Category Archives: Best of Site

Longer articles featuring the best of SBE36.org. Biographies of local engineers, news event coverage, and “Making Waves” commentary.

Fires Disrupt San Diego Broadcasts

The record-breaking fires in San Diego County are serving to bring us both opportunity to prove itself worthy of its slice of the public spectrum, and the challenge to cover all the breaking news with limited resources and without any income whatsoever.

Fire safety officers warned late the previous week that it might be a tough weekend when extremely low humidity and desert “Santa Ana” winds combined to prepare the dry underbrush for burning.

Sunday, October 21

Fire breaks out at 9:00 AM in the relatively unpopulated area of Protrero and Harris Ranch Road along state highway 94 southeast of San Diego. Fire later starts east of Romona northeast of San Diego in the Witch Creek draw.

In the evening, as the fires head toward Romona with its 30,000 residents, stations begin going live wall-to-wall with neither commercials nor the usual primetime programming. Notably, all seven Clear Channel radio stations start simulcasting, mostly using KOGO radio news crews, with veteran newsman Cliff Albert anchoring. Independent KUSI goes full-time with an ENG crew in Romona, then NBC’s KNSD hit the air after their NFL broadcast. ABC affilate KGTV, Fox affiliate XETV, and CBS affiliate KFMB each go live.

Stations use their existing alliances to simulcast, with the BCA stations XEPRS (AM) 1090, XEBCE (FM) 105.7, and XEPE (AM) 1700 rebroadcasting KUSI’s audio.{mosimage}

Monday, October 22

Lincoln Financial Media’s KSOQ-FM 92.1 satellite station becomes the first casualty as the Witch Fire crossed Mt. Whitney, burns electrical power lines feeding the station. It goes silent.

The Harris Fire on Monday night burns over the top of Mt. San Miguel, home to San Diego UHF TV stations KNSD, KPBS, KSWB, and KUSI and radio station KPBS-FM. Low power Spanish TV station KSDX 29 is completely destroyed, with photos showing the heat seemingly coming from the inside, out. Live video from KNSD’s tower camera shows the fire approaching, then cracking the lens from excessive heat. San Diego Gas & Electric’s 230 kV line to the area fails as over 20 transmission poles burn, and telephone service goes out. Most TV & FM stations on top are able to continue broadcasting using generators. KPBS-FM and -TV go off the air for lack of generator power. Telephone line outages causes failures of remote ENG microwave antenna controllers there for KGTV, KFMB, and XETV.

While less publicized, enormous fires also break out in Baja California, Mexico. One such fire, a few miles south of the Harris Ranch Fire, burns the electrical transmission lines feeding broadcast facilities on Cerro Bola near Tecate. XEBCE (FM) is off the air until the line is prepared.

Tuesday, October 23

The Witch Fire far to the north in Valley Center causes phone outages at Palomar Mountain, where ENG relays no longer take remote commands for TV outlets.

After KPBS-FM goes off the air, Lincoln Financial Media’s KBZT (FM) (94.9, alternative rock) begins broadcasting fire information from the KPBS studios on a ISDN link, and continues to do so through Wednesday.

Tuesday night, KPBS crews bring a spare 1000 watt transmitter from their desert station in Calexico back to the San Diego State University studio site. Bext supplies a two-bay antenna from their shelf stock downtown, and KPBS staff mounts it overnight on their STL tower. By morning, KPBS-FM 89.5 is back on the air from Gateway Center at about 400-ft elevation AMSL.

Meanwhile, XETV FOX6 takes a portable ENG receiver to its transmitter site in Tijuana and begins relaying live news from the Harris Fire near Chula Vista, using a recent FCC ENG license endorsement that allows the station to beam over the border on 6.5 GHz.

Wednesday, October 24

SDG&E crews quickly installs new poles, restoring power at Mt. Whitney, and KSOQ (FM) resumes rebroadcasting KSON-FM.

The Witch fire climbs Palomar Mountain, threatening homes near the top, as well as radio sites and the famous telescope. News crews report that firefighters make a particularly risky stand at the South Grade Road and stop the fire before it gets to those homes.

By late afternoon, the Santa Ana winds subside, temperatures cool somewhat, and humidity begins to increase, slowing the spread of flames, but bringing the very real possibility of easterly spread on the north on south fingers of the fires.

Thursday, October 25

A motorcade of fuel trucks and broadcast engineers drives up Mt. San Miguel, refueling the generator storage tanks. Utility representatives forecast having all the replacement poles serving the mountaintop in place within two weeks.

Late in the afternoon, AT&T restores phone service to Palomar Mountain, once again allowing for the control of microwave relays there, but the fire rages on the southwest slopes of the long ridge.

Friday, October 26

KPBS puts a temporary generator in place, by late afternoon powering its FM and DT transmitters to the legal limit, and its analog transmitter at half power.

Epilogue

To date, the Harris Fire burned 90,750 acres. There were 34 injuries to firefighters, 21 civilians burned and 5 civilian fatalities.

The Witch Fire burned 197,990 acres. There were 38 injuries to firefighters, and two civilian fatalities.

The Rice Fire burned 9,472 acres. Full containment was obtained on October 28th. There have been five injuries to firefighters.

The Poomacha Fire burned 49,150 acres. There were 20 injuries to firefighters.

In total, 346,890 acres burned, 1,588 residences destroyed, 320 residences damaged, 2 commercial properties destroyed. 640,000 citizens were evacuated. Suppression costs so far are estimated at $93-million.

Rockley Curless, KPBS transmitter engineer, took a series of photographs of the site and posted them on Flickr.

Normal Town – Setting Audio Levels for San Diego TV

If Bob Vaillancourt, Engineering Manager for local NBCU O&O KNSD has anything to say about it, San Diego’s TV audio is about to improve. In spite of great new pictures with high definition broadcast TV, one of the lingering complaints about the technology is the audio. It’s all over the place. Compressed commercials can blow out the audience after a soft dramatic scene. Local material doesn’t always match network material in an automated master control. And different local stations can have very different levels as viewers surf through channels.

Bob said he had recently spoken with NBCU’s Advanced Technology guru, Jim Starzynski, who laid out a plan to address loudness using the Dolby dialnorm setting that is a part of the Advanced Television Systems (ATSC) standard. That plan starts with each of the ten network owned and operated stations, but he said it needs to spread to the other digital stations in each market, and ultimately to all ATSC stations.

Dolby dialnorm is part of the specification written into ATSC that helps normalize audio levels based on metadata that rides along with the audio. Normalization, unlike compression or limiting, doesn’t change the dynamic range—only the level of audio. Researchers learned that people who watch TV like to set their volume levels based on dialog instead of music or background. Dialog normalization, or dialnorm, attempts to automatically adjust dialog levels based on the standard of the source. Without dialnorm, Dolby interprets the dialog amplitude as being averaged around -31 dBFS. With a Fox dialnorm setting of -25, they are commanding the end viewer’s Dolby decoder to release its audio to the amplifier with a 6 dB attenuation. With a local setting of -23, the decoder attenuates the local material 8 dB.

How do you derive those settings? That’s where Bob comes in. NBCU bought for KNSD a Dolby LM-100 Loudness Meter that specifically reads loudness with respect to digital full scale only during dialog. Bob sampled all the San Diego area English language DTV stations over a two-week period in early July. He took readings during primetime, fringe, daytime, and even overnight. He put the readings into a large spreadsheet to share with local broadcasters.

The results are interesting. First, all the stations in the market except KNSD and KPBS had their dialnorm settings on their Dolby encoders at the Tandberg default of -27. KPBS had theirs at -31–the setting that signals Dolby decoders not to normalize levels. Bob had set KNSD’s dialnorm at -22 to begin with, then adjusted it during the week to -23. He recommends XETV FOX6 set its dialnorm to -23 based on an average of 43 loudness readings ranging from -20 to -29. Readings at KPBS swung the most, as you might expect of a public station with widely varying content and no dialnorm action. Readings at KUSI were the most consistent, as you might expect of an independent station heavy with news and talk content.

XETV has adjusted its dialnorm to -25 based on a recommendation from Fox Network, though we intend to adjust that figure after analyzing it more. Jim DeFilippis, Fox VP of Engineering, said that they will be working with affiliate stations and the other networks to implement dialnorm. FOX6 will soon be applying normalization to all local recorded content.

Bob says that they now have the Dolby Loudness Meter at their ingest station where operators use it to help them set levels. He is looking forward to working with all local engineering crews to get their dialnorm settings programmed. Once this is done, viewers should hear more consistent loudness when switching between stations as well as when the stations switch between local and network content.

You can learn more about dialnorm in this Broadcast Engineering magazine article.

 

SBE36.ORG Ten Years Later

In July of 1997, Dave Biondi in Texas offered free webhosting for SBE chapters wanting to create a site. Having wanted to learn HTML and the various allied technologies, I went for it. Netscape’s browser came with a decent HTML editor, so with a Sams book in my lap, I created the first chapter web page. We registered an independent website a couple of years later, still using the Texan.net servers. That first web page still exists, though the logo has been updated and the site is now hosted in San Diego at Aplus.net.

The idea of informing the San Diego broadcast engineer about the SBE chapter and local industry news seemed obvious. At that time, Ron Foo and John Barcroft at KGB were working hard publishing the monthly SBE chapter print newsletter. I wanted more local content and eventually to help relieve them of some of the laborious processes of composing, copying, folding, stapling, stamping, and addressing. Some chapters, like Portland, do such a consistently good job of covering local events that it just seemed possible to do that here. And the intended audience was supposedly wired, so wouldn’t it also be possible to set-up web and e-mail distribution?

In 1997, I had a brand new screaming 160 MHz Macintosh Performa 6360 and quickly bought the BBEdit text editor and some cheap graphics software. With some Apple Quicktime macro programming, I could create a webpage from plain text paragraphs in seconds. I created web banner ads for our sponsors and at one time had 24 in circulation, some artistically pleasant, others not so much.

The only problem with this technique is that it creates static web pages. If your design later changes or you get new sponsors and need different banners to rotate, you have to re-render the HTML. I looked around for a more dynamic web page publishing technique, but I couldn’t find anything well enough documented that I could learn it in what little spare time I had. I did learn and implement Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, which is a cool way to write a central design structure with a single text document.

In 2001, when I gave the job a rest for a year, webmaster Tim Toole won the SBE Chapter Website of the Year award.

In 2004, I created a potentially commercial site called Benx.us (Broadcast Engineers’ News & eXchange), but it really demanded collaboration and everyone else had their own gig going and didn’t want to combine efforts. Hackers seemed to enjoy exploiting the PHP forum vulnerabilities so that I had to reload the site daily for a while. With respect to the forum, people had different interpretations about freedom of speech. I took it down after a few months.

In 2005, I discovered the underworld of open source content management systems (CMS). These systems, depending on the increasingly popular open source PHP web task language and SQL database, automate all the dynamic web pages. All you have to do is customize a template and install the desired working modules. If you are seeing this in the summer of 2007, you are looking at the Mambo CMS with a customized JW Tribute template. Look at this site for a peek at what it looks like elsewhere.

I haven’t seen much discussion about this, but that pile of code makes the site seem vulnerable. First, many of the modules they distribute don’t work. That’s probably due to the classic mistake that amateur programmers make in writing for their particular circumstance and not to the greater design framework. Often they just lose interest while chasing all the bugs. We tried to use Mambo for an intranet at work, but customizing it got us into a mire of spaghetti code that we didn’t have the time to devote to–time is money. All that PHP code and that one, big, increasingly vulnerable database make me quite afraid that one day the site will be broken and I won’t be able to reconstruct it. Yes, I back it up, but what happens when the host updates PHP and MySQL and some of the code stops working? Meanwhile, the webpages from before 2005 just sit there as little text files, ready for viewing–simple, like an old car.

So for SBE36 version 3, I’m looking for a simple implementation of PHP and CSS, from which I can make a site from a structure of stored HTML insert text files. Sort of like the original site, but with dynamic style, banners, and menus.

Ideally, there should be one SBE supersite with virtual chapter sites built-in. You contribute articles and checkoff boxes as to where they should be read. But that’s not in the spirit of the ever independent web.

Why do all this work?

I thought about this question and at first came up with noble answers about informed citizens in a democracy and all that, but it’s more primal, really. Writers are simply compelled to tell the stories of their time. You ask Bob Gonsett of Fallbrook, Clay Freinwald of Seattle or Kent Randles of Portland and I suspect they would have to admit the same thing–that telling you about what is going on is something that just has to be done and we’re just going to do it.

Not that my work is as consistent or as high quality as theirs. In fact, it’s simply a product of the time and interest I have to devote to the task–no more, no less.

I try to use a couple of principles to guide me. One is to confirm information. Another is to give others a voice–especially if they disagree. Another is to try to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s a small community. We all make mistakes.

So we do it because we like to inform, because we like to read our own taut script, and because once in a while someone says, “I read that article you wrote and really (liked it) (learned something) (it made me think) (laughed).”

Thank you just for reading.

Making Waves: RIP Gateway Electronics

Those of us who love to homebrew and tinker have lost a friend when Gateway Electronics in San Diego closed their doors in late April. The store sold a couple of years ago, but Manny and Fong couldn’t keep the cash flow positive, and a new lessee was to take over.

Here’s why I think Gateway closed:

  • People don’t have the time to tinker;
  • The integration of electronics has become so cheap and large-scale that small-scale projects don’t have much value;
  • Specialized small electronics items can now be found online;
  • The internet has made it possible to repurpose surplus gear through auction and direct sale sites without using retail outlets; and
  • Because of all of the above, retailers additional cash streams through either technical services, web sales, or local sales of higher traffic computer gear.

My favorite Gateway find was when, while looking at their selection of LEDs at the front glass counter shelves I saw in my peripheral vision a small container of tiny mechanical clocks. These are the kind of sealed, elapsed time counters they put on very expensive equipment that allowed you to log and time maintenance. This was in the mid-1990s when KFMB-TV had in service four Philips LDK-6 Plumbicon studio cameras that made great pictures. But their camera head timers had a habit of making a terrible noise when they presumably wore out their internal gears or just lost their lubrication. Philips charged $400 each for the neat-looking devices the size of your thumb. As far as I know, the LDK-6 may have been the only product they made that used this special 400Hz clock, and they had to manage their inventory and pay tax, year after year. Having worked in manufacturing, I understand parts costs. But here they were at Gateway, small, matte black, 400Hz, 100,000 hour elapsed time counters, $5 each. I bought four and we installed at least two of them over time.

I also liked their supplies of cheap LEDs, connectors, stainless hardware, and a great line of prototype circuit boards. They also stocked all kinds of transformers, switches, basic kits, and computer cables. Some items, like used switches and some really old test gear, you might not want to take home for fear of creating more of an expediture of time and energy than a savings that good engineering practices would dictate.

Gateway wasn’t the only surplus electronics supply store in the region, but they were the only one in Kearny Mesa within a short drive from most broadcast outlets. Industrial Liquidators doesn’t really count–they’re useful for some tools and pneumatic supplies, but have very little electronics stock. Murphy’s and California Surplus continue to operate from the same neighborhood of Johnson Avenue in El Cajon, and I’ll be the first to say that they do a good job of keeping their shelves tidy enough to make hardware relatively easy to find. If you ever have to replace or install a new one of those mil-spec MS “Amphenol” connectors, Cal. Surplus has a huge barrel of them that has saved me from the misery of waiting 8-10 weeks for a new one. Willy’s Electronics in National City still stocks some hobbyist electronics supplies, but its all new stuff and you pay full retail price. There’s the monthly Santee Swap Meet, but with the internet and declining electronics hobby, it’s become more of a big garage sale. I visit once a year for a load of tools, hi-fi cables, and fresh avocados.

The king, the acme, nay, the apex of surplus electronics is Apex Electronics in Sun Valley in the heart of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. I happened by there once when, during a visit to my mother-in-law’s, I took a side trip. With an acre or so of indoor shelves that must be 20 feet high and an outdoor lot of surely another couple of acres, this place is big. Good luck in an earthquake, pal. Take the virtual tour on their website. Microwave gear for pennies on the dollar, though that was before the price of copper went through the roof. If they don’t have what you want, then you should reconsider your design.

Epilogue

When Manny and Fong closed the Gateway doors, they handed out little pieces of paper with contact information and a promise of opening a new store. I tried to call and write to ask a few questions, but have yet to receive a reply.

What are your experiences with surplus buying? Are there other Southern California stores you know about? Tell us about it.

Making Waves: DST Means Work for You and Me

On March 11, 2007, Daylight Savings Time starts earlier than last year. Congress moved the date with a simple vote. Now you and I have to do all the dirty work to make our computerized world fall into place. Are you ready?

When I was 15 and enthused about ham radio, I bought from Allied Radio one of those 24-hour wall clocks and set it for Greenwich Mean Time. Yeah, I was that geeky. What that clock showed me is that all the fuss about time zones and daylight saving time is completely unnecessary. Why couldn’t the whole world run off one time and change their local school and work times to whatever they wanted? Does it really matter if they’re going to work at 0800 in London and we’re going to work at 1800 in San Diego? Instead, governments and corporations spend enormous resources tracking zone boundaries and daylight saving periods. DST serves only as a way to change the numbers on the clock, and is more meaningless the closer you get to the equator where sunrise and sunset times don’t change much. If safety and conservation are important at the upper latitudes, why don’t we just change the starting times of the school or work day to suit the daylight available?

In 1973, they messed with daylight saving time briefly because oil supplies were squeezed. They wanted more daylight in the afternoon so that we didn’t run so many lights at work. But what I remember is that we were suddenly getting up in utter dark, running the heat and lights at home an hour earlier than before. The problem was that at the 45th parallel, there was only so much daylight. At the time I worked at a small daytime only Class IV AM station in Oregon, and during December and January I would sometimes work weekends from the 8:30 AM sign-on to the 5:30 PM sign-off. According to Wikipedia, studies of the effects of DST have variously concluded savings of energy and traffic deaths as well as loss of savings to economic efficiency and increased energy peak loads at sunrise.

On March 11 this year, we’re changing from the usual early April changeover to DST to March 11. The United States change is part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Again the justification is to synchronize the workday to the hours of daylight available so that we are less dependent on Middle East oil.

The international ramifications are interesting. Canada decided to adopt the U.S. plan to move DST; Mexico did not. For the first time that I can remember, Tijuana will be in a different time zone from San Diego from March 11 until April 1. My station, XETV Fox 6, will be in the uncomfortable position of advertising programming times to its majority U.S. audience in Pacific Daylight Time, while the country of license observes Pacific Standard Time.

You may have work to do in preparation for March 11 this year. If you run Windows XP or Vista on the internet, you should be able to download their normal maintenance update to change the automatic DST switch date. If you run a machine isolated from the net, you’ll have to schedule a download or just change the time zone of the workstation in question.

It turns out that the Dallas Semiconductor real time clock (RTC) chips that control time in many computers have hard-coded DST changeover dates so that can’t be overcome except by manually changing the time or GMT offset.

You can program Macintosh computers to change automatically on the correct dates by editing the /etc/localtime file. Instructions can be found here. Linux.com has a clock howto with DST information.

If you depend on Java runtime applications, see Sun’s DST FAQ. It appears that if you accept the Java RT update being pushed to your workstations this month, you should be okay.

You’d do well to look around for time-dependent systems that may need your intervention. Some vendors are offering software upgrades to automate the GMT offset at the new time. Triveni, for example, is asking $500 to upgrade its PSIP management software that includes revised DST changeover dates. If you have a collection of similarly needy boxes around your broadcast facility and you can’t get away with simply changing the GMT offset yourself, this time change is going to cost you.