D.C. area NOAA wx radio outage

[Bote]

It's 02:20 on a drizzly, cold Monday morning so I thought I would scan the band on my ancient Icom 3210 hooked to a high band 1/4 wave antenna about 30 feet up here at the McLean Relay Station. That's right, I have no life. :-)

I can not find one local NOAA weather radio station on the air. KHB36 in Manassas is dark with Philly fading in and out. KEC83 in Baltimore is dark with nothing else heard. Hagerstown on 162.475 it is dark and I can't even hear Salisbury. If nothing else it's cool to DX this way.

OH, having written all that, at 02:31 Baltimore, Manassas, and Hagerstown just popped back on the air with repeated time announcements, and then went into the normal program material.

System upgrade? Server died?

Oh well, no harm done.

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[RandyB]

From NWS Sterling, VA:

"Public Information Statement
National Weather Service Baltimore Md/washington Dc
801 Am Est Mon Dec 1 2008

..public Information Statement

There Will Be Maintenance On All Of The Noaa Weather Radio
Stations Today. This May Result In Interruptions Of Service Until
Further Notice. We Apologize For Any Inconvenience."

[Bote]

hmmm...I checked their web site and saw no mention of it, hence my post.

OK, that makes sense, because they all popped back on the air almost simultaneously, as far as I could determine by flipping the dial on one radio. It was definitely creepy in a Day-The-Earth-Stood-Still (original version) kind of way.

Thanks!

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[90rock]

I clicked on the Public Info Statements on the left hand side, and then clicked "previous version" until I saw their statement. No word yet as to if its all finished yet.

[Bote]

Whew! I spent about an hour clicking all over the /nwr/ tree of the NOAA site and finally found the statement on the local Sterling (LWX) page. It makes sense to put it there since it is of local interest and is a function of the local w.f.o., but since it affects the radio system it would be nice to find a way to it from the radio pages.

Not to mention that a number of the links to the nationwide "Report an Outage" page go to the old form (outages.html) instead of the new form (outages.php). Mr. Webmaster needs to go through that page and update it, assuming that it is as important as they state.

Thanks for the pointer.