Blackberry REACT September 2010 NewsletterQuick ClicksFCC allows participation by employees in disaster drillsAs reported in the September issue of QST Magazine, the FCC has amended its rules to allow limited participation by hams in disaster drills involving their employers which are participating in the exercise. And September is readiness month. The evolution of sound in carsWe may now know Motorola as the maker of cellphones, but their name gives the origin – a Victrola in your motorcar. Well, a radio actually. The first car radio was the Motorola by Glavin Mfg. Corp. Now many people have their MP3 player jacked into the receiver instead of listening to broadcasts. Some carmakers actually tried putting record players in the dash, but that was the disaster it deserved to be.It wasn’t till the compact cassette tape that we got to listen to our own music. The timeline shown at the link gives you an overview of music on wheels. Inside the Bay BridgeNice video after the 15-second commercial. CGI animation shows how they expect the bridge to survive a “massive level earthquake.” Field Day circa 1950Color movie, no sound. Lots of war surplus radios, it seems. What means most to an engineer?1950s ad from RCA looking for engineers. “Rest easy in the knowledge that your future is secure … .” At least until 1986, when RCA went under. RCA has a fascinating history of monopolies and Navy intrigue. See its Wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA Water-propelled rocket reaches 810 feetUsing water under pressure and a booster stage, these guys send a rocket over 800 feet up. Several launches are shown in this five- minute video. Maintaining the relevance of ARESSpeaking of the QST Magazine, the September issue has an article entitled “ARES: Maintaining Relevance in a Changing World.” Among other things, the article suggests that ARES members have the following minimum ICS training from FEMA:
See http://training.fema.gov/IS/NIMS.asp for links to these courses and others. The ARRL also recommends that you take its basic course, “Introduction to Emergency Communications – Level1/Basic,” which is at http://www.arrl.org/online-course-catalog United Airlines Menu, 1959This meal was included in the price of the ticket, of course, and the utensils were metal. Follow the link to the “American Airlines in 1959 series” for more ads about air travel in the Fifties. It was glamorous, and the president of American Airlines had a message for its employees: “Passengers are people. If any difficulty arises which may affect or delay the passengers, treat them as intelligent, interested, friendly people. Tell them the truth in an understandable, friendly, non-technical manner. They will understand and appreciate your consideration and the information you give to them.” Times gone back have a certain nostalgia to them. College prof kicked out of Starbucks for using correct EnglishAll she wanted was a toasted multi-grain bagel. New theory about the prolonged solar minimumIf I knew anything about what they’re talking about, I might understand it. Every Time ZoneHam radio operators use Zulu or UTC or GMC or whatever it’s called these days to keep track of time, but this Web site shows you your local time and then shows cities in every time zone around the world with their local time and date. Handy for keeping track of that call to Mumbai or Johannesburg. 1922 color motion picturesThis page contains a link to a four and a half minute video of several clips testing a Kodak color film process. This is held out as probably the earliest color movies you’ll ever see – sound movies had not yet been released when these short movies were shot. The movies are identified as a Kodachrome test done in 1922; the Kodachrome slide film we all know and love was introduced in the Thirties, The Web page says tests on this type of motion picture film were begun in 1914. The images were recorded onto black and white film through two lenses with different filters. After processing and printing onto other film stock, a duplicate negative was further processed and dyed on both sides of the film. The resulting colors (gree/blue and red) produced vibrant colors but ghostly skin tones. You may recall seeing silent movies where the actors and actresses were dead white with dark to black lips. In part this was the make up, but in part it was the use of orthographic film. This type of film was in wide use from the beginning of photography, and it was sensitive to green, blue, and violet light. This meant that the gray tones produced by the film were “wrong.” The blue sky was always white, as were green leaves. You may recall old box cameras that had a red window to see the frame number— orthochromatic film was blind to red, which showed up as black on the film positive. Because flesh tones appeared too dark (the rosiness of Caucasian faces was the problem) on the projected screens, actors and actresses used white makeup. With the introduction of panchromatic film in the late Twenties, the gray values matched what we saw in nature, and orthochromatic movies disappeared. Technicolor went through several processes before settling on the three- color process which involved printing filtered light onto three strips of film: green, blue, and whatever was left (essentially red). The blue light was captured on orthochromatic film, and green and red were captured on panchromatic film. Each strip was printed separately and dyed with its appropriate complementary color to produce the negatives. A single strip of black and white film was then brought into contact with the dyed negatives in turn, building up a complete color image. When processed, the colors were then reversed to the correct “positive” colors for projection. Photos of New Orleans five years after KatrinaI’ve assumed that after the big earthquake and fire that levels San Mateo, we’ll all be rebuilt in a matter of months. Well, maybe a year. But looking at these photos of New Orleans, I begin to sense that there’s not enough money to build a town after devastation. And it’s not just buildings, it’s homes. Homes with all the stuff still in them: clothes in the closet, pictures on the walls, furniture on the floor. Events
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