We don’t need no water, let the… oh, wait… The actual roof is actually on fire you say?
YES: Ahh! Time to run around like crazy people!
Carrier HVAC unit damaged by fire
This happened over the weekend at one of our clients in NY. The back story is this; over the last two weeks, the area has received almost three feet of snow. This roof is pitched slightly toward the back of the building. The roofing material is some type of PVC, which is very slippery when wet. Thus, at some point the snow/ice pack shifted towards the back of the building, and it broke the natural gas pipe off where it entered the unit:
Broken gas pipe, HVAC unit 1
The next time the HVAC unit cycled on, there was a giant torch on the roof with flames reportedly eight feet high. A local firefighter just happened to be driving down the road and spotted the fire, thus likely saving the building from major damage. The fire department came and cut off the gas and electricity. The building was evacuated for about 20 minutes while they overhauled and checked for internal fires.
Carrier HVAC unit damaged by fire
A second unit suffered the same fate, only with less damage:
Carrier HVAC unit damaged by fire
The fire in this unit was contained in the controller area. Same situation with the gas pipe, only it looks like the pipe was not broken all the way off:
HVAC unit broken gas pipe
The other two units are shut off while the gas pipes are dug out of the snowpack and checked for damage. At some point, they will be turned back on so that the heat can be restored to the second-floor sales bullpen. Meanwhile, the salespeople; are complaining.
We threw a tarp over the unit with the cover ripped off because more snow is on the way:
I have been reading the comments regarding the FCC’s NPRM (13-249). Clearly, many people are interested in keeping the AM broadcasting band both active and relevant. Some of these suggestions have merit but are unlikely to be adopted by the FCC. Others are viable and could alleviate at least a few of the technical shortcomings of the AM band. The rest fall along expected positions. Here is a brief rundown:
Clear Channel, iBiquity: Allow stations to transmit in all digital mode. Likelihood: Possible. The hybrid version of AM HD Radio has been a failure on several fronts; added interference to adjacent channels, self-interference, poor adoption, wonky CODECs, etc. However, letting stations choose to broadcast in all digital AM HD Radio may decide the issue once and for all. As long as the all-digital carriers fall within the current analog channels, this would be fine. Actually, I would add that stations transmitting in all digital be allowed to choose DRM as well as HD Radio
REC Networks, MMTC: Move AM stations to former TV channels 5 and 6. Likelihood: Unlikely. It would be a neat solution, however, there are currently many full and low-power TV stations still using those frequencies.
Clear Channel, SBE, MMTC, Crawford, et al: Allow AM stations a special translator filing window. Likelihood: Almost assured. This has been broached by the FCC itself. I would add that Class D and Class C stations be given priority.
SBE, du trial, Lundin and Rackely, MMTC et. al: Remove the “ratchet rule,” reduce antenna efficiency requirements and city of license contour requirements. Likelihood: probable. Over the years, the FCC’s rules and regulations designed to help AM broadcasting’s technical product have done the opposite in many cases. This is especially true of the “ratchet rule.”
SBE, du Trial, Lundin and Rackely, MMTC: MDCL (Modulation Depended Carrier Level) Likelihood: Possible. MDCL does not do much to improve AM signal quality, but it can save the station owner some money on the electricity bill.
Alabama Broadcaster’s Association, et al: Better FCC enforcement. Likelihood: Not very. This is another area where interference and AM noise problems can be fixed. Given Ajit Pai’s desire for “non-regulatory” relief, stepped-up enforcement seems to be a non-starter.
Hatfield and Dawson: Eliminate substandard AM stations. Likelihood: Not very. Getting rid of substandard stations and letting the remaining AM stations enjoy a little breathing room is actually a big step in the right direction. H&D notes that the FCC should petition congress for tax relief for those stations that choose to surrender their licenses. Unfortunately, it does not appear likely that the FCC, congress, and the current station owners would go for it.
du Treil, Lundin, and Rackely: Do away with skywave protection for class A stations Likelihood: Possible. The argument goes; skywave listening represents a very small number of mostly hobbyists (AM DXers) as other, better methods for program distribution exist for serious listeners. Sad but true.
du Treil, Lundin, and Rackely: No more new AM stations. Likelihood: Possible. There is a cogent argument to be made regarding the overcrowding of the AM band. Stopping any further crowding is a good idea.
SBE, Cohen, Dippell, and Everist, et al: Tighten regulations on electrical noise emitters. Likelihood: Unlikely. The FCC does not have the mettle to tighten regulations against powerful manufacturing and technology lobbies.
iBiquity: Do not let anything get in the way of the HD Radio rollout. Likelihood: Is it possible to get in the way of something that is standing still?
Talking amongst engineers and AM broadcasters, many of these ideas have merit. The real question is, will any of this bring more listeners?
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that after a two-month sabbatical, Radiodiscussions.com has returned with an updated look and all of its archived posts intact.
Radiodiscussions.com screenshot
I am pleased that the current owners had a change of heart. Radiodiscussions.com was not perfect, however, it was a good place to gain insight, take part in conversations, read up on rumors and innuendo, follow the flame wars on various threads, etc. In other words, observe radio people in their natural habitat.
We have been doing work at a particular radio station for a few years now. Every time I go there, I look at this… thing:
Burk DOS Autopilot/CDL running on Windows 98
It is a very old PC running Windows 98 and Burk Autopilot/CDL 4.6 for DOS. The autopilot program is running from a windows DOS prompt and seems to be working okay; my concern is about the age of the hardware and the potential for failure. The Autopilot is what controls the AM station’s power levels, which vary from 1,000 watts daytime to 4 watts nighttime. We have all read about AM stations fined by the FCC for running daytime power levels at night. Failure of the ancient autopilot computer could lead to exactly this scenario.
I attempted to purchase the newer, Windows XP version of Autopilot, only to be told “that item is not in this year’s budget.” Apparently, it was not in the budget for the following year or the one after that. Thus, when the hard drive on the old Windoze 98 machine began making a terrible grinding noise, I knew the end was near. I made an attempt to run the Autopilot from a Windows XP DOS prompt, at which time I was informed: “The program cannot start or run due to incompatibility with 64-bit versions of windows…” GAK! I kind of knew this already.
I began daydreaming about running a DOS virtual machine inside of a Ubuntu or Lubuntu operating system. Then I found a DOS emulator program for Linux called “DOSemu” which looked like exactly what the doctor ordered. Using the carcasses of several old HP desktop computers, I came up with one working PC that had two organic serial ports. This is actually not a bad unit, as it has a 1.6 GHz dual-core processor and 2 GB RAM. On this machine, I loaded the 32-bit version of Ubuntu 12.04 desktop. Naturally, the original Autopilot/CDL 4.6 disks were nowhere to be found so I had to copy the directory off of the old computer. It was also understood that this project was simply going to suck. Therefore, the superannuated Windoze 98 machine had no network interface or any USB ports. My only option was to copy the files onto a 3 1/2-inch floppy disk. Fortunately, I have a USB 3 1/2 floppy drive, which I was able to use to copy the files onto the new computer into the /home/ARC16 directory.
Downloading and setting up Dosemu was fairly straightforward. There were a few configuration steps that needed to be completed before the Autopilot software would work and communicate with the ARC-16 remote control:
In the DOSemu configuration file, the hardware serial port needs to be configured to work with the DOS emulator. This is located at /etc/dosemu/doseum.conf. The default conf file has all of the serial ports commented out. Remove the comment and change the serial port source: $_com1 = “/dev/ttyS0” or $_com2 = “/dev/ttyS1” The serial ports available can be determined by the following terminal command: dmesg | grep tty The output should look something like this:
paul@engineeringIII:~$ dmesg | grep tty [ 0.000000] console [tty0] enabled [ 37.531286] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A [ 37.532138] 0000:04:00.3: ttyS1 at I/O 0x1020 (irq = 3) is a 16550A [16206.667112] usb 2-1.3: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0 paul@engineeringIII:~$
For USB to serial port converters, the serial port source may look something like this: $_com1 = “/dev/ttyUSB0”
The DOS emulator time can be synced to Linux time by: $_timemode = “linux” This is great because Linux can be synced to a NTP source, meaning Autopilot time will always be correct.
The logged-on user that will be running the DOS emulator needs to be added to the “dialout” group. This can be done by sudo adduser [user name] dialout. This will allow Autopilot software access to the comm port.
The DOS autoexec.bat file should be edited so that Burk autopilot loads automatically when DOSemu is started. DOSemu automatically assigns the D drive to the Linux home directory. Thus, simply adding:
D: CD ARC16 ARC16
to the end of the autoexec.bat file will start the ARC16 program automatically when the DOSemu program is started.
DOSemu can then be added to the Ubuntu desktop startup.
The results:
DOS autopilot running on Linux machine
Burk Autopilot/CDL (DOS version) running on a Linux (Ubuntu 12.04.4) machine. The stupid thing will probably run forever now.
This computer is also used to program the satellite receivers, which are located at the transmitter site. Thus, there are several manuals and program clocks stored in the documents folder. I also installed the x11VNC server program, so that the computer desktop can be logged into remotely from the studio over the LAN link.
I noticed that the DOSemu program hits the processor fairly hard, with one core running about 45% most of the time. That should be fine, as this machine is used very infrequently for other tasks.
