General – Page 54 – Engineering Radio

Where the rubber meets the road

This is the quandary that I have been in these last few months: Time, as they say, is money. The end product might not seem like it, however, this blog takes up a goodly amount of time. There is the writing, research, taking pictures, editing, and whatnot. Then there is back-end stuff, updating software, plugins, etc.

Then there is actual money expended: domain registration and website hosting.

In short, it is not free, at least not for me anyway.

I did place a few Google Ads in line with some of the content to offset the money part, which they have met that goal, but not much else.

While it is nice to have a hobby, and fun to tell stories about radio engineering, in the end, it really does not help me earn more money, support my family, advance my carrier, or my standing in the community. The children are young, but that will not stay that way for long. Before I know it there will be braces to pay for, a car or two, a college education, and whatever comes after that. Not to mention my own superannuation to look forward to, with such considerations as adding to the retirement account.

There is another shift in my status coming up, with my wife off to work again as a school teacher. I find there are not enough hours in the day to work the part-time radio engineering gig and meet the school bus to offload the children. Therefore, something has to give, that being the part-time radio engineering gig.

I am, therefore, looking for ways to make money at home. Developing this blog or turning it into a full-fledged radio engineering news website might be fun, but it would be much more work, and there is the rub. I can’t do more work on this site without seeing some return. I don’t mind working, in fact, I enjoy working, but I can’t do it for free.

So, I am open to ideas on how to monetize this blog or develop it into something else that will make some money. The third option is to let it go… I’d rather not do that.

What happens next

It’s the middle of the night and the phone is ringing. That is never good. The transmitter is off the air. You call the remote control and try to put the main transmitter back on the air. No good. The backup comes up, no problem. Shaking off the sluggishness, you get dressed and head out the door. The transmitter is about 30 miles away, but it’s in the middle of the night, so there is no traffic. While driving, you are thinking of all the things that could be wrong. The blower motor was sounding a little loud last trip. The exciter has some reflected power. The PA tube is two and a half years old.

Upon arrival, there are several overload lights lit, including the driver’s plate. An investigation is in order. You turn everything off and open the doors. The trouble seems to be a bad IPA power supply. There are spares on the parts shelf, so you put one in. Put the transmitter into the dummy load. You turn on the filament and the transmitter comes to life again. Reset the overloads.

Broadcast Electronics FM35A transmitter ready to be turned on

Now you are standing there looking at the plate-on button. Was it really only the IPA or was that just a symptom? Was there something else that took out the IPA power supply? What will happen when I press the plate-on button? Will it come on normally or go BANG! I hate BANG! By the way, my tradition in a situation like this, if on a mountain top somewhere, I go outside and pee. I give the situation one more run through the mental checklist, then come back inside and press the button.

Broadcast Electronics FM35A transmitter high voltage on button

Please excuse the blurry picture, it is hard to take a picture of yourself turning on a transmitter…

VNC for Android phone

With the advent of computer file storage and automation came unmanned operation. Unfortunately, what often happens with unmanned operations is somehow the engineer becomes responsible for station operation and ends up getting all the phone calls when anything goes wrong:

Traffic forgot to transfer the Sunday log and the station is off the air at 12 am Sunday morning. Call the engineer.
Part-time DJ didn’t read the directions on merging logs, call the engineer.
Windows has encountered a problem and needs to reboot, call the engineer.
The server has locked up, call the engineer.
Silence sensor, engineer’s phone number

I got sick of driving to the radio station when things got out of whack with the AudioVault, so I installed VNC on all the machines. From that point, I could log on from home and see what the problem was. It was great, when traffic goobers up the log transfer, I called the traffic director at home and had her go in a fix it. Untrained operators, called the program director. Unfortunately, I don’t have Bill Gate’s phone number, so the Windows issues are still on me.

All of this was great as long as my laptop was around. Being married, however, I had to occasionally listen to my wife, who insisted that we not take the laptop to dinner or the movies with us. There were those occasional times when it would have been nice.

With the purchase of the Android phone, however, I no longer have to worry about that. Android VNC is a free app that allows an Android phone to connect to any VNC server application. The user can save all the VNC connection information on the phone. It has several mouse options including a touch pad, touchpad mouse, mouse trackball, etc. It connects to most VNC servers: incl TightVNC, RealVNC on Win and Linux, x11vnc, and Apple Remote Desktop on OS/X. 0.4.3. Special commands such as ctl-alt-del are available through the menu. It is also fully zoomable. All in all, I can do almost anything with the Android phone that I can do on the laptop. My wife is thrilled.

It is a time saver.

Upgrading National Weather Service Radio transmitter

If you have ever wondered about those ubiquitous NOAA all hazards radio (formerly National Weather Service radio) stations, wonder no more. These stations transmit on one of five frequencies in the 162 MHz band with power ranges between 250 and 1,000 watts. There are over 1,000 transmitters scattered throughout the country including outlying territories like American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.

The original 1958 plan was for these stations to transmit Aviation and Marine weather forecasts. The system was expanded for use by the general public in the early sixties. Since that time, it has been slowly expanding, with the most recent survey concluding that NOAA weather radio station can be received by 95% of the US population.

One of those stations in my neck of the woods is due for a transmitter upgrade. WXL-37 uses two Scientific Radio Systems SR-416P transmitters, as a main and a standby. The programming audio comes from the NWS office in Albany, New York, via TELCO line. The old transmitters are tube type made by in 1976. They are reliable transmitters, however, after 34 years of continuous use, they are getting a little tired. They are also big and bulky and since Scientific Radio Systems went out of business, not been supported.

This year, NOAA is replacing these transmitters with a Nautel NG1000. I have worked with Nautel’s military-grade transmitters before and found them to be extremely rugged. Those transmitters are what the original AMPFET design was based on. Nautel is not the only vendor that NOAA is using however, others include Armstrong Transmitters and Crown Broadcast.

Scientific Radio System SR416P transmitters — NOAA Scientific Radio Systems SR416P VHF transmitters

The Nautel NG1000 is a little thing, taking up about half an equipment rack with an outboard cavity filter and dummy load. There are two drawers, a controller an antenna switch, and a remote control. Each drawer is its own 1 KW transmitter. The GUI is on a laptop, which is what I prefer. If there must be some sort of computer-driven GUI, then make it removable, so that when lightning strikes the 1,000-foot steel lightning rod 25 feet away, it doesn’t get blown up. Each transmitter is connected to a 30 AMP 240 Volt breaker via a 4-prong twist lock plug.

Nautel NG1000 transmitter — Nautel NG1000 NOAA transmitter

The antenna for this station is near the middle of this 1,000-foot tower, thus the station gets excellent coverage with a TPO of 1,000 watts.

American Tower, Highland, NY — American Tower site, Highland, NY

On a related side note, the computer synthesized voices normally heard on NOAA stations took several years to evolve. Remember when this began back in the mid 1990’s with “Paul.” Several years later, “Craig” and “Donna” were introduced. Finally, “Tom,” is able to change voice inflections for emphasis. When I was in the Coast Guard, we did high seas synopsis and forecast on HF without aid of computers. At times, especially during typhoon season, it got a little busy in the weather broadcast position. There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods. Personally, I’d rather hear a human voice, especially in a crisis.