An American Tragedy (with reference to Theodore Dreiser)

He had the looks of a scruffy Santa Claus, so let’s call him C. The long white beard, a head of full white hair, a weathered face in between. When I first met C. he lived in a low rent appartment in small town New Jersey. His alcoholism made him a frequent customer of our volunteer rescue squad.

There was something odd about C. When sober, he spoke a very elaborate English, completely out of line with his social status of the day. He would show up at church potluck dinners and engage the pastor in lengthy theological discourse. Occasionally, he would relate to the life he had had, graduating from Brown University, and working for a TV advertising agency in Manhattan. We did not take that seriously at the time, we heard too many similar stories from the homeless, even though his demeanor provided some credibility.

Some of us called him the Reverend.

Tracking the Fools

Alemanic carnival figure, from the Tettnang area of Baden-Württemberg

Carnival in our part of the world is filled with witches, ghosts, and monsters of many kinds. And each year in late February or early February, they come to Ulm. It’s Narrensprung time – literally, the time when the fools jump. And jump they do, while 20-30 thousand people look on.

Little wonder that the town needs special  emergency medical services during that day. While actual incidents have continuously decreased in recent years, the Red Cross still responds in force.

Emergency use of Echolink technology

Hilltop crossband repeater

Echolink as a communication link for emergencies sounds like a stupid idea, at first. After all, doesn’t the attraction of amateur radio in emergency situation lie in its ability to communicate without infrastructure? So how much sense is there in using an Internet-based technology like VoIP, which forms the foundation of Echolink?

But then, all disasters are regionally limited in scope.  So it may very well be that, say, 30km away the infrastructure is in perfect working order. Accessing an Echolink node there would provide highly reliable connections to the outside world, with 24h availability. What is more, connections could be made into emergency operations centers without amateur radio capability, using Internet connections only (even though that would require either access to the firewall, or use of an Echolink proxy server).  I recall that this is how storm spotters in the US routinely communicate with the National Weather Center offices.

Sluggin’ it out with an emergency radio afficionado

I should first mention that I am big into emergency applications of amateur radio. Firmly believing in ham radio’s ability to provide vital communication links “when all else fails”, I am using my activities in Emergency Medical Services at the county, and over the last years also at the state level, to plug this topic (which is not that popular in Germany) wherever I can.

So naturally I was looking for emergency radio applications when visiting the Ham Radio 2009 convention in Friedrichshafen. Little did I know that this quest would leave me quite upset and even physically assaulted …

Redundancy boys, redundancy …

Leading German mobile phone operator T-Mobile was struck by a major outage yesterday. For reasons yet unknon, two of three Home Location Register servers failed for several hours, possibly after a software update gone awry. This left about 75% of T-Mobile’s subscribers without service for several hours.

Sun sets over large communication towers

The winter sun sets behind the Ermingen communications tower near Ulm

The other day I had to check on some antennas on a large communication tower near Ulm – part of my responsibilities for the analog communication system linking the county’s emergency medical service ambulances to their dispatch center in Ulm.

Not having been at the site for over a year, I was struck by how empty the installation was. When I first took on this (volunteer) job, there were still two engineers working at the installation, taking care of the various microwave links owned by Deutsche Telekom, as well as the radio and TV transmitters which share the site. Now, the tower is operated by Deutsche Funkturm GmbH, who used to have at least an office downtown where we could get the keys – not anymore. Gladly, the police communication specialists have a set of keys which they are willing to share.