The Newsletter of Crawford Broadcasting Company Corporate Engineering AUGUST 2017 • VOLUME 27 • ISSUE 8 • W.C. ALEXANDER, CPBE, AMD, DRB EDITOR Auction 99 announced in which MX applicants can work As we slide into the last full month of together to eliminate the MX situation. One option summer, we also slide into a couple of projects that may be minor engineering changes (site change, have been pending for months now. pattern/power change or whatever). If we can’t do On July 26, the FCC opened a translator that, applicants can settle among themselves, which auction window for class C and D AM stations that would presumably result in one or more applicants did not participate in either of the prior AM translator withdrawing their applications, leaving one grantable filing windows. This is a short window – it closes on singleton application. August 2. If applicants in an MX group cannot resolve Our company had only one station eligible the MX situation by minor technical amendment or for this window, WRDT in the Detroit market (class settlement, then the facility will go up for auction, D). We could have filed a 250-mile move-in and the individual applicants will have to bid on it. application for a translator for WRDT, but with its I am obviously hoping that there were no transmitter site some 50 miles south of the city and at other eligible class C or D AM stations in the area the time a 25-mile radius (from the AM site) limit on that (a) did not participate in one of the first two the translator’s 60 dBu contour, it was simply not FMX filing windows, and (b) want a translator. worthwhile to spend the money on a translator It’s not an easy thing to search the FCC’s purchase and move-in to provide FM service to a few database for the primary station in a translator record cows and chickens. – you have to open the Form 349 application and With the 25-mile radius no longer a factor look in there. Nevertheless, I did look. I came up with for WRDT (the station’s 2 mV/m contour covers the a list of three AM stations in the area that appear to entire Detroit market), we can put a translator right be eligible. Of those, two have the potential to be in up in the city – that is, if we can find a frequency. competition with WRDT for a translator frequency I started looking at a particular frequency, (by virtue of their 2 mV/m contour distances). We’ll one we have a bit of a history with, months ago when see. the auction window was first announced, and I found Hopefully by next month’s issue of these that I could indeed make that channel work from the pages, we will know what, if anything, we are up centrally-located WMUZ tower site. Week after against. week, just about every time I updated my FM database from CDBS, I would check to see if the WCHB channel was still available. Right up through the start It has been a long work in progress, but of the freeze on July 19, it was, so when the auction we’re now coming down the home stretch to closing window opened the following week, I filed the short- on WCHB in Detroit. This 50 kW blowtorch uses form application. four towers day and ten (!!!) at night to blast the At this point, I don’t know whether any Detroit market with a first-class AM signal. It will be other applicants have filed mutually-exclusive a great addition to our cluster there. (“MX”) applications. The FCC will at some point in Once we close, the real work begins. I plan the coming weeks issue a public notice listing all the to order a new Nautel NX50 transmitter immediately. MX applications. A settlement window will be The existing late-1990s vintage Harris DX50 will 1 The Local Oscillator August 2017 mid-October. That is totally dependent on equipment delivery and installation schedules. Obviously, we cannot install what we do not have, and it will take a few weeks to get things up and running once we do get the equipment. Tower crew scheduling is another wild card. We plan to install a backup data link (internet) at the site, so we may be able to go on the air using that link if we don’t have the microwave link up and running. We’ll have an update in next month’s issue, hopefully all good news on getting this great station assimilated into our operation. Several of WCHB's ten towers on a foggy day in January. KCBC Wheatnet slide into auxiliary service. That transmitter has a Steve Minshall has just about wrapped up history of module issues. We want to go on the air the partial conversion of KCBC to Wheatnet’s AOIP with a solid, reliable, full-power signal. platform. I say “partial” because at this point, it’s just Next on the list is a Trango Apex Lynx 11 the control room, Nexgen on-air workstation, audio GHz microwave link from the studio to the WCHB server and streaming encoder. The production room site. We already have the FCC permit for this, so conversion will come at some point in the future. we’re good to order equipment and schedule tower The Audioarts D75 on-air board was getting work to install and path the system. We will put the pretty long in the tooth at KCBC, and we had studio end of the link on the WMUZ tower at the budgeted for a replacement this year. Going any way studio. At the transmitter site, the dish will go on other than AOIP just didn’t make sense, so we made tower #3, where there is already a 6-foot 950 MHz the jump into Wheatnet, establishing the grid antenna (which we will take down). We will also infrastructure that we can build on in the future as we have to install a lighting choke at the tower base to convert the production room and its Nexgen couple 120V AC power onto the tower for the workstation. microwave radio (the 162-foot WCHB towers are This is particularly important as more and unlit and have no power on the structures). more equipment becomes Wheatnet enabled. No At the studio, we have to install a new audio I/O; just connect it to the Wheatstone AOIP station license on our Nexgen system and add an network and the device is “wired in.” audio server and Wheatstone blade. We also need to decide what codecs we plan to use to get the audio National EAS Test out to the new AM site. FEMA recently announced the date for the Brian Kerkan and I have been kicking next national EAS test – September 27. A secondary around the idea of putting a blade at the transmitter date – October 4 – was announced in case there were site and transporting the audio that way. That would some actual emergency taking place on September save us the cost of one codec, and it would be elegant 27. in that we could simply map the output of the audio In preparation for this test, I have opened a server blade program bus to the blade at the single ETRS account for our entire company. In transmitter site. The challenge will be integrating the accordance with the new procedure, the results of the VLAN for Wheatnet’s class C network with the other test for every station in the company will be reported network traffic for the transmitter site over the single, under that one account, which will make things much bandwidth-limited (47 MBPS) microwave link data easier for me. pipe. We would need a rather sophisticated switch, In the coming weeks, make certain that you such as a Cisco 2960, on each end to merge, split and have the latest firmware revision in your ENDEC manage the traffic. Brian is going to try this on the units, that you have a good connection to IPAWS and bench in the coming days to see if we can make it good signals from your over-the-air sources, and that work. you are getting good weekly tests from each of these At this point, assuming we close early this sources. month, we are anticipating a sign-on date of early to 2 The Local Oscillator August 2017 The New York Minutes By Brian Cunningham, CBRE Chief Engineer, CBC – Western New York Hello to all from Western New York! It has particular show or event. been a while since we last visited here. Last month I Installing and programming the Wheatnet was on vacation in Kentucky close to months’ end, system went practically flawlessly! I am so thankful and did not have enough that Cris, Amanda and a host time to submit my “New of others put together a York Minutes” for July. As practical ‘step by step’ of this writing, I am on instructional white paper for vacation again! However, I the installation and am at home, enjoying my programming steps. We had time off, so this will give me very little communication a chance to fill you in on all (questions) on how to get the activities for the past everything talking and couple of months in the interacting together with Buffalo and Rochester CBC NexGen, thanks to the markets. wonderful job our corporate As you may recall, engineer did in documenting we began a rather large each and every step.