The U.S. still stands at 12 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day, same as it was at the end of last week. At this point, we now have a little flat spot on the end of the graph of daily new cases. It’s too soon to say whether or not that means we’re about to enter our long-awaited winter wave of COVID-19.
Continue reading Post #1609, COVID-19, stuck at 12 new cases per 100K per day
The U.S. stands at 12 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day, same as it was at the end of last week. That said, the new case rate continues a steady decline — it has just reached the point where it takes several days to reduce the (rounded) count by one.
You should probably take today’s numbers with a grain of salt. Many states did not report new data today, owing to yesterday’s Federal holiday. A few days from now, we should have a better idea of whether or not the U.S. Omicron wave is continuing to fade.
Today, as I was driving home after a trip to one of our local parks, I got honked at on Maple Avenue, in the Town of Vienna, where I live.
My offense? Failing to cause an accident on Maple Avenue. Apparently the Tesla driver behind me wanted me to clear the roadway by running into the car that was blocking the lane ahead. Instead, I stopped. (It’s not as if I had a choice, because I literally couldn’t get around the lunkhead blocking the lane.). In any case, after a three second delay, the lane cleared, and we all proceeded merrily down the road.
Despite the stupidity of honking at me for failing to run into somebody, maybe that impatient driver can be forgiven. Because, unless you’ve bothered to look at the data, you probably don’t realize just how many car accidents occur on that innocent-looking two-mile stretch of road we refer to as Maple Avenue.
So in this post, I’m going to dig up a few pieces of data on reportable accidents along Maple Avenue in Vienna. Just to remind myself that on this stretch of road, the occasional bit of defensive driving is no sin.
The main commercial district of the Town of Vienna, VA lies along an arterial highway, Virginia Route 123. Although here in the TOV that stretch of Rt. 123 is called Maple Avenue.
It’s a congested urban arterial highway that sees about 30,000 vehicles per day. With all that implies.
In the past, I outlined the fundamental reason why traffic is so consistently awful on this piece of road. The Washington and Old Dominion railroad was here before the roads. There’s roughly a five mile stretch of the old W&OD rail bed that acts like a fence. For that stretch, the only gate in the fence — the only road that crosses that old railroad bed — is Maple Avenue (and a couple of nearby side streets). As a result, anyone who wants to move north-south in this area, or east-west in this area, and doesn’t want to use the interstate, ends up driving on Maple Avenue in Vienna. Either that, or do an end-run around that old railroad bed.
This road is congested during the AM and PM rush hours every business day. But at least during rush hour, the traffic flow is predictable. Almost everybody is just passing through.
For my money, the absolute worst time to drive on Maple Avenue is Saturday afternoon. In addition to having the road packed and the traffic slow, traffic is chaotic. Cars are moving in all types of unpredictable ways. It’s jumbled mix of people running errands locally, and people just trying to get from one side of Vienna to the other.
Traffic crawls.
To add to the fun, in order to squeeze five lanes into the road bed, the lanes are about as narrow as they can possibly be. The travel lanes are about 10′ wide.
But the real killer is is that the center turning lane is just 9 feet wide. Which, if you drive a small car, is OK. But if you drive a large SUV, crossover, or truck, you need some real skills to get your vehicle fully out of the travel lane, and fully into the turn lane, on-the-fly. And, since many people lack those skills, but still drive those vehicles, the result is that people making left turns consistently block the adjacent travel lane, because they haven’t pulled their vehicle fully into the allotted 9′ space.
Which is why I got honked at today. I couldn’t move forward, because the rear bumper of the left-turning SUV in front of me stuck out about two feet into the travel lane.
I’ve lived here long enough that I’m completely used to this. I expect it. If it’s Saturday afternoon, you aren’t going anywhere very fast on Maple Avenue. And you’ll be dodging a lot of bad driving along the way. That’s just the way it is, as we all try to negotiate this narrow urban arterial highway.
Nor is that ever going to get any better. The Town, in its Wisdom, ensured that some new, large, and very expensive buildings were going to get put up right next to the road. (They made it a condition of the zoning that the face of the building could be no more than 15′ from the road.) So, short of Armageddon, there will never be any way to widen that roadway. There’s a roughly 49′ curb-to-curb distance now, and that’s the way it’s going to be.
If that’s not enough, we’re now in the middle of changing the zoning in order to pack in some high-density housing directly on Maple Avenue. Because, apparently, what we think we need here in Vienna is thousands of additional residents, all living directly on Maple Avenue.
Here’s a map of reportable accidents that occurred in 2021, on or around Maple Avenue in Vienna. As you can see, there were 100 car accidents involving significant property damage, injury, or both.
But 2021 was a good year, as traffic was down due to the pandemic. If you look at the last pre-pandemic year, the count was 134 accidents. More-or-less an accident every three days, along Maple and vicinity.
Source for both maps: VA TREDS system
I guess I’ll stop there.
Fact is, every year, a whole lot of people damage a whole lot of expensive hardware, doing stupid things in Maple Avenue traffic.
And so, if some yoyo is partially blocking the travel lane, yeah, I think I’ll stop. Honk at me if it makes you feel better. Because it’s probably smarter to stop, than to roll the dice and see if I can squeeze by without doing any damage.
I am not, in general, a patient or polite person. But on Maple Avenue, on a Saturday afternoon, I purposefully strive to be both.
At the end of the day, I guess I pity the folks who still can’t manage to figure out that no matter how much you honk your horn, if you’ve chosen to drive in that traffic, you aren’t going to go anywhere very fast. It’s just the way it is.
Contrary to every formal prediction, the U.S. Omicron wave continues to fade away. Today the U.S. stands at 12 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day, down one from a couple of days ago.
Continue reading Post #1606, COVID-19, now down to 12/100k/day
I continued the process of Getting Rid of Stuff.
Today I started in on my lifetime accumulation of camping equipment. I was an avid backpacker as a teenager, and continued hiking and camping well into adulthood. The resulting equipment runs the gamut from ancient to merely old.
I stopped when I ran across a couple of packages of nine-hour candles. These are made to be burned in a backpacker’s candle lantern. That’s a cheesy, lightweight, spring-loaded contraption that pushes the candle up as it burns, keeping the flame in the same place as the candle is consumed.
I couldn’t put my hands on my old candle lantern, so I looked on-line to see what was available now. To my surprise, candle lanterns have all but disappeared from the camping/hiking market, even in stores catering to backpackers (e.g., REI, Campmor). The sole option is one high-end candle lantern from one manufacturer — the same one who made my candles.
After about a minute of thought, it finally dawned on my why nobody uses candle lanterns any more.
Once upon a time, this was a reasonable way to have a bit of light when you were backpacking. If your only electrical alternative was a flashlight with carbon-zinc batteries and an incandescent bulb, candles arguably provided more light per unit of weight than a standard flashlight could.
But as technology changed –– first with alkaline batteries, then with LEDs — candles became obsolete as a lightweight source of light. A quick internet query shows that the inefficiency of candles as a light source is common knowledge in the backpacking community.
But just how obsolete are they, really? That is, what’s the illumination-to-weight ratio for candles, compared to AA batteries running an LED flashlight? Does electricity now have a slight edge, or is it more the case that you’d have to be an idiot to take a candle lantern backpacking these days?
Inquiring minds want to know.
The first hurdle is getting an estimate of the light output of a nine-hour candle. Virtually everyone assumes that, well, it’s a candle, so it must produce one candlepower. But candles vary widely in terms of combustible material, wick size, and the resulting light output.
The original definition of one candlepower was based on a candle that burned at a rate of 7.8 grams of combustible material per hour. (Reference). The actual material used to define candlepower was wax from a sperm whale. That said, it’s likely that the energy density of that animal-based hydrocarbon is similar to the energy density of modern petroleum-based hydrocarbons, including paraffin wax.
Effectively, then, one candlepower is what you’d see from a candle that burns 7.8 grams of wax per hour. The definition changed somewhat over time, but not enough to matter for this rough calculation.
Unsurprisingly, these candles — meant to burn as slowly as possible — produce less than one candlepower. These nine-hour candles weigh almost exactly 50 grams, meaning that they burn at a rate of just 5.6 grams per hour. Based on the standard definition above, we’d expect these slow-burning nine-hour candles to produce (5.6 / 7.8 =) about 0.7 candlepower.
But how does that compare to the light output of a flashlight? When applied to candles, candlepower really is a measure of total light output. By contrast, when that term is applied to flashlights, by convention, candlepower is used to describe only the brightest part of the beam. If you want total light output, for a flashlight, you need to get it in lumens.
And, just as a matter of faith, I see several internet sources that all derive the same conversion factor. One candlepower = 12.57 lumens (reference).
And so, 50 gram nine-hour candles will produce a total of (0.7 candlepower x 12.57 lumens per candlepower x 9 hours) about 80 lumen-hours of light.
Coincidentally, two alkaline AA batteries or four AAA batteries weigh just about exactly the same as one nine-hour candle. Two AAs weigh just shy of 50 grams (reference). Or, four alkaline AAAs would weigh in at around 46 grams (reference). Close enough.
So, how many lumen-hours can I get out of two AA or four AAA alkaline cells?
West Marine advertises one nautical safety light getting 11 hours’ run time, at 25 lumens, using a single AAA cell (reference). They advertise another with 30 hours’ run time, at 20 lumens, from two AA cells (reference).
Respectively, four of the AAA lights would provide (11 hours x 25 lumens x 4 =) 1100 lumen-hours. One of the AAA lights would provide (20 x 30 =) 600 lumen-hours.
And I haven’t even tried to look for the most efficient flashlight available. These are just off-the-shelf marine safety products.
In short, candles aren’t even close to competitive with flashlights these days, on an illumination-to-weight basis. An off-the-shelf LED flashlight, with standard alkaline batteries, provides roughly 10 times as much light as a candle, per unit of weight.
Sure, I’ve ignored the weight of the devices themselves, and only concentrated on the fuel (or batteries) consumed. And, in theory, you might have to carry some dead batteries around for a while, if you were backpacking with them. And so on.
But it’s no wonder backpacking candle lanterns have all but disappeared. They’re a really dumb idea in the era of alkaline batteries and LEDs.
That said, the actual energy density of candle wax is far higher than the energy density of alkaline batteries. In the same way that (say) ten gallons of gasoline stores vastly more energy than the equivalent weight of charged lithium batteries. It’s really merely the case that candles are incredibly inefficient at converting that energy to light. For that efficiency, you see estimates that are all over the map, but if I had to guess, I’d guess that vastly less than 1 percent of the energy of the burning candle is actually released as light. The rest is released as heat.
So, as as heat source, candles stack up pretty well against any battery-powered device. But just how well?
A typical high-end AA alkaline cell holds about 4 watt-hours of energy (reference). So two of them would be able to release about 8 watt-hours.
Candle wax contains about 46 kilojoules per gram (reference), and a watt-hour equals 3600 Joules (reference). Together, all of that means that one 50-gram candle contains about (50 grams x 46,000 Joules/gram / 3600 Joules/watt-hour =) 640 watt-hours of energy. Restated, one nine-hour candle contains about 80 times as much total energy as two AA alkaline cells.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. In fact, it’s probably conservative, given that gasoline is cited as being somewhere between 50 and 100 times as energy-dense as lithium batteries, depending on the metric and the source of the comparison.
So, candles as heaters, great concept. Candles as a light source, not so much.
Finally, we can roughly infer just how inefficient candles are at converting chemical energy into light. A typical figure for modern LED efficiency is 30%. That is, 30% of the electrical energy ends up as light, the rest ends up as heat. All told, that nine-hour candle has 80 times as much energy, and produces one-tenth the light. Which means that if an LED is 30% efficient, then a candle is about 0.04% efficient. Which, surprisingly, is quite close to a quoted figure of 0.05% (reference). In other words, 99.9+% of the energy in the candle wax is converted to heat, not light.
That said, per unit of weight, as a heat source, candles are no better than any other hydrocarbon. Other than an ability to burn them quite slowly, there doesn’t seem to be any advantage to using candles as a heat source rather than (e.g.) gasoline, kerosene, propane, butane, etc.
Traditional kerosene lanterns are also incredibly inefficient at converting fuel to light.
But more than a century ago, the dismal inefficiency of a traditional flat-wick kerosene lamp was improved by the addition of an incandescent mantle. A modern kerosene lamp works not by producing light directly, but by heating the mantle until it glows. Aladdin kerosene lamps, for example, are unpressurized kerosene lamps that use a mantle. They produce about four times as much light as traditional flat-wick kerosene lamps, per gallon of fuel (reference).
The use of an incandescent mantle is standard for all modern lights powered by burning hydrocarbons. Next time you see a decorative natural gas light, look closely, and you’ll see a mantle over the flame. Burning natural gas, by itself, produces almost no light. The light you see from a gas lamp is the light of the glowing mantle, heated by the burning natural gas.
So, why not stick a mantle in a candle lantern? Near as I can tell, the flame from burning wax is just as hot as the flame from burning kerosene.
I’m pretty sure that the issue isn’t so much the temperature of the flame, as it is the total amount of heat produced. Both Coleman (pressurized) and Aladdin (unpressurized) lamps burn about three ounces of fuel, per burner, per hour. That works out to roughly 65 grams of hydrocarbons burned, per hour, or roughly 10 times the burn rate for my nine-hour candles. Plausibly, if I put a Coleman lantern mantle over my candle, I could get a little spot to glow. But there’s no way I’m going to get that entire mantle to glow with just the energy input of a nine-hour candle.
Addendum to addendum: Well, I couldn’t just leave it like that, so I bought a Coleman lantern mantle and tried it. Turns out that the only part of the candle flame hot enough to make the mantle glow is a tiny bit of it, right in the heart of the flame. With that, you can get a piece of the mantle about the size of a match head to glow.
The upshot is that a mantle is totally impractical for a candle lantern. You have to suspend a tiny piece of the fragile burnt mantle literally inside the candle flame. And then, you get a modest increase in light output. Even if you could set that up and make it work, that fragile piece of mantle would never survive even the slightest bump.
The slow post-Labor Day decline in new U.S. COVID-19 cases continues. The U.S. is now at 13 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day, down one from last week.
Continue reading Post #1604, COVID-19, now down to 13/100k/day
… but France and Germany appear to be starting theirs.
The U.S. remains at 14 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day, same as the end of last week. The downward trend continues, it’s just so slow that it now takes several days to drop another whole case from the daily count.
In particular, in the U.S., there’s no winter wave yet, but the state-level trends seem to be separating by cold/warm states, a bit. Which would be the first indication of a winter wave. So … eh, it’s too soon to tell. But we’re about due for a wave to start, if we’re going to have one.
Deaths are closing in on 300 a day, down from a steady 350 for the past few months. Hospitalizations continue to fall, and currently are at 3200 per day, down a few hundred from the end of last week.
Continue reading Post #1603, COVID-19, no US winter wave yet, but …
Source: Fandom.com
Police scanner! This post is notes to myself on the quick and easy way to get a modern police scanner functioning. It boils down to:
Source: Fandom.com
In my quest to Get Rid of Stuff, I’m now working through a lot of old electronics, including a bunch of different radios. Most of it, I knew what to do with, or the stuff was good enough that I could easily give it away.
And then there was my police scanner. This is a Radio Shack Pro-197 digital trunking scanner.
I bought this years ago — I’m guessing mid-2000s — for reasons that escape me.
All I recall about it is that:
I figured it would be like a short-wave radio. Plug it in, turn it on, turn the dial.
Boy, was that wrong. And welcome to the world of Object Oriented Scanning. Where everything is an object. And nothing makes sense.
Realize that I spent my professional career writing complex computer programs. Yet I couldn’t make head or tail out of Object Oriented Scanning. I won’t go into how absolutely useless the user manual is. Except to note that it’s so awful that somebody took the time to rewrite the entire manual into a more readable form. And even that went over my head.
Moreover, my usual approach of turn it on, push the buttons, see what happens, yielded more-or-less nothing. All the elements appeared to be in place — frequencies, system types, all that jazz needed to define the modern communications object. All that was missing was noises coming out of the speaker.
Nor was I alone in this. You can look at internet chatter and see that many, many people were baffled by the brave new world of Object Oriented Scanning.
In any case, after years of occasionally trying (and failing) to get this to work, I finally cracked the code. So I thought I would share it. All I had to do was:
I suspect that a big part of the problem is that I really needed the software and the (hardware) data transfer cable from the get-go. But Radio Shack provided neither of them. It is possible, in theory, to program that information in manually. But it’s a lot easier just to buy and use the right software.
These folks will sell you the PC software, for about $40. They have a one-time free trial, which for Radio Shack radios is at this reference. I believe that’s all Windows only.
If you want to use this more than once — say, take another crack at downloading the information that lets you listen to your local public service providers, or download different types of radio networks — you’ll need to subscribe to the RadioReference database, for about another $20 for six months.
If your radio is like mine, you’ll need a cable to connect your PC’s USB port to the input jack on your radio, which, archaically, uses a headphone jack instead of a USB port. Mine, I bought years ago from Radio Shack. For your radio, you’ll want to look on your manufacturer’s website. Mine was so old it was very old-school in term of manually loading the drivers and all that.
Using the software on the PC, look up the information for your state and county. Say, for trunked systems, which is going to cover most urban police forces. Download it off the RadioReference database. Edit it, if you must.
Then, turn on your radio, plug in the cable, and download all that correct and current information to your radio. Instructions for the radio side of this were nonexistent. That’s because, near as I can tell, when you plug in the cable, with the radio turned on, the radio stands by to download the information. The computer software controls the download.
At the end of which, all that information is in your radio’s active memory.
Then, to be safe, you should save that information to a permanent file in your radio’s memory. For the Radio Shack model, these permanent files are termed V-scanner folders. The radio comes with 21 of them, and you should just think of them like awkward Windows folders. On my radio, you access that via Function – Program. Pick a folder, and save the current memory to that folder.
You’re done.
Hit “scan”, and the radio will scan all the systems that you just downloaded. In my case, every trunked pubic provider system in Fairfax County.
I suppose there’s a software method to limit that search to just a subset, but with 20 more V-folders available, if I want to do that, I’ll just edit the list and load that into another V-folder. If I want to restrict to that subset, I’ll load the contents of that edited list — from the V-folder to active memory — and use that.
Anyway, for the first time since I bought this close to two decades ago, it works as advertised. Nothing wrong with the hardware. Major issues with the input data.
And, I guess, operator ignorance. Funny thing is, I’m still ignorant — I have no clue how this actually works. But now, at least, it does work.
Those of you who just got done tossing all your 3G phones may get a kick out of this. Or maybe not.
Today I applied for and was granted an FCC license to operate GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service) equipment.
For just 35 bucks, I may now legally operate a GMRS radio. The license is good for ten years.
But wait, there’s more! The FCC tosses in licensure of my immediate family members, for free.
Such a deal!
There were only two qualifications:
This post is mostly a note to myself, so I can keep straight everything I think I just learned about some of the radios that you, as Joe or Jane Citizen, can buy and use for short-range communications. Unsurprisingly, I guess, that world has changed substantially over the past five years or so. Owing, in large part to a 2017 revamp of the FCC rules covering those devices.
The main surprise is that these radios keep getting better. Even in the age of cell phones.
To be clear, your kid’s Buzz Lightyear walkie-talkies don’t need a license. Not now. But, weirdly, until 2017, technically speaking, they actually did. As evidenced by the ancient manual for the Motorola toy radios that I bought for my kids years ago, shown at the top of this posting.
I’m guessing the number of FCC seizures of unlicensed Buzz Lightyears was pretty small.
In any case, here’s the story behind my newly-minted radio operator’s license. And everything I just learned about CB, FRS, GMRS, and other citizen two-way radios.
I’m going through an extended period of GRS (Getting Rid of Stuff, to keep it family-friendly). My version of SDC. It’s a long-overdue thinning out of 30 years’ accumulation of stuff that I don’t need, but is too good to throw away.
Much of the volume of material is the result of those twin evils, Cheaper if Bought in Bulk and Free Shipping. There’s a reason my wife revoked my Costco membership.
But in other cases, I own perfectly functional items that I no longer have a use for. Sometimes I can recall why I bought a particular item, and the memory sparks joy. But most of the time, it’s more a case of “What was I thinking?”.
Luckily, for most of my stuff, even if I have no use for it, somebody else does.
This week’s task was electronics. Not computers — I dealt with my computers last year. This is mostly radios, cameras, WiFi extenders, weather monitors, adapters, cables, and similar assorted other electronic junk.
Mostly, radios — lots and lots of radios.
Amongst which was a perfectly useful Citizen’s Band (CB) radio. (Which, believe or not, has been officially re-designated by the FCC as “CB radio”. So “CB” is no longer an abbreviation for anything.)
Worse, it was a virtually brand-new radio. I bought it years ago, for a family vacation to Florida, thinking I’d use it to assess traffic conditions on the road. And otherwise pass the time on I-95. Only to find out that almost nobody uses CB any more. Not even truckers. Drove the length of I-95 and didn’t hear a peep.
I found a good home for that particular unit. So that’s a happy ending. As part of the process, I decided to see what was going on in the world of CB. And that led to something of a surprise: CB FM?
I knew that CB had been around, with only minor modifications, for decades. It was first authorized by the FCC in 1958. The number of channels was increased to 40 in 1977. The use of some channels was restricted (e.g., channel 9 is used for emergencies). There was, at one time, a requirement that you have a license and call sign, just like ham radio. That was eventually dropped after people routinely ignored that requirement during the 1970’s CB craze. (All of that information comes from Wikipedia.)
The point is that, aside from a few legal changes, and the increase in the number of channels, the technical specifications for CB remained virtually unchanged until very recently. Other than SSB (below), until recently, I believe that every CB radio ever made for the U.S. market, since its inception in 1958, could communicate with every other CB radio. Which meant that if a bunch of people wanted to communicate, and they all had “a CB radio”, then all that equipment would play nicely together.
The only technical innovation (or equipment incompatibility) was the gradual addition of single-sideband (SSB) transmission, in addition to standard AM. Even with that, I believe that every SSB unit sold is also capable of broadcasting and receiving standard AM signals. Without going into detail, you need specialized equipment to translate SSB into intelligible speech. If you only have a standard AM receiver, SSB transmissions sound like a cross between Donald Duck and voice synthesizer. You can tell that somebody is talking, because it has the pattern of human speech. But you can’t make out a word. (It’s downright creepy to hear somebody laughing in an SSB transmission heard on a non-SSB radio.) If you ever tune in to ham radio bands, and hear something that sounds like speech, but isn’t, that’s probably SSB.
But, to be clear, CB uses AM transmission, and AM radio isn’t “nice”. It’s static-y, for want of a better term. And the weaker the signal, the worse the sound.
But in July of 2021, the FCC approved use of FM transmissions on CB channels. The radios themselves have to be capable of both FM and AM, so they are backward-compatible with the original standard. But they will allow individuals who purchase new, FM-capable CBs to communicate using a far less static-prone FM signal.
Based on the reviews on Amazon, the resulting voice communications are a lot cleaner and a lot easier to listen to. Judging by the price, you more-or-less get the FM option for free. Give it another couple of years, and I’d bet that, with the possible exception of those who require the additional range offered by SSB, you won’t find a unit offered that doesn’t have FM.
So, weirdly enough, 67 years after the standards were first established, in a country where everybody has a cell phone, you can now get these niche-market radios with an FM option. That, along with the general improvement in electronics in general, means that you can now get a CB that has pretty good (or at least, non-annoying) sound quality. And yet, by law, every CB radio can still communicate with every other CB radio, using the original AM standard.
Who would have guessed that in the era of the cell phone, CB could still evolve?
As part of this process I exhumed three old kids’ walkie-talkies. Probably bought them in the early 2000s.
They still work, and they are occasionally useful things to have around. So I looked into getting them up and running again, starting with the users’ manual.
To my horror, I discovered that these “toys” required an FCC license for legal use. The users’ manual said so, with zero ambiguity. Using these “toys” without a license risked fines, imprisonment, and confiscation of equipment. All that time, I thought I was just having a good time with my kids. And the FCC could have come gunning for me at any moment.
But that didn’t quite make sense. These things look like toys. We used them as toys. And the only other people we ever heard, through these radios, were clearly kids. Using them as toys. Yet, there was the manual, straight from the manufacturer. FCC license required, under penalty of law.
I looked around and found numerous seemingly-well-informed internet sites that said — again unambiguously — that any device capable of broadcasting on these channels requires an FCC license. In particular, use of any 22-channel walkie-talkie absolutely required an FCC license.
Seemed kind of silly, but $3.50 per year seemed like a small price to pay for staying on the right side of the law. So I got a license.
But, at some level, who’s kidding whom? I could go on Amazon and see 22-channel walkie-talkies that were obviously made to be toys. Barbie walkie-talkies. Buzz Lightyear walkie talkies. Hello Kitty walkie-talkies. There’s no way that the FCC is going to confiscate a kid’s Buzz Lightyear walkie-talkie for lack of the appropriate license.
And, as it turns out, that license requirement was the law, when my walkie-talkies were made. But what most internet sites failed to mention is that the law was changed in 2017. As with CB above, this market continues to evolve, and the law is evolving with it.
Not only do those little half-watt toy walkie-talkies require no license, but you can now buy and use the 2-watt versions without a license. Anything more powerful than that requires an FCC license for legal use.
You see a lot of stuff about this that comes across as just so much gibberish. So let me try to distill the current law. Without resorting to any of the arcane language that we have inherited from prior law and regulation.
Family Radio Service (FRS) and General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) are two FCC-authorized radio communications options intended to be used for short-distance, low-power communication. Once upon a time FRS consisted of just a handful of channels, restricted to very-low-power (half-watt) transmission. And GMRS encompassed a larger set of channels, and allowed mostly higher transmitting power (and allowed the use of remote antennas).
To cut to the chase:
Any device with a fixed (attached) antenna, capable of broadcasting at no more than two watts power, can use all 22 channels found on your standard kids’ walkie-talkie. No license required.
For want of a better term (and possibly even technically correct), I’ll call those devices FRS radios. Functionally, FRS no longer applies to a restricted set of channels, it applies to the limits on power and use of external antennas of any 22-channel walkie-talkie. (There may still be a lower power limit on the original FRS channels, but the device itself will automatically take care of that.)
Any more power than that, or if you want to use a remote antenna or repeater, and you need a GMRS license from the FCC. GMRS base units can operate at up to 50 watts, with reductions required around the subset of channels that was the original FRS channels. The law also added new “interstitial” channels that presumably would be available to newly-manufactured GMRS radios.
My recollection is that my kids’ walkie-talkies worked exceptionally well. Certainly had far better range that I would have imagined. Now I can operate them legally without a license. And I should be able to get license-free two-watt walkie-talkies with even better range.
Most importantly, all of that equipment will play nicely together. The two-decade-old units and any modern counterparts.
That said, manufacturers have complicated the situation with use of various “privacy code” standards. (See this reference). But the bottom line is that if you turn that off, every FRS/GMRS walkie-talkie or base station can talk to every other one. Still. Newer ones will have access to a few more channels. But that’s the full extent of incompatibility. My old units are weaker than is now allowed by law. But they remain usable, decades after they were manufactured.
Another few days, another little drop in the U.S. rate of newly reported COVID-19 infections. The U.S. now stands at 14 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day, down two from just two days ago.
Deaths remain around 350 per day. Hospitalizations are now under 3600 a day.
Continue reading Post #1600, COVID-19, the decline accelerates.
