Emergency Broadcast System Test(video)

[RedAlpha]

Oh the wonders you can find on youtube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecsu13U5VuI

[AllSafe]

That tone is 853+960 hertz, played for about 20-25 seconds as per CD rules. Very easily reproduced in Cool Edit.

"This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters in your area, in voluntary cooperation with federal, state and local authorities, has developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, the attention signal you just heard would had been followed by additional information, news or instructions. This station serves the World Wide Web. This concludes this test of the Emergency Broadcast System."

I've had that memorized for a very long time.

[kx250rider]

This brings to mind how all AM radio dials had to have CD frequencies marked by a "CD" symbol on the dial face. Not sure when that policy started or quit, but all the old radios I have repaired from the 50s, 60s, and early 70s had it. also car radios. To be honest, I don't know whether those were blank frequencies that were reserved for special CD broadcasts, or live regular stations which would have had their air handed off to emergency services... This Zenith transistor radio is from the late 60s. I have seen many radios which have the CD inside a triangle same as the official label appears.

Anyone know about this?

Charles

[zetronist]

Here is the answer to your question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CONELRAD

John

[kx250rider]

Thanks John! I always was curious... Those CD emblems were on all the radios, but I wonder if even 1% of the population knew to tune their radios there if all the other stations went out. I bet not.

Charles

[Jim_Ferer]

They publicized it a lot... I remember the 640 and 1240 AM even now. They were worried the Sovs in their bombers would home in on the radio stations, like the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. They scrapped it when the idea was obsolete.

[zetronist]

Here's a link to a poster about the AM radio frequencies:

http://www.conelrad.com/atomicsecrets/i ... me_cvr.jpg

Check out the website as well

http://www.conelrad.com

John

[Justin]

Is it just me or does the lettering 'CD' look like it's meant to scare you?

I'm not kidding, it looks freaky.

[AllSafe]

There are still quite a few stations which broadcast at 1240 kHz. Don't know about 640, though.

[Chad]

Is it just me or does the lettering 'CD' look like it's meant to scare you?

I'm not kidding, it looks freaky.

Hey, everything from the 50s and 60s was freaky :-P

Anyway, I bought an old Conelrad unit off of eBay two years ago. It powered up just fine, tubes and all, but I had no way of testing it. Maybe I'll remember to take some pictures of the device.