SBE CHAPTER 40 NEWSLETTER
NOVEMBER 2000
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
Broadcast Systems - (800) 801-2623
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

BABES/SBE LUNCHEON ON WEDNESDAY Nov 29th

Our speaker this month will be John Fode, Regional Manager of Telestream. He will talk about their Clip Mail Pro product, an appliance that encodes video for transport over a LAN or the internet.

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.

Do Nothing FCC Called to Attention of Congress
On Oct. 18th, SBE hand delivered a letter to the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Billy Tauzin of Louisiana. Signed by SBE President, Andy Butler, the letter expressed concern about the lack of action by the FCC on a technical rule making that is critical to the timely roll-out of digital television. RM-9418, a 1998 petition for rule making filed by the Telecommunications Industry Association, proposed that digital modulation be allowed in all TV BAS microwave bands. The letters entire text can be found on the SBE web site, www.sbe.org.

Presently, in order to add or convert an STL for dual modulation (Microwave Radio's "twin stream" (tm)) or digital modulation, the best you can do is apply for an STA and renew it every 6 months. There are no rules to cover such modulation schemes.

Digital Birth Control
When my former fearless leader asked me if reception of digital TV would be better than analog, I responded it would be similar to the law governing the inheritable nature of birth control. To whit, If your parents didn't have any children, you won't have any children either.

Cod Liver Oil and the 8 Virgins
The problem with Cod Liver Oil is that it doesn't cut through rock and, if anything, is more messed up by terrain than the 8 Virgins. It does a fine job close into the transmitter site by making sense out of bad multipath. The 8 Virgins can only take so many notches out of the spectrum and they're toast. At a distance they do better than Cod Liver Oil.

Cod Liver Oil requires so much more power and headroom that it just doesn't make sense for covering a region. It makes a lot of sense in a system employing 12 to 18 repeaters.

Grasshoppers have gotten use to the coax ants delivering their signal. I can't imagine them seriously trying to do it themselves when they can get Congress to mandate that the ants do the job. So, Cod Liver Oil or the 8 Virgins is only so much noise. What matters is the ants.

Now brush your teeth and go to bed.

Last Meeting of the Year
Please make note that we do not meet in December. Have a good holiday season and join us in January.

This is from the 1950s. It's the front window at The Tides Bookstore in Sausalito. Inside, on the wall, was a depiction of Ken and Barbie in Eden.

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