California's Golden Guardian Statewide Exercise Series, the nation's largest state-sponsored emergency preparedness exercise endeavor will take place November 13-18. Golden Guardian is an ongoing annual event, comprised of a series of seminars, discussion based tabletop exercise and drills, culminating in a full scale exercise designed to test the emergency capabilities of the State of California to deter, prevent, respond and recover from a potential terrorist attack or catastrophic natural disaster.

Begun in 2004 as a federal/state and local exercise which activated State emergency resources, the Golden Guardian Exercise Series is mandated and funded under federal Department of Homeland Security guidelines requiring exercise and subsequent evaluation and improvement activities. Gov. Schwarzenegger and his senior staff have participated in each Golden Guardian exercise.

Golden Guardian 2004 exercise revolved around a simulated dirty bomb attack at the Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach, a train derailment and toxic spill in Ventura County and a hijacking scenario at Bay Area airports. GG04 took place while the nation was in an elevated 'Orange Level' alert status.

Golden Guardian 2008 focuses on a simulated catastrophic 7.8 magnitude earthquake on the southern portion of the San Andreas Fault, ranging from the Salton Sea in Imperial County to Northern Los Angeles County. Seven southern California counties are participating in this main event, as well the State Operations Center in Sacramento. A catastrophic natural disaster exercise involving the multi-state Lake Tahoe region is also planned. Thousands of participants representing dozens of local, state and federal agencies including the U.S. Military are participating in GG08.

Links of interest

Golden Guardian 2008 Exercise Series
www.ohs.ca.gov/hseep/golden_guardian/

The Great Southern California ShakeOut
www.shakeout.org

FON Photos: Determined Promise 2004 (GG04)
www.freqofnature.com/photography/dp04/ posted by Tracy at 8/27/2008 0 comments

Los Padres Council Boy Scout Troop 105 in Santa Barbara is scheduled to chat with the folks onboard the International Space Station around 8:35 AM on Tuesday, August 19th.

Station K6TZ in Santa Barbara will call NA1SS around 8:35 AM (15:39 UTC).

Boy scouts will ask as many of the following questions as time allows:

1. What is your favorite experiment on the space station?
2. What kind of computer do you have available to use on the space station?
3. How long do plants live in a space environment?
4. Can you tell us what weightlessness is like?
5. What does the food taste like?
6. What kind of shapes can you make with liquids in weightlessness?
7. How much sleep do you get?
8. What do you do when you get bored?
9. How did scouting help you in your career?
10. How often do supplies come?
11. How often are new components added to the space station?
12. How do you do your laundry?
13. What is your favorite: being an astronaut or your other interests?
14. How much time do you get to yourself?
15. What is your favorite aspect of scouting?
16. At what age did you first want to be an astronaut?
17. What is the most difficult task you have to do on the space station?
18. Tell us about the view of Earth.
19. Do you ever get afraid of heights?
20. Do you ever see any other satellites or space junk during your orbits?

The International Space Station (ISS) will be audible to anyone listening in on the 145.80 MHz downlink.

Upcoming Amateur Radio ISS events can be found at http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ariss/news/arissnews.txt posted by Tracy at 8/16/2008 0 comments

Gene Costin, better known as Gene Hughes to radio scanner enthusiasts, recently passed away in Southern California.

Gene started his love affair with radio as a young boy in 1939 Los Angeles after his Uncle sent him an AM radio. Gene discovered that by tuning the radio to one end of the dial he could listen to police calls.

This fascination of new found voices on his AM radio led him on a life-long journey that included publishing the popular 'Police Call' radio scanner books, a career as a police dispatcher, and later as a volunteer with the Los Angeles Police Department where he was recognized by the State of California as volunteer of the year.

Gene published the last edition of 'Police Call' in 2005 with a heart-filled testimonial of his love affair with radio in the front of the book. Even though he had retired the 'Police Call' books, Gene continued to enjoy the hobby and frequented the Southern California Monitoring Association (SCMA) meetings with friends who shared his love of radio.


Gene 'Hughes' Costin ... 10-7 (off-duty) August 2008.

Links of Interest

Wired Magazine - Oct 2005
Police Call King Calls It Quits

Los Angeles City Fire Department
LAFD Friend, Father of 'Police Call' Dies

Southern California Monitoring Association (SCMA)
www.socalscanner.com posted by Tracy at 8/04/2008 1 comments

[Source: County of Riverside]


(Map of the current radio system. Courtesy of Freq Of Nature)

The County of Riverside currently operates an 800 MHz EDACS radio system that is lacking in coverage and functionality. The current system has a reduced level of interoperability.

The County of Riverside fire and law enforcement agencies currently utilizes approximately 20 communication sites to provide voice and data transmission capabilities to assigned personnel in the field. As currently configured, the system provides coverage to only about 60 percent of the County. The communication system now in use is at the end of its useful life, and is no longer adequate to meet the County coverage and capacity needs. Population growth within the County is necessitating the expansion of the coverage footprint. Additionally, due to increases in the County radio usage, additional traffic-carrying capacity is required to meet the needs of emergency services personnel to serve the public.

For more information see the County of Riverside Public Safety Enterprise Communication web site:
http://psec.co.riverside.ca.us posted by Tracy at 6/18/2008 1 comments

[Source: Ventura County Star]

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors voted to spend as much as $16.7 million on a new communications network that should eliminate most of the radio "dead spots" that emergency workers encounter.

With the current system, firefighters, paramedics and sheriff's deputies often can't reach central dispatchers with their hand-held radios. They must use the mobile radios in their cars and trucks instead, and that can sometimes slow down calls for assistance, said Jim Norris, the Ventura County Fire Department's information technology manager.

"This is where the rubber meets the road in the delivery of services," he told the board. "If a deputy is at the scene of a gang fight, he might not be able to go back to his car to his radio."

The new system will have "acceptable audio quality" in about 95 percent of the county's populated area, he said.

The system has been in the works for months now; Tuesday's series of votes by the Board of Supervisors authorized additional spending and contracts with vendors to implement it.

The communications network will include five new microwave towers, upgrades to 11 existing microwave towers, and a new Motorola handheld radio system. It should be completely in place in three to five years, Norris said after the board meeting.

The system will have far more bandwidth than the county will require for its radio voice data, Jackson said.

"As we move forward, we could put real-time video on there, so dispatch centers will be able to see when sheriff's and fire reach a site," he said.

More... posted by Tracy at 5/15/2008 0 comments