> Tuesday at 2 PM Eastern, the system was tested for the first time ever.  It was what is called a "Live Test" in that it actually used the REAL header information of a real test -- thus no equipment knew it was a test.
> 
> Well, broadcasters had over six months prior notice of the test.  All kinds of patching was done, including some really heroic efforts by National People's Radio (NPR) to make sure the test got through to everyone.  NPR has a "Squawk Channel" which they use to notify stations of -- well, anything.  For example, they used it to let stations know about 9/11 coverages and changes to their operations to cover the news.  NPR made their Squawk Channel available to every broadcaster for the EAS EAN Test.  Now, imagine that.  We were patching MASSIVE HOLES in the system for just one test by using this.
> 
> Even with over six months of preparation and National People's Radio offering up a satellite channel to make it work, if failed.
> 
> Many broadcasters are calling it a disaster, but it really wasn't.  Yes, it didn't work, but isn't that the point of a test?  We now know the system is very sick and needs attention.
> 
> I hope everyone has NOAA Weather Radios because that is really the only way the public is going to be notified of anything.
> 
> Funny thing is, I was watching it in DC and it kind of worked.  Yes, of course I didn't hear the first of the three SAME data bursts, but I heard the next two.  Comcast did not buffer the audio message as they should have so the beginning of the announcement was missing.  It also ended early.  DC radio stations seemed to all get it.  Heck, it started in DC.  However, it didn't work anywhere else.  Many stations got just dead air to re-transmit.  Imagine how that sounded three stations or more down the chain!  HUMM and NOISE.
> 
> I have yet to figure out the reason, but it turned out that stations monitoring each other didn't have their EAS equipment stop repeating stations which monitored them, so we got "feedback."
> 
> http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/sbe-eas/attachments/20111109/cbb81ced/attachment.mp3
> 
> Of course the whole thing is a joke because other than NOAA Weather Radio, no consumer has a device that will actually alert them off of broadcast radio and TV.  If the TV is ON, it is fine, but if the TV/radio is off, no one will ever be alerted.
> 
> It is REALLY sad, especially because RDS, Radio Data System, can easily alert us, and will even turn on radios which are turned "off."
> 
> However, CONELRAD was very cool.  FM and TV went off the air, and AM stations in the program retuned to 640 or 1240 kHz, then switched on and off to provide a continuous audio stream from different transmitters.  It was tested a few times and while the audio quality from the different transmitters was ODD, it was easy to listen to, and actually worked.  Of course, some transmitters were unhappy working well off frequency.  Even recently, many transmitters had two crystal sockets and a switch but both sockets had the station's actual frequency crystal in the socket.  Of course, many new transmitters are PLL.
> 
> Hey, I feel really safe.
> 
> --chip
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