About this blog: Halpin at large

Michelle Halpin, Solano Magazine's production manager at large, is a public affairs broadcast journalist, currently deployed to Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, which is headquartered at Camp Lemonier, Djibouti. A member of the 69th Public Affairs Detachment, a California National Guard unit in Fairfield, Calif., she is currently attached to and deployed with the 131st Mobile Public Affairs Detachment out of Mobile, Alabama; she left in March 2007 and is scheduled to be back in the U.S. in early summer 2008. Halpin says, "So far on this deployment, I've bounced from Fort Dix, New Jersey, to Tampa, Florida, to Atlanta, Georgia, back to Tampa, Florida, to Qatar, to Djibouti, and to..."

Transmitting broadcast-quality video from Djibouti back to the Digital Video & Imagery Distribution System (DVIDS) in Atlanta, Ga., with my commercial satellite antennae system made by NORSAT, Nov. 19, 2007. The system uses the same technology as that found on any TV station's truck/van that you might see on the roadway, except that it can be packed up into four Pelican-type cases (that includes ALL the accessories except for your power source; I'm sitting on one here).

Media outlets such as CNN, FOX News, Pentagon Channel, local TV stations and even production companies can then 'pick up' my TV-qality footage and re-broadcast. This 'DVIDS' system is how many of you at home end up seeing video (B-Roll) of military operations going on in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places in the news. The History Channel program Mail Call even filmed an entire episode from the DVIDS Technical Operations Center in Atlanta just last year.

About this blog: Halpin at large

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