Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter for August 1st 2023
https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Weatheradio_Canada.html
Hello and welcome to issue number 3 of the newsletter for 2023. This summer is sure flying by fast and since the last issue, I had turned 50 and regained contact with an old buddy from school. I will get into that in a bit and I have a story about us, which has Weatheradio Canada in it.
As I start this issue off, I wish to address something which had been said as a reply on a Facebook group, to my post on June 1st. You know? The one about the second anniversary of i-Notify? Someone had expressed concern that the software was to be some sort of stopgap, on the way to getting rid of WXRs across Canada, left and right. Nope, the new voices and software had all been in the works since around 2015 and I had found out about the new voices during that spring. I have samples to prove it of Tom and Ava. In fact, it was Denis Paquette who had alerted me to the new voices, which were supposed to have replaced the ID on the St Catharines WXR, but had not. In fact, they wouldn’t until most of Ontario was migrated over in September 2021.
Speaking of the voices, I really am sorry that I had suggested the male voices for the station ID. I hope that some day, this can be switched to female for the ID, the RWT and RMT and general network announcements, with the male voices for weather alerts and everything else the female voices are not programmed to do. There is said to be an upgrade to the software coming next month, including another language for parts of Canada, who do not speak French in the north. I wonder what it will sound like for the rest of us and I hope that we will get the short term forecasts back where they belong on the broadcast and all regions within the listening area, will hear their forecast being played. Not everyone has a smart phone, or wants to use an app as their first source of weather information. I use both Weatheradio Canada and various apps, but that is just me. I am not about to tell you what to do, or direct you away from the network, because of how it sounds these days. In fact, I encourage anyone who is listening to report anything and everything you can, through the email address and as a last resort, the phone number. I have talked about my feelings on calling it in a recent post during the RWT reports on Wednesdays, so I am not going to get into it here. Just go down through the archives for July and you will find all of the posts, complete with music to listen to, chosen by me.
Anyway, let’s enjoy the rest of the summer and hopefully, those wild fires can be brought under control soon.
You can help a good cause with just a couple of mouse clicks.
Subscribe to the CQ Blind Hams Youtube channel, watch a video or two, and help fund an HT for the next ham who is blind who gets their license!
All money earned from the “C Q Blind Hams” Youtube channel will fund the purchase of radios for the next blind ham or hams to get their license. Once we pass 500 subscribers, features are unlocked which allow us to make a little money. That begins to include ad revenue when we reach 1,000 subscribers.
Thank you in advance for your support. Please spread the word to other groups, clubs, and social media.
I have allowed this to be posted in the NOAA Weather Radio Weatheradio Canada Facebook group because of most transceivers having not just ham radio frequencies, but also the option of listening to weather and other bands on them, by either direct key entry or in the case of the 10 WX channels, they could be accessed by holding down a button. Mine has that and it even has a Weather Alert option, which I do not recommend using on a transceiver, unless it is a marine radio. It is activated by turning on the WX channel option and pushing the ptt switch and leaving it alone, after activating this function. Once again, I do not recommend it. Anyway, if you haven’t had the itch to get into ham radio, it’s a fun hobby and the one drawback is that it costs money. However, it is worth it with the contacts you make, either locally or around the world. Most of us who are subscribed to the blog directly, or the email list are hams including myself since 2009. I haven’t been active as I once was, because of the pandemic and now, I need a new earpiece for my ht. Hopefully I get one soon, so I can transmit comfortably, without talking directly into the radio, or using a speaker microphone. Both have their up and downs, but a simple earpiece is just that, without VOX and I will hopefully never, get one with that option. Imagine accidentally keying up your radio, by making a noise? Anyway, let’s help our blind ham radio brothers and sisters out, as I am also blind and a ham.
Let’s Help A Brother Out
I thought I would put something here from an old school chum from back in the day, as he is a part of one of the Facebook WX radio groups, but doesn’t have a radio yet. His name is Rob and he also has a love of music in common with me, along with being a ham. He is inactive on the latter, but is active when busking and open mike nights. Anyway, here is his message, but I had to correct some spelling as it is going out on the internet.
“hey all. Well, I was talking to Gord about this awhile back, and he told me I could post this. I’m looking into getting a weather radio. However, I need some recommendations of what’s accessible, as I’m blind as well. Do you have any recommendations on the best ones? Also, for a cheep price? I’m in london ontario”.
So, can you help him out? If you can, let me know and I will pass it onto him. I did tell him that Weather Radios (buy and large) are not really accessible for us, but some models are easier to learn how to operate than others. I have talked about one such model in a past post from the PDF days and hopefully, if and when he gets a radio he doesn’t have too much trouble with setting it up.
Weatheradio Canada and Queen
As I have mentioned in this blog, Queen are one of my favourite rock bands and here is a story I have from 1992, which oddly ties Queen and Weatheradio Canada together. This involves an old buddy from school, whom I had reached out to in May, thanks to a staff member who is also a Facebook friend. His name is Bob Reid and he is a musician, like me and he plays piano, while I play guitar. I’m no Eddie Van Halen or Brian May, or any type of shredder and had not aspired to be one either. I prefer to sing and keep the beat in the background as a rhythm player, only busting out when I’m playing a riff.
Anyway, Bob and myself had met in 1983 at school, when I was being punished for speaking up forcefully about an issue. I was sent to the little kids wing and I was walking around, crying and Bob happened to be near his room and invited me in. We became friends and found that we had a mutual love of music, all be it different bands. Altho, he did have some Queen when we became roommates during the 1990/ 1991 school year and that got the ball rolling. He had a similar affect on my musical tastes, when he went through a Beatles phase and that came first, before Queen a year or two before then. With Queen, I went out and bought everything I could find on CD in the 90s and when I began to by my music on iTunes, I would eventually get back to Queen in 2014, purchasing everything I could find in the iTunes Store and unfortunately, I had to buy all of the studio albums again because of issues with sound quality last year. I had bought the deluxe versions of every studio album from Queen on the iTunes Store in 2014, but to my horror the sound was atrocious at best. Yes, I am quite fussy about sound and if I can help it, I look for the highest sound quality on iTunes, before I purchase anything I haven’t before. I have had to do much the same with other bands because of the same issue. Anyway, I have all of the Queen albums on my phone and I’m happy.
Back in 1992, Bob had invited me over to his place for a couple of days and we would spend some of that time, recording and listening to music and obviously, when recording they would be Queen covers for fun. We did Tie Your Mother Down, Hammer To Fall, Radio GaGa and Is This The World We Created? all with me singing lead and playing guitar, while Bob did the rest on keyboards using programmed drums and keyboard bass.
I came over on a Tuesday and I had left on a Friday, with my dad driving to and from Bob’s place, where he also lived with his parents in the GTA. Here is where Weatheradio Canada comes into the story, after we watched an episode of The Flintstones we switched the TV to the King City Radar channel and it had been a year, since I had heard the broadcast on TV. In my area, it had been taken off the air, for seemingly no reason and I had no WX radio in order to listen to it back then either. I’m sure I would have decided to purchase something, but I had no idea how big it would be and if it was durable. I never liked the 3 channel units and I had one, in 2001. Let’s just say that it was a bad radio and I had gone over that in the archives in a past post, back in February.
I went home and would soon go to HMV 333 Young Street and purchase a Queen CD single/ interview disk and the Barcelona album by Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé on CD, as it was in 1992. I had purchased Freddie’s first solo album Mr. Bad Guy on CD a few days before coming over and I had brought it with me, so Bob could make a taped copy of it for himself. Now we have new mixes of both albums and I don’t mind, but I hope that some day the originals will be coming back so we don’t have to search on Youtube, for what was once available to us.
In May of this year, Bob called me a week before I had turned 50 and I had mentioned the King City Radar to him and he didn’t know, anymore than I did what was going on, besides hearing the broadcast over a TV instead of a VHF radio. I had posted about this in another blog for my Queen fans and I go into a bit more detail, about how one of the songs was recorded. Bob has the music on tape, but is currently trying to digitize everything, including other things he had done back when he was in his teens. Anyway, here is the blog post I had done last month. If you want to know more about myself and Bob and how we met, it’s all there in All Gord’s People in the archives as part of a series about “Being A Queen Fan”. https://allgordspeople.wordpress.com/2023/07/17/barcelona/
THE WATCHDOG REPORT
If you hear anything that doesn’t sound right on your local Weather Radio transmitter, there are various ways to report a problem that depend on where you live. If you live in The United States, you can call 1-888-697-7263. You can email NOAA at nwroutage@noaa.gov, or on the web at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr. If you live in Canada, you can call 1-877-789-7733. You can email the National Weatheradio Canada Team at ec.wxradio.ec@canada.ca. Also, you can report it on the NOAA Weather Radio Weatheradio Canada Facebook Group. https://m.facebook.com/groups/weatheradio/
You can also email me directly at wxrnewsletter@gmail.com and it will be passed on for you. Please cc me at this email address if you choose to fire off an email to either netowrk. You can also report problems on X (formerly known as Twitter) @WxrNewsletter and by all means, follow me at this account too.
Note from the author:
I will mainly include items with a definitive time on their start to finish and ones with unknown starts or endings, I will of course include as well, but with a mention of them being unknown.
Since the last issue in May, an outage had started and to refresh your memory, here is what had happened.
Charlottetown XLM 647 had been looping there station ID message as of 5:30 pm April 29. On May 2nd, I had received the following email from Weatheradio Canada on this outage.
Hi Gord,
Charlottetown was in watchdog due to the internet connection going down. Bell was on-site yesterday, and the problem has been solve.
Thank you for reporting the problem and for your patience while we were working to resolve the situation.
Regards,
Jean-Francois Trudeau
Weatheradio Technician – Voice Technology Unit
Meteorological Service of Canada – Environment and Climate Change Canada
On May 11th, Toronto XMJ 225, Kingston XJV 363 and Peterborough VEU-671 were all off the air from around noon to times unknown, except for Toronto. Toronto had come back before, or after 5:00 P.M. the same day.
On June 29th I had sent the following email about the Normandale WXR needing a little help. Hi there. I am able to hear Normandale VFI 621 and it is almost midnight. However, the hourly reports are an hour behind, with a “Technical Difficulties” message at the beginning of the English part of the cycle. This means that we are hearing reports for 10:00 PM and it is 11:46 PM as I write this. Can you please take a look at this, especially since it and probably most (if not all of Southern Ontario) are under a special air quality statement now? Many thanks in advance. Unfortunately, I may not be able to hear if things have been rectified, but I hope they are (stat).
The Old Reliable Weatheradio Canada Guru
I got a reply from Weatheradio Canada on June 30th. Hello Gord,
Thank you for reporting the issue with Normandale, VFI621. We are aware that the site suffers from frequent disconnect and unfortunately today it doesn’t recover. Internet connectivity is down, and we can’t reach the site.
We do not yet have a timeline for a resolution but we are working on it.
Thank you,
Jean-Francois Trudeau
Weatheradio Technician – Voice Technology Unit
Meteorological Service of Canada – Environment and Climate Change Canada
The following is a series of emails sent to me, by a Youtuber, whose main focus is Weatheradio Canada, but he has had to change because of what is in the emails below.
From: , SSPWXR, Address to my email with the subject line “Silence on Weatheradio Canada XLF322”
I am not sure if you still use this e-mail account but I’ll try anyway. I am emailing you regarding a Weatheradio Canada station that has been offline for more than a week already. More specifically, XLF322 in Saskatoon, SK, Canada. I am aware that this station has announced decommissioning almost a year ago. But the service from this station just cut off abruptly to static. No message in the broadcast cycle and no S.A.M.E. message at all.Environment Canada has provided zero information and has only left me and other people concerned for this station in the dark. So I wanted to contact you about this—just as a last resort.
Cheers,
—SSPWXR (you’ve probably seen me around in the Weatheradio Canada community a fair bit of times.)
On that note, I subscribe to the Youtube channel and it was they, who had sounded the alarm about the decommissioning on August 19th last year. I was told in a later email, that it had gone off the air at about 6:36 AM CST on June 16th 2023. My replyis is as follows. I won’t give the full reply, because I don’t think it is needed here. Hi there. Thanks for the email and I will look into it. I will fire them off an email with your concerns and I hope to hear from them some time tomorrow, when everyone is back to work.
I did fire off an email and here is the reply from Weatheradio Canada. Hello Gord,
Yes our email is still active and monitor daily. We are operating with limited resources at the time and we thank you and other users for your patience in waiting for responses as well as resolutions for the broadcasting problems we are experiencing at the moment with some of our transmitters.
We are aware of the problem with XLF322 in Saskatoon. Unfortunately the transmitter failed. We are in the process of finding a replacement unit and scheduling date for the replacement work but we do not yet have a timeline for resolution.
You and other users can continue to report outages and provide questions and comments about our services through weatheradiometeo-service ec.weatheradiometeo-service.ec@canada.ca
Much appreciated,
Jean-Francois Trudeau
Weatheradio Technician – Voice Technology Unit
Meteorological Service of Canada – Environment and Climate Change Canada
After the RWT post on July 5th, I had received the following as a comment. I phoned the Government yesterday about Normandale Radio being stuck. The girl on the phone had no idea what I was talking about. In fact, she kept asking what radio I had. What is wrong at Environment Canada? Hundreds of boaters rely on that station. All the best, Paul VE3SU
This is the reason for his phone call as I had put it in an email, shortly before publishing it initially I of course, sent it to Weatheradio Canada team, Subject: Normandale is like a broken record Hi there. Just wanted to find out about any progress on any of the stations, currently with problems. I managed to catch Normandale VFI 621 a few minutes ago and it seems to be alive, but it gets stuck every few seconds, continues on for a few seconds and it gets stuck every few seconds, continues on … … and repeat. Unfortunately, it was on the French portion of the cycle so I couldn’t tell if it was speaking the correct time or not, along with reception being rather poor, even though I am 14 floors up and facing west. I was using a marine handheld radio with a ducky antenna and it usually beats my other WX radios for reception and it does, but Normandale is not easy to hear from midtown Toronto and where I am.
Anyway, could you please take a look at this and of course, continue to work on any other WXRs with problems with the broadcast? Many thanks in advance.
The Old Reliable Weatheradio Canada Guru
Here is the reply sent to me on July 5th. Hello Gord,
As you know, we lost connectivity to Normandale last week and that prevent us from rebooting and loading new bulletins. Other listeners also reported the audio stuttering. We were hoping to resolve the situation today but our numerous attempts to remotely fix the problem failed. We now waiting on our contractor to provide a date for an on-site repair visit. We hope to restore the service a soon as we can, but we are unfortunately back to the point where we do not yet have a date and time for a resolution.
Thank you for your patience.
Jean-Francois Trudeau
Weatheradio Technician – Voice Technology Unit
Meteorological Service of Canada – Environment and Climate Change Canada
Then on July 7th I got this from Weatheradio Canada. Good morning everyone,
You are receiving this email as you contacted us in the last week to report the problem with the Weatheradio in Normandale ON. After continuous efforts, I finally managed to connect to the site this morning and updated the broadcast content. However, connectivity was lost again shortly after. Most likely the site will go on degrade/watchdog mode later today or this weekend. Additional and replacement networking equipment is tentatively schedule for deployment next week in hope to resolve the problem.
Meanwhile we thank you again for your patience.
Regards,
Jean-Francois Trudeau
Weatheradio Technician – Voice Technology Unit
Meteorological Service of Canada – Environment and Climate Change Canada
Fortunately, Normandale is back and broadcasting normal as of the time of this post. I’m not exactly sure when everything was alright again, but I have had a chance to hear it a couple of times since the July 7th email.
On Wednesday July 19th, I had received this email from Jacques Pannetier, with the subject “Odd behaviour of CGZ555 Vancouver and XKK506 Victoria Weatherradio transmitters during Weekly test”
Hello everyone,
I am vacationing in the Vancouver area. I have several portable weather radio gears with me. Since Wednesday is the usual Weekly, so I had one radio tuned to the Burnaby / Vancouver transmitter the other tuned to Salt Springs Island / Victoria transmitter. BOTH radios with audio on.
Here is what I’ve noticed:
XKK506 Victoria was broadcasting as usual, then sent its RWT exactly at noon… and then went dead. NO audio for 5 minutes, the carrier was still on. Then audio came on again, and everything seems… ok?
CGZ555 Vancouver was ALREADY silent at the time of the weekly test. Then by 12:02PM, the audio came on, telling that it’s a weekly test, and then broadcasting the short SAME burst “EOM”, End Of Message. Then, it went dead for 5 minutes and now is back online. Missing was the main SAME burst for RWT!
Both stations seem to exhibit similar problems at nearly the same time.
It could be a red herring, but by their behaviour it reminds me of what happened to the Montréal transmitter during the April ice storm, by being on and off intermittently.
I hope my report will help fixing the problem that has affected both stations.
Regards,
-Jacques Pannetier
On July 31st, I received this email, also from Jacque.
I am back from vacations and I notice this morning that station XLM300 in Montréal is not functional, as of Monday July 31th at 8:50AM. The transmitter is ON, but nothing could be heard.
I would also bring to your attention that it’s been several times in just a few months that the Montréal station has been out. There might be additional work to be done to make that station more resilient.
I hope that you’ll be able to promptly bring back the service. Thanks.
Finally, I would like to seize the opportunity to tell you that your weather radio service is my PRIMARY source of weather alerts. The recent extreme weather that has affected the area proved that my cellphone isn’t reliable as a primary source, because more than once, cellphone service was disrupted at the worst possible time and the ALERT READY service is useful only… if I actively listen to radio or TV… and assuming I still have electricity (as well as cable for TV). It is a case which redundancy is a must.
As always, I’m available if additional infos are needed.
Regards,
-Jacques Pannetier
We both would receive the same email, with the exact text.
Hello Gord,
Thank you for your email. Yes, indeed we are aware of the problem with station XML300 in Montreal on 162.550MHz, some equipment failed. We received the replacement equipment on Friday, and it was configured this morning. It’s shipping to Montreal tomorrow and we hope to perform the site visit by end of week to restore the service.
Thank you for your patience,
Jean-Francois Trudeau
Technicien de la Radiométéo – Unité des Technologies de la voix
Service météorologique du Canada – Environnement et Changement climatique Canada
Bonjour Jacques,
Thank you for your email. Yes, indeed we are aware of the problem with station XML300 in Montreal on 162.550MHz, some equipment failed. We received the replacement equipment on Friday, and it was configured this morning. It’s shipping to Montreal tomorrow and we hope to perform the site visit by end of week to restore the service.
Thank you for your patience,
Jean-Francois Trudeau
Technicien de la Radiométéo – Unité des Technologies de la voix
Let’s end this post by telling you what I have coming in the future. I will be doing a separate post on the 2003 Northeast blackout and there is a Weatheradio Canada aspect to this story. I intend to publish it on August 14th and hopefully, there will not be a repeat of such an outage and I wonder if either that, or purchasing my first crank radio in 2005 had planted the seeds for my eventual push to discover and join the wonderful hobby known as either amateur, or ham radio. I know I was thinking about what if something like this happened again and I will tell the story, from how I found out about what had happened and its consequences for me. Hint, I was very lucky in that my power had come back soon after returning home and I got home, with help from a kind stranger. Anyway, that’s it until then.
Weather Radio Listeners Newsletter 