After working all night at one of my employer’s analog transmitter sites, I had arranged to catch a flight out of the Burbank (Bob Hope) airport early that same morning. Luckily I was flying United today and not American Airlines, because their aircraft had crapped out and was screwing up everyone’s schedule (of course) and…
If you work in a medium to large office you probably have several of those posters glamorizing “Teamwork”, “Courage” or “Fortitude” with a single, stirring image and a slogan to drive it all home like “Because it is in your destiny for greatness!”, “You are part of machine working for the greater good of mankind”…
I have heard of this custom, free firmware called DD-WRT for a while now, but I needed to purchase a compatible router that would accept the replacement software and the one that was recommended the most by others was the Linksys WRT54GL. It also was one of the most trivial to perform the upgrade. Right…
For several years I have been attending the NAB convention and this year I was asked to craft a report for my current employer: ION Media Networks. >General Observations: The last few years I have noticed a progressive thinning of broadcast television specific technology and a steady shift toward digital media primarily focusing on its…
Today PaxTV (Paxson Communications – my current employer) begins to dig itself out of the ratings hole it has worked its way into over the years by implementing a new brand and programming outlook. PaxTV is now “i: Independent Television” or just “i”. While the concept of providing “wholesome” entertainment primarily devoid of sex and…
I am a fond proponent and avid ‘flag waver’ of local broadcasting and free HDTV and I would be happy to answer questions on the subject for anyone to the best of my ability. It is fun to show friends and neighbors what HDTV looks and sounds like when I invite them into my home…
Since a new tower had been erected in 1997 with HDTV in mind, it already featured a broadband RFS panel antenna used to broadcast the analog channel 29 and was capable of accommodating the future DTV channel on UHF 15. The trick after expanding the building and installing the HDTV transmitter was to combine the…
For this facility (KHOG) the gain of the antenna was considerable so that only about 10kW TPO would be needed to meet the maximized ERP level, so the choice of a solid-state Diamond transmitter from Harris was made. The benefits of this choice were that the multiple modules and power supplies allowed for considerable redundancy…
Here is a project I am justifiably proud of. Our corporate engineering management had determined that we were to use a Harris Flexicoder as the core of our HDTV encoding, but outside of that we were to determine what we needed to best integrate it into our facility. Initially, I was not pleased with the…
A few grainy images of the Andrew side-mounted antenna we ordered for the KHBS DTV transmitter in Poteau, Oklahoma (which serves the Fort Smith, Arkansas market).