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May 2021 Local Oscillator The Newsletter of Crawford Broadcasting Company Corporate Engineering MAY 2021 • VOLUME 31 • ISSUE 5 • W.C. ALEXANDER, CPBE, AMD, DRB EDITOR Change transmitter (it was a strange setup), caught fire. We The past 12 months have been some of the managed to stay on the air at reduced power using most dynamic of my lifetime. Thinking back to the one of the towers for months while repairs were “normalcy” of the early part of 2020 and the zoo that made. was the rest of the year and beyond, I am truly In 1995, a very active time for expansion in amazed. our company, we acquired KUPL and its unique The pandemic was the catalyst in all this, mountaintop three-tower site. A control room was and many of the changes in our personal lives, our built out and we began operating under the KKPZ work lives and the world, came about in reaction – callsign from the new site. That signal was a little many would say overreaction – to that. But there further up the dial and transmitted the same power as have been other changes as well. Everything is KPHP, but it’s directional pattern was much more related, I realize that, so one could accurately say that favorable and did a better job of covering the the pandemic has, to some degree, been responsible Portland-Vancouver market. for most of the societal and many of the technological When the expanded band opened, KPHP and infrastructure changes that we are seeing today. was nearly at the top of the list of interferers, and that Contrast the world around you to, say, February of was how expanded band allocations were originally 2020, and it’s glaringly apparent. Interesting, isn’t it, awarded – those existing stations that caused the how we have adapted and now consider as “normal” most interference could, if they were willing, get a the things at which we would have been alarmed a CP for an expanded band station provided that they little more than a year ago. agreed to sunset their analog station after a few years. We agreed and built out 1640, then KKJY, later Portland Changes changed to KPBC (now KDZR), putting it on the air Moving beyond pandemic changes (and I in April of 1998 as a diplexed operation at the KKPZ really hope we are), we are dealing with other kinds site. of change within our industry and our company. The On the sundown date in 2003, we dutifully end of last month, on April 30, we shut down KKPZ took KPHP off the air and submitted the license as in Portland, taking it silent as we consider our options required. Many other expanded band station owners for the station and real estate. petitioned the FCC to allow them to keep their Crawford has been on the air in Portland regular band stations, at least for a time, and the FCC since 1992, when we purchased KLVS (yes, all Elvis, went along. That issue is still somewhat pending and all the time) on 1290. The format was changed to was addressed to some degree in the FCC’s AM Christian talk and the callsign changed to KPHP, Revitalization Proceeding in recent years. Portland’s Home of Praise, immediately upon In 2003, we sold the KPBC to Disney. They closing. We built out riverfront studios and offices ran it for a number of years with their Radio Disney and continued to operate from a three-tower format with the KDZR callsign, and then sold it in a directional site shared with a 50 kW station on 1520 group sale to Salem in 2015. Salem continues to (now KQRR). That diplexed operation had its operate the station, and it continues to share tower #3 challenges, and at one point the center tower tuning of the KKPZ three-tower directional array at the Mt. house, which also housed the 1520 phasor and our Scott site. 1 The Local Oscillator May 2021 All that is to say that we gave it a good 29- written in Fortran 77. Much of that source code was year run in Portland. No one can say we didn’t give it made available to the consulting engineering our best. We regret that it has come to the point community, including yours truly. Decades ago, I where we must take the station dark. compiled this source code into executable files that While the factors that have brought us to this ran just fine in the DOS environment and even in 32- point, I must say that a major contributing factor is an bit Windows 7 systems. But Windows 8 and 10 Oregon property tax that amounts to a money grab by changed all that with the elimination of that DOS the state and pulls into the calculation revenues for compatibility, requiring us to use DOS emulators to the entire company. That is hardly fair for a little AM run these programs – which still give “correct” station, or any other small business that is affiliated answers that the FCC can’t really argue with. with a larger corporate entity. In this case, the tax One program that I use in modeling grab made it impossible to continue to operate the antennas, antenna systems and RF circuits uses station economically. I suspect that we will see more Adobe Air as its OS, and Adobe has ditched it. It is and more of this kind of thing in liberal states where still available from Harman, but we (Amanda, really huge amounts of tax revenue are needed to pay for – I just nodded, smiled and offered my gratitude) had social programs. to figure out a convoluted procedure that included So where do we go from here with regard to setting permissions and changing the system date to KKPZ? I don’t have a clear answer, other than to say some point in the past to get the program successfully that we are looking at all our options. installed. The list goes on and on, and there are more Computer Changes and more hoops to jump through to get with a new Getting a new computer with the latest computer to the point where we were with the old processor, loads of RAM and plenty of solid-state computer with each new generation of equipment. drive storage, is fun. Or it should be. Actually, it’s While I speak here of my own experience something that I generally dread, because so many of changing out an office computer or notebook, the the important programs that I use are now downloads same difficulties are in play for replacing/upgrading and obtaining current download links, registration Nexgen hardware. The support folks at RCS are numbers and the like is a major pain (if not continually scrambling to keep up with all the impossible in some cases). There are a lot of these, continuous OS changes. I can say the same for apps that I need to effectively do my job, so it’s no Wheatstone, and no doubt Axia and others. Even minor thing. Nautel has been caught by the demise of Flash. And then there are the out of publication Thankfully they have come out with an interim apps that we still use. For example, our primary base solution as we all eagerly await an html solution. map source is DeLorme Topo NorthAmerica. Many more have also had to deal with the DeLorme is long out of business, soaked up by discontinuation of Flash and other platforms. Garming at some point in the past if I recall correctly. Overall, with each new generation of And while I have the installation DVDs for the computer hardware and operating system, we get a program, if I have any installation issues, I’m out of better product with more capability and speed, but luck. Thankfully I did, after some difficulty, get this there is pain in the process of making the change. I’m excellent mapping program successfully installed. very glad that I’m through with it for this go-around And then there are the OS changes that and won’t (or shouldn’t) have to mess with it for obsolete certain applications. For many years, the several more years. FCC used mainframe computers and programs 2 The Local Oscillator May 2021 The New York Minutes By Brian Cunningham, CBRE Chief Engineer, CBC – Western New York Hello to all from Western New York! The Once the parts came in, I began changing month of April seems to be catch-up month, as I have them out, which went without any problems. The been busy completing several projects that have been issues began when I tried to begin the tuning process lurking for quite some time. at the WDCZ transmitter Last year, I site. With two full-time 5 removed an Audioarts D-75 kW stations on the air at that console from WPTR in site, the test equipment being Albany to be re-used in one used for the frequency of our Rochester production change was being swamped rooms. It was to replace a with RF, making the tuning Mackie 24-channel procedure all but impossible. production mixer that had Fast forward been in service for 19 years. several months… we moved The Mackie served us well the transmitter to its final for all these years, but we location at the WDCX(AM) needed to have the ability to transmitter site in Rochester provide adequate back-up to complete the tuning should we experience a process. There, we catastrophic failure in the main air studio, and the experienced the same interference from the main Mackie just couldn’t provide us with everything we Nautel ND-5 that was on the air.
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