Was sitting at the computer reading LJ when all of a sudden the power went out. Looked outside and all the signage and traffic lights were out too. Hmmm. Probably a localized blackout. Got on my neighbors cell phone and tried various numbers around town…appears it was confined to this side of the river. I grabbed my big MagLite from its readyrack and went next door to the underground manufacturing facility my landlord has. Let him borrow the light since theres no windows down there and for some reason they have almost no emergency lighting. Came back here and pulled out the Baygen radio, wound it up, and started looking for stations…my initial concern was that this was the result of some sort of large-scale problem (terrorist attack on the power grid leaving the whole northwest in the dark, etc) but once I found it was confined to this side of town I was a bit relieved. Most of the stations were off the air and the ones I did pick up didnt have anything to say so that told me it definitely was small-scale. Grabbed my backpack, which I always keep an extra MiniMagLite in, and sat out front and waited for the power to come back on. Took about an hour so it must have been a minor thing that caused it. I was prepared to head home if it lasted more than an hour, but……
Lessons learned:
Spare flashlights for those who are less prepared and you want to share with
Battery radios are a must.. the Baygen is ideal
Have a way to find out the extent of the outage..I called people all the way on the other side of town who had answering machines to see if they had power
Things I was deficient on:
When power went out, my cordless phone became useless. Need to have a regular wall-mounted phone in here
I’m surprised you weren’t monitoring the city/county communications. Minor power troubles might not have made a splash, but if everything was down, they’d be talking about it.
A UPS of some sort for short-term cordless backup is good (I have a 40ah) and a corded backup is definately necessary.
Is that the one you posted pictures of that you made? I was pretty impressed with that and more than a little jealous.
At the moment, I have no police scanners. Ive been meaning to head down to the pawn shops and snoop around. I especially need one since my seismic intrusion detectors operate on 133.5mHz and I need something to pick up their alert signals.
I had a Bearcat but got careless, dropped it and never worked right after that… just been too cheap to buy another one but its on The List.
you crack me up
The one for the cordless is much smaller. Just one 40ah battery and a small inverter and float charger.
I got my scanner from Radio Shack. It has the bands I want and is easy to use, but was inexpensive and sold as a race scanner for NASCAR and other races with in-car radios. Typically, they don’t make it anymore.