What mission needs immediate extended-range comms? Search and rescue? Disaster recovery? Urgent tactical situation? Emergency response? With a 100-ft antenna tower, your tactical or land mobile radio can only talk out a few miles. As a contributor to ICWE's Urgent Communications website wrote earlier this month, "communications for first responders in a disaster or wide-area event are always problematic" (see here).

Enter Syntonics' latest HARC-mini (High Antennas for Radio Communications) aerostat range extension system.

Combine HARC-Mini, a tank of helium, and a small balloon, to achieve comms ranges up to 30 miles and more. HARC-Mini weighs six pounds, operates on rechargeable batteries for 8+ hours, and supports any radio communicating in the 30-1000 MHz band, HARC-Mini is an entirely new tool for tactical or emergency communicators.

Initially exhibited at MILCOM 2014 in October, HARC-Mini is already drawing significant interest from both military and civilian communicators who want to dramatically extend their communications range. Contact Steve Gemeny and ask about getting your own demonstration of this new, innovative capability.

The U.S. Navy operates an excellent SBIR/STTR program, including publicizing the success stories of its participants. The Winter 2014 Profiles in Success magazine, published by Dawnbreaker, highlights Syntonics. Turn to the last ... and best, we think ... of the success stories to read all about it.

The basis for the story was our FORAX-HARC-WNW (Wideband Networking Waveform) Phase II prototypes. We successfully developed the L-Band HARC-WNW aerostat range extension system and flew it at several demonstrations. Our Chief Engineer, Doug Crowe, spent long hours working in our lab, at Rockwell-Collins in Indiana, and at Boeing in California, preparing for field demonstrations at Fort Huachuca and Yuma Proving Grounds. Later the systems flew during an NIE at Fort Bliss / White Sands Missile Range.

This effort was one of many production orders and development projects for our FORAX (Fiber Optic Remote Antenna eXtension) RF-over-Fiber equipment. Flowing both from SBIR Topic N07-149 and an earlier SBIR for USSOCOM, we have now delivered more than $35 million of RF-over-Fiber equipment to the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Special Operations Command, Department of Homeland Security, civilian agencies, and multiple allied militaries.

Two HARC-WNW prototypes flew on the Army's Test Bed Aerostat at NIE 12.1, conducted at Fort Bliss and White Sands Missile Range.