Friday fragments — critical comms snippets for 2 October 2015

A round-up of the week’s critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 2 October 2015.

Treasurer blocks US$68m comms deal. Iowa’s treasurer has blocked a proposed US$68m contract with Motorola, saying that the lease-purchase deal adds too much interest. “It would be a nice financial deal to them, but to the state it’s going to cost us $9 million to $10 million,” state treasurer Michael Fitzgerald told The Republic. “We have real problems with this lease-purchase that they are trying to run through.”

Exercise to test solar disruption. A disastrous solar coronal mass ejection (CME) will be the focus of a US national Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS) communication exercise in early November, and MARS is hoping to collaborate with Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) and Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES) groups. “The exercise scenario will simulate a CME event and focus on actions that radio operators should take prior to and following a CME event,” said Army MARS Program Manager Paul English. “One thing we want to continue to work on is the interface with the greater amateur radio community.”

FirstNet overview. If you haven’t caught up with FirstNet — the coming US nationwide public safety comms network — yet, IBM’s Don Dejewski and Peter Williams have written a nice overview of the system and what it hopes to achieve.

Stolen radio recovered. A thief’s drunken broadcasts over emergency frequencies using the radio he stole from the local fire chief have helped police apprehend him and recover the radio. The unit was taken from the chief’s SUV, which had been parked in his driveway. “All the time I’ve been there, never one time I’ve had anything taken,” fire chief Ed Hutchinson, 93, told Trib Live News. “The door’s always open, the key’s always in the ignition. It sits in front of my house, 24 hours a day, for 62 frigging years.”

US military studies nuclear-proof comms. The US Air Force has called for industry input into research that would lead to comms that are better protected against the effects of nuclear explosions, including electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Called the Nuclear Communications for Aerial Systems and Technologies (NCAST) project, it aims to produce “communications technologies that can survive and operate through nuclear explosions using frequencies that offer less competition for spectrum, high capacity and resilience in nuclear environments”.