US Department of Commerce/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), PGAS, Procurement Operations Division (OA312:GNS), 1325 East-West Highway, Station 4301, Silver Spring, MD 20910-3283

58 -- SPECIFIC AREA MESSAGE ENCODING SYSTEM SOL 52-DGNW-5-00082 POC Greg Smith at (301) 713-0823, or by fax at (301) 713-0806. Unless another firm expresses an interest and demonstrates a capability to supply NOAA with acceptable Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) systems, NOAA intends to award a sole source contract to NEMAR, Inc. of Ft. Worth, Texas. The NOAA Weather Radio (NWR) SAME system is an ancillary system installed on NWR Audio Programming Consoles at National Weather Service Offices. NWR SAME allows the meteorologist at an NWS office to append a short, encoded, digital data burst to audio messages being broadcast from NWR transmitters to warn the public of impending severe weather or other hazardous conditions. The information encoded in the data burst identifies the specific area(s) affected (up to 32), the specific type of threat i.e., tornado, hazardous material spill, earthquake, etc. (up to 20), and the time period over which the warning will be in effect (up to 6 hours). Currently available NWR SAME decoders can activate dormant NWR receivers, can activate NWR SAME alarms through cable TV systems, can display and output the decoded information as text, and can activate special visual and audio alarms for the hearing or visually impaired. NOAA seeks to purchase NWR SAME systems for installation on the 230 NWR Audio Consoles that are not currently so equipped by mid-1996 and optionally on an additional 50 consoles. A draft specification is available for review. In demonstrating a capability to respond to this requirement, NOAA requires (1) functional and performance details regarding the intended product and (2) technical literature or brochures, if the equipment is currently available off-the-shelf, or, if not currently available, information on the firm's experience and past performance which demonstrates the capability of the firm to produce the product. See Note 22. (0062)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0216 19950306\58-0002.SOL)