If you could see heat circulating around your equipment or server rooms, you’d find at least a few places where hot air is not gracefully returning to the air conditioner, or where you are pulling in already heated air into your equipment. Avoiding these situations takes some planning, and those who have already pondered the movement of heat waves have some great, simple ideas. For example, did you know you should just stack up hot servers right on top of each other rather than provide air gaps between them?

For our February meeting, Bob Schluter of Middle Atlantic Products discusses effective ways to control the temperature inside equipment racks, critical to the proper functioning and survival of the circuits operating within them. He can help you understand and calculate when to vent a rack using natural convection and when to use forced air (fans). Additionally, he will cover some basic power distribution topics, including AC magnetic fields and their effects on signal wiring as well as ground myths. Bob is a bit of a celebrity and a unique guy as both engineer and president.

Join us Wednesday, February 18, at noon at TV Magic, 8112 Engineer Road in Kearny Mesa, San Diego. T-shirts for the first 40 attendees and pizza lunch will be provided by Middle Atlantic Products. Lecture starts at about 12:30, and you should be on the road by 1:30 PM. Guests welcome. Hey, even if you worked on the digital transition, take a break and join us.

About Bob Schluter, President & Chief Engineer, Middle Atlantic Products

A multiple patent-holder, Bob Schluter has been active in the Professional Audio, Video and Data industries in various capacities since 1976. From his early involvement in electronic equipment design and recording studios throughout his 30 years as President and Chief Engineer at Middle Atlantic, Bob has been intimately involved in integrating and installing audio, video and data systems. Constantly in touch with evolving technologies, Bob is currently designing next generation thermal systems and power distribution products.

The Orban Mobile Broadcast Laboratory visits San Diego and you’re invited. Our regular meeting and parking lot exhibit starts at noon, Wednesday, January 21 in the parking lot of Clear Channel Communications, 9660 Granite Ridge Drive in Kearny Mesa. Lunch provided. Members and guests welcome.

From Orban.com: The Orban/CRL Mobile Broadcast Laboratory (MBL) is a fully equipped mobile vehicle that has been converted to permit testing and demonstrations of Orban and CRL products, and to do comparisons with other products. The MBL travels across the country stopping at local broadcast stations and SBE meetings in U.S. cities. The MBL also carries kiosk rack-mounted displays of Orban/CRL’s entire product line. A variety of equipment, including the new Optimod 8585 Digital Surround Audio Processor, the new Optimod-PC 1101, the Optimod-FM 8500, and the Opticodec 7600 series ISDN machine, are on-board.

Presentations are conducted on High Definition RadioTM and the most recent developments in audio processing. The MBL offers broadcast engineers, technical service managers and owners an opportunity for hands-on demonstrations, technical training and a chance for in-depth Q&A sessions with the experts from Orban/CRL. The MBL Tour is a must-see for anyone in the broadcasting field.

Sharing a hot lunch with colleagues seems fitting during the holiday season, so we hope you can join us Wednesday, December 10 at noon for lunch, chatter, and…

A Few Words from an EAS Master

Last year, the FCC issued a Report and Order on EAS requiring, among other things, that broadcasters "must be able to receive CAP formatted EAS alerts no later than 180 days after FEMA publishes the technical standards and requirements for such FEMA transmissions".  In July of this year FEMA announced its intention to do so during the first quarter of 2009.

Harold Price of Sage Alerting Systems will present a discussion of what that means, and describe the new Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) requirements for broadcasters. Harold was the lead designer for the original Sage ENDEC and for the new Sage Digital ENDEC.

Join us, won’t you? Wednesday, December 10, 12 noon at TV Magic, 8112 Engineer Road, in Kearny Mesa, San Diego. We’ll have real banquet tables and a real holiday meal provided by SCMS. Please reserve now your spot at the table. Call or write Doug Tharp, (818) 398-7314, or dougt@scmsinc.com.

Door prizes include an HD radio and professional microphone.

While you weren’t looking, your audio and video media hard drive technology has gone through a quiet revolution. No longer are we striping arrays of SCSI drives to compensate for balky seek times and bus limits. SCSI and RAID technologies have gone virtual. If you’re like me, you may have taken a lot of this for granted. Our November meeting presentation by Rorke Data sorts out what’s going on with today’s spinning disk and linear tape data storage media.

Rorke Data specializes in broadcast media, and you’ll find their products in many of the systems sold by automation and software companies. Look for engineer Todd Dahlgren to cover: RAID 6, cluster file systems, iSCSI, InfiniBand, the continuing role of linear tape open (LTO) long-term storage, and even optical storage. Todd and representative Teresa McPherson will answer questions about their full storage line.

Join us for this lunch ‘n’ learn meeting Wednesday, November 19, at noon, at TV Magic in Kearny Mesa. Rorke buys lunch. As always, members and guests are welcome. We should be finished by 1:30.

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.