Information About 97.113

To learn more about our Petition for Rule Making to change FCC Part 97.113:

 

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Wednesday
03Mar2010

Bulletin: FCC Wants Comments on Hospital Assn. Request for Blanket 97.113 Waiver

This just in:


http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-10-365A1.txt

DA 10-365
Released:  March 3, 2010
WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUREAU AND PUBLIC SAFETY AND HOMELAND
SECURITY BUREAU SEEK COMMENT ON REQUEST BY AMERICAN HOSPITAL
ASSOCIATION FOR BLANKET WAIVER TO PERMIT HOSPITALS TO USE AMATEUR
RADIO AS PART OF EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS DRILLS
WP Docket No. 10-54
Comment Date:   April 2, 2010 Reply Date:  April 19, 2010

73,
Benn KC5CW

Wednesday
24Feb2010

Depiction 1.2 Software Now Available

I wish I liked this software more. God knows, I’d like to. But, the software is complex, its functionality wide but not deep, and it requires significant planning and setup to be really useful. But, I like the idea and the people. I have not yet really invested enough time in Depiction to do a review. The demos look great, but seem to be best-case uses of the product.

Here’s their release:


Imagine, Depict and Share With the Powerful Mapping, Simulation and Collaboration Tools in Depiction 1.2

Evacuating during disasters. Planning for urban growth. Ensuring the security of your neighborhood. Our communities face challenges like these every day—and a new software tool can help overcome them. Depiction, Inc. announced today the release of Depiction 1.2: desktop mapping, simulation and collaboration software that anyone can use—and afford.

Everett, WA (PRWEB) February 23, 2010 — Evacuating during disasters. Planning for urban growth. Ensuring the security of your neighborhood. Our communities face challenges like these every day—and a new software tool can help overcome them. Depiction, Inc. announced today the release of Depiction 1.2—desktop mapping, simulation and collaboration software that anyone can use—and afford. Depiction enables users to imagine, depict and share interactive geospatial scenarios like these and many others.

Depiction 1.2 enables users to imagine, depict and share interactive geospatial scenarios.
Depiction 1.2 enables users to imagine, depict and share interactive geospatial scenarios.
 With Depiction, you can create and interact with your own ‘what if’ scenarios, in minutes, creating a living map unlike anything you’ve seen before. 
“People know and care about their community, but have previously lacked the tools to visually explore and share the insights, dreams and fears that affect it,” said Depiction, Inc. founder and president Mike Geertsen. “With Depiction, you can create and interact with your own ‘what if’ scenarios, in minutes, creating a living map unlike anything you’ve seen before.”

Depiction 1.2 is a web-enabled desktop program that incorporates technology from the mapping, simulation and collaboration industries to create a visual story—or depiction—about a real or potential scenario. These capabilities have previously been reserved for highly trained systems engineers, analysts and programmers using complex, expensive, enterprise-level installations.

From Agencies to Individuals
Depiction is being used by city and county emergency managers, fire and police departments, health districts, homeland security, universities, businesses and others for a wide range of planning and operational activities. And because it is both affordable and easy to use, Depiction is also used by individual volunteers, from groups like the Red Cross, Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT), Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) and more. Both agencies and individuals have used it to coordinate responses during Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in the Gulf Coast, wildfires in California, the recent winter storms in the Northeast, and other events across the country. Other industries, such as logistics planning, real estate portfolio development and hazardous material handling, are also seeing the value of using affordable, easy to operate software to imagine, depict and share dynamic views of their community.

Imagine
What if the river rose by five feet? By ten? How would key employees make it to work if an earthquake destroyed all the bridges in town? Depiction is “the easiest way for non-programmers to use the power of geographical simulation models,” according to Dr. Timothy Hare, Professor of Anthropology in the Institute for Regional Analysis and Public Policy at Morehead State University. The software’s simulation tools are immediately accessible to educators, consultants, preparedness professionals and even everyday citizens. As users move elements around the map, floods disable buildings, barriers block planned routes—they can even create custom elements and interactions, such as a blackout that shuts down critical facilities.

Depict
Volunteer groups can map their neighborhoods, companies plot their office locations, politicians keep track of voting patterns and more with Depiction’s easy to use mapping technology. Users can combine their own data files with publicly available resources and even data created by advanced Geographic Information Systems (GIS), including ESRI shapefiles, Geographic Markup Language (GML), elevation data models, and more. Even spreadsheets, database files, scanned paper maps or GPS-generated waypoints and tracks can be easily dropped into a depiction file. Depiction automatically populates your scenario with publicly available maps, data and imagery from sources such as NASA, USGS and NOAA. It also brings in crowdsourced maps and data from OpenStreetMap, touted for its immediacy, accuracy and usefulness during the relief efforts after the recent earthquake in Haiti. All this data is saved into a local depiction file, meaning it is available for exploration and simulation even when the Internet is unavailable—on an airplane, or during an emergency.

Share
Depiction’s innovative “Live Reports” feature enables individuals and organizations to create visual collaboration networks in minutes, without needing a central server. Emergency managers, security teams, event planners and others can maintain a common operating picture during exercises, events, disasters and more, and can share situational awareness with people in the field, in an operations center—or anywhere in the world. The program’s export features also enable users to share their data as images or spreadsheets with individuals who do not use Depiction, or with other GIS systems in the form of GML files. Mike O’Day, Seattle Red Cross Government Liason, praises Depiction’s power in “obtaining a visual representation of the common operating picture.”

Current customers in other fields are making good use of the product’s powerful features. “Depiction will quickly become the most effective tool for any planner to integrate planning data and real property information,” says Michael J. Dinn, CRE, of Dinn Focused Marketing.

Available Now
See Depiction 1.2 in action during a live webinar this Thursday, February 25 at 1 PM EST/10 AM PST, hosted by president and founder Mike Geertsen, and Depiction Customer Engagement Director Kim Buike, a retired Navy Captain and Red Cross chapter board member.

Version 1.2 is available immediately. Current Depiction users can upgrade to the latest version at no cost. Depiction 1.2 can be purchased risk-free and downloaded for just $199 at www.depiction.com, and requires no subscription or maintenance agreement. Volume discounts and discounts for volunteers are available.

###

Tuesday
16Feb2010

CQ Magazine's 97.113 Petition

On December 21, CQ Communications, publisher of CQ Magazine, filed a petition to amend the FCC’s prohibition against business communication over Amateur Radio. This proposal was written not just to cover emergency communications (as was the N5GAR/WB6NOA/N5FDL petition filed Oct. 15) but to include certain other groups as well, such as astronauts and CQ’s own employees.

(Download a copy of the petition here. .DOC format).

These groups, and a few others, could run afoul of the “pecuniary interest” prohibition while doing things like operating from the International Space Station, writing a product review, or participating in a contest.

Here is CQ’s proposed wording:

Proposed Rule Changes

18. Therefore, for the reasons cited above, petitioner proposes the following changes to §97.113 (Proposed additions in italics; proposed deletions are shown with a strikethrough):

1. Amend subsection (a), paragraph (3), as follows:

§97.113 Prohibited transmissions.

(a) No amateur station shall transmit:

(3) Communications in which the station licensee or control operator has a pecuniary interest, including communications on behalf of an employer, except as otherwise provided in these rules. Amateur operators may, however, notify other amateur operators of the availability for sale or trade of apparatus normally used in an amateur station, provided that such activity is not conducted on a regular basis;

2. Add a new subsection(e), as follows:

(e) Communications on behalf of an employer may be transmitted on an occasional basis, provided that:

(1) Such communications are incidental to the employee’s normal job responsibilities and are conducted voluntarily;

(2) Such communications are conducted during an employee’s personal time, including but not limited to lunch hours, days off and other non-compensated time periods, and

(3) The primary beneficiaries of such communications are other amateurs and/or members of the general public, and not the employer.

(4) Nothing in these rules shall be construed to limit the recreational use of an amateur station on an employer’s premises by a duly licensed employee, as authorized by the station licensee.

3. Redesignate existing subsection (e) as (f) make the following changes:

(f) No station shall retransmit programs or signals emanating from any type of radio station other than an amateur station, except propagation and weather forecast information intended for use by the general public and originated from United States Government stations and communications, including incidental music, originating on United States Government frequencies between a manned space vehicle shuttle and its associated Earth stations. Prior approval for manned space vehicle shuttle retransmissions must be obtained from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Such retransmissions must be for the exclusive use of amateur operators. Propagation, weather forecasts, and manned space vehicle shuttle retransmissions may not be conducted on a regular basis, but only occasionally, as an incident of normal amateur radio communications.

4. Redesignate existing subsection (f) as (g).

In a more-reasoned era, this wording was not necessary and good sense prevailed. With the FCC on the warpath, this petition now seems necessary.

I am supportive of this petition, but don’t like one paragraph, specifically the one that requires employees to communicate “on their own time.”

I don’t see how to make this work in the real world, especially with public safety employees. Are workers really expected to submit special time sheets to make sure they are not paid while on-the-air? And what about people who multitask, are they supposed to add up their total airtime and have it deducted from their wages?

I understand what CQ hoped to accomplish with the paragraph. We considered and quickly rejected similiar wording for our petition, based on the reasoning I’ve outlined.

When the FCC finally assigns a Rule Making number and comment periods on this issue, I will comment in favor of the CQ proposal.

Tuesday
16Feb2010

FTM-350R: The Fix Is In

It looks like at least one—and the most critical—of the problems facing owners of Yaesu’s new FTM-350R APRS-enabled mobile V/UHF transceiver can now be solved. After reproducing my complaints about “heading up” GPS navigation pointing in the wrong direction, Yaesu got its Japanese engineers on the case and supposedly have developed a fix.

My radio is now down at Yaesu in Orange County and is having the fix applied. This problem (described in the video posted below) appears to effect all FTM-350R’s now available.

Not being fixed—because it cannot be reliably reproduced—is the problem of the radio hanging, apparently while receiving an APRS packet. I have had this happen on five occasions, so it’s not a showstopper. But, the only way to restart the radio is to remove power from the base unit, which can be inconvenient and shouldn’t be necessary, in any case.

I have had other reports of this problem, but am aware of no specific cause or cure. Seems to be a software issue.

Finally, the Bluetooth VOX on my FTM-350R is useless, which makes Bluetooth hands-free impossible. I am not sure how common this problem is. I sent my Yaesu Bluetooth headset in with the radio for testing.

It is a shame that a radio that in many ways is such a breakthrough was not better tested (and fixed) before release.

 

Tuesday
16Feb2010

Free New USGS Digital Topo Maps

From the current issue of SAR News, an excellent free online newsletter:

Free New Generation USGS Digital US Topo Maps Available

 

Upgraded (from beta map) content and improved contours and hydrography features, and technical functions such as data layers, are now all rolled into one with the new digital US Topo Maps based on the USGS National Map. Other advantages to using the digital maps are the ability to turn data layers off and on, zoom in, printed to scale or used on-screen, compatibility with Google Maps, and choice of reference systems. Plus, the maps are free.

http://nationalmap.gov/ustopo/