Cracked Battery Terminal

File under some new every day. Yesterday, there was an area-wide power outage in Woodstock, NY. The backup generator failed to start, however, WDST remained on the air until the UPS batteries ran out several hours later.  Then my cellphone rang.  Alas, yet another Sunday on the job.

Upon arrival, I found the power had just come back on, so the DJ (yes, there was a live person in the studio, on Sunday) was restarting the NextGen system and getting the station back on the air.  I restarted the rest of the servers, streaming computers, and whatnot.  While I was there, I figured I might as well see why the generator didn’t run.

Pressing the start switch led to the “click, click, click, click…” which normally indicates the battery is dead.  Deciding that I should dig a little deeper, I got the volt meter out.  Battery voltage, no load 13.8 volts.  A normal reading.  Flick the starter switch and measure the battery voltage again, under load 13.7 volts.  Hmmmm, now that is not what I suspected.  If the battery were bad, the voltage should drop down under load.

Cracked Battery Terminal
Cracked Battery Terminal

I grabbed the negative cable and it came off in my hand.  Another one of those “ah ha!” moments.  Upon closer examination, the terminal connector is cracked in half.

Cracked Battery Terminal
Cracked Battery Terminal

I went to the local Ford dealership and bought a heavy-duty truck battery cable.  Since the battery itself is six years old, I decided to bring it and have it checked, and sure enough, the battery was going bad too.  Rather than suffer through another power outage without a generator, I went ahead and replaced the battery.

Why the terminal cracked in half in the first place, I don’t know.  Perhaps it was over-tightened, or some type of manufacturing defect.

STL paths

I learned this one the hard way, all climates, and terrain are not equal.   An important detail when planning a Studio to Transmitter Link.  The RF STL  is usually in the 950 MHz band, although lately, people have been using 2.4 and 5.8 GHz unlicensed systems with good results.  What works well in the northeast, for example, might not work that great in Florida, where tropospheric ducting and multi-path can create reception problems.

One example of this happened in Gainesville, Florida.  A station there had a 15-mile path over flat ground with tall towers on either end.  It had full line of sight and Fresnel zone clearance.  Ordinarily, the signal strength was -65 dB, which is about 25-30 dB of headroom for the equipment being used.  However, in the mornings, most often in the late summer or early autumn, there would be brief dropouts of a few seconds.  After two years of suffering through the mysterious morning dropouts, we finally rented a plane and flew the STL path, only to discover there was a swamp right in the middle that was not on the topographical map.  On those mornings when dropouts occurred, it was surmised that dense fog would rise up, causing the RF path to bend and creating multipath at the receive antenna.  Since it was a Moseley Starlink, the digital demodulator would unlock due to high BER.  The signal strength never moved off of -65 dB.

Of course, had this been an analog STL, it would not have dropped out, although it may have gotten a little noisy for a few minutes.

950 MHz STL path study
950 MHz STL path study

I have learned to be very conservative with my STL path analysis, using software tools like RF Profiler to look at the theoretical path, but also surveying ground obstacles like trees and buildings, which are not accounted for in the USGS terrain database.  There are several RF software programs out there that will do the same thing.

Last week, when a station manager insisted that an STL path was possible from a proposed new studio location, I deferred to the path study, which showed only about 50% Fresnel zone clearance.  While it was true that the path is less than a mile, and it is also true that one can see the top of the transmitting tower from the roof; trees, buildings, and even an access road create problems that could potentially cause STL dropouts.  We are not going down that road again.  The station manager, whose background is in sales, was told to find another location or order a TELCO T-1.

Everything is fine, why do you ask?

I found this picture of Bob Struble’s vacation last summer:

HD radio flagship

To the uninitiated, this might seem quite alarming; boat sinking, rigging all ahoo, this poor guy waiting for rescue or certain death.  But to understand what is going on here, you have to see the whole picture.   Things are not what they seem, in fact, it’s designed that way:

The rest of the story

All this time, I have been lamenting the technical flaws IBOC, when really; its supposed to do that.  Holy cow!  All these years of wondering, “What the fuck are they thinking?” and decrying HD Radio, especially AM HD radio.  Boy am I embarrassed.  Makes me want to do this:

Baghdad Bob Bob Struble latest quote, brought to bold typed prominence on the pages of Radio World magazine:  “Consumers now expect to see album covers when they listen to music.”  I think he means album art, but anyway.

You mean to tell me HD radio is failing because of lacking album art!  Of all the Bob Struble quotes, to prominently feature this one in their article makes me think 1) the editors at Radio World have a sense of humor, or 2) they have a sense or irony, or both.

So anyway, there you have it: Album Art.  The rest of the so-called technical flaws are “design features” that will enhance HD radio in the long run.  They’ve got us right were they want us.

Wait until the patent expires

If I had to pick, one of the most egregious things about HD Radio™ is the fact that it is a proprietary system. Ibiquity owns the licenses for the IBOC HD Radio™ technology.  If the FCC were to force radio stations to convert to all digital transmission, as they did with TV, then one corporation would then own the modulation method for all of the radio stations in the country.  It would also own all of the secondary (HD2 and HD3) channels by virtue of the password-protected software and would, as current contracts are being written, be allowed to inspect the books any time they want.

This could lead to some very interesting situations, especially if Ibiquity chose to flex some muscle regarding programming content, formats, music, politics, news coverage, or what have you.  Let’s not forget, Ibiquity’s investors are large broadcasting companies like Clear Channel, Cumulus, Citadel, Univision, and so on.  Smaller broadcasting companies could likely get caught in a go-along-to-get-along situation.

If you have never played with an HD Radio™ exciter, let me tell you, everything is locked down.  Every function needs a password from Ibiquity and there is no way around it.

Ibiquity’s proponents dismiss this concern and continue to say “Just wait until the patent expires, then it will be an open system.”  Except that the “patent” is not going to expire.  Ibiquity owns 70 patents for their IBOC system.  Only one patent needs to be in effect for the HD Radio™ system to remain proprietary.  The last patent was issued on May 10, 2010.  Ibiquity simply needs to make some small change, update, or tweak and they can file for a new patent, which will add another 10 years.  This can continue indefinitely.

The patent is not going to expire.