I'm too young in the business to know, but I've been told by some of the elder techs in the company (we maintain a private microwave system) that the AT&T sites were laid out so identically to each other that a tech who knew his way around one could be blindfolded and taken into any site and would be able to work on the equipment. AT&T and the Bell System were big on standards so I don't doubt the accuracy of this claim.
Even as careful as we are to try to maintain a standard layout, each of the sites I maintain all have their own quirks. But then, we have auxillary equipment that varies from site to site so that screws up the attempt at standardization.
It seems AT&T had a considerable investment in long distance buried coaxial cable. Apparently there was a pair of these cable laid a few miles away from here as a contractor was going through a few years back digging them back up and recovering them.
As I recall from the local paper's article the cables were probably 4 to 6 inches in diameter and were then encased in lead. I also recall that they were buried several feet deep, at least deeper than water lines and regular phone cable gets buried around here.
From my youth I recall an AT&T Long Lines bunker a few miles south of US 36 on US 75 north of Topeka, KS. I believe these cables went through there as they were on an east/west run through northern Kansas. Where the ultimate terminating points were would be a good exercise.
Many old microwave sites are still standing around these parts. The tower lights and painting are still maintained. It's interesting that it apparently cost more to disassemble them than to leave them stand.
Thanks for noticing the spaces. The last character is SK run together which means end of work or signing clear. Perhaps I should change that to AR to mean end of message.
You're right, trying to capture this energy into batteries would not be highly beneficial. They would add considerable weight to the train, the maintenance costs are high, the charging rate is much too slow to be effective, and they're full of hazardous chemicals. Besides, I wasn't thinking of batteries as I'm quite familiar with that technology.
I was trying to visualize something along the lines of a bank of capacitors that could be rapidly charged and then be discharged into the traction motors to assist the prime mover. Some problems here are size and weight again along with complexity. The capacitors would need to be able to hold considerable power for a long time without leakage.
Another method would be some means of wirelessly transfering the power from the train. Tesla was working on these kinds of ideas and I think more research is needed.
Solar cells will likely last much longer than 15 years on average. Many peopla are jumping on the solar and wind power bandwagon simply because once the initial investment is made, other than maintenance the operating costs are low.
Also, in many cases, folks forego the installation of batteries and associated chargers and just feed their excess power back to the grid. Of course this can only legally be done in states/municipalities where such action is specifically authorized. Typically, payout of such systems is estimated at 10 to 15 years.
While it will be a long time before any significant percentage of electrical power is generated using solar, wind or even a small hydro generator, I think these are technologies worth looking into. Besides, solar cells are mostly silicon, a resource we're not in danger of running out of soon.
For more information check out http://www.homepower.com/ as they have a lot of interesting articles and their current issue is available for download as a.pdf file.
Built into road locomotives is a second way to produce electricity. The most obvious way has already been discussed, the prime mover (railroad parlance for the diesel engine). The second way to produce electricity is via dynamic braking.
To help ease wear on the brake shoes of the cars, an engineer will utilize dynamic braking down a grade and stay off the air. In dynamic braking the traction motors (the motors that drive the wheels) become generators and the electricity they generate is routed to large grids in the roof of the locomotive.
Now, this is really wasted kinetic energy from the train. If there were some way to harness and store this power for a later hill, or if it could be transfered to another train, the fuel cost savings would be enormous. Alternatively, if this power could be put into the grid some way, at least it wouldn't be wasted.
There might be some Tesla type of technology needed here to make this work, but the rewards would be high.
First I think we must keep in mind that AO-7 was launched into orbit in 1974, long before anyone began to worry about space junk on a large scale. I'm not sure what the actual life expectancy of AO-7 was, but I believe it was considered to have failed prematurely. This all predates my entry into amateur radio by a few years but there were still plenty of references to AO7 in the early '80s amateur radio books and manuals.
As to why it wasn't deorbited, I don't think it had a kick motor as it was intended to be placed in a LEO and remain there. Also, launch opportunities at the time dictated great restraints on size and weight so the focus was on radio capability. Also, let's not forget that the battery failure AO-7 suffered would have precluded any possibility to command it to de-orbit and most folks would not have wanted the liability associated with the thing de-orbiting itself at random.
At some point a method of cleanup in space will probably be necessary. While not active for better than 20 years, AO-7 was still tracked and you can bet that anything lauched today still takes its orbit into account so a crash won't happen, unless something goes drastically wrong.
One day AO-7 will return to Earth due to the natural forces of orbital decay. In the mean time I think this is a fascinating story and is worth following.
Certainly the uplink frequency is still within US (and most other countries) Amateur Radio allocation, however within the Amateur Radio Service exists a clearly defined sub-service, the Amateur Radio Satellite Service (USA). In Part 97 the Amateur Radio Satellite Service is allocated a set of frequencies it can use. After WARC-79 those internationally agreed to allocations were changed and now the receiver of AO-7 operates outside of that segment.
While I doubt enforcement efforts would be made against the curious, it is in AMSAT's best interest not to encourage use of this bird. AMSAT is generally highly respected by the various administrations around the globe and won't jeopardrise their reputation by encouraging something that may be considered illegal by some.
I suggest you put the interests of Amateur Radio ahead of your own. If it can be shown that amateurs won't even obey the rules within their service then our chances for many significant gains at WRC 2003 and beyond will diminish greatly.
Living out here in farm country we routinely deal with a large amount of "bio-mass" (I like that term, gonna make this farmboy sound educated down at The Well some evening). To be able to readily utilize it to produce hydrogen before spreading it on the fields would be a good thing. It could also help stabilize the rural economies.
Right now ethanol plants and soybean processing plants are being constructed to provide for the increasing demands of renewable fuels and lubricants. Let's face it, internal combustion engines will be around for some time. Anything we can do to wean ourselves off of imported oil while at the same time benefiting agriculture and the rural communities is a good thing, IMHO.
WRT hydrogen powered vehicles. Since the byproduct is water, perhaps it would be a good idea to collect the water as the car is driven until the next refueling stop. Imagine in the larger cities where commuters would exchange the collected water for a portion of their fuel at each refill. The water collected is then delivered to the community water supply and filtered. This could have a positive impact on the future of water use in the larger urban areas lessening the demand on ground water wells and reservoirs.
Think of the impact several million cars, not to mention large trucks and other vehicles contributing to the water supply in this way rather than fouling the air could have...
What am I talking about? Notice the words I bolded in the bottom section - "and applied retroactively". If this 95 year extension is applied retroactively, then aren't quite a few Disney movies now based on works that had fallen into the public domain, but now possibly (due to the retroactive wording) would be considered to now actually be under retroactive copyright at the time they were 'pirated' by Disney? Thus making Disney's claims to things like The Jungle Book, Pinocchio and others, completely void, as they were stolen from people who are now protected by this retroactive copyright? How far back does this retroactive thing go?
Nice thought, however I think it is beyond belief that Hollywood's lawyers would have screwed up so badly and left a loophole this large. Particularly since they've gotten the copyright term extended 11 times. That's ELEVEN times in the past 40 years, folks!
It just shines the light of truth on the elected class in the USA. The next time you hear some politician railing against the crud dumped on our society, just remember that those same politicians have aided and protected the same perpetrators through extended copyrights and other draconian acts. It's all a smokescreen, folks, designed to confuse and prevent you from seeing what is really happening.
Re:next week: analog radio to be phased out
on
GNU Radio
·
· Score: 1
The SSSCA (by any other name still the same) would extend its provisions to any "digital device." This has interesting implications for amateur and commercial two-way radio, if indeed its provisions are so broad as to encompass devices beyond those connected to the Internet.
If you're a ham, and your understanding of the SSSCA leads you to believe it may impact amateur radio, write your ARRL division director (whether you're a member or not). The more organizations and people we get opposing Senator "Disney's^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Hollings' bill, the better.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but the reason for using a PC with a sound card is that A) they're cheap, B) their interface specs are reasonably open leading to C) GNU software can be used for development and D) the elimination of having to use proprietary development tool kits.
Clearly, for a true software defined radio, it seems to me at least, that a DSP capable of running at RF will be required. However, most of the digital processing can be done in the PC where resources are cheap and easy to work with. IMO, this is the same concept as the hated WinModems.
I think this project is most important because of its GNU status. Allowing amateur radio to become locked into a proprietary solution for the next generation of radio is not a "Good Thing." I hope this project is able to produce something useful in the near future and set the standard for others to follow.
Re:Sounds interesting, there is a similar project
on
GNU Radio
·
· Score: 2, Informative
While TAPR has tried a lot of things, unfortunately not many of their projects have gotten off the ground since the TNC II (A packet radio modem (Terminal Node Controller) for amateur radio use.) Whatever their development process is, I think it could use an infusion of bazaar style development. They've worked on a spread spectrum radio since the early '90s. Each time they're "just a few months" from releasing a working model something changes and the project disappears again. I ended my membership after a couple of years as I just didn't see the project progressing. To be fair, it's a volunteer/hobbyist organization. Perhaps some friendly competition from GNU will spur both to release a usable product by the end of the year.
The past few years the major advancements in amateur radio digital technology have come from Europe. i.e. PacTOR, PSK31, and now MFSK. Clover was developed in the States, but being patented and other issues (leading to high prices) kept it from becoming a mainstream technology.
Add me to the list of those the Idiots misspelled. My last name being Bargmann seems a bit difficult to transpose to Barganna, at least to me. I spelled it right twice in the durned email. Oh well.
I don't care what they say about me so long as they get my name spelled right.
The article itself states the compiler itself is not open source. So how's this going to cause it to be chosen over GCC when it (probably) won't be distributed to the same degree as GCC?
Q: Why do people use MS-Office?
A: Because its there.
Q: Why will people use GCC?
A: Because its there!
Same concept, really. Most Free Software will continue to be built with GCC until Intel releases this compiler under the GPL, performance not withstanding.
Such devices, the suit contends, deprive the networks of revenue and reduce their incentive to produce new shows.
We could only hope! Network TV is a black hole of intelligence so the sooner these dinosaurs disappear from the landscape, the better. Of course the networks are only pleasing their viewers. All the smart viewers have gone elsewhere...
I'd rather see these major media companies bleed through their network outlets and not have the profits to pour into further eroding individual rights and freedom. Hopefully, devices like this can get a marketplace foothold such that a legal block is impossible.
One that sticks out in my memory was told to me by a telco tech. If say, a customer calls in a noisy line and the tech isolates it to a given location, his employer then calls a contractor to dig up and repair the pair. Notice I said pair. Should the contractor discover more bad pairs in the same location, they are bound to only fix the pair as ordered by the telco and ignore the other bad pairs. The telco considers it cheaper to do it this way than it is to have the contractor repair all the found problems at the same time. Of course it may be that the contractors have negotiated this deal with the telco banking on repeat business.
Yes!
Grew up on one and everything you say is soooo true. People don't realize that the producer's price has dropped considerably in the past 15 months (my dad and cousin got out just before the price drop in late '99) to about $.85 to.$90 USD per gallon. Meanwhile, the average price in the store I see is about $3/gallon. Out of that amount one must buy feed, or raise it which requires land and equipment and help--family or hired, pay the electric and water bills, pay the milk hauler, pay the veterinarian for herd health, not to mention emergencies, plus try to raise a family and have a bit left over for medical and life insurance. Outside of social security, there is no retirement plan or 401k to buy into. All this from an average of $6 to $8 per cow per day. Not very enticing
If one is lucky and manages to navigate the normal minefields, one's friendly government is just waiting to enact new environmental regulations that simply make it too costly to stay in business. Add to that spiralling property tax rates, and you have a nice recipe for disaster.
I'm not at all sorry to be out of the dairy biz, although I'm still farming and involved with my brother in feeding beef calves and his cow-calf operation. It's still tough, but nothing compared to the dairy, which is totally brutal on your body even with a decent milk barn setup. Humans aren't made for standing on slick concrete for hours on end. I find working as a telecom tech for a major railroad to be much more comfortable!
--
Hang up and drive!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm too young in the business to know, but I've been told by some of the elder techs in the company (we maintain a private microwave system) that the AT&T sites were laid out so identically to each other that a tech who knew his way around one could be blindfolded and taken into any site and would be able to work on the equipment. AT&T and the Bell System were big on standards so I don't doubt the accuracy of this claim.
Even as careful as we are to try to maintain a standard layout, each of the sites I maintain all have their own quirks. But then, we have auxillary equipment that varies from site to site so that screws up the attempt at standardization.
It seems AT&T had a considerable investment in long distance buried coaxial cable. Apparently there was a pair of these cable laid a few miles away from here as a contractor was going through a few years back digging them back up and recovering them.
As I recall from the local paper's article the cables were probably 4 to 6 inches in diameter and were then encased in lead. I also recall that they were buried several feet deep, at least deeper than water lines and regular phone cable gets buried around here.
From my youth I recall an AT&T Long Lines bunker a few miles south of US 36 on US 75 north of Topeka, KS. I believe these cables went through there as they were on an east/west run through northern Kansas. Where the ultimate terminating points were would be a good exercise.
Many old microwave sites are still standing around these parts. The tower lights and painting are still maintained. It's interesting that it apparently cost more to disassemble them than to leave them stand.
Did anyone else notice the "Powered by Unisys" graphic in the upper right corner of the page?
Thanks for noticing the spaces. The last character is SK run together which means end of work or signing clear. Perhaps I should change that to AR to mean end of message.
Hmmmmm.....
You're right, trying to capture this energy into batteries would not be highly beneficial. They would add considerable weight to the train, the maintenance costs are high, the charging rate is much too slow to be effective, and they're full of hazardous chemicals. Besides, I wasn't thinking of batteries as I'm quite familiar with that technology.
I was trying to visualize something along the lines of a bank of capacitors that could be rapidly charged and then be discharged into the traction motors to assist the prime mover. Some problems here are size and weight again along with complexity. The capacitors would need to be able to hold considerable power for a long time without leakage.
Another method would be some means of wirelessly transfering the power from the train. Tesla was working on these kinds of ideas and I think more research is needed.
Solar cells will likely last much longer than 15 years on average. Many peopla are jumping on the solar and wind power bandwagon simply because once the initial investment is made, other than maintenance the operating costs are low.
.pdf file.
Also, in many cases, folks forego the installation of batteries and associated chargers and just feed their excess power back to the grid. Of course this can only legally be done in states/municipalities where such action is specifically authorized. Typically, payout of such systems is estimated at 10 to 15 years.
While it will be a long time before any significant percentage of electrical power is generated using solar, wind or even a small hydro generator, I think these are technologies worth looking into. Besides, solar cells are mostly silicon, a resource we're not in danger of running out of soon.
For more information check out http://www.homepower.com/ as they have a lot of interesting articles and their current issue is available for download as a
Here's an interesting idea for the /. crowd.
Built into road locomotives is a second way to produce electricity. The most obvious way has already been discussed, the prime mover (railroad parlance for the diesel engine). The second way to produce electricity is via dynamic braking.
To help ease wear on the brake shoes of the cars, an engineer will utilize dynamic braking down a grade and stay off the air. In dynamic braking the traction motors (the motors that drive the wheels) become generators and the electricity they generate is routed to large grids in the roof of the locomotive.
Now, this is really wasted kinetic energy from the train. If there were some way to harness and store this power for a later hill, or if it could be transfered to another train, the fuel cost savings would be enormous. Alternatively, if this power could be put into the grid some way, at least it wouldn't be wasted.
There might be some Tesla type of technology needed here to make this work, but the rewards would be high.
First I think we must keep in mind that AO-7 was launched into orbit in 1974, long before anyone began to worry about space junk on a large scale. I'm not sure what the actual life expectancy of AO-7 was, but I believe it was considered to have failed prematurely. This all predates my entry into amateur radio by a few years but there were still plenty of references to AO7 in the early '80s amateur radio books and manuals.
As to why it wasn't deorbited, I don't think it had a kick motor as it was intended to be placed in a LEO and remain there. Also, launch opportunities at the time dictated great restraints on size and weight so the focus was on radio capability. Also, let's not forget that the battery failure AO-7 suffered would have precluded any possibility to command it to de-orbit and most folks would not have wanted the liability associated with the thing de-orbiting itself at random.
At some point a method of cleanup in space will probably be necessary. While not active for better than 20 years, AO-7 was still tracked and you can bet that anything lauched today still takes its orbit into account so a crash won't happen, unless something goes drastically wrong.
One day AO-7 will return to Earth due to the natural forces of orbital decay. In the mean time I think this is a fascinating story and is worth following.
Certainly the uplink frequency is still within US (and most other countries) Amateur Radio allocation, however within the Amateur Radio Service exists a clearly defined sub-service, the Amateur Radio Satellite Service (USA). In Part 97 the Amateur Radio Satellite Service is allocated a set of frequencies it can use. After WARC-79 those internationally agreed to allocations were changed and now the receiver of AO-7 operates outside of that segment.
While I doubt enforcement efforts would be made against the curious, it is in AMSAT's best interest not to encourage use of this bird. AMSAT is generally highly respected by the various administrations around the globe and won't jeopardrise their reputation by encouraging something that may be considered illegal by some.
I suggest you put the interests of Amateur Radio ahead of your own. If it can be shown that amateurs won't even obey the rules within their service then our chances for many significant gains at WRC 2003 and beyond will diminish greatly.
Sign me up!!
Nice thought on a Monday morning...
Indeed!
Living out here in farm country we routinely deal with a large amount of "bio-mass" (I like that term, gonna make this farmboy sound educated down at The Well some evening). To be able to readily utilize it to produce hydrogen before spreading it on the fields would be a good thing. It could also help stabilize the rural economies.
Right now ethanol plants and soybean processing plants are being constructed to provide for the increasing demands of renewable fuels and lubricants. Let's face it, internal combustion engines will be around for some time. Anything we can do to wean ourselves off of imported oil while at the same time benefiting agriculture and the rural communities is a good thing, IMHO.
WRT hydrogen powered vehicles. Since the byproduct is water, perhaps it would be a good idea to collect the water as the car is driven until the next refueling stop. Imagine in the larger cities where commuters would exchange the collected water for a portion of their fuel at each refill. The water collected is then delivered to the community water supply and filtered. This could have a positive impact on the future of water use in the larger urban areas lessening the demand on ground water wells and reservoirs.
Think of the impact several million cars, not to mention large trucks and other vehicles contributing to the water supply in this way rather than fouling the air could have...
What am I talking about? Notice the words I bolded in the bottom section - "and applied retroactively". If this 95 year extension is applied retroactively, then aren't quite a few Disney movies now based on works that had fallen into the public domain, but now possibly (due to the retroactive wording) would be considered to now actually be under retroactive copyright at the time they were 'pirated' by Disney? Thus making Disney's claims to things like The Jungle Book, Pinocchio and others, completely void, as they were stolen from people who are now protected by this retroactive copyright? How far back does this retroactive thing go?
Nice thought, however I think it is beyond belief that Hollywood's lawyers would have screwed up so badly and left a loophole this large. Particularly since they've gotten the copyright term extended 11 times. That's ELEVEN times in the past 40 years, folks!
It just shines the light of truth on the elected class in the USA. The next time you hear some politician railing against the crud dumped on our society, just remember that those same politicians have aided and protected the same perpetrators through extended copyrights and other draconian acts. It's all a smokescreen, folks, designed to confuse and prevent you from seeing what is really happening.
The SSSCA (by any other name still the same) would extend its provisions to any "digital device." This has interesting implications for amateur and commercial two-way radio, if indeed its provisions are so broad as to encompass devices beyond those connected to the Internet.
If you're a ham, and your understanding of the SSSCA leads you to believe it may impact amateur radio, write your ARRL division director (whether you're a member or not). The more organizations and people we get opposing Senator "Disney's^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Hollings' bill, the better.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but the reason for using a PC with a sound card is that A) they're cheap, B) their interface specs are reasonably open leading to C) GNU software can be used for development and D) the elimination of having to use proprietary development tool kits.
Clearly, for a true software defined radio, it seems to me at least, that a DSP capable of running at RF will be required. However, most of the digital processing can be done in the PC where resources are cheap and easy to work with. IMO, this is the same concept as the hated WinModems.
I think this project is most important because of its GNU status. Allowing amateur radio to become locked into a proprietary solution for the next generation of radio is not a "Good Thing." I hope this project is able to produce something useful in the near future and set the standard for others to follow.
While TAPR has tried a lot of things, unfortunately not many of their projects have gotten off the ground since the TNC II (A packet radio modem (Terminal Node Controller) for amateur radio use.) Whatever their development process is, I think it could use an infusion of bazaar style development. They've worked on a spread spectrum radio since the early '90s. Each time they're "just a few months" from releasing a working model something changes and the project disappears again. I ended my membership after a couple of years as I just didn't see the project progressing. To be fair, it's a volunteer/hobbyist organization. Perhaps some friendly competition from GNU will spur both to release a usable product by the end of the year.
The past few years the major advancements in amateur radio digital technology have come from Europe. i.e. PacTOR, PSK31, and now MFSK. Clover was developed in the States, but being patented and other issues (leading to high prices) kept it from becoming a mainstream technology.
Add me to the list of those the Idiots misspelled. My last name being Bargmann seems a bit difficult to transpose to Barganna, at least to me. I spelled it right twice in the durned email. Oh well.
I don't care what they say about me so long as they get my name spelled right.
And the Damn Fools even misspelled my name.
GAAAAHHHHH!!!
The article itself states the compiler itself is not open source. So how's this going to cause it to be chosen over GCC when it (probably) won't be distributed to the same degree as GCC?
Q: Why do people use MS-Office?
A: Because its there.
Q: Why will people use GCC?
A: Because its there!
Same concept, really. Most Free Software will continue to be built with GCC until Intel releases this compiler under the GPL, performance not withstanding.
Such devices, the suit contends, deprive the networks of revenue and reduce their incentive to produce new shows.
We could only hope! Network TV is a black hole of intelligence so the sooner these dinosaurs disappear from the landscape, the better. Of course the networks are only pleasing their viewers. All the smart viewers have gone elsewhere...
I'd rather see these major media companies bleed through their network outlets and not have the profits to pour into further eroding individual rights and freedom. Hopefully, devices like this can get a marketplace foothold such that a legal block is impossible.
But then, I dream a lot lately!
Nawww, it's nothing to be worried about, just some Kansas T-storms that have wandered too far from home. Come back rain, we need you!!
--
Hang up and drive!
Ahh the stories...
One that sticks out in my memory was told to me by a telco tech. If say, a customer calls in a noisy line and the tech isolates it to a given location, his employer then calls a contractor to dig up and repair the pair. Notice I said pair. Should the contractor discover more bad pairs in the same location, they are bound to only fix the pair as ordered by the telco and ignore the other bad pairs. The telco considers it cheaper to do it this way than it is to have the contractor repair all the found problems at the same time. Of course it may be that the contractors have negotiated this deal with the telco banking on repeat business.
Dilbert lives!
--
Hang up and drive!
Yes! Grew up on one and everything you say is soooo true. People don't realize that the producer's price has dropped considerably in the past 15 months (my dad and cousin got out just before the price drop in late '99) to about $.85 to .$90 USD per gallon. Meanwhile, the average price in the store I see is about $3/gallon. Out of that amount one must buy feed, or raise it which requires land and equipment and help--family or hired, pay the electric and water bills, pay the milk hauler, pay the veterinarian for herd health, not to mention emergencies, plus try to raise a family and have a bit left over for medical and life insurance. Outside of social security, there is no retirement plan or 401k to buy into. All this from an average of $6 to $8 per cow per day. Not very enticing
If one is lucky and manages to navigate the normal minefields, one's friendly government is just waiting to enact new environmental regulations that simply make it too costly to stay in business. Add to that spiralling property tax rates, and you have a nice recipe for disaster.
I'm not at all sorry to be out of the dairy biz, although I'm still farming and involved with my brother in feeding beef calves and his cow-calf operation. It's still tough, but nothing compared to the dairy, which is totally brutal on your body even with a decent milk barn setup. Humans aren't made for standing on slick concrete for hours on end. I find working as a telecom tech for a major railroad to be much more comfortable!
--
Hang up and drive!