SBE CHAPTER 40 NEWSLETTER

SBE CHAPTER 40 NEWSLETTER
FEBRUARY 1999
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
Belden - Steve Lampen - (415) 440-8393
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 - John Briskie - (650) 593-1837
Anixter - Judy Conner - (510) 489-7430

BABES/SBE LUNCHEON ON WEDNESDAY Feb 24TH
Our speaker will be Sheldon Gordon from Sony Corp. regarding upgrading the studio to DTV. Sony DTV converters and receivers will also be covered.

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 Carol Brahney at Zacks: 408-324-0551 x324 (cbrahney@zackinc.com). We meet at 11:30 and are seated at 12:30.

Future Meetings

March - NDS encoders for DTV
April - Dessert after desert (NAB spoken here)
May - Using GPS as precision reference
June - Marty Jackson - The California Microwave Twinstream. 8VSB and (what's-its-name?) over the same link.

SMILE, A SATELLITE TOOK YOUR PICTURE Ray Smith at KCSM came up with a marvelous site for those of us in latitudes 37 and 38 and longitudes 121 and 122. Set your browser to http://badger.parl.com/locators/latlong/

By plugging in the numbers, you'll retrieve a satellite photo of the location with a resolution of 1 meter.

They will take NAD 27 or NAD 83 numbers. I found my building but haven't had much luck with mountain tops other than Sutro.

A GPS box usually puts out NAD 83 numbers and they need to be converted to NAD 27 for use on FCC applications. (Thank you Dane Ericksen for that tip.)

[My favorite satellite photo site is produced by Microsoft known as the Teraserver - Tim Pozar]

My contribution to your site list is:

http://www.nwbuildnet.com/nwbn/mapservice.html

At that site you can plug in a zip code and get back a latitude and longitude for the location. At present it just handles 5 digit zip codes.

GEEK WANTED Why waste words. I got this long job announcement from Cal-State Hayward and that's what it boils down to. Knows everything; fixes everything.

#99-012 EQUIPMENT SYSTEMS SPECIALIST (Staff Engineer), 
Media and Technology Services, 
Full-time (40hrs/wk), 
$3348 - 4390/mo. 
Hours: T-Th 1:30PM - 10:00PM, Fri 10:00AM - 6:30PM, Sat 8:30AM - 5:00PM

The closing date was Feb 12 but I'd give it a try as living breathing geeks are hard to come by. They didn't supply a phone number or an address.

Time to Light Up KTVU and KRON are about to answer the question: "Can you really use adjacent channels and get away with it?" They're on 56 and we're on 57 and we haven't been on together but we will be. KBHK is getting set to operate on 45 and that will be the first local DTV-NTSC combination. One other pair due this fall is KPIX ch29 (already on) and KQED ch30.

One report I've heard is that the harmonics from an IOT are a function of the way the beam forms rather than how much drive is used. I'm looking forward to Doug Lung's 2nd article on IOTs in TV Technology.

Another open question is just how much filter do you really need? KTVU, KRON, KPIX, and KGO have harmonic filters, the Dielectric waffle iron filters, and channel filters. How little can you get use and still meet the spec?

SBE ANNOUNCES MILLENNIUM CERTIFICATION PROJECT If you were certified at the Technologist, Broadcast Engineer, or Senior Broadcast Engineer level and let the expiration run past the grace period, you have until year end to apply for reinstatement of your certification. The application form requires a statement of why you think you should receive re-certification as well as other information to determine your qualifications. There is a fee of $99. Please contact me for an application form.

We sent a copy of the announcement to everyone on our chapter email list and also posted it on the Web Site.

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

Good News - Bad News The good news is that there is a microwave system that will permit sending NTSC and DTV over the same link. The bad news is that there are no rules to permit digital transmission on 7 or 13 gig.