Unchained Preppers
Off Topic/ B.S. => General Off Topic => Topic started by: special-k on June 11, 2013, 09:17:39 AM
-
Mostly an uneventful flashlight party.
Approx. 3 .5 miles from my location, a train derailed and knocked over a main transmission line tower. It happened around 8:30pm last night. Power was back on around 7:30am. We're fortunate there was no chemical spill. I can't believe they got the power back on this fast... you know, with all the mandatory union masturbation breaks and all. As the news says, they have no idea why it derailed.
I did notice one phenomena... Every fool with a car decided to go for a Sunday drive. But in retrospect, that was the only way we got any news of what happened... being that the local radio was absolutely useless because they did not report on it! Seriously, a significant portion of the city without power and not a peep on the radio... WTF!
Oh yeah... Get some headlamps if you don't already have some.
Train derails in Norwood, causing power outages (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9ptYSZMI2M#ws)
-
Thank heavens nobody was hurt.
Take a minute to write down what you learned from this short disruption of your daily life. It sound like communication was a big one.
-
My view on the lack of radio coverage....
Not sure of the radio area in question, but alot of stations are mostly automated these days. There are rarely live DJs on the air, especially after business hours. It's much more cost effective to have a syndicated show running on auto-pilot, than to have a live-body in the studio. There is probably a person who is on-call to go to the station if the computers go down and need to be restarted, but in emergency situations, getting up-to-date information will be pretty much nil, until the news staff (if they even have one) can get to the station. Sucks, but that is the reality of alot of radio these days.
-
...Take a minute to write down what you learned from this short disruption of your daily life. It sound like communication was a big one.
Having a generator would have been nice. However, every time I save up enough to get the one I want... I end up getting something else (more food, ammo, etc.) As much as a comfort as it would be, a generator is not a priority on my budget.
I have a "smart" phone but the car charger is broke... so I hesitated to search the web for info. I did make a quick call to a friend outside of the city and had them look up the news on the web and call me back with a quick report. If push came to shove, I could have used my small 12vdc > 120vac inverter + wall charger to charge my phone in my vehicle.
On a side note:
I don't talk about it much on here, but I'm big into CB/11 meter free band. I have more than enough equipment, and know how, for top notch base and mobile radio rigs. However, I took the radio out of my vehicle shortly after I moved here because I didn't want my window smashed by some crack-head that might get $20 from a pawn shop for my $900+ worth of mobile radio equipment. Also I have not bothered to set up a base station because I know that as soon as I start to transmit in this densely packed area, all of my neighbors are going to start bitching about interference. I'll eventually get around to setting up a homemade hidden antenna. The irony is that this homemade job will likely cause MORE interference due to its less-than-desirable radiation pattern... but at least they won't know were it's coming from *insert trollface*. You ask: "What good is all this going to do if the power is down and you don't have a generator?" The answer is simple: I connect my hidden base antenna to my mobile rig. I can run at minimum power from just the battery AND/OR start the engine for an extra 90+/- amps if higher power is needed.
-
O-Kay man...Guess what your first 1,500 - 2,000 word article is going to be about ;) I even have a title for you...My Home Base CB set-up on the Cheap. I can't wait reading it. :coffeeNews:
-
@JM
:hiding: