This month we catch up with GatesAir to learn what’s been happening to the company since their spin-off from Harris.
Representatives will review the capabilities of the GatesAir studio products, current and future Intraplex products, and discuss the current state of audio over IP (AoIP) in the broadcast industry. We’ll also look at the next steps that will make AoIP interoperability a reality. Topics will include AES 67, Ravenna, AVB, control needs, and Studio vs. Enterprise vs. WAN applications.
Should be a good time as the meeting is Wednesday, November 19th at 12 noon the 94th Aero Squadron restaurant at 8885 Balboa Avenue east of CA-163. Members and guests are welcome and GatesAir provides lunch. Continue reading November 19 Meeting: GatesAir at 94th Aero Squadron→
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.
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→
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.
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 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.”
