AERIALS has in place both severe weather alerting systems and automated emergency battery backup power system so that the repeater station continues to be available during power failures.
The AERIALS 443 Repeater system provides an NWR Specific Area Message Encoding (S.A.M.E.) based automated Severe Weather Alerting system capability to help save lives for those that monitor the 443 repeater system.
We also provide a repeater controller based Severe Weather messages that repeat often during bad weather whenever the repeater is activated. These messages are specific to the nature of the severe weather event.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has an extensive VHF radio system for disseminating weather information including Watches and Warnings. The NOAA Weather Radio (NWR) National Weather Service (NWS) system reliably covers about 85% of the United States. Countless lives have been saved by advisories, watches, and warnings issued over NWR. NWR is the only government operated National Emergency broadcast medium.
AERIALS is the first repeater system in Monmouth County to offer this capability. We monitor the NWS transmitter in Howell, NJ on 162.450Mhz which provides specific coverage for Monmouth and Ocean counties. As can be seen from the display of the Motorola service monitor in the photo below, we get a good signal at the repeater site with just the whip antenna. In addition, the antenna installed for this purpose is a Cushcraft AR-270 tuned to 162.450Mhz at 180 feet using 75ohm 7/8 inch hardline, it also serves are our UHF control link receiver antenna.
However, as can been seen in the next photo, we also have strong nearby signals on the band, thus we use a GE Master II receiver with its helical resonator front end and an external pass/reject filter configured from a Celwave 5Mhz split mobile duplexer that we have tuned to pass 162.450 and reject the co-hosted two meter repeater as its more active than the co-hosted commercial VHF repeater. The GE receiver sensitivity and immunity to strong nearby signals is perfect for this application.
This system was installed July 13th 2002, passed its first weekly NWR test on Wednesday July 17th at 11:15am and was activated during a real weather emergency for the first time on Friday July 19th when the Ocean-Monmouth county area was hit with severe life threatning thunder and lightning storms with heavy rain and winds.
As we support the SAME system, it is our hope that the NJ State OEM officers will at some point coordinate with the National Weather Service and implement the SAME/EAS Civil Emergency Message (CEM) event code to alert all RACES/ARES members of the need to activate. The CEM code is currently being used for AMBER alerts, but in 2003 the new "Child Abduction Emergency (CAE)" that has been adopted will be pressed into service for that application.
We the members of AERIALS are proud to be able to offer this valuable capability to the local Amateur Radio community.
The S.A.M.E. WX receiver audio feed is also user controlled via an on-demand Dual-Tone Multi Frequency (DTMF) signaling access for manual activation and control operator intervention. This allows a system user that only has a UHF transceiver available the ability to turn on and off the NOAA weather radio broadcasts at any time to get the current weather broadcast. This access method provides 3 minutes of NWS audio feed at a time, should this not be suffient to hear the desired NWS information, simply re-enable the feed for another 3 minutes.
To manually active the NWS audio feed using your DTMF microphone enter 321 and unkey, a beep will be heard, then enter 320 and unkey, a beep will be hard and the audio will be active for 3 minutes or until the same codes are entered again.
Please note, at present, when IRLP is active the S.A.M.E. system is disable.
In the future, when connected to the N2CKH hub in Lakewood to link to other NJ based repeaters or to the IRLP, the local S.A.M.E. system on the 443 repeater will also be disabled as there will also be one on the linking hub to serve all connected repeaters connected. The S.A.M.E. unit on the linking hub will always be active and will also be DTMF commanded and will output to all connected repeaters but NOT the IRLP audio stream.
A Morris Softronics S.A.M.E. unit is being used as custom installed in GE Master II/M receivers by N2CKH.
The Morris unit is the best and least expensive unit available for this application. It provides for an easy menu driven computer setup and integration from any 9600 baud dumb terminal. The Morris boards and are fully programable for all supported parameters and event feature a built in tone generator to provide for PTT control and audio setup.
The Morris board is integrated into the GE Master II/M receiver on the dummy backend PA heat sink assembly providing a seamles integrated S.A.M.E. solution with total RF immunity and easy access for maintenance and programming.
An NHRC Volume/Squelch board is used as is an 8 ohm 20w load resistor on the GE receivers 16 watt audio output to prevent oscillations. A fused D.C. power cable and ON/OFF switch along with a manually momentary S.A.M.E. test switch have also been added to the receiver. For testing purposes when on site, a speaker can be clipped onto the HI and LO ends of the load resistor for local audio.
At present the first the GE receivers will only monitor closest NWS station. We are currently using the Howell 162.450Mhz transmitter site, later we will add additional frequncies and a busy channel seeking circuit to lock onto the next strongest signal should the Howell transmitter go down.
Should you be a repeater operator interested in the Morris Softronics S.A.M.E. board click here
The National Weather Service (NWS) provides specific regional targeted weather alerting boradcasts that require a special decoding capability called Specific Area Message Encoding (S.A.M.E.) . NWS broadcasts weather information...24 hours a day...all year long and provides SAME test transmissions weekly. When an emergency weather condition becomes imminant the SAME system for the given geographic areas automatically alert all SAME decodes to transmit the current broadcast.
Should NWS also carry National Emergency Alerts such as when a government agency like FEMA or the President issues an EAS that content will also be available, no specific EAS channel will be monitored for EAS alerts at present.
In our area the newest and closest thus strongest station is 162.450 in Howell, located at the Atlantic Coast Communications tower in the Southard area of Howell at 300 feet above sea level. This site provides SAME tests weekly on Wednesday between 11:00am-12:00pm if no real weather situations are in progress.
Click here for coverage plots of the 162.450 NWS station in Howell.
Click here for coverage plots of the 162.400 NWS station in Atalantic City.
Click here for coverage plots of the 162.550 NWS station in New York.
Click here for all NWS transmitters in the NJ, NY, PA bordering area.
The receiver to be used for monitoring the weather transmissions will eventually be in continuous auto sync
mode, taking the strongest signal. Thus it will normally be tuned to 162.450Mhz capturing the signals from
Howell. However should that transmitter have problems it will take the next strongest signal. A GE Master II
VHF receiver is being configured for better immunity to strong local VHF signals with a VHF duplexer tuned
to pass 162.xxx range and reject 147Mhz.
Below is the current list of stations for the NJ, NY, PA area, stations are
being added all the time.
