Frozen Signals by Jacks Merlin

Author:Jacks, Merlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7: No Power

Jack shook his head in disgust when he saw the empty battery tray on the inside of the generator cabinet. Well at least the thieves did not take the wiring so there was hope the generator could start if the team could only get a battery or a large jump box to the site. However, given how long it was going to take to get the equipment to the top, Jack knew they were on their own for at least a few hours.

Jack closed the door to the generator cabinet and then walked into the communications shelter followed by Dalton. Inside, Alex was setting up a makeshift SIGCEN where he could take information from the EOC and then push that information out to the appropriate Fire, EMS, or Law Enforcement agencies. Dalton checked the generators at the other sites and found their batteries were missing too.

Jack called Daniel on the radio to let him know what they found and what they needed. Daniel told Jack the County Roads and Bridges Department were going to attempt to clear the road up as close to the site as they could get, but they were concerned about the dangers of falling trees. Both men agreed getting as close as they could get would be better since the large 8D cranking battery was too heavy to haul on foot.

The three men set out to utilize the existing tower antennas, but they had to mark each antenna before disconnecting the hardline. Then, they had to create jumpers to connect the tower antenna hardline (coax) connections to their respective handheld radios. Thankfully, Jack had brought his Uni-dapt kit with him which allowed the team to build adapters between the various connectors used on the site hardline connectors.

Jack did not like using adapters to make coax connections because they caused more loss than he liked. In other words, the connections between the radio and the antenna became less efficient as you add more adapters in line. The objective was to use as few adapters and connectors as possible to prevent RF energy loss. However, neither Jack nor his team had first-hand knowledge of which connectors were in use at the site. Jack made a mental note to write down every connector and build the proper adapter cable to eliminate unnecessary adapters.

Alex was busy setting up his workstation to receive dispatch calls from the EOC. He had brought a Microsoft Surface tablet which ran the same digital interface programs as Jack had, namely FLDigi. Alex would use FLdigi to communicate digitally with Daniel where they could easily exchange information efficiently and accurately. Alex used a DRA-65 sound card interface from Masters Communications to interface between the tablet and the radio which serves as the translator between the radio and the tablet. Prior to the ice storm, the team had pre-arranged frequencies to use just for such events so all of their radios had the planned frequencies already programmed in their radios.

Alex connected the tablet to the DRA-65 then connected the Anytone D878 dual band radio to the Signalink.

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