All posts by Gary Stigall

KNSN Gets New Owner, Transmitter

Bill Agresta of Crawford Broadcasting shows off the new KNSN Nautel J1000 transmitter. Photo courtesy Cris Alexander.
Engineer Bill Agresta of KBRT shows off the new KNSN transmitter, a Nautel J1000. Photo courtesy Crawford Broadcasting.

KNSN (AM 1240 kHz) last month updated its downtown transmitter after its recent acquisition by Crawford Broadcasting of Denver. The downtown site rebroadcasts the religious format 50kW KBRT (AM 740kHz) Costa Mesa in order to fill in some of the coverage lost when KBRT moved from Santa Catalina Island.

Multicultural Broadcasting sold KNSN at a loss to Crawford after having owned the station for only five years.

According to Cris Alexander’s entry in his Local Oscillator corporate engineering news blog, engineer Bill Agresta from KBRT replaced an aging Gates BC-1H transmitter with the new Nautel J1000. Cris was in town from Denver in September to help with some of the final touches.

The station broadcasts with only 550 watts due to its efficient 202° high tower. Agresta and Dick Warren will maintain the site.

Introducing Matt Anderson, Next Generation Broadcast Engineer

In July, John Rigg of Clear Channel’s San Diego cluster hired for his engineer opening a kid who would likely have been overlooked by just about any HR department. He has virtually no broadcast engineering experience and he’s never worked with NexGen automation or broadcast transmitters. He has no degree in engineering.

Get to know Matt, though, and you start to see the diamond-in-the-rough package of self-initiative and positive attitude with a base of electronic knowledge he brings to work that makes him a potentially huge win for Rigg’s team. You can train how to maintain software package in couple of months, transmitters are increasingly black boxes with a data port in one end and and RF port out the other. Teaching energy and a customer-service attitude are a lot harder. Continue reading Introducing Matt Anderson, Next Generation Broadcast Engineer

August 13, 2014 Meeting: Davicom Remote Control

Remote transmitter control has actually come a long way from old days of dial-up phone line command and response with stepper relays. Maybe you started when stations used Davicom VT-100 serial terminals with FSK transmission.

Paul Easter of Davicom will tell us about the latest in SNMP control and monitoring technology and how it fits in with today’s group multicast facilities.

Join us Wednesday, August 13, at 12 noon at Clear Channel Communications, 9660 Granite Ridge Drive in San Diego. Davicom picks up the tab for lunch. Expect to be out on your way back to work by 1:30PM.

About Paul Easter

Paul is an SBE Certified Professional Broadcast Engineer with over 35 years of broadcast engineering experience. He grew up in Lubbock, Texas where he learned electronics and was involved with KOHM at Texas Tech. Paul has built over 25 broadcast facilities, and currently serves as Technical Director of Houston Christian Broadcasters, a network of over 30 radio stations and translators throughout the southwestern United States.

A Move for the Love of Big Iron

We humans love our machines. We polish and parade our cars. We line up hours ahead to buy a new smartphone, tablet computer, or video game processor.

Scottie Rice KOGO Basement
Scottie Rice in the KOGO basement with Civil Defense water.

Scottie Rice, staff engineer at KFMB AM and FM, gives homes to elderly AM radio transmitters.

His latest project was moving the RCA BTA-5F 5kW transmitter from KOGO, and I’ll let him pick up the story from here. Note that like a captain describing his ship at sea, Scottie refers to his inheritance as “she.”

Continue reading A Move for the Love of Big Iron

Bob’s Back in Town!

KGTV named Bob Vaillancourt Director of Operations in late April after living and working in Honolulu for the previous seven years. He replaces Patrick Givans, who left recently to become Director of News Operations for KCBS/KCAL in Los Angeles.

You might remember that Bob was Director of Engineering at KNSD, but left in October 2007 to become DOE at KHON Fox 2 in Honolulu.

Bob says, “The move to Honolulu was a great experience as I was first tasked to upgrade the station’s automation and server playout system, replaced a very aged analog transmitter while at the same time relocate the DTV transmitter facility including antenna. When Lin Media took over the station from New Vision Television, a directive to move the station to full HD including the upgrade of infrastructure and news set was made and this allowed for me the opportunity to put KHON on the map with some of the best equipment and talent with the help of LIN corporate and cooperation. Finally, the remote satellite facility located approximately 16 miles from the studio was converted from an L-band, multi-channel fiber system to full IP interconnect with the cooperation of Hawaiian Telecom allowed for major cost savings over time with an immediate ROI compared to the older L-band interconnect.

“Although Honolulu and KHON was a fabulous experience which allowed us time to be with some of our family members who live on Oahu, San Diego was always considered ‘home’.

“Timing was perfect when KGTV offered the opportunity for me to join their excellent staff as Director of Operations. The bags were packed, the movers arrived, and we moved back to our home in San Diego.”

Bob’s known for his customer-service attitude and collaborative style learned in his early years with IBM. The staff at KGTV are enthused about his return to San Diego.