SBE CHAPTER 40 NEWSLETTER
FEBRUARY 2001
San Francisco
Roy Trumbull - Editor [email protected]
Bill Dempster - Artist
Advertisers for this month's newsletter are:

Zack Electronics - (800) 998-3947
Advanced Marketing - Frank A. Santucci - (650) 365-3944
Belden - Steve Lampen - (415) 440-8393
Orban - Rick Sawyer - (360) 715-1913
MARCOM - Martin Jackson - (408) 768-8668
William F. Ruck, Jr. Broadcast Engineer - (415) 995-6969
Audio Accessories - Rosie Alexander - (510) 787-3335
RF Specialties of California - Bill Newbrough - (888) 737-7321
Hammett & Edison, Inc. - Dane E. Ericksen, P.E. - (707) 996-5200
LeBLANC - David A. Hill - (650) 574-4600
Gentner Communications - Kelly Hanning - (800) 879-9317
Improbable Missions Fource - Mike Schweizer - (888) 4-ISDN4U
Econco - George Badger - 650-327-7599
Brill Electronics - Larry or Sam - (510) 834-5888
Kathrein (Scala Division) - Michael Wm. Bach - (541) 779-6500
Harris - John Briskie - (650) 593-1837
ADC - Russ Erickson - (877) 440-7877

Babes/SBE Luncheon on Wednesday Feb 28th

This month our featured speaker will be Peter Anderson of Leader Instruments. The primary subject will be the Triveni Digital MT20 "StreamScope" ATSC transport stream analyzer. Leader DTV test equipment will also be discussed. (Ed note: I've had one of these units under loan and it is one of the most practical pieces of test equipment for DTV that I've seen. - RT)

As usual, our luncheon will be at Sinbad's just south of the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero near the foot of Mission St. We meet at 11:30 and are seated at 12:30.

Pennie Lincoln Dies
(June 22, 1965-February 10, 2001.)

Pennie was the daughter of Donald E. Lincoln of San Francisco and the late Marilyn W. Lincoln; stepdaughter of Maryliz Lincoln; fiancee of Steven Bird of San Rafael; sister of Mark Lincoln (Stephanie) of Santa Rosa; aunt of Jessica and Brian Lincoln. A life long resident of Marin County. Aged 35. Penelope graduated from Tamalpais High School, Class of 1983. She was a proud defender of animal rights. She was the office manager at Sutro Tower. Memorial contributions may be made to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, 5001 Angel Canyon Rd., Kanab, UT 84741.

The service for Pennie was held on Saturday Feb. 17th in Mill Valley. A friend told of the two of them going to a cat show at which a prankster had earlier released a mouse. The mouse had been captured and was in a box and a lady asked Pennie to take it away. She asked her friend if she could think of any reason why she shouldn't do that. No reason at the time, but there was a phone call that evening. "What if the mouse is pregnant?" It was, now Pennie had a litter to find homes for. Another speaker was Tony Scruggs, formerly with KPIX. Pennie talked to him about the problem and his kids were the ones who adopted the little ones.

Fool Phone
Someone once described the lottery as a tax on the stupid. When you get out into roaming territory, the cel phone deserves a similar definition. There was an interesting piece in Consumer's Reports a few issues back about nasty charges on cel phones, pay phones, and calls from hotels. Bottom line was that a Sprint prepaid calling card you can buy at Costco is a good deal. I've been using one and it's true, as long as you place the call through their 800 number. Otherwise, all bets are off. The card gives you 480 minutes for about $30. Given the fact that even the best of plans has all manner of loopholes that permit your carrier to bill you with outrageous charges, this is kind of a neat way around the banditry.

Tech-Notes Tops 1000
One of our members, Larry Bloomfield has been publishing an HDTV related newsletter known as Tech-Notes and it's taken on a life of its own. The newsletter comes from a listserver to the subscribers on roughly a monthly basis. It all depends on how much material Larry and his partner Jim Mendrala can come up with. Issue number 72 came out recently and it and all the back issues can be found at http://www.Tech-Notes.tv. I contribute to the newsletter as do many others. So take a look.

EMAIL ADDRESS
If you have an email address, please contact Warren Reese at [email protected]. Warren is in charge of our email list, which we use when we need to notify members when something has happened between newsletters.

WEB PAGE
Webmeister Tim Pozar has the current newsletter plus newsletters all the way back to 1996 at: http://www.lns.com/sbe