Local News, National

FCC Memo Says San Diego Field Office May Close

Articles in Radio World and ARRL websites last week each quote internal FCC memos saying the Enforcement Bureau is set to reduce its field staff by half and close two-thirds of its field offices, including the one in San Diego. In the memo, EB Chief Travis LeBlanc and FCC Managing Director Jon Wilkins said the Bureau needed to take “a fresh look” at its 20-year-old operating model in light of technology changes and tighter budgets.

Under the plan, in the southwest, the Los Angeles field office would remain open, and Phoenix would have detection equipment in place but San Diego’s office would permanently close.

Part of the staff reduction plan would include creating a “Tiger Team” of agents “flexible enough to support other high-priority initiatives.” Under the plan, all field agents would have engineering backgrounds “to support the primary focus on RF spectrum enforcement.”

Apparently management would not be immune from the cuts, with director positions shrinking from 21 to 5, and administrative support positions from 10 down to 3.

Meetings

March 18 Meeting: Orban Regarding Radio Loudness

We all went through the TV loudness discussion and regulations. How about radio and netcasting? Bob Orban will give a remote presentation to Chapter 36 about just this:

 My main topic will be the relationship between the fairly recent  ITU-R BS.1770 loudness measurement standard and non-television applications such as FM radio and audio-only netcasting: what “target loudness” is and how it applies to audio-only services. I will also briefly touch upon low bitrate compression artifacts and how things have changed with the widespread adoption of the MPEG4 HE-AAC codec.

Join us and learn something! It’s Wednesday, March 18, at 12 noon at iHeartMedia, 9660 Granite Ridge Road, San Diego. Orban will provide a light lunch. Members and guests welcome.

Local News

Woodson LPTV KZTC Flash Cuts to Digital

Mt. Woodson channel 7 VHF low power station KZTC flash cut to digital ATSC February 22. KZTC outputs a 1.5kW directional signal aimed at the southwest quadrant toward San Diego. The station had been rebroadcasting Entravision XHDTV’s MundoFox subchannel, but now rebroadcasts the same station’s English language services that include the Fox MyTV network and syndicated content.

KZTC is maintained, and partially owned, by Matt Lunati, who had been a fixture in San Diego broadcast engineering, but lately has been working servicing telecom sites in Arizona.

Local News

FCC Takes More San Diego Area LPFM Actions

On January 12, 2015, the FCC ordered in a single document the granting of an LPFM station for San Diego Catholic Radio and dismissal of applications from Active Pulse and Hi Neighbor. SDCR was given the right to construct its station on 93.7 MHz at iHeartMedia’s historic KLSD-AM/KGB-FM facility at Oak Park.

In summary, the FCC agreed with SDCR’s objection to Active Pulse’s application on grounds that the organization had no state record of being a non-profit organization. Hi Neighbor had earlier affiliated itself with AP in the mutually exclusive group.

93.7 MHz is currently occupied locally by 10W translator K229BO on Mt. Woodson rebroadcasting KPFK from Los Angeles after 90.7 MHz signed on in Tijuana.

 

Meetings

February Meeting: Xtreme Power Conversion at KFMB

At our February 18 SBE meeting, Gina Galindo, Xtreme Power Conversion Inside Sales Manager, will present information about how their UPS models  address the 10 common problems associated with AC power.  She will also explain how to properly size a UPS for a given load, and the battery capacity needed for an expected runtime. In addition, Gina will present information about XPC’s range of inexpensive rack mount PDUs (Power Distribution Units), including the 1-RU IP controllable PDU and 1-RU AC Bypass Switch.

Join us Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at 12 Noon at KFMB, 7677 Engineer Road in Kearny Mesa, San Diego. Xtreme Power Conversion and RF Specialties of California will sponsor the lunch.

About XPC

Xtreme Power Conversion (XPC)  is a privately owned American company,  Headquartered in Denver Colorado.  From their  manufacturing plants in China and Taiwan XPC provides state-of-the-art uninterruptable power supplies, rack power distribution units, and portable cooling products for a global network of Customer OEMs and distributors.  XPC manufactures UPS products from 400VA to 20kVA in size.

Please join us for this informative meeting.

Society of Broadcast Engineers