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Closure of the Weatheradio service in Canada

rac.ca

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Re: Closure of the Weatheradio service in Canada

#61

Post by palmotea »

robmusial wrote: post #3

I hate to see this. I bought a Sangean AM/FM/Weather radio with NOAA All Hazards alerting a little while back (I've been extremely happy with it) and as I was programming it wondered how long until either a group like DOGE, or private interest who wanted to repurpose these radio bands would cause such a wonderful service to go away. Maybe I'm naive but I'm surprised it happened in Canada before it happened here in th…

> or private interest who wanted to repurpose these radio bands would cause such a wonderful service to go away

IIRC, the radio bands are some marine VHF channels. I'm not sure if those can be repurposed.

Re: Closure of the Weatheradio service in Canada

#62

Post by doubled112 »

opengrass wrote: post #52
TutleCpt wrote: post #7

I'm starting to wonder how many Canadians are on Hacker News. This after seeing the BC Time Zone story as well as this one. Just curious, really. I'm wondering what the country breakdown is for Hacker News users.

Like 60% work for the government, the rest is $18 an hour or your own hustle.

This is a surprisingly accurate feeling when you talk to people or go job hunting in major cities.

I say that as a Canadian that doesn’t fit into any of those categories.

Re: Closure of the Weatheradio service in Canada

#63

Post by ToddWBurgess »

I am a ham radio operator and also a member of Radio Amateurs of Canada. As we all know, the weather can be a matter of life and death and it is important Canadians have access to the latest weather. I am glad that RAC is taking up the cause for Canadians. In many parts of the country weather radio services parts of the country that don't have reliable Internet or AM/FM radio broadcasts. 73

Re: Closure of the Weatheradio service in Canada

#64

Post by teuobk »

Aloha wrote: post #53
teuobk wrote: post #8

Here's a map I put together of the Weatheradio (one "r"!) service coverage in Canada, assuming each station has a range of 60 km: https://www.keacher.com/files/dir12/weatheradio_map2.png Perhaps unsurprisingly, the coverage is most dense where the population density is also highest, with some exceptions. And if anybody is curious, here's the coverage for the equivalent Weather Radio service in the United States: http…

I'd actually assume closer to 100km of coverage, 60 miles or so is a conservative estimate of coverage, in the prairies I would expect it to go much further - 500w of output on high band VHF goes quite quite far - I know how far the US NWS stations cover, and its much closer to 60+ miles.

Environment Canada assumes 60 km on their Weatheradio page ( https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services... ), so that's what I went with. Having said that, I very much agree that the range is probably considerably greater in many cases.

Re: Closure of the Weatheradio service in Canada

#65

Post by Marsymars »

Aloha wrote: post #53
teuobk wrote: post #8

Here's a map I put together of the Weatheradio (one "r"!) service coverage in Canada, assuming each station has a range of 60 km: https://www.keacher.com/files/dir12/weatheradio_map2.png Perhaps unsurprisingly, the coverage is most dense where the population density is also highest, with some exceptions. And if anybody is curious, here's the coverage for the equivalent Weather Radio service in the United States: http…

I'd actually assume closer to 100km of coverage, 60 miles or so is a conservative estimate of coverage, in the prairies I would expect it to go much further - 500w of output on high band VHF goes quite quite far - I know how far the US NWS stations cover, and its much closer to 60+ miles.

While there are a handful of 500W stations, most are in the 100-200W range: https://www.qsl.net/ve7hce/weatherradio.htm
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