ABC turns to HF during tropical Cyclone

Super Tropical Cyclone Yasi, a category 5 storm, came ashore this morning between Cairns (pronounced Cans) and Townsville, Queensland around midnight Thursday (9 am Wednesday, NY time).

Tropical Cyclone Yasi, February 2, 2011
Tropical Cyclone Yasi, February 2, 2011

Radio Australia carried Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) Queensland coverage of the storm, which was extraordinary.  Spot coverage, emergency information, sheltering information, updates, and calls from listeners in the midst of the storm.  Some of it is pretty intense.  One fellow, John, out in the country all by himself in the height of the storm sounded somewhat forlorn, I hope he makes it.

Due to the size of the storm, widespread power outages are expected and may last for weeks or months.  As a part of this, there are numerous outages and potential outages in their AM and FM broadcasting chain.  To that end, ABC has two shortwave frequencies available for their Queensland service; daytime (8 am to 8:30 pm local time, 2100 – 0830 GMT) on 9710 KHz and night time (8:30 pm to 8 am local, 0830 – 2100 GMT)  is 6080 KHz.

Once again, HF (shortwave) radio gets the job done when local stations, cell towers, and internet connections to dead.  Sometimes it is the low-tech answer.

Egypt demonstrates why the Internet is unreliable

On Thursday, January 27th at 22:34 UTC (about 4:30 PM, NY time) Egypt cut off outside access to the internet.  According to Renesys:

At 22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet’s global routing table. Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt’s service providers.

Go and read the entire article.  Notice how the government asked and the ISP corporations complied.  This is in response to massive riots and uprisings in Cairo and other cities which may topple the government.   Think that the internet and new media alone can keep our government honest and doing the people’s work?  Think again.  Net Neutrality is a pipe dream and would do nothing to stop this type of censorship regardless.

A free press is one of the critical legs of our democracy.  Traditional broadcasting and media have been decimated in the last 15 years.  They are not without fault, cutting staff, politically slanted reporting, and profit-taking has done their part.  Fortunately, while staff have disappeared, the infrastructure (networks, transmitters, printing presses) remains in place.  They need to be revitalized and utilized.  There is a trend that I and others have noticed where small operators, perhaps one or two stations at most, are providing excellent service to their respective communities and running circles around other, group-owned stations in the same market.

The Otari MTR10

I have come upon two of these units in very good shape:

Otari MTR10 1/4 inch 2 track reel to reel machine
Otari MTR10 1/4 inch 2 track reel to reel machine

Once upon a time, these were top of the line units.  I don’t know how much they cost new, but I’d imagine it is somewhere north of $3K in 1985.

Both machines work mechanically and electrically.  One machine has some slight grooves in the record and playback heads and looks a little more worn.    The other does not.  I will entertain all offers.   If a person would want the machine to be gone through and aligned, I’d charge three to four hundred dollars for my time.