N C-Message Weighting Messaging System (408)-377-7441 ===================================================== B A S E L I N E N E W S - J U N E 1 9 9 3 ===================================================== "News about technology and technology policy" - including an electronic digest of published reports - This Month: =========== - Signals of Interest - Campbell eliminates Fire Department to cut budget - FCC Part 88 - Nuisance Calls =========== SIGNALS OF INTEREST (MHZ) 35.020 McDonalds, Bascom and Fruitdale, San Jose 35.020 McDonalds, El Monte near El Camino Real, Mountain View 35.020 McDonalds, El Camino Real near Bernardo, Sunnyvale 48.360 PG&E, Walnut Creek (Gas department) 151.415 State Dept. of Fish and Game, Menlo Park -Pause- [C]ontinue, [N]onStop, [S]top? [C]C152.405 Alpha Cab, San Jose (Base) 154.515 Service Auto Supply, Palo Alto 154.570 McDonalds, Whipple near Industrial, Redwood City 157.605 Alpha Cab, San Jose (Mobile) 158.930 Milpitas Materials, Milpitas (mixing and loading concrete) 163.250 Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital, Hollister (paging) 451.625 Marin Municipal Water District, Novato 453.675 San Jose Police, San Jose, (Airport Detail) 457.550 Carls Jr., El Camino Real at Eaton (eatin'), San Carlos 457.575 Jack in the Box, Camden and White Oaks, Campbell 460.725 United Airlines, San Jose International Airport, San Jose 460.725 United Airlines, San Francisco Int'l Airport 460.875 United Airlines, San Francisco Int'l Airport 461.875 Ellison's Towing, Palo Alto 464.5125 Leslie Salt, Hayward (data 4-20ma loop) 464.6125 Nordstrom, Stanford Shopping Center, Palo Alto 464.800 TCI Cablevision, Fremont 853.1125 Airport Limousine, Milpitas 853.7875 CalSTAR helicopter, Concord (dispatch) 854.0125 Stanford Life Flight helicopter, Stanford (dispatch) 854.2125 DHL Courier, Bay Area (MDI data and voice) 854.4125 DHL Courier, Bay Area (MDI data and voice) CITY OF CAMPBELL CONTRACTS WITH CENTRAL FIRE DISTRICT The Campbell Fire Department will soon merge with Central Fire District. On 4 May, the Campbell City Council voted 4-1 in favor of a five-year contract to provide fire services. Chief Douglas Sporleder of Central Fire District said that Central may begin providing fire protection services as soon as July 1 according to the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS. What happens now? While there are some grey areas, state law provides that employees of Campbell's fire department must be absorbed by Central. The city's paramedic unit will be permanently taken out of service in the merger. We expect that Campbell paramedics will revert to firefighters or seek employment at an agency where they can use their paramedic skills. After the merger, a county paramedic unit will have to be dispatched to any medical call in Campbell. At this writing, City officials and Central have not determined whether Campbell will continue dispatching their own fire calls. Our guess -- and it's only a guess -- is that Central will want all of their equipment dispatched through one place: GSA (County) Communications. Campbell would -Pause- [C]ontinue, [N]onStop, [S]top? [C]use the relay/transfer method to handle 911 fire calls under this scenario. Reliable sources say Central also has ambitions to contract for fire services with Los Altos County Fire District, City of Los Altos, Town of Los Altos Hills, and Saratoga Fire District. Campbell City Manager Mark Ochenduszko claims the merger will save his city $200,000 per year. MIDPENINSULA OPEN SPACE DISTRICT RANGERS DISPATCHED BY MOUNTAIN VIEW On 1 May, Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) rangers began communicating with Mountain View Communcators. The District is contracting with the City of Mountain View to provide dispatching services. MONTE SERENO RETAINS S/O In an unrelated action earlier this year, Los Gatos Police had made efforts to contract with the Town of Monte Sereno to provide police services. The Town Council opted to continue contracting with the Santa Clara County council to rate the proposed bidders ranked the Los Gatos Police Department superb. SAN JOSE POLICE, LASSEN COUNTY SHERIFF, AND PATROL VEHICLES Gerald Silva, City Auditor for San Jose has recommended several changes in the City of San Jose's patrol cars. Silva suggests a good idea: that the City switch to plain white from custom blue and white paint jobs in order to save $53,000/year. Silva also says the rule requiring cars to be replaced every four years or 85,000 miles causes cars to be replaced more frequently than ten other agencies, including Phoenix, Arizona Police. He would like to change the fact that vehicle replacement is required as part of the agreement with the union representing police officers. Silva didn't site any statistical or scientific study of vehicle cost, reliability, or any correlation with mileage/age criterion. Instead, he suggests that the city fleet manager should determine when patrol cars are worn out. A recent article in the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS showed a photo of a 1986 Lassen County Sheriff's car with a large hole in the front seat upholstery and 210,000 miles on it. The MERCURY article says that Lassen County routinely drive cars with over 150,000 miles on them. So, when do you put an old patrol car out to pasture? PUBLIC SAFETY TRUNKED SYSTEMS ARE MORE FUN AND MORE WORK Trunked systems allow advanced features that most conventional radio users are not acquainted with. For example, sophisticated systems allow individual radios to be disabled over the air. If someone loses a radio, the dispatcher can instantly disable it. Some systems allow dynamic regrouping: fire and police units responding to the same incident can be put into a subfleet -- a separate user group where they can communicate as though they are on a tactical channel together. Would you install a mainframe computer and let the vendor care for all aspects of it? Would you have the vendor maintain all peripherals, modems, and private-line telephone circuits? Would you buy a PBX and guess how much traffic it carries? Your agency probably could not afford such a luxury. All trunked systems handling life-safety traffic should have a trained system administrator. The administrator should look for indicators of any trunked system is essential to prevent users from getting a busy tone when they have an emergency. A system manager should watch for signs that the system is overloaded or that telephone patch use is poorly managed. For example, study of traffic may reveal that the system can only handle one telephone patch at a time during business hours. User training is a part of managing a trunked system. Users should understand that trunked systems are most likely to return a busy signal and assign long delays during high-demand periods such as during a disaster. It is imperative that users maintain strict radio discipline during disaster operations in order to keep system availability high. By trunked system users utilizing mobile data terminals on a separate radio system, simplex talk-around channels, and cellular telephones during unusual events, the system can remain useful for other users without communications alternatives. SAN FRANCISCO PARAMEDICS The San Francisco Public Health Department operates paramedic units dispatched on 462.950 MHz. Paramedic units carry hand-held radios to keep are dispatched to advanced life support (ALS) and basic life support (BLS) calls except contracted transportation. In addition, mutual aid plans call for Public Health Department paramedic units to respond to San Francisco International Airport in the event of a mass-casualty incident. In a few areas where UHF coverage is poor, the old VHF channel 155.385 -- called "Normal" -- is used. VHF radios are not hand-held and paramedics must return to the ambulance to use them. Paramedics recently had police channels added to hand-helds and the ambulance dispatch center console although they don't currently use them. UNITED PARCEL AND CELLULAR DATA United Parcel Service (UPS) operates a network of portable data communications units that are used for proof-of-delivery (POD). The units use the cellular telephone network to pass packets of data back to UPS's mainframe. The data identifies the status of packages. A customer can call and UPS is supposed to be able to tell you the exact location of your package. The radio system is called Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD). Data is transmitted over unused cellular telephone voice channels. Data packets go up to 19,200 baud and are transparent to the Mobile Telephone Switching Office (MTSO). The transmissions are "underlayed" on the current cellular system and the MTSO is not aware of them. CDPD can sense when the MTSO selects a voice channel that is carrying data. CDPD selects a different channel and continues the transmission in under 400 milliseconds. The packet contention scheme is similar to Ethernet and packet collisions are accounted for. Forward error correction (FEC) is also incorporated. Other cellular data transmission schemes have interlaced data with the cellular control channel. RAM Mobile Data has asked for a hearing before the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) because they claim the service offered by the cellular carrier has not been appropriately reviewed by the CPUC. CELLULAR: CALLING PARTY PAYS Cellular carriers in Arizona, Idaho and New Mexico have initiated service The calling party must dial a "1" and the cell phone number. There is no recorded announcement; the calling party is then billed for air time. In some areas, business-day air time runs as high as ninety cents per minute. This service is not offered in California -- yet. FCC PART 88 MOBILE RADIO TECHNOLOGY mentioned a change to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules that would reallocate large parts of the land mobile spectrum. While radio users will have to replace their equipment, they are likely to benefit because new assignments should be less crowded. Another item mentioned: transmitter power levels will be reduced in all services. In Europe, most services operate with less than 10 watt transmitter outputs. That means most radio users can get by with much simpler receivers. If the user on an adjacent channel is running 10 watts instead of 120, it's much easier to reject the unwanted signal. Mountain top radio sites -- if all other factors stay constant -- would have less intermodulation and noise troubles if everyone were running 10 watts. nearly all radios will have to be replaced with new ones that use trunking and/or different modulation methods. The cellular telephone industry has already shown ability to apply torque to Congress in order to get legislation through. Cellular and potential PCS carriers could complain that the public demands wireless services in order to get large scale changes to frequency allocations. If anything puts a dent in your ability to monitor two-way radio systems, this will. If modulation methods and channel spacing change, your current scanner may be obsolete. WHY USE OUR DATABASE? Several callers have asked, "Why don't you just put the whole FCC database on your bulletin board?" One reason is quality: the FCC database is full of corrupt data such as misspelled names. We found McDonalds spelled five different ways. Other "doing business as" (DBA) names make some licensees hard to find. Many splinter channel allocations have a blank transmitter city field. Further, our database tells you things like signalling tones and federal government frequencies that are not a part of FCC records. While no database is perfectly accurate, the frequencies in our database have been verified by a core of dedicated enthusiasts: corrupt data has been kept to a minimum. (Check the date field of each record to see how recently it was verified.) Yes, other databases are useful and our online frequency database aims to fill a unique void for accurate information. CD-ROM-MAKER Phillips and Sony have both developed CD-ROM drives in the $6,000-9,000 price range that allow a developer to write programs or information to a blank CD-ROM disc. A software package called CD-Author by Dataware (Cambridge, Massachusetts) allows a do-it-yourself CD-ROM with one of the above drives. An advantage to CD-ROM distribution is configuration control: data cannot be changed accidentally. Imagine your company or city telephone directory, or all of Bay Area Scanner Enthusiasts frequency lists on a single CD- ROM... Many cheaply-priced database programs are available to DOS and Microsoft Windows users. Personal R:Base, PC-File, Access, and Paradox for Windows are four that sell for about $100.00 at local retail outlets. There are many others. The low prices are an opportunity to acquire a legitimate copy of a very powerful database for home use. You can use the programs to build a record of valuables in your home, keep financial records, or record information about radio frequencies. MERCURY NEWS STARTS ONLINE SERVICE The SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS now offers an online edition. On Monday 10 May the newspaper began offering the new service through America Online. You can get one month of service including up to ten hours of connect time free. Terminal software for the free trial is available through the MERCURY NEWS for Macintosh and DOS operating systems and the Microsoft Windows interface. There will also be message areas. Send your name, address, telephone number, disk size, and whether you use Macintosh, DOS, NUISANCE CALLS Do you live in an area where Call Trace is not offered? Do you have trouble with callers trying to format the hard disk on your bulletin board? Are people tampering with your office computer's modem? Do people repeatedly call your home, make rude comments, and then hang up? These and similar troubles can be solved by calling Pacific Bell's Business Office and asking for help with your nuisance calls. First, they will want to give you a new telephone number. In many cases, this is a good idea and the least-complicated way to solve the problem. Changing numbers is impractical if you're listed in the directory (and still want to be) or have a public bulletin board. The phrase, "I'd like to prosecute" is understood by telephone company employees. If you decline their number change offer, you will get a return call from the Annoyance Call Center. They will require you to call the police and get a case number. You report when the calls take place. The police and Pacific Bell do the rest. The nuisance caller doesn't know anything is wrong until it's too late... PEOPLE OBEY STUPID RULES The sign over the phone booth clearly warned, "WOMEN ONLY." A companion phone booth nearby was marked "MEN ONLY." In the lobby of the Trier Main Post Office, students installed the official-looking signs then watched the reactions of people. The students, from the University of Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, decided to conduct a term project to see if mature adults would follow stupid rules. The idea for the project came from a U.S. journalist's joking remark that "order above all" was the theme of the country. Of sixty nine telephone users observed, three-fourths of the men and nearly all of the women obeyed the signs. One mother was heard explaining to her child that she could not use the empty booth because it "was only for men." Two male teenagers scoffed at the signs, then used the booth marked "MEN ONLY." An elderly woman with a male companion entered the "MEN ONLY" booth after checking to see that no one was looking. The only woman to use the "MEN ONLY" booth alone was confronted by being confronted, muttering, "only Germans would come up with this sort of idea" according to THE WEEK IN GERMANY. DRIVER'S LICENSE AND SOCIAL SECURITY Despite the federal law prohibiting the use of Social Security numbers (SSNs) as identification, the State of California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) will require you to present a Social Security Card in order to obtain a license or renewal. Case law has favored the use of SSNs even though federal law prohibits most uses as identification. The courts have ruled that states may require a Social Security Card to be presented in some cases. Knowing you SSN is not sufficient as DMV will require an original card be presented. If you don't have a card, you will be issued a 60-day temporary license. During the 60 days, you must obtain a new card by contacting the Social Security Administration at (800) 772-1213. Afterwards, the Lottery Commission, state tax officials, and anyone with a CLETS terminal will have your SSN. Drop by the California State Railroad Museum in Old Sacramento 18-20 June. The California Railroad Festival will take place. Need more information? Their number is (916) 323-8073 SAN JOSE FIRE DISPATCH NEWSLETTER San Jose Fire has been publishing a newsletter for distribution to authorized fire dispatch agencies. The newsletter is loaded with good information garnered by people at City of San Jose Communications and working on fire dispatch. Our favorite article from a recent issue was on "Freeway Direction Dyslexia," a phenomenon occurring when people call to report freeway accidents. It seems some callers suffer from a perception problem: they cannot tell northbound from southbound or eastbound from westbound. If you work in fire dispatching and would like to receive the newsletter, contact Mr. Larson at City of San Jose Communications. POLICE TEST NEW CHEMICAL WEAPON dangerous suspects. Police departments testing the new chemical include San Jose Police and University of California Police. The chemical, called oleoresin capsicum (OC), is made from concentrated chili oil. Like chemical tear gas Mace, officers must experience the effects of OC before they can use it on suspects. Lieutenant Bill Foley of UCPD was accidentally sprayed in the face with OC during training. "There was a burning sensation and an involuntary closing of the eyes," Foley commented. "I had no desire to offer any resistance." Although federal officers have used OC since 1989, the California Department of Justice did not authorize state and local officers to use the chemical until recently according to the DAILY CALIFORNIAN. FREEWAY SERVICE PATROL Starting in May, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, CalTrans, and the Highway Patrol activated the final segments of a service called Freeway Service Patrol. Tow trucks patrol critical sections of local freeways during peak commute hours to quickly remove stalled cars or accidents on Interstate 405 in the Los Angeles Basin. The main purpose of the program is to ease congestion on area freeways: thousands of idling cars produce tons of pollutants. The cost of a tire change using your spare, one gallon of gas, a jump start, or topping off your radiator and taping a leaking hose are included in the taxes you now pay. Tow operators will tow your car off the freeway if none of the above will help you. After the tow-car operator gets your car off the freeway, you are on your own to request further help. A free flyer describing Freeway Service Patrol and showing patrolled freeways is available from Metropolitan Transportation Commission at (510) 464-7700 or CalTrans at (510) 286-4444. You can download a PCX logo and map of the service areas in the Clip Art area. See Bulletin 11 for a list of Freeway Service Patrol contractors and their frequencies. TOW TRUCKS The California Tow Truck Association (CTTA) held a towing equipment show from 28 April to 2 May at the Red Lion Inn in San Jose. On hand were industries. There were new tow trucks and many light bars, signs, and tools used in the trade. Some great tow straps and tow chains that would be handy in anyone's trunk (or cab) were on sale. We found two trade magazines there that you may want to read. TOW TIMES is $34/year from T. T. Publications, Incorporated, 398 Freeman Street, Longwood, Florida, 32750, (407) 260-0712. Included is a "Locks Myth" column where common problems with ignition, door, and trunk locks are discussed. The "Pending Litigation" column discusses legal actions affecting the industry including -- most frequently -- actions over a tow company being removed from a rotation list. AMERICAN TOWMAN is $40/year from T. B. N., Incorporated, 629 Amboy Avenue, Edison, New Jersey, 08837, (908) 738-5900. We found their "Products and Equipment" column of interest. OFFICE OF THE COUNTY RECORDER The Office of the County Recorder publishes a consumer booklet explaining listed in old records: - went to bed feeling well but woke up dead - died suddenly; nothing serious - cause of death unknown; had never been fatally ill before - don't know: died without the aid of a physician - Death by blow on head with axe. Contributory cause: another man's wife THOUGHTS for June... -------------------- "What is a `backup'?" Anonymous (DOS user) "Drive carefully! The life you save may be mine." Bumper Sticker "I'm nearly famous!" Bumper Sticker "Kids spend more time watching TV (15,000 hours) than they do in school (11,000 hours). By the time today's kids reach the age of 70, they will Jeff Stryker _____________________________________________________________________ Thanks to individuals who contributed information for Baseline News. _____________________________________________________________________ Baseline news is not affiliated with Bay Area Scanner Enthusiasts (BASE). Baseline News (C) Copyright 1992 C-Message Weighting Messaging System (408)-377-7441 1200/2400/9600/14400 baud. As long as you distribute this file in its entirety, (including this statement) it is okay to redistribute, print, or copy this file for any lawful purpose without other restrictions. (end)