Q James Pirkle, KR4QN, asks, “The National Weather Service has recently started transmitting SAME in the Atlanta area. How can I learn more about this technology?”
A SAME—Specific Area Message Encoding—allows the National Weather Service to broadcast warnings and other weather information for specific counties. You simply program a SAME-compatible radio with the code for your county. Once the radio is programmed, it will remain silent until it hears a bulletin specifically intended for your area.
Of course, the trick is knowing which SAME code to program in your receiver. Fortunately, the National Weather Service has made it easy to get this information on-line. They operate an excellent Web site at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/ and they include a table of SAME codes for all counties in the US where the transmissions can be currently received. According to the NWS site, the SAME code for your county (DeKalb) is 013089 and the NWS station is KEC80 on 162.550 MHz.
If you listen to the actual tones that go out on the air when a weather alert is transmitted, you will hear the familiar long tone first, followed by some short bursts of data that sound like packet information. The first tone is used to activate the “conventional” weather alert radios and the packet-like bursts are the SAME warnings.
At present there is only one manufacturer producing consumer grade weather radios with the SAME decoder in them, and that is Radio Shack. No doubt other manufacturers will jump on the bandwagon soon.
From January 1999
