Even a CB radio will work in a pinch.......and they come in hand held versions......amazing how capitalism works......
Posted on 07/26/2012 11:02:02 AM PDT by Old Sarge
A major portion of Oakland's troubled police radio system failed shortly after President Obama's visit on Monday, leaving many of the 100 officers assigned to handle presidential security unable to communicate as protesters roamed the streets, police said Wednesday.
~SNIP
The year-old system has been plagued by breakdowns and dead zones that have left officers' digital radios prone to blackouts across the city and in most commercial buildings, including the basement of police headquarters. A city-hired consultant said last week that the system was not up to urban standards.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Points I saw in the article:
The problems Monday night were caused by the failure of a cooling unit used on a transmission tower at Gwin Reservoir in the Oakland hills. The tower overheated, causing "severe" communications problems after 10 p.m.
The cooling unit was replaced by midday, but service was not fully restored until about 6 p.m. Tuesday
Vunerabilities in the comms network, and this was just a routine, though important, event. Imagine the chaos in a real crisis...
For your edification PING.
Hmmmm.....not enough 'diversity' I suppose.
The system is less than a year old and it breaks,
No backup I guess.
I know the feeling, where I live they spent a couple of million and got a piece of crap also.Now we are changing to some kind of high band and have gotten new pagers and half of them don’t work.
Maybe if they got these people building this crap to post a security bond they would be encouraged to do better.
Vast right-wing conspiracy.
For your edification PING.
Even a CB radio will work in a pinch.......and they come in hand held versions......amazing how capitalism works......
Hmmm... That info could come in handy.
HA!
Oakland PD don’t respond to citizen calls anyway!
Why should OB be any different?
You beat me to it. WTH does...”not up to urban standards” mean????
Well, my field is antennas and RF, so I understand what they were talking about. I just took the opportunity for a pun regarding diversity from a racial perspective and ‘diversity’ from an RF perspective where separation of antennas can help with things like RF multipath, etc.
There is something to be said for old-school analog radios. They don’t ever really work all that well, but they almost always sorta-kinda work. The sudden failures of digital systems are annoying.
It’s a lucky failure, in that regard. Better now than before some serious crisis is underway. This gives them the chance to assess the vulnerabilities in the system and hopefully get them worked out.
Somewhere, I’ll bet... There is a systems design engineer writing an e-mail saying “OK... ~now~ will you listen to me?”
I find it increasingly more difficult to part with my collection of various types of CB radios.
They will be invaluable one day.
Cell phones, internet, all will be history.................
The Secret Service is not about to risk President Obama’s (or any president’s) security to a Third World bunch calling themselves cops. Not going to happen.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.