Broadcast Writer

By Vicki W. Kipp
Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE) Chapter 24 Newsletter
July 15, 2003

Larry Bloomfield’s “Taste of NAB” show rolled into Madison on July 15th. At the request of Chapter 24 Program Committee Chairperson Steve Paugh, Madison was the 25th destination out of 36 venues in Larry Bloomfield’s 2003 “Taste of NAB” tour. 

Taste of NAB presenter Larry Bloomfield (Figure 1) is known for many things. Some of us were introduced to Bloomfield through his “Beyond the Headlines” column in Broadcast Engineering magazine. As the leader of a broadcast survivor’s group called the “Order of the Iron Test Pattern” (OITP), Larry bears the title of “Sagacious Pixel.” When not busy publishing his newsletter, Tech-Notes, Bloomfield serves as the webmaster for the oitp.org web site. Larry is also known by his amateur radio call sign, KA6-UTC.

Larcan

Larcan makes FM translators, VHF and UHF television translators, and analog and digital low-power and high power VHF and UHF television transmitters. In Larry’s experience, Larcan transmitters have been exceptionally reliable. Larry noted that translators are widely used by stations west of the Mississippi with spread out viewing areas.

Jampro

Jampro doesn’t just make FM antennas– they also make television antennas. Jampro creates rototiller style, turn style, and slotted panel antennas. Larry Bloomfield has toured the Jampro factory, and can attest to the manufacturing quality of their antennas. When you approach Jampro to buy an antenna, they don’t ask what type of antenna you want. Instead, they ask what coverage pattern you want and where you will mount the antenna on the tower. The tower is a natural shield which creates a substantial null in the coverage pattern behind the tower. Jampro uses parasitic elements to compensate for the null and to produce a more circular pattern. Jampro’s antenna testing method stands out. Before they ship an antenna, they test the antenna in an environment similar to what it will have when mounted on the tower.  

Larry Bloomfield feels that there is a significant advantage to doing actual outdoor antenna testing as opposed to computer-simulated testing. Jampro can supply parts for any antenna that is on the market today. If you own a Jampro antenna, they have the blueprints for your antenna available. During their almost 30 years, Jampro has kept the plans for every antenna they have ever made.

Lightning Master

Lightning Master Corporation sells lightning dissipaters (Figure 2) and other structural lightning protection devices, bus bars, tower leg grounding straps, and transient voltage surge suppressors. Larry showed us a stainless steel lightning suppressor that resembled a “porcupine on steroids.” There are six ways to generate electricity: batteries (chemical), light (solar), thermocouples, magnetism, static electricity caused by friction, and lightning. Bloomfield explained that electricity is one of three things: lack of electrons, excess electrons, or the movement of electrons. Recall that 6.24 X 1018 electrons is a Coulomb. The absence of 6.24 X 1018 electrons is a negative Coulomb. When you stop to think how many amps of electricity travel down a bolt of lightning, you realize that bolt has an awful lot of Coulombs. That’s an awful lot of electrons. You know that if you have a half dozen pieces of equipment at your site, the lightning will choose the most expensive or most difficult-to-replace component to burn up as it travels to ground.

To understand how a lightning dissipater works, Bloomfield asked us to imagine a Van de Graaff generator which generates static electricity. If you approach a Van de Graaff generator while holding a blunt object, an arc will jump three or four feet from the generator to the blunt object. If you approach the generator holding a pointy object, you have to get closer to the generator before an arc forms. If you approach the generator holding an object with multiple points, you can walk right up to the generator without it forming an arc.

Although you can’t put a lightning dissipater on an AM tower, you can install a lightning dissipater on the tower’s guy wires to disperse charges without affecting the coverage pattern. When lightning hits an AM tower, it travels down the AM tower and down the guy wires. Insulators on guy wires do not stop lightning, but a lightning dissipater can help.

AJA

AJA makes rack-mount and portable interface and converter devices for most television formats. Bloomfield suggested that AJA products are useful for plants who have just converted to SDI. Let’s say that they spent several thousand dollars on a Quality of Service (QoS) monitor a year or two prior to converting. The station doesn’t want that expensive QoS monitor to go to waste. AJA sells a converter that has an SDI input and an alphabet soup assortment of outputs, including RGB and YPbPr.

Wohler

Wohler makes rack-mount monitoring and alarm systems for audio and video. A Wohler VAMP2-SDZ SDI video and audio monitor, AMP1-S8 Series 8-channel audio meter, and ALM53-8AS/P audio monitor were on display.

Bloomfield described Wohler’s innovative 7-inch MONFlex LCD Video Monitor which folds up to fit in 1 rack unit. The monitor is mounted on an adjustable gooseneck to allow the user to adjust the monitor for the best viewing angle.

Bloomfield showed us a Wohler 8- channel ALM53-8AS/P Analog Stereo Audio Alarm System with level metering. The Wohler bar meter indicates audio deviation, peak, average, and compression. The closer together that peak and average occur on the meter, the greater the amount of compression occurring.

ESE

The El Segundo, California-based company ESE has been in business forever. They sell every kind of clock you can possibly imagine, along with counters, distribution amplifiers (DA), and many other analog devices. Larry showed us an ESE clock that had both an analog and digital display of the time.

ESE manufacturers rack mount or portable DAs. Larry demonstrated ESE’s 1 in X 12 out stereo audio and video orange distribution amplifier (DA).

 ESE’s portable DAs are colored bright orange for easy visibility. Bloomfield explained, “No one loses an orange DA!” ESE even makes an S-Video DA.

If anyone has any old or new ESE products being used in your plant or in the field, please take a picture and mail it to ESE. ESE is rewarding people who send them photos of ESE gear in use with promotional items.

Evertz

Bloomfield fondly recalled his first experience using Evertz equipment when he was the Chief Engineer for the show “Hard Copy” the first year that show was on the air.

One of the Evertz products demonstrated was the Quattro 4 SDI video and audio quad split monitoring card. The Quattro 7765AVM-4 has analog, SD, HD and VGA outputs. It is sometimes cheaper to display video on a VGA display than a traditional video monitor.

Bloomfield showed us the Evertz SDI high-definition logo inserter, which allows you to move the logo around the screens. The flexibility to move the logo helps local affiliates avoid having their local logo collide with the national network’s logo.

Quartz

If you open any router made by Grass Valley in the mid-1990s and pulled a module out, you would see that it contained Quartz parts. Quartz is based in the United Kingdom.

Quartz QMC master control is a master control switcher which can execute switches via a computer interface or a more traditional master control console. It does downstream keys, voiceovers, cross-fades, DTV output, and the whole nine yards. A paper simulation of the Quartz’s multichannel QMC master control switcher panel was displayed, along with a functioning switcher chassis. The QMC switcher can control two different stations at the same time. If you add more rack units, you can control more channels. The switcher features a dual channel DVE and built–in logo store.

Currently, the upper limit being used is 126 channels. Quartz QMC can be automated by Sundance Digital Automation. Quartz QMC can also be used as a routing switcher. Currently, 1024 X 1024 is the largest router that Quartz has installed in a station.

Sundance Digital

The Sundance Digital slogan proclaims “If it can be remote controlled, we can automate it!” Sundance Digital representative Kurt Caruthers explained Sundance Digital’s products to our group.

Sundance Digital clients can choose between two service plans: TotalCare is 24 X 7 service and all upgrades; TotalCare-Plus includes 24 X 7 service and all hardware replacement and software update every three years. With Sundance, you buy the computer hardware and the software licenses. A distinction of Sundance Technical Support is that when you call in, you will speak directly with a technician. When you call in after hours for technical support, the automated phone answering system will dial the mobile and home phone numbers of the engineers until someone picks up, ensuring a rapid response.

Sundance Titan is the newest multichannel centralcasting automation facility management system. Titan will  allow you to have a multiple list processors running simultaneously. A station can have a couple of list processors running your on-air play list in Master Control, and have a bunch of computers on a LAN or WAN all adding to the playlist at the same time. The station can switch between controlling your channel locally and running it out of a central facility.

Sundance’s NewsLink product streamlines playback of news content from an iNews or ENPS newsroom computer system by integrating the news computer with video servers, editors, CGs, and still stores.

Sundance’s Intelli-Sat product organizes your satellite record schedule, tunes satellite dishes and receivers, and then works with Sundance’s RecordManager to record the desired satellite feeds. The Intelli- Sat’s scheduling utility will alert the operator of any resource conflicts.

Sundance’s TimeLiner product is a server or tape machine event sequencing system.

Caruthers discussed Seeker, Sundance’s first facility asset management system. Seeker allows users to access footage from stations across the country.

Sundance’s Segment Share product allows broadcast groups to have one station time show segments, and then let Segment Share send the timing data to all of the other stations in the group. Each station has to set the appropriate in-point for their record.

Cobalt

Based in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, Cobalt makes A-to-D and D-to- A converters and interfaces. Cobalt design work is done in Illinois, the U.K., and California. Before starting Cobalt, Cobalt owner Gene Zimmerman built Odetics cassette handler transport electronics. Cobalt orders circuit boards for their products from companies in California and Wisconsin. Many Cobalt products contain circuit boards from Multicircuits in Oshkosh.

When shopping for converters, Gene Zimmerman advises engineers to look for isolated BNCs on the universal inputs. Isolation BNC inputs help to avoid ground hum and power supply switching noise, which can show up in A-to-D conversions. Zimmerman showed a converter with presets for Betacam, SMPTE, M-2, widescreen, composite, and component formats, and the option to custom set the digital processor controls.

The companion product is a D-to-A converter, with a SDI input and 2 SDI outputs. This converter accepts a digital input and outputs an analog signal. This converter is handy for connecting in-line with a Codi or a Duet production switcher.

Gene Zimmerman demonstrated a prototype converter, whose dual-rate BNC input accepts SD or HD, and an output offers choices of 12-bit HD analog out, 12-bit analog composite, and SDI SD or HD outputs. 

Leader Instruments Corporation

Leader makes analog and digital television test equipment. At the meeting, we saw a Leader LV 5700 Multi SDI Monitor. In 2003, the LV 5700 received 5 awards: Broadcast Engineering Pick Hit, Videography Magazine Vidy, Government Video Salute, Digital Cinema Premiere Product, and DigitalTV-Television Broadcast Editors’ Pick of Show. The scope features a XGA output, Ethernet output so you can monitor the scope output on the Internet, and a USB port output. With a flash memory card, each engineer can set and save their preferred scope operating parameters. They can use the flash memory card to record a specific part of the signal that is impaired, and then e-mail that sample to others. The LV 5700 menus are difficult to get lost in because the menu is only two layers deep. The Multi SDI Monitor can process digital video, analog PAL, and analog NTSC. The scope automatically senses and changes to the parameters of the input format connected to it.

Leader representative Bob Sparks spoke to us about Leader’s popular FS 3018 Lighting Monitor Software which runs on the LV5700. Communicating via WiFi 802.11b, the Lightning Monitor Software on a Pocket PC works in concert with Leader’s LV 5700 SDI Monitor. The FS 3018 software allows users to monitor on SD and HD SDI signals on a Pocket PC. The software allows custom settings for peak alarms of YRGB, and displays of waveform, vectorscope, audio, and status screens, along with the picture the camera is viewing. You can add screen edge markers for 4X3 or 16X9 resolution.

Belden Wire and Cable

Don Heinzen of Belden Wire and Cable was a co-sponsor of the dinner before the meeting. Don pointed out that much of the equipment on display was connected by Belden cable.

Graybar Electronics

Pat Keller from Graybar Electronics was a co-sponsor of the dinner before the meeting. Graybar sells peripheral devices such as cable, racks, shelves, grounding devices, emission testers, cable locators, TDRs, and many other products.

OITP

Larry Bloomfield explained the professional group that he heads, the Order of the Iron Test Pattern (OITP). OITP recognizes people who have survived working in the broadcast industry. The OITP has member certifications and gives awards. Larry invited all meeting attendees to join the Order of the Iron Test Pattern. There are no dues or membership fees.

Prizes

The meeting ended with a drawing for prizes donated by Fluke, Jensen Tools, Wohler, Cooper Tools, Sencore, Harris Corporation, Clark Wire & Cable, and DSC Labs.

For those who weren’t able to attend NAB 2003, a “Taste of NAB” was the next best thing.

Figure 1. Larry Bloomfield confirms his next venue with a caller from Minneapolis.

Figure 2. On the left, model tower and antenna from Jampro. To right, lightning dissipaters from Lightning Master Corporation. 

Figure 3. SBE National Board Member and Chapter 24 SBE liaison Keith Kintner examines the equipment.