November 2014 - Crawford Broadcasting Company
Contents
1. and put it in the rack just to fill the hole formerly occupied by our Intraplex It amp a beautiful thing Being T1 free not the Optimod We will continue to use WDJC FMG HD3 carrier as a backup for the 6 GHz link Todd is even working on a way to use a Raspberry PI and some free VOIP software to eliminate the old POTS line up there Wedl be all wireless and thatdl be even better than beautiful F iwi ES nt PEL d Figure 2 The old Optimod filling a hole formerly occupied by an Intraplex Problems at WXJC FM The huge and happy metropolis of Pumpkin Center AL doesn get a lot of traffic However we have fractionally increased that statistic in the past few weeks driving to and from the WXJC FM site to repair some line damage caused by a later storm similar to the one pictured above We inherited the existing Andrew transmission line and connector from Queen of Peace Radio the previous owners Whoever put the connector on that coax didn do a very good job The rubber seal at the back of the connector was torn Even worse with air pressure it would spread out slightly permitting very little air leakage But in a severe storm if we lost power the compressor wouldn be operating With leakage the pressure would eventually drop to a point that the torn rubber seal relaxed This is pure speculation but I think extended power outages coupled with very heavy rains allowed water to seep into the lin2. Wattcher on top of the right cabinet This type of thing isn needed with a Nautel solid state transmitter The SWR trip on that thing is lightning fast The precise designs will vary between AM and FM of course and Nautel has improved things over the years But as a general rule their usual approach is simple if the transmitter senses a fault condition you donG just blow a fuse trip a breaker or open a contactor Their transmitters will literally ferowbarO the drive to force a circuit to stop operating as quickly as possible It amp not just how fast you can detect a dangerous condition what really matters is how fast you respond to it The Wattcher can actually detect a problem very quickly but itG still an order of magnitude slower than NautelG approach If we were to continue using tube type transmitters wel probably consider looking into a way to starve the drive to the IPA or PA with a fault to de energize as quickly as possible Even the fastest mechanical contactor needs many milliseconds to drop open and unfortunately that amp more than enough time for considerable damage to be done But in this case the FM5 reacted so quickly there was no damage whatsoever I was extremely happy about that Nautel continues to earn its reputation for battleship reliability I6ve loved their products for as long as Idve been using them and that FMS at WXJC FM has done nothing to reduce my affection The repairs being finished as
3. as well Rinse repeat sell email addresses all day long Personally I think that email while great is beginning to reach the end of its usefulness For every legitimate email that you see in your inbox it amp not at all unusual nowadays to receive 10 spam messages There has to be a better way and I keep waiting for someone to come up with an alternative T for example paying a tiny amount per message The total wouldn amount to more than a few dollars for month even for heavy users but it might discourage random spammers from blasting junk all over the Internet But that amp enough for now Until next time DONO FORGET TO VOTE and keep praying for this nation The Chicago Chronicles Rick Sewell CSRE CBNT AMD Engineering Manager CBC Chicago I would guess most of us have dreams that are work related I remember as a disc jockey that I would often go through the dead air iS The station would be silent and I would attempt to get something on the air Anything on the air But every time I go to hit play on a machine it wonG work Even when I would try to turn the mic on and go live that wouldn work either It was interesting that the control room in my dreams would be an amalgamation of different control rooms I worked at over the years So none of the equipment made sense being together But I guess that amp what you would expect in a dream Years later as an i engineer I now have experienced the
4. least check my e mail from anywhere get a current weather report check the remote controls at our transmitter sites or even look up a service manual when in a pinch and I can send a text message instantaneously to anyone in the world if I could only find it in the menu October was a pretty busy month in getting everything prepared for the coming winter season Weather forecasters have been predicting a very cold winter with above normal precipitation for the Northeast region If this holds true we are in for some pretty nasty weather this year with significant snowfall amounts and the polar vortex making its appearance several times throughout the winter season Last winter we experienced two blizzards something that has not happened here for almost 80 years Total snowfall for last year was measured at 129 9 inches at the airport but areas south of the city such as where the WDCX FM transmitter site is located received close to 17 feet of snowfall last year Current weather models are pointing to a much colder and significant snowfall amounts beginning in early 2015 with snow accumulations that could break records set as far back as 1880 We have finally finished all of our big outdoor projects for the year Last month Don Boye completed the tower painting at WDCZ and this month American Masonry repaired all of our concrete tower bases at the WDCZ transmitter site The concrete pylons were cracked and crumbling due
5. to replace all of the lamps on tower 3 at the WDCX AM tower site in Rochester We first suspected a problem with the photocell as the lights would work for a spell go dark for several days then work again After checking all the components in the lightning system photocell flasher etc we determined that the bulbs were indeed bad so Don made the climb and replace both beacon and secondary lamps While Don was on the tower it provided me with the opportunity to check everything in the networks for this tower electrical and RF connections along with a good cleaning and lubrication of the tension spring in the RF switch The remaining five doghouses will be cleaned and checked out in the next few weeks as time permits The only project I have yet to complete is the installation of a new Potomac antenna monitor at the WDCZ transmitter site I want to have the ground system repairs completed before I begin the installation of the monitor to insure that the readings are accurate I will dial in the array to exact licensed parameters on the old monitor then hook up the new digital monitor and compare the two readings If any differences are noted the new readings will have to be filed with the FCC as the new operating parameters Also the monitor points will be measured and submitted with the new readings to insure that the array is performing as licensed That about wraps up another month here in the Northeast Until we meet aga
6. The Local Tp o Oscillator The Newsletter of Crawford Broadcasting Company Corporate Engineering NOVEMBER 2014 VOLUME 24 ISSUE 11 W C ALEXANDER CPBE AMD DRB EDITOR A Good First Month After signing on the air the last Monday in September KNSN had a good first month of operation The equipment including new transmitter processing and remote control was stable and trouble free We did have an antenna problem however one that apparently existed prior to our sign on but which had not manifested itself during our testing In the last couple of days before sign on as I did quick transmitter and equipment checks I found that the power would wander around showing high on the transmitter but low in terms of base current The issue would come and go The tower owner engineer identified the problem as a loose safety climb cable in the near vicinity of one of the KNSN skirt wires There were evidently also some broken or missing standoff insulators on some of the skirt wires The landlord took care of all this in early October and all has been well ever since Signal reports have all been good except for one odd duck report we got out of the Oceanside area that said when KNSN went on the air the listener amp reception of KBRT tanked His problem is very likely something local some kind of RF noise source like a CFL or whatever since the KNSN sign on had no impact on the KBRT signal Welcome Abo
7. The New York Minutes Brian Cunningham CBRE Chief Engineer CBC Western New York Hello to all from Western New York For years I have been putting off the need to purchase a new cellphone I have used the same model of Samsung flip a5 phone for the past six years or so and just couldn justify the need to spend hundreds of dollars for the newest gadget available Heck all I wanted is a phone a means to call and speak to someone when the need arises I did not even use the text option with my phone plan When I needed to contact someone I called them Those days are over I finally realized that this is the future and if I wanted to keep up with technology Il better join the millions of Americans now enjoying the wireless age After looking at a half dozen phone models and plans I finally decided on the Nokia Windows phone It operates with a Windows 8 1 platform and is very similar to a Windows computer making the learning curve much easier for this old buzzard While new broadcast technology excites me a new phone just doesn get my juices flowing Still there are some things I really like about the new phone One is the data storage With a 32 Gb SIM card it can store up to 20 000 photos or up to 78 hours of music and movies That amp something my old flip phone couldn do Im sure that there are many apps available that will expand far beyond my needs of what this phone is capable of doing but for now I can at
8. and outages We experienced a series of f amp mall problems and as a result that kept me busy going from one to the next Fortunately the worst damage seems to be the loss of a satellite receiver At the moment things seem to be under control and I am working through the cleanup stages now One thing is very evident even with a backup generator the reliability of UPS supplies to keep equipment operating is a key factor So I am back to that UPS battery life problem once again At the moment I am thinking that replacement with a different make and model UPS may be the solution Some other engineers in this area have reported similar problems One solution suggested by a local engineer is replacing the small individual units with a 5 or 7 kW full time UPS supply Overall the cost is lower to maintain a single high power UPS than it costs to maintain batteries of many small units Unfortunately the cost of additional power circuits to several locations adds to the initial capital expense The Local Oscillator Nov 2014 Rocky Mountain Ramblings The Denver Report by Amanda Hopp CBRE Chief Engineer CBC Denver Recertification At the end of September the moment method recertification for KLZ popped up on my calendar The last two years really flew by All the paperwork needed to be done by the 10 12 so we got on it Thankfully it wasn that difficult of a job It took us right at half a day to get things done includi
9. ard We have a couple of additions to the CBC corps of engineers this month In San Diego we welcome Dick Warren who is the new contract engineer for KNSN Dick comes on the recommendation of our good friend Bob Gonsett a well known and well respected Southern California consulting engineer We very much appreciate the referral and introduction and we are delighted to have Dick watching the store at KNSN Dick also works as contract engineer for KURS the station we diplex with at the KNSN transmitter site so he is very familiar with the site the diplexer and the operation We welcome Angella Thomas to our CBC Chicago engineering team She joins as IT Coordinator Staff Engineer essentially filling the gap left by Brian Bonds when he moved up in the structure Angella comes to us from FEMA and brings a considerable skill set We very much look forward to getting her up to speed in the operation This addition fills the organizational chart for the department It amp great to be back at a 100 staffing level there AOIP ASERV and Satellite After a few months of living with Wheatnet IP in our Denver facility I am wondering how we got by without it all these years It is truly a marvelous infrastructure that provides tremendous flexibility This was brought home in a big way last month when we did a software update to our Denver bridge router system We had to take the bridge router down during the update so it had to be bypasse
10. d With the Wheatstone IP Blade system this was a very simple matter indeed We physically patched the AES program bus output of each station amp ASERV blade to the input of the STL codec for that station The connection was a quick click click done and the blade system still left us with the ability to mix and switch satellite feeds and audio servers to the program buses When we were finished with the bridge router upgrade another click click done cycle and everything was back to normal It could not have been any easier No doubt about it this is the broadcast infrastructure of the future and the future is here now Broadcasters have several platforms manufacturers to choose from but the end result is the same outstanding audio quality The Local Oscillator Nov 2014 ridiculously simplified wiring infrastructure and unparalleled operational flexibility With that in mind I never considered going with a conventional sound card as I began working out the details for a new audio server and distribution chain for KNSN and KBRT in Southern California We plan to provide for some limited separate programming in San Diego early next year and we plan to feed that programming from our Costa Mesa studios Wedl add a fslave ASERV at KBRT that can come on and run during the split out and wedl use a PC blade and IP blade to handle the audio switching and mixing chores no sound card All this has been ordered and will be in Denver s
11. e It pooled at the bottom of the drip loop in the coax finally resulting in an SWR trip on the Nautel transmitter Anytime youGe off the air youdl be thinking about what it might be as you drive to the site Once you get there especially if it amp a non routine problem you e going to wonder whatG going on When I first arrived I at first thought that lightning had killed the IBOC combiner injector and possibly the dummy load But when we broke open that connector on the line water poured out Naturally being highly skilled engineers we immediately said h ha and focused on that A new piece of coax was ordered We had some spare connectors here but I needed a gas blocker and ordered that as well RF Specialties did their usual good job and sent the parts right out We The Local Oscillator Nov 2014 cut the old coax well up on the tower trying to get above the water damage which had obviously been happening for some time Figure 3 The inner still looked OK but the outer conductor was almost black This reinforces but again does not prove my theory that line has probably been leaking for some time during power outages Figure 3 Part of the old coax section obviously damaged by water But go back to Figure 2 If youGe familiar with the BE FM 30 series you might notice that thereG a second dark colored panel below the exciter That amp a little SWR trip detection circuit that I built using the old Bird
12. ements from KBRT and it will provide for a separate program feed to KNSN New receivers will also be provided for KBRT KNSN KCBC and KKPZ These are really nice QBit MCR 10x DBR units IRU in size and a lot cooler to operate than the old ABRs we have used in their various iterations since 1994 I hope to have the satellite equipment on hand shortly and we could have it on the air some time in December ABIP I have long had mixed feelings about alternate broadcast inspection programs ABIP that many state associations participate in It amp not that I don think they provide a valuable service but instead I have always thought that we pay our chief engineers and managers to keep our stations and sites in 100 compliance with the rules and those folks do a good job so why should we pay someone else to confirm this We are doing our job right Last month I decided to give ABIP a shot in Michigan and the experience was an eye opener for me First the inspector was Dale Gehman an engineer out of Pennsylvania that I know and greatly respect Knowing that he would be the guy doing the work gave me some confidence going in Dale was indeed thorough I n happy to say that he didn find any big issues other than a small tower coordinate discrepancy that we are now investigating Most of what he reported was more along the lines of good engineering and other practice things that we had not thought of This included additional sig
13. er Road Suite 1205 Aurora CO 80014 email address crisa crawfordbroadcasting com 13
14. here the straps are buried Itl be a project that amp for sure But once it amp done hopefully no more serious maintenance for another ten years or so RF Contactor We finally got the last rebuilt RF contactor installed at KLTT Tower 2 was the last tower that The Local Oscillator Nov 2014 needed it done We began this project last year and then winter came Once things warmed up this year things got busy mainly with me being out of town most weekends at our cabin so I decided to wait until fall We installed it on Saturday the 25 While I installed this at the tower base my dad had work to do inside the phasor replacing some wire duct that was damaged when a capacitor cooked off earlier this year We only had a limited amount of time to get work done so he stayed inside replaced the capacitor and some other things that were damaged Thankfully all of this work only took an hour which was less time than we had expected 12 Holidays With November comes the start of the holiday season Thanksgiving will be upon us soon then all the commercials will start just in time for political ad season to end I don know what worse watching political ads or Christmas commercials Either way Gn thankful to have a DVR so I can fast forward through these commercials I hope to have the canal work done before December Other than that project for once we don have a whole lot going on That can all change in a minute but fo
15. hortly where we will configure and test it One other new thing that weGe doing with this installation is using a 1RU server platform as an audio server I ordered a Dell R220 PowerEdge blade server with no OS We have a W7 64 license that we will load and since it already has two gigabit NICs we should be good to plug in the Nexgen USB key and go Assuming this works out this is the direction that I intend to go for all audio servers going forward That platform will provide for a very rack space economical installation 3RU counting a IRU spacer filler panel between server and IP blade Compare that to what weGe doing now with the HP audio servers and Broadcast Tools switchers and don forget the waterfall of cables out the back of the ASERV or the break out box that soaks up another IRU Another aspect of the sometimes separate feed to KNSN will be a new Extreme Sat uplink and receiver package We will replace the 1990s vintage uplink equipment we now have with a new multi channel uplink that will give us the ability to transmit two or more separate audio streams with the one uplink antenna and RF package We will feed one stereo audio channel with KBRT program and EAS and the other with KNSN program sans EAS which is inserted locally at the KNSN transmitter site This will allow us to have full satellite STL backup at the KBRT transmitter site it will provide for program feeds to KKPZ and KCBC both of which take program el
16. in here in the pages of The Local Oscillator be well and happy engineering The Motown Update Brian Kerkan CBTE CBNT Chief Engineer CBC Detroit Fall has been a busy season at CBC Detroit From parking lot paving to PA modules plenty of projects are underway I took the opportunity to check our Nautel NV40 from top to bottom during a X recent power supply failure I inspected every module and found several that had solder joints between the reject load and combiner that were separating This transmitter had a past history of heat related problems and some of the issues may have been caused by an HVAC problem in the past I checked all 16 modules and repaired the bad solder joints by reflowing them Below is what one of the modules looked like before being repaired Nautel offered to look over our transmitter and to make sure it was optimized I had tried to do a IPA balance which failed Once I upgraded the firmware the IPA balanced worked properly and I was able to get the transmitter operating much more efficiently With the help of NautelG engineering crew we were able to increase the efficiency of the f transmitter by 17 The change resulted in the transmitter running much cooler and we will save about 4 000 00 a year in electric cost I am in the process of installing fiber optic transceiver boards on the WRDT AM towers The LED lights were not properly detected by the previous CT sensor relay
17. is potential for many of those flagship stations to unexpectedly pass on EAS elements Here is why At local station producing local talk programming a must have is the profanity delay at least 7 seconds and preferably longer At those stations the staff will insist that the EAS be placed first with the delay later in the chain They will tell the engineer that order is a must to allow properly coordinating other program elements with the pre delay EAS Then one day the program is syndicated Now the engineer is faced with the need to feed the program to the syndicate usually with not much prep time Of course the obvious and wrong choice is to pick off the signal as shown in Figure 1 What may not be apparent is that this choice for network content will also contain the local station EAS Switching the position of the EAS encoder to post delay wonG be acceptable to staff And eliminating network audio profanity delay wond be 10 acceptable either That leaves two profanity delays as the only choice I see Figure 2 This is exactly what we have done at our Southern California stations where separate delays are used for the common feed to both KBRT and KNSN Ed As I write this we have just finished several To Network To XMTR Figure 2 The right way to do it days of pre winter storms At the end of last week and over the weekend we experienced a series of rain and wind storms which caused numerous power bumps
18. k peace when I have one transmitter not working for a station because I know it is very possible to be in that position when you are completely dead in the water I am hoping that kind of event no working transmitters is a once in a career event and I have had mine already No doubt there are some engineers out there who have been through that more than once That is why when our highest rated highest billing station here at CBC Chicago lost its auxiliary transmitter recently I once again was reminded of that event front a few years ago In this case we ended up late on a Friday afternoon figuring out that we needed more parts but we would have to wait until Tuesday morning for the parts to arrive Not the way you want to get some rest over the weekend The good part is that we got the transmitter going again and I can have peace of my mind because I have an auxiliary I can go to if the main goes down I am not sure this will do anything for the next time I have that nothing works dream The Portland Report John White CBRE Chief Engineer CBC Portland I must admit surprise when recent industry news included yet another report of misuse of EAS alert tones After the recent publicity fallout and fines when a commercial included the alert tone sequence I wondered what brain dead idiot would use alert tone in any non emergency on air situation And that includes syndicated radio shows aired on flagship stations and dist
19. nage warning of RF burn hazards on our AM towers and the need for personal RF monitors for authorized climbers of our FM tower Dale also provided some recommended forms to use for quarterly tower inspections and EAS logs What I took away from this experience is that it is indeed useful to have a second set of eyes look everything over periodically Working in a facility day in and day out we see things that don register that someone coming in fresh may pick up on Those overlooked items could well result in a notice of violation following an FCC inspection The cost of an ABIP inspection is a fraction of the cost of the base FCC fine so it is good insurance With a whole new outlook on voluntary inspection programs going forward I plan to start participating in ABIPs in some key markets I l give our people plenty of notice so they can be ready My bet is that in every case we will find things we never thought of One final thought on inspections in general Many years ago an FCC inspector in Colorado told me about the fifteen minute inspection His point was if he didn see some glaring issue in 15 minutes he wasn likely to dig until he found something Another way to look at this is that if a station or site looks clean well maintained and well organized chances are it is in compliance This is as good a reason as I can think of to keep our sites in inspection ready condition at all times The Local Oscillator Nov 2014
20. ng the field measurements The good news is that everything checked out okay and seems to be working like it should which is what we want Server I am about to have my first experience with setting up a Dell server with Windows 7 Professional This server will be used as an audio server for KNSN at the KBRT Studio I will be getting it set up first as a computer then getting all the NexGen side of things installed and then getting the Wheatstone drivers installed for the blade system they will be getting NexGen Update Before I could install NexGen on that new audio server I first had to update our NexGen system We needed to be on the same version as KBRT so that when they get the new ASERV it will all work without confusing the system KBRT was on v 2 13 and we were on v 2 12 I spoke to the wonderful support people at RCS and scheduled the update for a morning I wanted to do it before any live shows were on the air mainly because with all the moving parts of these shows we really needed full control of NexGen at that point NexGen wanted me to prepare for half a day so I did along with everyone else around the studios I was surprised when an hour into the update RCS called me and informed me that everything was done and told me what I needed to do to finish the update Todd Stickler also updated the KBRT system and as far as I know it all went well So now we are both on the same 2 14 version and when they plug in thi
21. nnel that the main transmitter went The Local Oscillator Nov 2014 down on our highest rated highest billing station on a Saturday morning We of course quickly switched to the auxiliary transmitter at our aux site We took a look at the main and realized we needed a new power supply for the IPA The repair was going to have to wait until Monday for the power supply to be sent from the manufacturer As I said we had the auxiliary transmitter up and going and it had always been very reliable so we could hopefully play the waiting game for the parts to show up However a little after 10 pm Sunday evening we get the remote control calling and that transmitter was off the air This got us scrambling again and we found the PA cavity had taken an arc of energy and would have to be completely rebuilt Again we would have to wait for parts when the manufacturer was open on Monday So it was time to go back to the main We found that the IPA power supply was good for about 90 minutes and then it had to rest for two minutes with the power completely removed from it Once that rest period was done you put the transmitter back on air and then wait until it tripped again and start the cycle all over again Needless to say this was not a great cume building time for the station So I have been through one of those most dreaded times for a broadcast engineer when both transmitters are not working So I guess that is part of the reason I always lac
22. r email address to other businesses This is where the legitimate looking spam comes from work related such as transmitter sales and streaming companies for example I also suspect but cannot prove that some of these companies will sell your email address in spite of the fact that they supposedly promise not to do so Again read the fine print They might say something like AWe will only use your email for our purposes that amp nice and vague or fWe may share it with our partners ah 2 Don post your email address in the clear The Local Oscillator Nov 2014 online Spammers routinely use robots to scour the Internet looking for email addresses on Web pages Always do something like f amp poole at cbc com where amp bc is short for rawfordbroadcasting Make them work at it 3 If at all possible don open a spam email This is a real problem nowadays if you receive email on your mobile device for example it will open email including images I by default Spammers will sometimes send out f amp cattershot emails to as many addresses as they can think of The instant you open that email if there amp an image or other link in it their server notes it and they know that your email address is legitimate They can then sell that email address to other spammers and the cycle continues Oh and hereG the really good part if you click FunsubscribeOin a true spammerG email that just confirms that youGe there
23. r now Idl take it So until next time that6 all folks KBRT Costa Mesa Los Angeles CA 740 kHz 50 kW D 0 2 kW N DA 1 KNSN San Diego CA 1240 kHz 550W U KCBC Manteca San Francisco CA 770 kHz 50 kW D 4 3 kW N DA 2 KKPZ Portland OR 1330 kHz 5 kW U DA 1 KLZ Denver CO 560 kHz 5 kW U DA 1 KLDC Brighton Denver CO 1220 kHz 660 W D 11 W N ND KLTT Commerce City Denver CO 670 kHz 50 kW D 1 4 kW N DA 2 KLVZ Denver CO 810 kHz 2 2 kW D 430 W N DA 2 WDCX Rochester NY 990 kHz 5 kW D 2 5 kW N DA 2 WDCX FM Buffalo NY 99 5 MHz 110 kW 195m AAT WDCZ Buffalo NY 950 kHz 5 kW U DA 1 WDJC FM Birmingham AL 93 7 MHz 100 kW 307m AAT The Local Oscillator Nov 2014 WEXL Royal Oak Detroit MI 1340 kHz 1 kW U DA D WRDT Monroe Detroit MI 560 kHz 500 W D 14 W N DA D WMUZ Detroit MI 103 5 MHz 50 kW 150m AAT WPWX Hammond Chicago IL 92 3 MHz 50 kW 150m AAT WSRB Lansing Chicago IL 106 3 MHz 4 1 KW 120m AAT WYRB Genoa Rockford IL 106 3 MHz 3 8 kW 126m AAT WYCA Crete Chicago IL 102 3 MHz 1 05 kW 150m AAT WYDE Birmingham AL 1260 kHz 5 kW D 41W N ND WYDE FM Cullman Birmingham AL 101 1 MHz 100 kW 410m AAT WXJC Birmingham AL 850 kHz 50 kW D I kW N DA 2 WXJC FM Cordova Birmingham AL 92 5 MHz 2 2 kW 167m AAT CRAWFORD BROADCASTING COMPANY Corporate Engineering 2821 S Park
24. ributed other stations around the country The suggestion of setting trict timed may or may not prevent the proliferation that we have seen in the most recent event And strict time wonG stop the broadcast on the station carrying the syndicated program and will only prevent propagation to other stations My own thinking is we need discipline and when tempted to use a real sound effect we must simply not do it To illustrate how seriously I take the Fmust not principle Ihave been working on preliminary efforts for a broadcast emergency tabletop exercise As part of the exercise I have planed to have several interruptions with new events to be addressed I had planed to introduce them in an EAS like min ui manner In a non broadcast environment I could have used actual EAS fuck quacks but I chose not to Instead I have located actual duck quacks to use EAS tones are to be used for EAS period The Local Oscillator Nov 2014 To Network To XMTR Figure 1 Typical flagship station audio path There are likely other ways that EAS elements can be unexpectedly propagated onto network distributed content Here in Portland we have observed that Internet codecs are opening the practicality of small regional networks Most syndicated radio programming is originated at a local flagship station which produces the program and forwards the finished audio to the syndicator for distribution I would be willing to bet there
25. s 11 ASERV into their system it won freak out Canal Work Im NP wm Kk Out at the KLTT transmitter site we have a commercial irrigation canal running right through the middle of the property We are supposed to maintain this canal something we agreed to when we built the site to keep the canal people from ripping up our ground system but unfortunately we know very little of what is required We have had controlled burns over the years but that doesn seem to be keeping the canal people happy and while those do clear out some of the vegetation they don do anything for the silt that builds up in the canal After getting some phone calls this year and actually getting someone from the canal company on the phone that could help us we were given some guidelines for remove the silt This silt was the cause for so much water standing at all times in the canal and it not allowing us to burn fully The vegetation in the canal would never dry out enough to completely burn To deal with the issue weOve asked the folks at Kilgore Construction to take on the task of cleaning out the canal The first step is to get a utility locate Wedl have them hook into a couple of the tower base ground straps to find the copper straps that go through the canal so we know what to avoid with the excavator Then Mike Kilgore will come in the excavator and dig it out removing vegetation and silt WeGl have to hand dig w
26. s from West to East see Figure 1 This is very hard on a north south link There are several groups online for broadcast engineers One that I frequent is a Facebook group called fl Take Pictures of Transmitter Sites O When I posted some pictures of the work in progress a few weeks ago it was intriguing how many of my fellow engineers questioned whether this link would work reliably After all this The Local Oscillator Nov 2014 Figure 1 A typical severe storm system The WDJC WYDE FM path is shown They had a point With these long extended waves wedi have a lot of heavy precipitation passing through the path for several hours at a time But I m pleased to report that it never failed The WDJC to Mt High link the longer hop dropped from a normal RSL of about 35db to 50 at the worst of the storm shown in Figure 1 but stayed up throughout I think there are some reasons for this For one Cris designs our links to have plenty of headroom against weather fades For another the technology has improved dramatically Someone who bases his her opinion on experiences with say an older Canopy running at 5 GHz might indeed wonder if it l be reliable But these things use a number of techniques from reducing overall bandwidth temporarily in poor signal conditions to very robust error correction Whatever they e doing it works and Idn very happy so happy that I even dragged drug out the old Optimod at WYDE FM
27. s when a beacon failed Cris designed a PC board for the transmitters and receivers WEXL had an issue with the ND 1 AM main transmitter The choke in the power supply failed causing the PA volts to drop below the threshold and causing the carrier to drop A replacement is on its way Our air staff likes our new Wheatstone M series microphone processors The processors The Local Oscillator Nov 2014 provide a wide range of control and can be setup parking lot and upgrading our storm drains and we using an application across the network Once setup have installed the new ASR signs at gates to comply the front panel controls can be disabled with the new FCC rules We are in the process of repaving our Figure 1 Note the bad solder joint on the RF out connection News from the South by Stephen Poole CBRE CBNT AMD Chief Engineer CBC Alabama The new STL link between Birmingham and is a 6 GHz double hop The jump from the WDJC the WYDE FM site near FM transmitter site in Cullman AL has been in service Birmingham to Mount High for over a month and wee near Warrior AL is about delighted WeGve canceled the T1 27 2 miles The second hop line with ATT and are all from Mount High to WYDE microwave all the time It amp a FM is about 17 odd miles A beautiful thing couple of engineers who work in Alabama told me that one big problem is the shape of the storms that come through here they tend to move in wave
28. same type dream but in a different role This time I am at a transmitter site The station is off air and no matter what I do I can get it back on air Hit the filaments Hit the plate Go to the backup Nothing works When I wake up predictably I silently give out a fiWhew it was just a dream I am normally a pretty good sleeper I guess most of us have our bouts with insomnia every once in a while Mostly I have what I would call finsomnia by non auxiliary O Inevitably if one of a stationd ISSUES goes down and we only have one vd f 3 transmitter at our disposal I get that restless sensation that I need to get it fixed now I hate putting my trust in just one transmitter Now I have been through periods with a station where we didn have a backup transmitter for years It didn bother my sleep then because that was just the way it was and there was nothing I could do about it If the main transmitter went off the air we were off the air until I could get the transmitter fixed Fortunately we had a very reliable main transmitter and were hardly ever totally down Despite that experience even when I am in a situation with two transmitters that are very reliable I still have trouble being at peace when one transmitter is down This is why I hate to wait for parts You get that helpless feeling that if the other transmitter goes down youGe dead in the water I can remember a few years back while I was at Clear Cha
29. to age and if we didn make these repairs soon we in all probability would have to replace the footings entirely This would be extremely costly as the towers would have to be un bolted from the footings jacked up and a support frame constructed to hold the tower in place while the concrete bases were replaced While the masonry crew was busy with the repairs I inspected the entire ground system for this five tower array and found numerous problems with the existing ground system Most of the problems detected were broken ground straps and almost all were at or near ground level I suspect that the damage was caused by whoever was contracted to perform mowing services by the previous owner Repairs to the ground system are underway and I hope to have everything in top order by monthG end if the weather holds off long enough to get everything done At the WDCX FM transmitter site the only problem noted was a dead battery on our standby power generator I was unable to start the generator The Local Oscillator Nov 2014 on arecent weekly maintenance visit so I pulled the battery and had it tested at a local battery shop They found that five of the cells were dead so replacement was warranted I check my records and noted that this battery was replaced almost six years ago so it was time to replace it Better now than when its 10 below with waist deep snow On Sunday October 12 Don Boye of Western Antenna and Tower was called in
30. you read this Lord willing wedl have some pictures next time I might even include a shot of Jack wearing his black fedora Spam Woes Ah another month and more spam It amp very very annoying for all of us Not a week goes by that at least one of our coworkers won email me or Todd and ask fisn there anything we can do 0 The problem as I ve discussed before is stopping the spam without killing legitimate email It amp a real problem too for example I increased the scoring on fius domains a while back only to discover that many businesses use these domains for their Alick here links TigerDirect to name one good example I had to literally put in exceptions for these legitimate businesses Another approach is to block any dynamic DNS domain name or a mail domain that doesn have reverse DNS configured Unfortunately many small businesses are guilty of both We have to be careful not to block an email from an important client To help address the problem I6ve requested that we include a Dell spam filter in next year amp budget It has excellent reviews and Idn hoping that will help In the meantime remember these common sense rules 1 Be very careful about giving your email address to anyone online Many online chat groups and forums want your email address Be very picky about this In spite of what their user agreement might seem to say read the fine print if at all possible they will sell you
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