Radios needed to communicate between different parts of the truck!

[SteveShannon]

Yesterday a friend of mine and I heard about a long truck carrying a big boiler during one of our ham radio nets. So we drove down to see it.

The “truck” consists of a pull tractor, the load, and two pusher tractors. A notice from MDT says it’s 217 feet long and 29 feet wide. Another video said the boiler is 360,000 lbs.

The truck travels at night on state highways to avoid traffic. 
While I drove my friend videoed the truck on my phone:

 

[WRKC935]

The way to do this right is two radios.  One radio that was a 1 to 25 watt radio set at the lowest possible power in each position for inner vehicle communications.  These would only be for the operators of the 'train'. 

A second radio on a different channel for escort and spotter operations.  These could be 1 to 25 watt versions as well but turned up to 10  or so watts to communicate with the escort vehicles and the train vehicles. 

There are two equally important sources of radio traffic when running a setup like this.  First of course is from the other operators on the connected vehicle.  The second being from spotter / escort ops that are running all around the vehicle.  And a front lead vehicle may be a 1/2 mile or more in front of the load vehicle to spot traffic, road conditions or other issues that will effect the navigation of the load vehicle. 

Being able to hear BOTH is important, to the point two radios are all but a requirement.  Licenses can be simple itinerant nationwide frequencies but multiple channels are also a must if you would happen to run into another license holder that would cause interference.  If that happens everyone switches to a different channel and the issue is averted.  And escort / spotters are NOT on the same channel as the vehicle operations for the same reason.  Something as simple as changing speed is a group effort here.  All power units have to be doing the same thing at the same time.  And that 'team effort' for lack of a better description is why NO ONE else is on their channel. 

CB radios and other 'distractions' shouldn't be present in the load vehicles either.  If CB or other radio monitoring is needed, that needs to be a function of the escort / spotter team.  They can then relay important information to the load vehicles across the spotter radios. 

 

At least that's the proper way to do it in my mind.

 

[BoxCar]

4 MURS radios on two frequencies. One for chase/escort vehicles, the other frequency for the train.

[SteveShannon]

Here’s a video from the other side:

 

 

[nokones]

What exactly is/are the communication problem(s) during the movement with this permit load?  Has anyone state that they are having any communication difficulties during the permit load movement? What is or not being communicated during the movement and how is it affecting the movement of this permit load.

I am not an expert of moving a permit load of this nature but I have decades of experience, more than anyone can imagine, in resolving radio communications problems and designing radio communications systems/plans to resolve those problems. I have always enjoyed radio communication problem solving.  In my opinion, nothing is impossible in resolving radio communications problems and there is always something that can be done, maybe if won't be perfect but it will be close to perfect.

[WRQC527]

I'm pretty sure this crew knows what they're doing without input from the experts at mygmrs. These guys don't exactly look like amateurs. Thanks for the cool video, Steve.

[SteveShannon]

2 hours ago, nokones said:

What exactly is/are the communication problem(s) during the movement with this permit load?  Has anyone state that they are having any communication difficulties during the permit load movement? What is or not being communicated during the movement and how is it affecting the movement of this permit load.

I am not an expert of moving a permit load of this nature but I have decades of experience, more than anyone can imagine, in resolving radio communications problems and designing radio communications systems/plans to resolve those problems. I have always enjoyed radio communication problem solving.  In my opinion, nothing is impossible in resolving radio communications problems and there is always something that can be done, maybe if won't be perfect but it will be close to perfect.

Sorry, I certainly didn’t mean to imply they were having a problem with communications. My title was intended to include radio communications as one of the interesting aspects to the job these folks do, but really I just wanted to share the video my friend took about this large truck. I just thought it was interesting. 

[WRQC527]

17 hours ago, Sshannon said:

Yesterday a friend of mine and I heard about a long truck carrying a big boiler during one of our ham radio nets. So we drove down to see it.

The “truck” consists of a pull tractor, the load, and two pusher tractors. A notice from MDT says it’s 217 feet long and 29 feet wide. Another video said the boiler is 360,000 lbs.

The truck travels at night on state highways to avoid traffic. 
While I drove my friend videoed the truck on my phone:

The biggest thing I ever saw being trucked was a C-17 fuselage through the streets of Long Beach late one night. Not nearly the spectacle you saw. I also saw an Airbus A-310 fuselage on I-10 in Arizona. 

[SteveShannon]

7 minutes ago, WRQC527 said:

The biggest thing I ever saw being trucked was a C-17 fuselage through the streets of Long Beach late one night. Not nearly the spectacle you saw. I also saw an Airbus A-310 fuselage on I-10 in Arizona. 

We see Boeing fuselages come through Montana frequently and tons of wind turbine blades and structures. They’re impressive, but this was the biggest thing that I have seen. It can only go so far each day and power lines are being moved as it goes. 

[pcradio]

Wow, now that is a big load folks!

[WRQC527]

38 minutes ago, Sshannon said:

wind turbine blades and structures.

Not sure if you've been to the Palm Springs area but there's hundreds of wind turbines. Amazing structures, especially up close. 

[SteveShannon]

11 minutes ago, WRQC527 said:

Not sure if you've been to the Palm Springs area but there's hundreds of wind turbines. Amazing structures, especially up close. 

We called them VAR sucking bird whackers in the utility industry.