Posted November 17, 2023

Our Chapter 40 treasurer, Mark Fehlig   WA6NGC  has been elected as a Director at Large in the Mount Diablo Amateur Radio Club. Congratulations Mark.

Posted July 24, 2023

It was a big success…with a great turnout…funds raised….Pictures coming soon.

Station of the Year 2023 Lunch



Highlights

Plus SBE Chapter 40 was represented below:

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Posted: December 7, 2022

Tim Pozar was a guest on Leo La Porte’s Twit Network on Floss Weekly on December 7th

A wide variety of subjects were covered focusing on broadcast engineering contemporary digital technology in the multimedia age. Broadcast technology flashbacks were in the conversation as well

Brian David, Chief Engineer of KPFA, does his job completely remotely from his home in Pittsburgh PA. It’s a new era with the current state of today’s technology.

The on demand stream of Episode 710 from the Twit TV network link is now available on this page.

Even Leo LaPorte joined in the conversation after the the episode officially ended.

Posted: May 30, 2022

The California Historical Radio Society at their museum known as Radio Central in Alameda hosted a special event on May 18th covering the mostly technological history of American television. It is very comprehensive covering early 20th century through the 1970s. It is in two parts and each video runs about two hours.

Posted: January 7, 2021

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On Saturday, August 22nd a presentation premiered of the Bay Area Hall of Fame inductees and Don Sherwood Award winners of 2020. A tour of the new vintage radio control room at the California Historical Radio Society’s museum (Radio Central) in Alameda was a part of that event.

A detailed video tour of the control room will be available on this page soon.

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Posted: June 26, 2020

No to Digital AM

A new complicated format is not needed but digital tools can help improve analog AM by Frank Karkota ⋅

The author is a former engineer at WCRB(AM/FM), WSSH and WFGL/WFMP. He has also been a contract engineer and a manufacturer of SCA receivers and EAS equipment for television.

I am opposed to the digitization of the AM broadcast band and believe it would be a mistake. I have six reasons.

The first is personal. In the 1950s when I was a boy, I built my first radio. It was a very simple crystal set. It consisted of a coil which I hand-wound, a cat-whisker galena detector and a headphone. There were no capacitors. Living 10 miles from the nearest station, which was only 1,000 watts, no single station was very strong so I picked up a number of stations. One night, I even picked up Radio Moscow and the BBC. This was the beginning of my lifelong interest in radio.

When I was in high-school, I got my amateur license and built a number of AM receivers and transmitters for the ham bands. Had it not been for that crystal radio, which would not have worked with digital, I might never have had a career in radio.

The second reason is the simplicity of making both receivers and transmitter. AM radio can never die, just as long as there are books that explain the technology. Anybody, with a little knowledge and a few tools, can make a decent AM radio with readily available discreet components. With a little more knowledge it is easy to build a low-power AM transmitter. AM radio will always be there and the parts are readily available.

[Letter to the Editor: AM Stereo Is Still an Option]

Despite my lifelong work, both in receivers and transmitters, I could not build a digital receiver or transmitter with discrete parts. I doubt that the proponents of digital radio could either. It is just too complicated. In order to make either, you need sophisticated microprocessors and there are only a few companies that make them, most of which are in Asia. If the supply from Asia were cut off, it might be five to 10 years before new consumer digital receivers could be built with processors made in the USA.

Our technology is becoming too complex. When I was a teenager and had my first car, I could repair just about anything. I could diagnose ignition problems, adjust the carburetor, check the timing, you name it! Today, if a car fails, it must be taken to a garage with sophisticated diagnostic tools, and the sensors cost a fortune to replace. Do we want the same with our AM radios?

The third reason why we should not go digital is because of the remarkable advancements in receiver technology. New receivers use digital signal processing (DSP) for all functions from antenna coil to recovered audio. Basically, DSP receivers heterodyne the incoming signal to a low frequency using an image-rejecting mixer. The signal is digitized and then demodulated by a virtual receiver that is mathematically ideal. The recovered audio in digital form is applied to a digital to analog converter, then amplified, and to the speaker. Within this ideal receiver is software to remove most unwanted impulse noise.

I tried Silicon Labs Si4770 AM/FM receiver chip and the reception is spectacular! Adjacent channel rejection is 57 dB. Signal to noise ratio for 30% modulation is 60 dB. Total harmonic distortion at 90% modulation is 0.2%. Receiver bandwidth adjustable is 100 Hz to 15 kHz in 100 Hz steps or automatic, based upon strength of desired and adjacent channels. Since the passband is nearly flat, that translates to an audio bandwidth up to 7,500 Hz. One surprise is that during periods of selective fading, there is no distortion.

[Read More Guest Commentaries Here]

If you want to hear what DSP sounds like, get into a fairly new car and listen to the AM radio because most new cars use DSP. A number of Asian companies are making DSP integrated circuits for AM/FM radio. They are cheap and the radios use only the loop antenna and no other coils or filters. There is consistent performance from receiver to receiver and no alignment. To select the frequency, the radios can use a microcontroller or a potentiometer attached to a ruler dial. Within a few years, all radios will use DSP and the problem of poor quality radios will cease to exist. Most important, the AM band will still be compatible with existing radios and technology.

The fourth reason for rejecting digital is the poor recovered audio quality of digital radio. I tried a trial version of professional DRM transmitter software. The software provider included a bug that causes the software to fail after three minutes use, and then it has to be reset. I downloaded the “Dream Receiver,” a PC computer based receiver, to evaluate reception. Thus, I could compare DRM to AM. The DRM was very clean. No noise could be heard at any usable signal level. But the audio did not sound as good as AM.

The fifth reason for rejecting digital is that the listener would lose some listening options. If you have two stations, one AM and the other digital, they will both be noise-free near the transmitters. As you move away from the transmitters, the AM signal will become noisy, but the digital will remain clear. At some point the digital will disappear, but the AM signal will still be usable, albeit noisy.

I do not listen to a station because it is close or because it is strong, but because it has a program that I want to hear. I will tolerate some noise to listen to that program, but with digital, I will be forced to listen only to local stations whether I like the program or not, or I will not listen at all. Furthermore, sometimes stations fade in and out, partly because of propagation, but sometimes because of co-channel interference. If the station is AM, there will be a period of noise during the fade, but if it is digital, the station will cut out for the duration.

Finally, most car radios will need to be replaced to permit digital reception. I intend to keep my car for at least ten years. Will I have to buy a new car just to get traffic reports and possible emergency information? Or will I have to purchase an expensive replacement radio and go through the misery of disassembling the dashboard to make the change?

I can find no valid reason to replace the AM band with digital. For most people, it will provide no significant improvement in quality. It will greatly reduce the range of many stations, especially clear-channel stations. The listeners will have fewer choices because they will be limited only to local stations.

Radio World invites industry-oriented commentaries and responses. Send to Radio World.

Posted: May 26, 2020

KQED Ready Remote Radio Master Control

Station puts contingency plans in place for the future.

The author is Radio Marketing Specialist for Lawo AG.

Radio has always been a vital source of news and information when crises hit. California’s public broadcasters have traditionally been prepared for nearly any eventuality, such as disasters like earthquakes, floods and wildfires. And now they must be prepared to inform listeners during a pandemic as well.

In San Francisco, NPR member station KQED observed other stations in the U.S. where personnel were unable to access their facilities due to COVID-19 shutdowns, and took action to ensure remote access to their FM‘s Master Control Room and adjacent production facilities.

“We had to ask ourselves what we would do if one of our staff members tested positive for the virus. How would we produce our daily programming if the facilities were off-limits?” says Donny Newenhouse, executive director of broadcast engineering and operations at KQED.

“We knew we would need the ability to run our Master Control Room from a remote location. We also needed to remotely-control the three production studios where our daily call-in program, “Forum,” originates. All of these rooms have Lawo sapphire mixing consoles, so we called Lawo and asked – how can we do this?”

“There wasn’t an off-the-shelf solution to remote-control the sapphire consoles and also control the integrated networked systems, but our engineering staff had some ideas,” says Herbert Lemcke, key account manager/president, Lawo Corp. Americas. “A key aspect of the solution was to use KQED’s spare sapphire mixing surface as a remote for the one in MCR by using CANBus-to-IP converters to connect to and control the station’s console core and Nova73 router.”

KQED’s engineering space at Sutro Tower (the main transmission site for many Bay Area TV and FM stations) hosts the emergency remote setup, a solution already employed by KQED’s television operations, which have a backup TV Master Control at Sutro. Using the sapphire surface installed at the tower site, KQED’s operators can directly control the operation of the sapphire located in the station’s MCR for complete control of all satellite feeds and local programming sources.

The second part of the project — creating a “virtual studio” at Sutro for operators to produce the daily “Forum” call-in program — required a different kind of remote control. For this, Lemcke and Lawo R&D engineer Andreas Schlegel designed a touchscreen mixing console interface using Lawo’s VisTool GUI Building software.

This connects via IP from the Sutro Tower site to KQED’s downtown studios, which should give complete access to all mixing functions and console resources in the station’s three control rooms, including the codec pool, broadcast VoIP phone system, Dalet playout system — even talkback and mix-minus channels.

Lawo engineers were able to give KQED the solution they needed: the entire physical and virtual remote control solution was executed, tested and proofed in under a week’s time, and reports from operators on the virtual studio implementation have been very positive.

“With the combination of hardware remote control of Master Control, and VisTool virtual control of our studio mixing consoles, our contingency plans are in place and ready should we need them,” says Newenhouse. “But we hope we never will.”

April 7, 2020

In case you don’t already know, my consultancy with Belden will officially end on May 3, 2020.  I’ve put down a few days earlier in my signature below to give me some time to transfer between old and new emails.  If you want to stay in contact, use the data below.  I always said I would retire at 70, and that is only two months and 11 days later – got pretty close!  26 years with Belden, 2 ½ years consulting for then – not a bad track record.

My time with Belden has been the high point of my professional life and you were an important part of it.  Many thanks for your help and friendship.  If you go to any broadcast trade shows, check to see if I am in the show book. I will probably be selling my latest book.  (I have three in process at the moment.)  If any of you know a literary agent, I could use one!

If you need something to fill up your time waiting for the corona virus to pass, go check out my webpage.  Make you laugh.  Make you think.

This email address will change on May 1, 2020 to lampenstephen@gmail.com
Check out my web page  www.stevelampen.com
My consultancy with Belden officially ended on April 30, 2020

After April 30^th, for Belden questions, call 1-800-BELDEN-1 (1-800-235-3361)

December 5, 2019

The last Morse code maritime radio station in North America | Bartell’s Backroads (in Marin County)…….Read more

September 21, 2019

Chapter 40 President, Art Lebermann doing the honors of awarding the Bay Area Hall of Fame 2019 certificate in the Engineering category at the annual lunch at the Bask Cultural Center in South San Francisco on September 21st to Veldon Leverich of Salem Broadcasting.

May 24, 2019

A side car to the Dayton Hamvention 2019 in Zenia, Ohio was a v.i.p. field trip to iHeart Media’s WLW transmitter plant in Mason 40 miles to the south of Dayton just outside Cincinnati  on May 18th. From the 1920s Western Electric 7A, the 500kw RF amplifier, the cathanode home brew transmitter to the latest Harris solid state  3DX-50 were featured on a guided tour of this amazing facility of broadcast historical significance.

Our guides are big wigs in the broadcast engineering industry. Geoff Mendenhall W8GNM of Mendenhall LLC and Jay Adrick K8CJY, as well as Chief Engineer Ted Ryan W8SAI made  this special event a reality. Jay is out of retirement working for Gates Air on a part time basis as a technology and regulatory advisor with emphasis on TV spectrum repack.

However let us look at this amazing timeline of technology of WLW from it’s early beginning with that unique Blaw-Knox diamond shape tower with emphasis on that 500kw modulated amplifier. The 7A transmitter was the driver during those half a megawatt  test transmissions back in the 1930s.

No room in my carry-on for my Sony 4K camcorder so I shot the video with my Samsung Galaxy S10+. I did the post production when I got home. There are many YouTube videos on WLW. I just joined the crowd. This clip runs 53 minutes. Enjoy.

Dave Billeci

March 24, 2019

The word is out from Len Shappiro of the Bay Area Radio Museum that the KLIV four tower array has been dismantled at the Story Road location  in the Little Saigon district of San Jose. The original plan was  to relaunch the station according to owner Bog Kieve with a new format. That may not happen with no tower and transmitter and the property sold but there may be other media possibilities.

January 24, 2019

Empire Broadcasting has announced that Classic Country “Country Gold 1590” KLIV San Jose will sign-off at the end of this weekend.

In an on-air announcement, owner Bob Kieve stated that the station will go dark for awhile but the company intends to relaunch it with a new format.

From

More on KLIV going off the air from East Bay Times

KLIV’s last sign off on January 28. 2019—————————————————–

HOLLYWOOD SHOWS UP AT RADIO CENTRAL

Scenes from a documentary about Augustus Post, one of the founders of  The American Automobile Association  was shot mid January in the main exhibit room. CHRS volunteers assisted the Southern California based crew by creating an impressive  radio station announcer/control room set for the production with equipment in the CHRS  collection. The rack equipment meters were lit up, tapes loaded on the recorders, and red light emitting diodes installed inside the Collins transmitter. On the day of the first shoot, all windows were blacked out for set lighting management  for the crew.

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    The Sony 7600 receiver….Imperfection Detector

FROM:

Broadcast Equipment Isn’t Perfect New and legacy can have faults that must be watched out for by John Schmidt Our debate over annual NRSC mask testing continues and expands a little. John Schmidt, chief engineer of Peconic Public Broadcasting’s WPPB in Southampton, N.Y., has this response. I’d actually be more concerned about harmonics and true spurs than compliance with the “close in” mask. I’m of two minds about testing. I’d like to think that today’s gear is reliable enough and designed so as to make routine tests unnecessary. But there is a lot of not so “today’s” stuff out there still on the air. And a couple of examples from perhaps 20 to 30 years ago that may or may not be pertinent. Some years ago I was listening to the shortwave bands on my Sony 7600 at a relative’s about 200 miles from home. By chance, I tuned to 2480 kHz. There was a very strong signal from a station licensed for 1240 kHz — 200 miles away! The 1240 fundamental was nowhere to be heard, buried in co-channel junk. But the second harmonic provided a great signal far beyond their usual coverage area! I called up the chief, a friend. “Oh, impossible, it must be propagation.” Well, it wasn’t and he soon repaired it. But how long was that second harmonic there? Who knows? He never got cited by the FCC. A few years earlier, I was tuning my (analog, that dates it) car radio around the FM band and picked up a local class A all up and down the dial. My first thought was intermod in the radio. But when I got home and heard the same thing on my receiver there, again, I called the chief. “Oh, your receiver is overloaded.” But it turned out that their brand new synthesized exciter from one of the big name manufacturers had a little problem. Momentary power hits would put it in “all kinds of spurs” mode, until it was power cycled. It took the manufacturer several attempts at mods to put this one to bed. So there is something to be said for occasional measurements. How often? I don’t know.

From
Take a Tour of an Abandoned Radio Studio

According to the FCC database, WHJJ(AM) in  Providence R.I. is licensed to Capstar TX (iHeart) as debtor in possession. It’s still broadcasting at 920 kHz with 5 KW day and night but from where?
The video tour guide has no experience with the broadcast industry but the presentation was interesting.

From George Thomas W5JDX of Amateur Logic TV…..

Clyde Haehnle, Remembering WLW 500 KW Super Power and Building VOA Bethany Relay Station. Recorded May 17, 2014 at the National VOA Museum of Broadcasting. Clyde was the last surviving engineer from the WLW 500 KW era. His stories recount some of the major achievements in broadcasting during it’s heyday.

From Radio Magazine….

If you’ve ever been curious about the set up of a Bauer 707 transmitter, here’s a chance to peek inside with a series of still images, accompanied by a stirring sound track.

Video creator and ham radio operator Philip Neidlinger writes, “I commenced the ultimate mad science project to end all projects approximately mid-February 2017. The Bauer 707 is now on the air and sounding great. The current transmitter output is 250 W carrier into an inverted vee at 50′ (apex).”

Also, be sure to keep an eye out for an unexpected cameo from one of cinema’s most famous movie villains.