Just need to vent...

Sadly, both of our industries focus on entertainment rather than communications.

During the last batch of tornados we lost power, internet, and local cellular for >2 hours.

Fortunately I upped my OTA television game a year or two ago, I straddle two markets, and our county EOC and many of our fist responders can use 2-metre and 70-cm for fall-over comms and many of our repeaters were still up.
I was off that day - and the cellular disruption was slightly unsettling but it pointed away from one of my offices.
The internet outage was too, but that was/is a local 'own goal.'

I live in hurricane country so we're more used to plugs-out comm but there are still far too many Gen-Z folks out there who think that an Apple-15 with unlimited data is more than sufficient for an emergency communications plan.

Terrestrial cellular is still far too vulnerable to local emergency disruptions and I always urge people who are not price sensitive to investigate Starlink.

 

Doesn't have to be.

It's just that somebody further up has decided that it is more profitable to just say "sorry" after each oopsie.

 

It will be Intriguing to see how starlink holds up when that 1st mongo solar flare hits - sometime in the future.
In the same vein we just purchased a chinese El Cheapo metal piece of luggage for the all band 160m thru 440mhz transceiver (and a modem). packet radio ain't dead yet. Admittedly is somewhat of a drag unscrewing antenna connectors.

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If they have half as many birds in the air, and ground stations as they are planning for they will probably only suffer from a reduction in capacity.

NOT.
Even.
Close.

There's a lot of 'sad hams' out there that are saying that digital is 'ruining armature radio.'
These are the same type who were clinging to their vacuum tubes and straight-key CW, 50 years ago saying that VHF/UHF voice was doing the same thing.

Digital is SAVING ham radio.

 

--- ..-. / -.-. --- ..- .-. ... . .-.-.-

Bob Wilson

 

"Excuse me, Grandpa Joe, I'd love to hear again your story about how you helped Benjamin Franklin discover electricity, but Mr. Bell needs my help right now"

 

I've said this before, but it bears repeating....

The telegraph was one of the first (some say THE first) patented inventions that used that electricity stuff that all the kids were talking about.
It was one of those inventions that utterly changed the arc of human history - because for the first time in human history INFORMATION flowed effectively at the speed of light, and effectively for unlimited distances.
It took a few decades for the infrastructure to catch up with the tech, but by the 1870's towns that were 'touched by wires' were no longer isolated by information that traveled at the velocity of a horse-borne rider.

Graham won the patent photo-finish ahead of Grey, but he was somewhat cash strapped and offered to sell his patent to the "AT$T" of the day (Western Union) for $100,000.
BEING the "AT$T" of the 1870's, Western failed to realize the fabulous gift that they were being offered......
Western Union laughed at Bell, telling him that the telephone was nothing more than a 'toy.'

Western Union actually had what they thought at the time were good reasons to believe this.
Telegraphers could key much faster than people could speak, and the telegraph/telegram necessarily provided a 'hard copy' of the conversation. These were much more 'business-like' than 'speaking wires.'
Western Union would have paid millions for a practical "harmonic" (multiplexed) telegraph which MEANS they understood the value of information throughput but not the ability of the telephone to PROVIDE that throughput.
UNFORTUNATELY for Western Union, they twigged to their mistake a little too late.
The telephone would go on to be one of the most, if not THE most profitable patent in history.

Interestingly enough......
Morse's code lives on!
The keys are a lot different today than those large brass instruments from the 1840's but the new bugs and such all work the same because dots are still dots and dashes are still dashes.
It is, after all........'digital comms' in more ways than one.
You can still hear those dits and dahs on radios all over the world today and "of course" (or --- ..-. / -.-. --- ..- .-. ... . .-.-.-) there are digital encoders and decoders that eliminate the need for understanding the blizzard of all of those those tone bits for today's communicators (or 'appliance operators' to the sad hams.)
The Morse Code (CW) requirement was eliminated for amature radio in the US for Technician-class licensees in 1991, and for all license classes in 2007.
NOW for various reasons there is a 'yuge' resurgence not only in Ham radio licenses but ALSO in CW!


What was old is new again!

 

That was a nice stroll down memory lane. As a Disney employee for decades - one of the first things I had to work on was a messed up telegraph recording loop used at the Main Street train station entrance. The loop was supposed to read, "To all who come to Disneyland, welcome". It seemed messed up but it really wasn't that bad. It was a recording of pre-Morse Telegraph code. Different yet similar. Never thought of it previously, but also similar - these dits & dahs were a sort of precursors to computer languages. Holy shades of ASCII batman!
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Come on, Toyota, RAMP UP how many Prius (Priis?) you're cranking out!

My wife decided she wants to replace her wonderful 2017 Prius with a 2024 BUT finding one on lots is about as difficult as Joe Biden speaking in a complete sentence! I've even expanded my searched to Dallas and Kansas City....still slim pickings.

People can't buy what they can't find....economics 101, Toyota!! Figure it out.....

 

Betcha you can find a nice, new $45,000 small TRUCK on those lots, -eh?

Funny how profit margins work.....

 

Prius has been a scarce but popular vehicle for quite awhile.

Back in 2008- 16 years ago we had to order our Prius and it took 6 months to receive it. However by ordering we got the exact vehicle we wanted.

The Prius hasn't really ever been a big seller although when Toyota expanded the line to include the popular Prius C it had a great increase. In recent years its sales have nosedived = complete redesign.
Not knowing the demand for the newly designed Prius Toyota will have to catch up with the public's excitement about the new vehicle.

Toyota only builds cars it has orders for, it does not build for oversupply or phantom predictions. That can be frustrating for popular models.

Prius sales figures for the past several years in US and Canada. : r/prius (reddit.com)

 

I'm glad it's not popular. It's a hell of a bargain

 

You have to admit, that's a pretty sweet vent they're installing.

I don't know all the rules. Is there a specific height or pitch that calls for anchors up there.?

I know in the USA there are height above ground and distance from edge rules, but that might not even be all of them.

 

Telegraph was built on the smoke signals, mirrors, and drums of previous generations. Maybe loud yelling chains of communication were even earlier. Smoke signals and mirrors traveled at the speed of light but yelling and drumming were only at the speed of sound of course.

 

Another early telecomm:
The Whistling Island – Vallehermoso, Spain - Atlas Obscura

Bonus they were venting

 

Immigration happened after the indigenous whistlers, who seemed to be the first to occupy.

The whistlers didn’t really immigrate to the island. The Spanish conquered the islands and made slaves of the inhabitants, more or less. I would say the Spanish were the immigrants. But after awhile the immigrants start saying only those coming later are immigrants.

 

The Romans had a lovely communications system based on ventilated water tanks.

They would use a series of visible signals to establish timing, and apply the timing to a portable water tank with a calibrated drain spigot.

In practice, they'd send a signal (fire, flag etc) to indicate that the receiver should prepare their water tank and watch for a timing signal.

Both sender and receiver would fill their water tanks. The receiver would post a steady watch on the sender.

The sender would show flag/fire to signal time start, and both parties would open the drains on the water tanks.

The tanks were marked with graduated levels, and each level indicated a different predefined message.

When the water level dropped to the graduation matching the message the sender wished to send, a STOP fire/flag was shown, and both parties would stop the water to read the result.

We can be sure they drank their Ovaltine.