The Newsletter of Crawford Broadcasting Company Corporate Engineering
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The Newsletter of Crawford Broadcasting Company Corporate Engineering JUNE 2018 • VOLUME 28 • ISSUE 6 • W.C. ALEXANDER, CPBE, AMD, DRB EDITOR The Roller Coaster the detriment of possible future LPFMs. I could The past years have been a roller coaster paraphrase the gist of the objection with the when it comes to translators, highs and lows, ecstasy playground rant, “Not fair not fair not fair!” The and agony. The AM Revitalization translator objectors seem to believe that parity between the windows have provided us with a vehicle to attach number of authorized translators and LPFMs is a FM signals to most of our AMs. That’s the ecstasy. requirement of the LCRA. Really? Next thing you The agony has come in battling translator know, these LPFM folks will be insisting that they interference to our should get kilowatt full-power FM power and waivers signals and trying on adjacent-channel to mitigate protections. interference to While I other FMs by our haven’t always translators. I can’t agreed with FCC say it’s been fun, lawyers, I do but it has been believe they are “interesting,” and I sharp and on top of mean in the their game, and I Chinese proverb cannot believe that sense! they simply forgot Right now, about the LCRA. we are in the midst This belief is of the technical further borne out by settlement filing the recently window for released NPRM Auction 100 dealing with mutually exclusive (MX) groups (May 24 – June 14). translator interference resolution (MB Docket No. We believed that with the cooperation of our fellow 18-119), where the LCRA is mentioned in the MX-group applicant, Genesee Media, we would discussion therein. quickly be clear of the MX status in Rochester and be We’ll have to wait and see whether this good to go both there and in Buffalo. But not so, said objection throws a monkey wrench into the works or the Prometheus Radio Project et al, who filed an whether the FCC will dismiss it. Hopefully it will be informal objection to both our Buffalo and Rochester the latter. My sense is that Prometheus et al want the translator applications along with about 1,000 others. FCC to unwind every translator grant since 2014, I’ve read the Prometheus objection and am including all from the AM Revitalization translator still shaking my head. They say that the FCC has windows. (Not fair!!) totally ignored or forgotten about the requirements of On another matter, last month we filed a the Local Community Radio Act (LCRA) since 2014 formal petition to deny on Moody’s Chicago 106.3 and allowed a “giant spectrum grab” by translators to MHz translator application. If allowed to go on the 1 The Local Oscillator June 2018 air, that translator will impact a large area where we audio improvements with transmitter replacements, currently have listeners in northwest Chicago. Our but clearly the Nautel GV5 sounds better than the BE petition included a list of listeners that we had FMi703. A lot of that is likely the exciter, but there is identified internally who live and listen in the overlap evidently also some improvement in the area, and I did an undesired-to-desired study on each, PA/combiner scheme as well, as the station covers showing that none of them would get anywhere close better with the new transmitter (a more solid signal in to the -20 dB ratio required for interference-free fringe areas). reception of our station. The jury is still out in terms of improvement Of course Moody filed a response, asking factors on the GV3.5 at WXJC-FM in Birmingham. the FCC to defer action on our petition until the new That transmitter replaced a 2004 Nautel FM5 with translator interference resolution rules go into effect the NE50 exciter. We also replaced the audio and then deal with any actual interference under processor there with a very top of the line unit and those new rules. The trouble is, while we know what fed its output to the transmitter using AES192 digital has been proposed, we don’t really know what those composite, so there were several improvement factors rules will be. The 54 dBu threshold is much in debate in play that we cannot really separate out (transmitter, and will (hopefully) be changed before the NPRM exciter, audio processor and interface). I can say this becomes law. – that station is as good as it can possibly be right Besides that, we don’t want the Moody now. We expect great things from it. translator to come on the air at all, because that will We are in the process of replacing our 2003- without a doubt cause a bunch of interference and vintage Omnia5.EX and Omnia6.EX with Omnia.9 could well impact some PPM data that will hit us top-of-the-line audio processors for AM and right in the wallet. Omnia.11 processors for FM. These are amazing We’re on solid ground here, so we fully units. In the past few weeks, we installed Omnia.9s in expect the FCC to follow its current rules and keep Denver and Los Angeles – with amazing results! this translator from coming on the air. Still, it’s an We started all this several months ago when irritation to have to deal with this, especially from an we installed Omnia.9s at all four AMs in Detroit and entity that should be practicing “do unto others” as a on WDCZ(AM) in Buffalo, also with amazing matter of routine. results. Brian Kerkan developed the processing presets that we are using at KBRT, in Detroit, Transmitters and Processors Buffalo and on the talk stations in Denver. Our We are right now in the midst of a wave of corporate hat is off to Brian for this! equipment replacement/upgrades, including two In Birmingham, we also upgraded the audio transmitters in Detroit and audio processors processing on WDJC-FM and WYDE-FM with throughout the company. We also just replaced the Omnia.11s, also feeding the digital exciters for those main transmitter at WSRB in Chicago and at WXJC- stations with “Omnia Direct” AES192 digital FM in Birmingham. composite. Stephen Poole was impressed, and if he’s The difference in the on-air sound at WSRB impressed, I am impressed! All three FMs in was reported to be very noticeable, a big Birmingham now have the latest-greatest and have improvement over the way the 2003-vintage BE set the bar for the whole market. Try and catch us! solid-state digital transmitter. No change was made in By this time next month, we should have all the audio processor at that site, so the improvement the AM processors that were slated for replacement was all transmitter. We normally don’t associate swapped out. 2 The Local Oscillator June 2018 The New York Minutes By Brian Cunningham, CBRE Chief Engineer, CBC – Western New York Hello to all from Western New York! What no matter how high you set the thermostat. In all a difference a month makes! Back in mid-April, we probability, the motor has failed, but I won’t rule out were still experiencing snow in Western New York. a broken drive belt. In either event, it will be an easy This month, we’ve had the fix, and will help immensely extreme opposite, heat, and with evacuating heat from lots of it! Just before this inside the transmitter report went to press, we had building. For the moment, several days in the 90s with while we await replacement oppressive humidity to go of the compressor, I have a along with the extreme borrowed portable A/C unit temperatures. I realize that to running in the building. our compatriots in the Last month, in both southern states, this is no big of our markets, we deal ‒ they live with experienced some very excessive temperatures strange behavior with the months on end. In the Nexgen automation. It Northeast, we aren’t geared would randomly stop at the for this kind of weather, and end of a spot break or voice when it happens, bad things occur. track element. You could start the next item in the In Rochester, at our AM station, we lost log; it would run fine for hours, and then halt again. commercial power due to excessive draw on the That’s not a big deal while someone is manning the power grid, in all probability due to large numbers of control board, but it was a big issue when it happened air conditioners trying to cool down homes and during overnight hours when no one was there. businesses in the area. Once power was restored, the Nexgen technical support spent several hours going AM transmitter would not stay on at full power. It through the logs, trying to find the cause of the would fold back power with a VSWR fault. In low stoppages. To make a long story short, the cause was power (night mode, at half power), it would stay on found to be a Windows automatic update that dealt with no faults occurring. I will shortly be heading to with time management. I am not sure of the logistics the WDCX(AM) transmitter site trying to find the of the update, but it conflicted with Nexgen’s cause of the faults. Hopefully, it will not be a major procedure for updating time to all the audio servers component failure, I’ll report on my findings in next and workstations. month’s report.