water tower question

Oh... you guys mean lightNing... not lighting... there were a few typos in a few of the posts that confused me...

-------------
-The Pants Has Spoken
"Yellow line? What Yellow Line..."

oops, guess I missed the N once. Anyways I found the THOR website.

www.thorguard.com

I want a THOR for my room.

interesting,i knever knew that they had there own weather detection system.

This Tuesday after close Corey and I helped Tony to report the Line Jumping Food service employee at the Park Operation's office. While In there, I noticed they had their own Radar set up on a computer, some weather instruments as well as what looked like what could have been a THOR unit on the far wall behind the counter. (Kind of small though).

I can see it now, I go in there and start staring behind the counter.
"can I help you with anything?"
"no"
"Is something wrong?"
"no"
"are you here to report or complain about anything?"
"no"
"Why are you here?"
"I am looking at the Radar"

Imagine Cedar Point as a city. The only difference is it's residents suddenly vanish each night.

-------------
2001 park line up:

Cedar Point: May 5-6, June 11th

(other parks N/A as of 05/02/01)

Speaking of THOR, I bet it's being used right now. For those who think the lake offers protection from storms, I offer: The Lake Breeze Front ... no less than five thunderstorm cells lined up along the lakeshore from Port Clinton to Cleveland.

Exhibit A

Sorry about the slight tangent - I get all worked up about these things. They didn't call us "weather weenies" for nothing!

------------------
Virtual Midway
http://www.virtualmidway.com

So Jeff, where are you getting these wireless phones that aren't cellular? Are we talking about satellite phones or something?

"Cellular" is used to describe the old analog technology we had back in the early to mid-90's. Even though no one advertises wireless service as "cellular," and no other country in the world still calls it "cellular," for some reason American consumers still call it "cellular." PCS and other systems are not referred to as "cellular."

------------------
Jeff
Webmaster/GTTP, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

I never understood calling it cellular in the first place. It seems like an overly technical idea to use as the common name for a product.

The thing is, it's still cellular which is what makes all the "clear alternative to cellular" and other commercials so amusing. :o) Technically, cellular just means you use a bunch of smaller antennae that use a particular subset of available channels instead of one big one in an area. Which we still do... mostly. I've gotta check out the new nextel satellite phones. As soon as I find a barrel full of money, of course. :o)

Cellular towers are designed to broadcast signal in "cells". The cells are a pentagon in shape. The old system has drawbacks because of how large the towers need to be as well as the transmitters on top. The cellular signal is much stronger from those towers thus requiring less of them to cover a large area. A drawback from such a wide area is that you will encounter many "dead" spots that will be miles in length. The PCS signal however is divided more into smaller zones. Each zone has a small antenna to broadcast and receive transmissions. The antennas are cheap to put up because they don't need to be as high, they are smaller and it is easier to lease the area to put them on. Some examples of where you will see PCS antennas are on top of buildings, telephone poles, high voltage transmission line towers, strapped onto the sides of cellular towers and on water towers. Most likely Cedar Point has decided to lease the top of the tower for a PCS carrier and is reaping the benefits of otherwise unused space.

Justin: Yes, cellular and PCS are conceptially similar as far as their implementation, but there is a distinction in the way the two services are implemented in that the higher frequency PCS travels less distance and requires more antennae. It's different enough that the marketing, technical folks and FCC call it something different.

Of course, in the UK, they've always called it "mobile," so there you have it.

------------------
Jeff
Webmaster/GTTP, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

Well they call/say everything different in the UK.

Exhibit A: "Aluminum"

------------------
Tommy Penner - Variable X
"Smells suspiciously of pot and beer..."

No, that's what we call it. The rest of the world calls it Aluminium.

Of course, we're the only ass-backward country that doesn't use the metric system too, so what do you expect?

------------------
Jeff
Webmaster/GTTP, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

A couple of thoughts:

The resorts and dorms demand some serious water, especially in the morning when everyone is trying to get ready to head into the park. It puts a lot of pressure (pardon the pun) on the system.

The lighning detection system is called Thor-Guard. It is used on all PGA tour courses and most municipal parks in South Florida also have the system installed. The thing works by measuring the ions in the air and determining the potential for lightning. At our parks, an audible horn (you can't miss it) blows and strobe lights start flashing. The park doesn't use the horns for obvious reasons.

It is actually a pretty reliable system.