SBE CHAPTER 40 NEWSLETTER

OCTOBER 1997

SAN FRANCISCO

Roy Trumbull - Editor roy547@netcom.com

Bill Dempster - Artist


BABES/SBE LUNCHEON ON WEDNESDAY OCT 29TH

This month our speaker will be Marc Stringer from Belden. Marc will have some new catalogs and talk about new twisted pair cable and smaller coax with high performance.
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.


WEB PAGES

The chapter 40 web page is at http://www.lns.com/sbe.


EMAIL MEISTER

The keeper of the chapter 40 email address list is Warren Reese his address is radions@jps.net. Please note the new email address. Warren worked for the KPH in Bolinas which was one of the last coastal Morse sites. He has photos of KPH on his web page at http://www.jps.net/radions.


SMPTE TUTORIALS

Nov 8th - Living in the Modern World of MPEG-2
The presenters are Dr. Paul Farrelle of Zapex Technologies, Jean-Georges Fritsch of Minerva. This is at Stanford.
For more complete details visit the SMPTE site at: http://members.aol.com/SMPTEsf/index.html and click on seminars.
The single seminar price will be $29 for SMPTE members and $39 for SBE members. Non- members rate is $59. The entire series is $89 for SMPTE members, $129 for SBE members, and $179 for non-members.
Make checks payable to SMPTE S.F. 1997 Tutorials and mail to: Andrew Zeyer, Finance Manager, SMPTE, 595 W. Hartsdale Av., White Plains, NY 10607-1824.


WEB PAGES TO NOTE

http://www.transmitter.com/ is Doug Lung's RF Technology Page. Doug writes the RF articles for TV Technology. He has a collection of his articles, which are always interesting, plus files of important information. For example he has the FCC document on DTV channels assignments arranged by state.

http://www.garlic.com/oes/eas.htm is Stan Harder's state OES site. Stan keeps all the latest state EAS information there.

http://www.belden.com/ is obvious. Question, dear friends in radio land,...is there a rock group known as "Twisted Pair"?

http://www.afcce.org/index.html is the site for the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers. You often can find some interesting papers posted there.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ is the site for the National Weather Service.

Harold Hallikainen has his FCC rules site back up. Part 73 can be found at: http://slonet.org/~hhallika/FccRules.html


ENTERTAINMENT

When people find out I work in TV they are often shocked to find that my knowledge of current programming is minimal. When laughtracks became the norm for sitcoms, I stopped watching them. I consider sport's playoffs to be rip-offs. I stopped watching professional football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. So what do I watch? It ain't electronic.

Every third Sunday of the month I squeeze into the Contra Costa Civic Theater in El Cerrito and pay my $4.00 to see the latest episode of "The Good Lawyer", a sitcom written by Mark Wimple. The show is in its third year and the citizens turn out in force.

Lawyer George Willoughby is a recent emigre to San Francisco from North Dakota. He's brought his hand cranked telephone and pictures of Lincoln with him.

His repeat client is Mrs. Worthington, who does with her Mercedes what soldiers do with tanks. In a recent episode the Transamerica pyramid leaped into Montgomery street and attacked her car. Her last victim was "Crash" the bike messenger. George's immediate neighbors are Constantine, who figured out his flat had been burglarized because his shampoo bottles were out of order, and Spike, the barrel chested leather wearing "Hey Dude!" biker lady.

Also appearing in most episodes are Moonbeam, the archetypal hyper crystal gazing new age freak ; Dominique Le Noir - the neighborhood vampire; Boris - Dominique's hunchback; Neville Hastings - an overacting Shakespearean actor of the Errol Fynn variety who usually leaps down the stairs brandishing a sword; William Clark - the bad lawyer and villain in some of the stories. Last but not least there is Stan "the handy man" who appears out of nowhere with a white fright wig and a cheap cigar. George is the only one who can see him.

The audience is part of the show. They applaud entrances and exits of their favorites and roundly hiss Clark when he appears on stage. The show is a hoot. So who needs TV?