SBE CHAPTER 40 NEWSLETTER
NOVEMBER 1998
SAN FRANCISCO
Roy Trumbull - Editor roy547@netcom.com
Bill Dempster - Artist
Advertisers for this month's newsletter are:
Zack Electronics - (800) 998-3947
Advanced Marketing - Frank A. Santucci - (650) 365-3944
Riggins Electronics Sales - George Riggins - (662) 598-7007
Orban - Rick Sawyer - (360) 715-1913
MARCOM - Martin Jackson - (408) 768-8668
William F. Ruck, Jr. Broadcast Engineer - (415) 995-6969
Communications Law Center - Philip M. Kane - (650) 369-7373
RF Specialties of California - Bill Newbrough - (888) 737-7321
Hammett & Edison, Inc. - Dane E. Ericksen, P.E. - (707) 996-5200
LeBLANC - David A. Hill - (650) 574-4600
Pacific Research & Engineering Corp. - William Hopkins - (760) 438-3911 Keith Davidson & Company - Keith Davidson, CSBE - (707) 648-0412
Improbable Missions Fource - Mike Schweizer - (888) 4-ISDN4U
Svetlana Electron Devices - George Badger - (800) 578-3852
TFT Inc. - Jesse J. Piatte, Jr. - (408) 727-7272 x504
Audio Accessories - Rosie Alexander - (510) 787-3335
Brill Electronics - Marcie Mearns / Field Sales - (510) 308-1248
Brill Electronics - Larry Shore / Inside Sales - (510) 834-5888
Scala - Michael Wm. Bach - (541) 779-6500
Scala - Everett E. Helm, CPBE - (541) 779-6500
Harris - Ed Longcrier - (800) 315-7285
Anixter - Judy Conner - (510) 489-7430
 

BABES/SBE LUNCHEON ON WEDNESDAY Nov 25TH
This month our program quest will be Kathleen Imhoff speaking about the Contra Costa C.A.E.R. system that covers refinery row in the east bay. Many of us have EAS units provided by CAER.

As usual our luncheon will be at Sinbad's. Sinbad's is just south of the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero near the foot of Mission Street. Please RSVP to Karen Prasek at Zack's: 408-324-0551 x126 as we've been running out of tables and chairs. We meet at 11:30 and are seated at 12:30.

Future Meetings
Sutro DTV Antenna Installed
On a foggy Nov. 4th the DTV antenna was installed in the middle of the face of the tower. It looks like a skinny pencil. Noting its red/white paint job someone called it a candy cane. Much has been made of its 12 ton weight. Please note that the tower itself weighs 3.5 million pounds and that the base contains 12 million pounds of concrete. The first phase of the project was to strengthen the tower per Klein tower. The design underwent extensive review by the city.

The power splitting tees to divide power between each pair of 4 bay sections are being installed and it is expected that someone will be on the air before Thanksgiving.

The design permits the 10 Sutro stations to share 4 antennas. The combiners aren't on site. When they arrive, we will have to shut down so they can be installed.

Because of the NABET lockout, a sanitized gate was established at Sutro so that work could go on at the other stations. The electricians and plumbers won't work in the mouse room.

At KRON we have something of a history-maker in our transmitter room. It's the driver that was recently demonstrated on-air at the Canadian Association of Broadcasters show in Vancouver.

We're waiting for a filter from Dielectric before we go on the air with that unit driving our IOT.

KTVU has their NDS encoder at the transmitter so they will be on the air any day now.

NO MORE EAS PINKY
The FCC did away with the pink EAS authenticator list, so don't expect one next year.

TFT claims they are Y2K EAS good guys. (Now if I can just get mine to stop telling me no test has run the past week when one has run.) Sage admits to an erroneous year display with some versions of software but they will be glad to sell you an update.

10 Million Pie Plates
The latest industry count on DSS dishes is 8 to 10 million depending on who is doing the counting. Back in August DirecTV, Primestar, and others cut off everyone's network service if they were in a red zipcode. It didn't matter if the network cut off was part of the original lawsuit or not. It was a pretty blatant election year ploy. I average about 15 waiver request a day and the bulk of them are either over the horizon or behind triple rock. But they are in red zipcodes. Go figure.

Starting Sept 1st , Echostar (aka DISH network) started carrying the Fox, NBC, CBS, and ABC affiliates in 20 markets including San Francisco. There is a bill pending in Congress to legitimize that service.

I've received several requests from business sites, such as hotels, for a waiver. There is no provision for granting such a waiver under the Satellite Home Viewing Act. The people marketing DSS services to commercial sights don't seem to be aware of that.

I remember the horse drawn cart
I called a supplier the other day to get a hard-drive. I only needed a couple of gig. Such critters are not to be found anymore. The smallest they had was a 6 gig for $209. Seems to me I paid $300 for 100 megs not so long ago.

Anyone need a TRS-80 with 48K of memory? I'll throw in the cassette recorder for loading the software.

EMAIL ADDRESS
If you have an email address, please contact Warren Reese at radions@jps.net. Warren is in charge of our email list, which we use when we need to notify members when something has happened between newsletters.

WEB PAGE
Webmeister Tim Pozar has the current newsletter plus newsletters all the way back to 1996 at: http://www.lns.com/sbe