I’m seeing a hole in the converter market at the small battery powered end of the spectrum. I had several pocket TVs and have a weather radio with a TV band. With apologies to the federal national weather service, I’d have to say that the chances of me getting enough useful, current and geographically localized information from their pathetically weak 162.x Mhz line of sight transmitters are much smaller than the chances of my picking up weather radar on my portable TV, or up-to-date commentary on my TV radio.

I’ve been there. Caught camping in a storm, heard sirens at 2a.m., got in the car and turned on the radio to hear Art Bell, 1940s music and other clear channel tripe and nothing. If I’d had a portable TV, chances are that some local station would’ve covered it because storms make for good ratings. If I’d had a weather radio chances are I’d have heard nothing because, though 162.mhz is a great frequency for aircraft, it just doesn’t go through glacial rock. It was days later that I finally found that the state park below my campsite had been evacuated.

So here we are, despite decades of planning, the rollout is an expensive fiasco, and finally portable TVs, weather radios, Channel 6 on FM’s 88MHz go silent to make way for a federally mandated digital format which was designed in the pre-internet, Windows 3.1 days The delayed rollout takes place during the peak of the tornado season for much of the U.S. I sure hope the national weather service and FCC step up their storm coverage and wattage!