LeBlanc: Protect your hearing it is irreplaceable

This is an excellent story about how hearing protection is sometimes be essential, and when you’re on the shooting range it has to be vital. But it is important to get the right set of headphones that will protect your hearing sufficiently. Lessons can be learnt from this excellent case study.

There is no doubt that we all take our senses of sight, smell, and hearing for granted as long as we are strong and healthy and everything is working well. When we are young we tend to believe that we are indestructible and readily adopt the idea that “it will never happen to me.” Consequently, we can develop some bad habits and be a little loose when it comes to preventative measures for almost anything.

I know because that was my attitude at thirty years old when my eye doctor made a comment in passing that my eyes were perfect, but the chances are I would be needing reading glasses by the time I was 50. I scoffed, but you could almost have set your watch by it because by the time I was in my late 40’s my arms started to get shorter when it came to reading, tying on fishing lures and other things that required scrutiny up close. At 50 I was wearing reading glasses.

Growing up I never bothered too much about wearing ear protection. When I was plinking it was with a .22 rifle that only put out a little noise if you were the shooter so the thought of hearing protections seemed ludicrous. When hunting I do not know if I have ever heard my firearm discharge and beside that unless I was dove hunting I seldom shot too many shots anyway.

The change of heart came when I started shooting on an indoor range, while in the Air Force. I noticed after shooting a few rounds with my .22 caliber, Ruger Single Six that my ears would ring for a while afterward. One night a grizzled old Master Sargent suggested I wear ear protectors or take a chance of damaging my hearing. I took the recommendation to heart and have been wearing them ever since. The result has been that after many years of shooting .22’s, large caliber handguns, rifles and shotguns my hearing is still intact and working well.

Shooting is not the only activity that can cause hearing problem as any loud noise can damage your hearing. The intense vibration caused by loud noises can injure or destroy the hair cells inside the cochlea, so they no longer function to transmit nerve impulses to the brain. If that happens, you will experience hearing changes.

Hearing protection is needed anytime one is exposed to sounds above 80 decibels (dB). Normal human conversation runs about 30 to 35 dB. At its peak level, the sound of a 12-gauge shotgun is about 140 dB. 9mm runs around 159 dB and a .38 special with a six-inch barrel is about 156 dB, a .22 LR pistol with the same length barrel 140, an M-16 is about 154, a .45 ACP pistol is 155, and a .357 Magnum revolver is 164. All of them are around double the safe sound level. Just to be on the safe side I used to wear muff type hearing protectors and usually ear plugs also when on the range.

For range use today there is an array of muff style hearing protectors. The new style that I now use have not only hearing protection, but also hearing enhancement. The controls on each ear can be tuned to match your individual optimum hearing and increase the volume up to eight times normal. So when the range master gives a command or when you are speaking with a companion on the shooting line you can speak in a normal voice and hear them as well or better than without the power muffs. Yet when you shoot the sound activated compression circuit reduces the sound from the shot to a noise reduction rate of 24dB.

This is very important on a shooting range because I have missed range commands in the past from the range master simply because I could not hear them through my hearing protection.

The new muffs I use are from Walker’s but they offer many other styles in their Game Ear series. These are unlike the muff style protectors as the bulk of the unit fits behind your ear with an earpiece that fits inside your ear, the unit weighs less than one fourth of an ounce and can be used with or without glasses. These too can be fine-tuned to your specific hearing, allow you to turn the volume up to magnify sounds from five to seven times and still reduce the sound of the shots to a rating of 29dB.

The ability to custom tune the devise to your hearing as well as adjust the volume up on these models will enable the hunter to more readily pickup games sounds in the woods. Sounds like a squirrel jumping through the trees or when their belly slaps a tree when they jump from one to another. It will help the hunter pick up the minutest sound of a deer brushing by limbs or the whisper of them walking through leaves or disturbing a rock.



So now there is really no acceptable reason not to wear hearing protector and if you get a good set it may even enhance your chances of bagging some more game.

London Gatwick Airport deploys new radio system from Motorola Solutions

Back in the day, around 2006, the Heathrow and Gatwick radio systems were the envy of many, many businesses, a cutting-edge Motorola analogue trunking system with individual and group setup, that could broadcast messages out across the site or talk to individual radios, something that is taken for granted these days with our digital systems. The Gatwick system has been upgraded and been given the digital touch.

US-based Motorola Solutions, along with its authorised channel partner Servicom, has debuted its new digital mobile radio (DMR) system, Mototrbo Capacity Max, at London Gatwick Airport.

Designed to provide enhanced voice and data communications, the newly installed system connects 1,300 people in the airport's airside and groundside teams.

2260)(c:0).jpg" width="333" />

Mototrbo Capacity Max will also double the capacity of Gatwick’s current analogue network.

Various applications, such as TRBOnet PLUS and iBeacon, were given along with Mototrbo Capacity Max to improve its data performance.

TRBOnet PLUS is a dispatcher application that allows voice recording, mapping and event logging in the control room, while the iBeacon indoor positioning application sends alerts to individual radios based on location.

Gatwick Airport IT project manager Simon Telling said: “We chose Motorola Solutions’ Mototrbo Capacity Max system not only for how resilient and secure it is, but because of the flexibility it offers us now and into the future.

“We have experienced significant growth over the past decade and we are now approaching the limits of our previous analogue system.

“Migrating to scalable, digital communications will double our capacity and bring new capabilities that will help us improve efficiency and safety for staff, retail partners and passengers across the airport.”

The new Motorola solution will also enable Gatwick’s central controllers to send off the closest employee to an incident, saving time.

The airport recorded more than 4.6 million in passenger traffic in July.

Source - http://www.airport-technology.com/news/newslondon-gatwick-airport-deploys-new-radio-system-from-motorola-solutions-5021249

A giant solar storm nearly triggered a nuclear war in 1967

We all know how important radio communications are and at a time before the internet and even digital communications, governments relied on RF communications that were susceptible to the suns solar storms, if you add that to the cold war nuclear tensions then we could all be living in holes now.



Cold War history is rife with close calls that nearly led to nuclear holocaust.

In September 1983, for example, sunlight reflecting off a patch of clouds fooled a Soviet missile-warning system into detecting the launch of five US intercontinental ballistic missiles that never were. A wary colonel in a bunker ignored the alarm on a 50/50 hunch.

Two months later, US forces staged "Able Archer 83" â€" a massive nuclear-strike drill on the doorstep of the USSR. Soviet commanders panicked at the show of force and nearly bathed America in thermonuclear energy. Once again, an act of human doubt saved the planet.

Now scientists have one more hair-raising event to add to the books: The "Great Storm" of May 1967.

"The storm made its initial mark with a colossal solar radio burst causing radio interference ... and near-simultaneous disruptions of dayside radio communication," a group of atmospheric scientists and military weather service personnel wrote in a new study, published August 9 in the journalSpace Weather.

Hours later, high frequency communications dropped out near US military installations in and near the Arctic â€" one of the closest places to station nuclear weapons and launch them at a Cold War-era Soviet Union.

"Such an intense, never-before-observed solar radio burst was interpreted as jamming," the study authors wrote. "Cold War military commanders viewed full scale jamming of surveillance sensors as a potential act of war."

A 'Great Storm'

Earth's magnetic field protects life on the planet by corralling the sun's high-energy particles toward the planet's polar regions.

If the sun happens to launch a cloud of solar particles directly toward Earth during a violent outburst, called a coronal mass ejection, it can trigger powerful geomagnetic storms.

This not only leads to beautiful auroras, but can also scramble wireless communications and disrupt radar systems.

While The Washington Post wrote up a story about the storm as "City Gets Rare Look at Northern Lights," top US military commanders sounded the alarms in secret.

The Air Weather Service (AWS) â€" a relatively new branch of the Air Force â€" had warned military leadership about the possibility of a solar storm, but US commanders believed the Soviet forces were jamming NORAD systems designed to detect threatening planes and missiles.

As the Strategic Air Command warmed up the engines of bombers and taxied toward the runway, the decision to go airborne may have been kicked all the way up to the "highest levels of government," possibly involving President Lyndon B. Johnson.

"Just in time, military space weather forecasters conveyed information about the solar storm's potential to disrupt radar and radio communications," according to a press release from the American Geophysical Union. "The planes remained on the ground and the U.S. avoided a potential nuclear weapon exchange with the Soviet Union."

And this all happened at the peak of nuclear armament â€" when a record 31,255 nuclear weapons were deployed around the world. (Today there are roughly 7,200 nuclear armaments at hand.)

"Had it not been for the fact that we had invested very early on in solar and geomagnetic storm observations and forecasting, the impact [of the storm] likely would have been much greater," study leader and UCAR atmospheric scientist Delores Knipp said in the release.

After the near miss, the researchers say the military learned to listen to its space weather forecasters, improve its abilities to see another looming "Great Storm," and avert the first and perhaps final global nuclear exchange.

 

Find the original source here

A giant solar storm nearly triggered a nuclear war in 1967

We all know how important radio communications are and at a time before the internet and even digital communications, governments relied on RF communications that were susceptible to the suns solar storms, if you add that to the cold war nuclear tensions then we could all be living in holes now.

Cold War history is rife with close calls that nearly led to nuclear holocaust.

In September 1983, for example, sunlight reflecting off a patch of clouds fooled a Soviet missile-warning system into detecting the launch of five US intercontinental ballistic missiles that never were. A wary colonel in a bunker ignored the alarm on a 50/50 hunch.

Two months later, US forces staged "Able Archer 83" â€" a massive nuclear-strike drill on the doorstep of the USSR. Soviet commanders panicked at the show of force and nearly bathed America in thermonuclear energy. Once again, an act of human doubt saved the planet.



Now scientists have one more hair-raising event to add to the books: The "Great Storm" of May 1967.

"The storm made its initial mark with a colossal solar radio burst causing radio interference ... and near-simultaneous disruptions of dayside radio communication," a group of atmospheric scientists and military weather service personnel wrote in a new study, published August 9 in the journalSpace Weather.

Hours later, high frequency communications dropped out near US military installations in and near the Arctic â€" one of the closest places to station nuclear weapons and launch them at a Cold War-era Soviet Union.

"Such an intense, never-before-observed solar radio burst was interpreted as jamming," the study authors wrote. "Cold War military commanders viewed full scale jamming of surveillance sensors as a potential act of war."

A 'Great Storm'

Earth's magnetic field protects life on the planet by corralling the sun's high-energy particles toward the planet's polar regions.

If the sun happens to launch a cloud of solar particles directly toward Earth during a violent outburst, called a coronal mass ejection, it can trigger powerful geomagnetic storms.

This not only leads to beautiful auroras, but can also scramble wireless communications and disrupt radar systems.

While The Washington Post wrote up a story about the storm as "City Gets Rare Look at Northern Lights," top US military commanders sounded the alarms in secret.

The Air Weather Service (AWS) â€" a relatively new branch of the Air Force â€" had warned military leadership about the possibility of a solar storm, but US commanders believed the Soviet forces were jamming NORAD systems designed to detect threatening planes and missiles.

As the Strategic Air Command warmed up the engines of bombers and taxied toward the runway, the decision to go airborne may have been kicked all the way up to the "highest levels of government," possibly involving President Lyndon B. Johnson.

"Just in time, military space weather forecasters conveyed information about the solar storm's potential to disrupt radar and radio communications," according to a press release from the American Geophysical Union. "The planes remained on the ground and the U.S. avoided a potential nuclear weapon exchange with the Soviet Union."

And this all happened at the peak of nuclear armament â€" when a record 31,255 nuclear weapons were deployed around the world. (Today there are roughly 7,200 nuclear armaments at hand.)

"Had it not been for the fact that we had invested very early on in solar and geomagnetic storm observations and forecasting, the impact [of the storm] likely would have been much greater," study leader and UCAR atmospheric scientist Delores Knipp said in the release.

After the near miss, the researchers say the military learned to listen to its space weather forecasters, improve its abilities to see another looming "Great Storm," and avert the first and perhaps final global nuclear exchange.

 

Find the original source here

Icom America announces new series of NXDN IDAS mobiles and portables

The new range of Icom Radios, the 3400 and 4400 range. With a new colour screen and an SD card slot. Icom really are making strides in the radio market, We just hope that they keep the same connection types, so we can use our icom earpieces.

Icom America recently showcased a new series of multi-mode UHF/VHF NXDN IDAS radios that are designed to provide users with a flexible feature set and an enhanced user interface.

“It’s firmware upgradeable and licensed for different features,” Mark Behrends, senior manager of strategic sales at Icom America, said during an interview at the company’s booth during APCO 2016 in Orlando. “So, you pay for the basic radio, and you license up for the features that you want.”

While the next-generation IDAS radiosâ€"the 3400 series for VHF portables, 4400 for UHF portables, 5400 for VHF mobiles and 6400 for UHF mobilesâ€"continue to operate on the VHF/UHF bands with slightly more spectral range than previous models, this new series features a color screen, a “really intuitive” interface and greater software-upgrade flexibility, Behrends said.

“What it really changes is the user interface and the usability of the radio,” he said. “So, you can have conventional standard, or you can license up for Type D trunking or Type C trunking.”

Programming the radios can be accomplished via Bluetooth, a USB port and Icom’s standard connections, Behrends said. The Bluetooth functionality allows the radios to work with myriad accessories and third-party applications, he said.



Behrends noted that the new radios support secure-digital (SD) cards, which enable additional flexibility for users.

“An SD card is pretty handyâ€"you can record on it, you can capture GPS waypoints on it, you can program ICFS files and add new firmware through the SD card,” Behrends said.

Icom America expects this series of radios to be available this fall, after the products complete FCC testing, according to Behrends. Pricing will differ based on the type of screen included, but it generally will be comparable to Icom’s “higher-end IDAS product,” he said.

http://urgentcomm.com/icom/icom-america-announces-new-series-nxdn-idas-mobiles-and-portables

what to look for when Purchasing earphones

Closed Back Headphones vs. Open-back Headphones

Open-back headphones have pads which rest on the outer ear. They're designed such that the outer shell of the ear cup has perforations usually with horizontal cutouts. The Open back headphones design of the ear cup enhances better natural sound because of less coloration as compared to the Closed back headphones.

Closed back headphones have much larger earpads which encircle the ears. They are designed such that there's a big pad which cups the ears, and it features an insulated outer shell of plastic which covers the ears. The Closed back headphones actually have a very solid outer shell which doesn't have any sort of perforations such that the outer shell effectively cups/encircles the entire ear. The Closed back headphones are excellent at isolating noise. They block most of the ambient noise, but they've a smaller sound stage, which gives the user the perception that the audio/sound is originating from within their head. Closed back headphones also tend to produce much stronger low frequencies as compared to Open back headphones.

Low Impedance vs High Impedance

Headphones normally come in various different impedance levels, such as 8 ohms, 16 ohms and 32 ohms. The power that's supplied by an audio source may be at varying levels because of a variety of factors including being limited because of being battery powered. Generally, as the impedance of the headphones increases, much more voltage will be required in order to drive it, and the audio loudness of headphones for a particular voltage decreases.

The determination of impedance is usually disregarded by many headphone buyers, however, the truth is it's one of the most important factors to consider when choosing the best headphones for your particular needs. Impedance is basically just how much power the headphones can put out so that it can overcome resistance to move the headphones' diaphragm.



Low impedance headphones (that is, less than 25 ohm), usually require little power in order to deliver high audio levels. Low Impedance headphones play well with devices which have weak amplification. These can include; mobile phones, portable music players and various other portable devices. This type of headphones can be used at home and also while jogging with your mobile phone; this is one of the reasons why most of the on-, in-, and over the ear headphones, are low impedance. Low impedance headphones are normally designed to get plugged directly in to a single (one) source, and generates sound more efficiently from a lower level input signal. This headphones tend to be much louder and much more efficient, however, they will also require a much more capable amplifier.

High impedance headphones (25 ohms and above), generally require more power in order to deliver high audio levels. As a result, they're protected from damages caused by overloading. High impedance headphones are typically designed for studio like applications where there might be multiple phones/devices wired in parallel and receiving input signals from a single source. High impedance headphones are more tolerant of the amplifier limitations, however, they will produce less volume for a particular output level. They are also a little more durable (that is, electronically), however, they require much higher signal levels in order to produce the same level of output level of the low impedance headphones. This type of headphones can be used with a wider range of audio equipment .

Passive Headphones vs. Active Headphones

Passive (noise cancelling) headphones are made of materials which help in blocking out sound waves from the surrounding environment. The same way ear muffs soften the outside noise, so does this type of headphones employ passive noise canceling. This type of headphones are typically used for both professional mixing and monitoring, like in broadcast and recording studios, and such other applications. Passive headphones are basically designed to playback music/audio true to the actual original recording, with minimal, compression, EQ, and such other sound enhancements.

On the other hand, Active headphones use batteries in order to power the built in Digital Signal Processing (also abbreviated as DSP) technology which processes play back for a particular reason, for example, to enhance the bass and the high end. Due to the enhancement of playbacks with sharper high ends and more bass, active headphones are more popular for general listening and listening to music for pleasure. Active noise cancelling headphones are also made of materials which help in blocking out outside noise, however, they take things a step further by making their very own sound waves; the sound waves created mimic the outside noises, but are a mirror image of each other, thus cancels each other out.

Wired Headphones Vs Wireless Headphones

When choosing a pair of headphones, deciding between wireless vs. wired is among one of the most overlooked factors. Wireless headphones might be a more popular choice, however, the wired headphones also have their own set of benefits. Well, that being said, as a general rule of thumb, between wireless headphones and wired headphones, assuming a similar price between the models; the wired headphones usually offer a much better quality. Also, the audio quality may get compromised over Bluetooth.

You can opt for the wireless headphones if you are not much of an audiophile, and you tend to travel a lot. If you really don't like getting the cables of your headphones getting tangled, or caught while listening to music/audio, then the choice should be rather simple; go for wireless headphones.

You can opt for the wired headphones if you are an audiophile, and you do not necessarily bother with the wireless options unless absolutely essential like using them when traveling, or keeping the headphones as a backup. As aforementioned, the wired headphones are way ahead in terms of output quality as compared to the wireless headphones. You will never have to worry about running out of batteries, unless you happen to opt for wired headphones which cancel noise. In addition, you will never suffer from interference from the other commonly used wireless electronic devices. However, you will need to take good care of the wired headphone cables, or they will eventually break.

Motorola Solutions announces new mobile radio, enhancements to its P25 platform

Motorola Solutions are busy re-modelling their business at the moment and are under pressure from many other radio manufacturers, that are stealing away their market share. They are moving towards creating equipment that can use the LTE, essentially competing with the mobile phone market. This will be seen by many as a move away from the essence of two way radios, but it is an inevitable progression. This new radio will use current motorola accessories, chargers and batteries. We brought you this article from the urgentcomms websites

Motorola Solutions today will unveil a new P25 mobile radio that operates on its ASTRO 25 systems and will highlight key features enabled by the 7.17 release of ASTRO 25 software today at APCO 2016.

One of the key features of the APX 8500 all-band mobile radio is its ability to leverage LTE connectivity from a VML750 modem installed in the public-safety vehicle, if the ASTRO 25 data capability is interrupted by continuous voice transmissions during a busy incident, according to Anatoly Delm, Motorola Solutions’ director of global infrastructure marketing.

“Let’s say that you have a major incident, everybody’s talking all the time and the ASTRO network is being used all the time, it can [offload] some of the data communications, like GPS, to broadbandâ€"public-safety LTE or commercial LTE, depending on what the modem is operating on,” Delm said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications.

“So, you’ve got this combination of the best of both worlds, where your voice communications are continuing over the ASTRO network, and your data communicationsâ€"if the ASTRO network is too busy, because of a major incidentâ€"can be carried on by an LTE network from the same car.”

Meanwhile, the 7.17 release of ASTRO 25 software will provide system users and operators with features that are designed to improve the reliability and usability of the P25 network, Delm said.



One enhancement is a more efficient way to execute over-the-air software updates, Delm said.

“Ordinarily, what happens is that the software update has to travel to one radio at a time. If you’ve got a large enough fleet, it could take days or possibly weeks [to complete the software update for all radios],” he said. “In this case, the software is being continuously broadcast, kind of like on repeat. In the meantime, all of the radios continue to function as normalâ€"you can talk on them, and none of the functions are disrupted.

“Once a radio has received all of the packets that it needs, it can then give the user the [a notification] that the update is ready and asks whether the user wants to install it. If they say ‘Yes,’ then the radio is updated. This means you can reduce your update time to maybe a few hours, depending on the size of your fleet. But you certainly don’t have to do it one at a time.”

Other new capabilities included in the latest ASTRO 25 software release include personnel accountabilityâ€"often used for roll-call functionality on a fireground or other incident sceneâ€"over trunked systems, Delm said. Previously, this capability existed only in conventional mode.