An SBE celebrity of sorts appeared at the annual December chapter banquet. Fred Baumgartner has joined the MediaFLO project at Qualcomm as the Director of Broadcast Engineering.

As opposed to the RF side of the project, Fred tells us that he is working the commercial insertion side. Fred is known for his FCC filing for a community-based low-power AM service in 2003, and for his work with the Ennes Educational Foundation Trust for the SBE. He is organizing an Ennes Workshop for the 2006 NAB Convention, this year with the theme “Everything RF”. He’s served at Senior Systems Engineer with Leitch Technology. He is currently commuting from his home near Denver, where he has been a member of Chapter 48, certified as a CPBE and CBNT. He’s also a licensed ham radio operator—KG0KI. We’re looking forward to seeing more of Fred at future chapter functions.