Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Dennis Dura for sharing an article from Radio World that highlights recent NOAA Weather Radio outages and the broader implications for emergency alerting systems. A timely reminder of the vital role EAS backups play in public safety infrastructure.
Read the full article here: NOAA Weather Radio Disruptions Highlight Need for EAS Backups
Photo by Raychel Sanner via Unsplash
by Jock Elliott
Today is the 154th birthday of the National Weather Service. The NWS covers from American Samoa to the Virgin Islands and from Hawaii to the Arctic Circle of Alaska, and it does so with fewer than 4,000 employees nationwide.
It is, according to Mike Smith’s blog: “one of the few federal agencies that is essential to the welfare of the Nation.” https://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2024/02/154th-birthday-of-he-national-weather.html
And in my view, NOAA Weather Radio is essential for every household. If live in the US you don’t have a radio capable of receiving the Weather Radio channels, you need one.
For more info, check here: https://swling.com/blog/2022/02/jock-shares-a-bit-more-about-noaa-weather-radio/
Photo: US Coast Guard
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Carlos Latuff, who shares the following video/recording and notes:
Hey Thomas, [Check out] how well the USCG signal arrives from Chesapeak in Porto Alegre, Brazil. It’s a NOAA Pacific NE forecast.
I made this video at 06h36 (09h36 UTC):
[Here is an audio ifile so you can get an idea of the quality of the reception:
Audio PlayerThat is amazing reception in Brazil, Carlos! Thank you for sharing this! I must say, you really give your XHDATA D-808 a workout! It’s a proper little DX machine!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares his radio log art of a recent NOAA forecast. Carlos writes:
Recently I have been receiving NOAA’s Pacific high seas forecast via 12579 kHz USB. According to the NOAA schedule these SITOR-B transmissions come from the USCG base in Guam (NRV). But I’m not sure about that, since the signal is very strong to come from so far away. Attached is the illustrated report.
Signal received with XHDATA D-808 receiver and long wire antenna.
All the best,
Latuff
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares his radio log art of a recent NOAA Weather Bulletin from the US Coast Guard:
Carlos writes:
NOAA bulletin (partial), US Coast Guard, Chesapeake, VA, 13089 kHz USB, high seas forecast and hurricane information. Listened in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Carlos’ listening post and gear.
Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
Hackers can disrupt legit warnings or issue fake ones of their own.
The US Department of Homeland Security is warning of vulnerabilities in the nation’s emergency broadcast network that makes it possible for hackers to issue bogus warnings over radio and TV stations.
“We recently became aware of certain vulnerabilities in EAS encoder/decoder devices that, if not updated to the most recent software versions, could allow an actor to issue EAS alerts over the host infrastructure (TV, radio, cable network),” the DHS’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) warned. “This exploit was successfully demonstrated by Ken Pyle, a security researcher at CYBIR.com, and may be presented as a proof of concept at the upcoming DEFCON 2022 conference in Las Vegas, August 11-14.”
Pyle told reporters at CNN and Bleeping Computer that the vulnerabilities reside in the Monroe Electronics R189 One-Net DASDEC EAS, an emergency alert system encoder and decoder. TV and radio stations use the equipment to transmit emergency alerts. The researcher told Bleeping Computer that “multiple vulnerabilities and issues (confirmed by other researchers) haven’t been patched for several years and snowballed into a huge flaw.”
“When asked what can be done after successful exploitation, Pyle said: ‘I can easily obtain access to the credentials, certs, devices, exploit the web server, send fake alerts via crafts message, have them valid / pre-empting signals at will. I can also lock legitimate users out when I do, neutralizing or disabling a response,’” Bleeping Computer added. [Continue reading…]
Amateur radio operators have played a longstanding game of “Will It Antenna?” If there’s something even marginally conductive and remotely resonant, a ham has probably tried to make an antenna out of it. Some of these expedient antennas actually turn out to be surprisingly effective, but as we can see from this in-depth analysis of the characteristics of tape measure antennas, a lot of that is probably down to luck.
At first glance, tape measure antennas seem to have a lot going for them (just for clarification, most tape measure antennas use only the spring steel blade of a tape measure, not the case or retraction mechanism — although we have seen that done.) Tape measures can be rolled up or folded down for storage, and they’ll spring back out when released to form a stiff, mostly self-supporting structure.
But [fvfilippetti] suspected that tape measures might have some electrical drawbacks, thanks to the skin effect. That’s the tendency for current to flow on the outside of a conductor, which at lower frequencies on conductors with a round cross-section turns out to be not a huge problem. [Continue reading on Hackaday…]
A Broadstairs eight-year-old has chatted with an astronaut aboard the International Space Station and a recording of the conversation will feature on the NASA website.
Isabella Payne spoke to Astronaut Kjell Lindgren as the ISS flew overhead last week.
The youngster was with dad Matthew who is a license holding amateur radio enthusiast and tutor. He and Isabella are both members of Hilderstone Radio Society.
Matthew said: “Isabella has been a member of the radio club ever since she was born and has been playing with the radio since she was six. Because I have the full licence she can sit on my knee and use the radio to speak to people as long as I am controlling it. Everyone at the club can do that. She has been involved in a few radio events, Children On The Air events, and will hopefully go for her own licence soon. [Click here to read the full article and view the photos.]
“I plan my life by the radio these days, my contact with the outside world in a sense…”
The first ever international prison radio conference has just been held in Norway, bringing together representatives of prison radio shows from 19 countries, including Australia, where Indigenous people continue to be grossly over-represented in prison populations.
Prison radio shows, wherever they are in the world, all work to give voice to the voiceless and empower people by enabling them to tell their own stories.
Click here to listen to the podcast episode.
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The Midland WR120 weather radio.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dennis Dura, who shares the following article from Slate:
NOAA Weather Radio needs some serious upgrades.
In March, a group of massive tornadoes struck communities around Des Moines, Iowa. Seven people were killed, including two children under 5. The crisis received attention not only due to its human cost, but also because of delays in emergency wireless communications: Thanks to a broken fiber optic cable at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Weather Service offices, wireless emergency transmissions were switched to an auxiliary satellite system, which all NWS offices use. Overloaded with extreme weather messages from elsewhere in the Midwest, the satellite messaging system found itself backed up just as the Iowa tornadoes reached their peak. This caused anywhere from a two- to nine-minute delay in tornado warning messages—and may have significantly reduced warning time at a moment when seconds count. The issue lasted for several hours as the deadly tornadoes ripped through the state.
NOAA Weather Radio, on the other hand, continued broadcasting effectively during the crisis. According to Bruce Jones, a weather radio expert and meteorologist with Midland Radio Corporation, “because the NWR broadcast comes direct from the National Weather Service local forecast office, those NOAA Weather Radio alerts and warnings were unimpeded and reached folks immediately.”
Often referred to as the “voice” of the National Weather Service, NOAA Weather Radio is a 24/7 public service that broadcasts weather information from more than 1,000 stations across the United States and many of its territories. And while Des Moines was a great success story for NOAA Weather Radio, the service faces mounting issues with aging technology and infrastructure, raising concerns over whether it will be able to continue protecting communities facing extreme weather.
[…]While NOAA Weather Radio has historically been an important, consistent, and life-saving means of emergency communication, it may not be for long. Outdated technology and failed attempts at modernization are threatening the NOAA Weather Radio system and resulting in extended outages for locations at risk. And as the climate crisis intensifies, this important technology is often vulnerable to the weather about which it’s meant to inform.
Interviews with NWS employees about outages reveal many local technical problems that take out communications, sometimes for weeks or months.
[…]Recent congressional action, however, has given new life to the possibility of systemic weather radio modernization. Rep. Stephanie Bice, a Republican from Oklahoma, has proposed the NOAA Weather Radio Modernization Act of 2021, which passed in the House of Representatives in May but has yet to pass in the Senate. From Oklahoma, Bice was well aware of the need for consistent weather communications during natural disasters like tornadoes, which affect her constituents.
The bill would authorize $20 million to expand coverage to the remaining 5 percent of the country without access to NOAA Weather Radio communications, as well as $40 million to modernize its hardware and software, including upgrading communication from copper wires to Internet services. According to Wesley Harkins, a representative from Bice’s office, “this paves the way for future development and provides failsafe options, so NWR is never down for an extended period of time.”
[…]The NWS itself acknowledges the benefits of this legislation. Maureen O’Leary, deputy director of public affairs at the NOAA, told me via email that improvements would include “expanding NWR coverage to rural and underserved communities, national parks, and recreation areas.”[…]
Click here to read the full article at Slate.com.
Click here to read articles relating to weather radio in the SWLing Post archives.