All posts by Gary Stigall

October 2008 Meeting – Bird Technologies

Classic RF measurement leader Bird Technologies pays us a visit October 15 at TV Magic, 8112 Engineer Road in Kearny Mesa, at noon. Members and guests are welcome to join us for a free lunch and technical presentation.

Visiting Bird Technologies Applications Engineer Lynn Strube will discuss RF power measurement basics, and why the measurements are important, transmitter power measurement methods, RF power measurement traceability and why analog and digital TV measurements are done differently. Don Scanlon will join her to describe their new transmitter power monitor (TPM) products and their SignalHawk spectrum analyzer.

Bird has been a supplier of RF measuring equipment for more than 60 years and they supply to broadcast, semiconductor processing, military, medical equipment and many other markets. Lynn has been in the broadcast industry for more than 35 years.

FCC Issues Forfeiture Order Against KUSI

The Federal Communications Commission issued a Forfeiture Order against KUSI (TV) San Diego for $25,000. The September 17 order relates to KUSI’s coverage of the October 2003 wildfires in which several local TV stations were accused of not providing sufficient graphical emergency information for people with hearing problems. The FCC found that some critical information was provided, but was incomplete compared with vocal information, or delayed more than 30 minutes. The agency disagreed with KUSI’s arguments that they have a "filtering" role, asking why the station was filtering information only for those unable to hear the dialog. KUSI broadcast some maps and graphical emergency information, but did not have real time closed captioning during their extended coverage of the fires.

KFMB-TV settled their Notice of Apparent Liability last March for its lack of visual emergency information during coverage of the 2003 fires with a Consent Decree in which they agreed to make a "voluntary contribution" to the US Treasury for $18,000 and have all charges dropped.

(The author is Director of Engineering for Bay City Television, the US operations company for XETV Tijuana, and was an engineer for KFMB Stations at the time of the 2003 wildfires.)

KSON-AM Finally Set to Rebuild Tower

Lincoln Financial Media finally got approval from the City of San Diego to reconstruct its KSON-AM tower south of downtown. That tower, you may remember (article), had its top crumple over in a windstorm late in December 2004. Some 200 feet was left after the limp top sections were removed.

The replacement, also a self-supporter, will reach the same 445 feet height nearby on the same plot of land in the middle of a towing yard along I-5 where it meets the south terminus of State Route 15. The new tower will also have the same shunt feed design. But the new steel members are designed to be of sufficient strength to handle high winds and some antennas on top.

KSON-AM at 1240 kHz and KURS at 1040 kHz have continued sharing the remainder of the old tower after crews removed the damaged upper third.

According to San Diego Market Director of Engineering and SBE Chapter 36 Chair Eric Schecter, Joel Saxberg has served as AM consultant for the project. David Evans and Associates has provided navigation through the city permitting processes that started three years ago. Sabre Communications of Sioux City, Iowa will fabricate the steel kit, and RD Engineering and Construction of El Cajon will erect the tower.

Upon its completion, KBNT-CA channel 17 is expected to return to the top with an ERI 8-bay omni-directional antenna along with an antenna from Teletrac Fleet Management radio services. Eric expects crews to complete construction by the end of 2008.

September 2008 Meeting – Triveni Digital – “ATSC Bitstream Verification”

Due to the complexity of the ATSC Transport Stream, broadcasters can find ourselves out of compliance. Some errors, while violations of the standards, do not produce degraded quality for the viewer. When even minor errors frequently trigger broadcasters’ alarms for inconsequential problems, important alarms often go ignored. The A/78 Recommended Practice was designed to address this problem. It develops a system of triage amongst the error types, ranging from unwatchable to invisible. By monitoring through devices that employ A/78, broadcasters can be assured of being quickly informed of any problems that will impact video quality.

Join San Diego SBE Chapter 36 for its regular monthly meeting Wednesday, September 17 at noon at Bay City Television, 8253 Ronson Road in Kearny Mesa. Triveni buys lunch. Expect the presentation to last till 1:30 PM. As always, guests are welcome.

About Richard Chernock

Dr. Chernock, the author of A/78 and Director of Technology at Triveni Digital, develops strategic directions for metadata management, content distribution and monitoring for emerging digital television systems. Previously, he was a Research Staff Member at IBM Research, investigating digital broadcast technologies. Dr. Chernock is active in a number of the ATSC and SCTE standards committees, particularly in the areas of metadata, monitoring and data broadcast. He is a participant in the SCTE HMS activity. He chairs a number of ad hoc committees within ATSC whose work relates to metadata and transport issues. He is vice-chair of the Technology Group on Distribution (TSG) and chairing the Non-Real-Time Services and Mobile/Handheld management layer activities within ATSC. In another life, he used transmission electron microscopy to study materials characteristics for advanced ceramics packaging and semiconductor technology at IBM. His ScD was from MIT in the field of nuclear materials engineering.

September 2008 Meeting – Nautel

When you get 30 engineers show up for a radio-themed meeting as we had in August, you can get cocky enough to call for two meetings in one month. Yeah, that’s what we’re doing in September. Our second presentation this month is by Jeff Welton of Nautel, the broadcast radio transmitter guys. TV Magic will host the meeting at noon, Thursday, September 25. Jeff will buy you lunch. TV Magic is at 8112 Engineer Road in Kearny Mesa. Expect the presentation to last to near 1:30 PM.

About the Meeting

The proposed 10dB increase to digital sideband power levels for stations broadcasting with HD Radio(tm) technology in the FM band will have significant impact on equipment and infrastructure requirements. Even if the sideband power were to increase by a lesser amount, the effect will be much more serious than many have realized. This presentation will cover the increase and the associated changes that may be required with various methods of injecting the HD radio signal onto the analog. In addition it will cover technology that has been implemented, or is being developed, to assist stations in achieving the highest possible signal level increase with the least possible impact.

About Jeff Welton

Jeff Welton is a graduate of the Electronics Engineering Technician and Technologist programs at RCC Institute of Electronics (formerly Radio College of Canada) in Ontario, Canada. He has worked in electronics repair, installation, quality assurance and manufacturing since 1985. In 1990, he joined Nautel in the Customer Service Department. Then in March 2007, Jeff accepted a position with Nautel’s Sales Department, where he has been able to use his technical background to help customers find the best possible solutions for their particular requirements.

About Nautel

Nautel is a global leader in the design, manufacture, sales and support of high power Radio Frequency (RF) products for AM and FM broadcast, navigation, industrial and space-based applications.  With a long history of creating highly innovative products, Nautel continues to lead the way in providing valuable new solutions for the digital radio broadcast revolution.