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Someone Donated $10 Million To KEXP

This shows several viewpoints, of which I (of course) have one.

Steve is also being sarcastic, though, not having met him personally, I think he does believe a portion of what he's been saying here.

No, an engineer shouldn't generally be held responsible to maintain "zero off-air time", unless he has an unlimited budget from an absolutely-supportive management. Even in a case where a site has everything, there's always a bit of time required to switch to another set of equipment. Some of these stations have aux transmitters on-site, others have complete aux sites. In the latter, many of us can fire up the aux and switch it on before shutting the main down. That can add some grunge, but you aren't technically off the air. Happy? Otherwise, you have a number of steps to make to get a aux on, though 90 minutes still seems extreme to me.

Generators don't fire up immediately and, so far as I know, nobody here has one of those inertia-based bridge generators to keep things up during the transition. So... a power outage will always result in some kind of down time. Probably the largest one I've been around lately has a generator that takes some 30-45 seconds to start, settle down and switch in. At least 3 stations sit in the dark while that sequence plays out. In another case, One of my generators is up and we're back on the air within about 12.

In any case, unless there's a direct connection between signal reliability and income, I don't think management will EVER go to a bulletproof extreme.

A few years back, some clown dug up a phone line and took most of our blowtorches down for awhile. Who do you blame for not having UHF, Wifi AND satellite backups for the T-1? The engineer? Management?, Or, as is more likely, you balance the cost of whatever backup scheme you have against the likelihood you'll need it and what it brings to the table.

What seems more or less normal to me, is a station has an aux transmitter and some way to switch it by remote control, once it's clear the main has gone down.

I see many setups these days where the engineers keep transmitter switching out of the hands of the airstaff. Average Joe announcers mostly lost their mental connections to the business end of a remote control when the 3rd phone went away. Nowadays, give them the ability to blow something up by switching something out of sequence and that's the first button they'll go for. At one station, switching transmitters was the first fix for everything... even an occasion where the announcer just didn't have the right pot keyed on. All that's OK, if that's the way you want to run things, but it does put more on the engineer to be available or have good monitoring of the site.

I used to hear stories about markets where stations kept their aux transmitters running into a dummy load 24/7. I suppose that's not necessary now, given solid state doesn't have a warm-up time. Even then, I don't think any of our local stations with tube-type auxes are that averse to the slightest blip in their carriers.
 
xmtrland said:
Thanks to PPM technology there is a PPM decoder box that monitors the PPM signal. KEXP encodes PPM so they must have one. Stations hook the Alarm output to an alarm on the remote control or a light at the studio to tell when PPM is failed. Most of time it means dead air or silence. Usually the PPM decoder is hooked to audio that is off air to ensure that the PPM signal is getting passed all the way through the transmission chain.

It's not uncommon for PPM alarms to activate when the transmitter fails and there is no audio at the receiver hooked to the PPM monitor. So in reality there should have been several alarms going off at KEXP.

However it's unclear at this point if the staff at KEXP may have interpreted the PPM alarm for the People Pledging Money alarm.

In the non commercial or the donation radio model it looks like the PPM alarm can have two meanings.
1- Your off the air and people are pledging Money so you get back on the air and stay there.
2- Your on the air with audio passing but the PPM Arbitron signal is not present. People are not pledging money.

I'm sure this extra step took time to digest and figure out which would help explain the long off air time and why it may have taken a while to figure out they had to go to the transmitter. And if people are pledging Money whats an extra hour of off air time, but more money.
Click to expand...

The PPM encoder only monitors itself, not the on air signal. The alarm function is internal to the PPM box.

The purpose of the PPM status alarm is to make sure that the signal is being encoded before it goes to the transmitter/s. It does not know whether the equipment after the encoder is working or not. That includes any post-PPM processing and the transmitter itself.

Nielsen says, "In FM stations, Nielsen Audio recommends that the encoder be installed after a pre-processor and before the final audio processor. This is because the encoder cannot operate on composite audio format output typical of stereo generators."

So the encoder does not know if the processor is working, if the transmitter is working, if the transmitter is actually in a dummy load, if the antenna is still on the tower, etc.

There are several connections, including USB, Ethernet and a pin-out connector for a remote control system's alarm / status function.

The entire manual is at https://engineeringportal.nielsen.c...t Manual, AnaDig Encoder (1050-1645 RevE).pdf

To a commercial station, not encoding is sort of the same as being off the air. But the PPM encoder's alarm system is not an on-air monitor.
 
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The aux is at the same location as the main, TV channel 9's tower up on Cap Hill. The Aux is the former main, using a one element @ 500 watts vs. the current 3 element @4700.
 
DavidEduardo said:


The PPM encoder only monitors itself, not the on air signal.

The purpose of the PPM status alarm is to make sure that the signal is being encoded before it goes to the transmitter/s. It does not know whether the equipment after the encoder is working or not. That includes any post-PPM processing and the transmitter itself.
Click to expand...

Don't some stations feed their monitors from an off-the-air receiver? That would include the full airchain in the confidence monitor.
 
Yah... that should be fairly simple then. Coaxial switches may not be the cheapest thing in the building, but they are available. Unless something else went down, you can warm up a tube rig and get it switched in a couple minutes or so. A solid-state aux should have been much faster.

In your case, it sounds like both transmitters have their own antennas, so it does seem curious that it would take that long to get the aux running.

As is legion here, speculation over what we don't know tends to make for some interesting, if not eye-rolling reading.
 
Rob Piotrowski said:
What does that matter? Non-com or not, the engineer's duty is to KEEP THE STATION ON THE AIR. If you can't do that then you should be replaced. That's the "context".
Click to expand...

You are kidding or using hypebole, right?

An engineer's job is to do the best job possible to keep a station on the air with the best quality audio and in compliance with FCC rules and station management's wishes and budgets.

If a station has no auxiliary site, planning for worse case scenarios must be done. But no amount of planning can stop a truck from hitting a guy wire, lightening from causing a catastrophic failure, component failure from taking out key other components as it fails and even (and I lived both of these) having your transmitter fire bombed by rebels (Miami) or taken over by guerillas (Ecuador).

This falls under the category of "s--t happens". In insurance policies there is reference to "Acts of God" to cover the improbable and unpreventable.

Otherwise, we do our human best. But not losing airtime ever is impossible. Minimizing the loss is our job.

Wealthy stations can afford highly redundant systems. One station I was Chief Operator for back a few years had three transmitters at the single site in two "buildings" (converted cargo containers), separate AC units, two towers, 3 antennas, 3 coax runs, 2 audio chains, 2 generators, separate AC lines to each building, and everything else that could be done. But management stopped short of a second site due to the cost, even though the station was one of the top billers in the highest revenue market in the country. Only when a forest fire put the station off for a while (clogged air filters were the cause) did they finally authorize the expense of a second site, as did most other LA stations after that incident.
 
I notice nobody here is highly crytical of any other station that has gone off the air for an extended period of time ever. A few months back, I was making my lunch about 2 in the afternoon one Friday with KSWD on when that station with no explanation went off the air. I switched the radio to 101.5, finished eating, then checked 94.1 again, still no KSWD, still no signal. That means they were down for at least half an hour. When I first moved to Vancouver for school a few years ago, it seemed like I heard all the stations broadcasting from the KGW site go down for a couple seconds at a time. Sid note, has anyone on this board been listening to a reasonably strong signal when it goes down due to technical difficulties, heard another station instead of static? The only time I can think of this happening to me was when I was still using Global Tuners regularly. I did not hear KMGE go down, but when I tuned into 94.5 expecting that station, I got an extremely weak KLYK instead. With the radios I own though, I don't think that would have been possible, as I had a hard time picking up the Portland stations I expected on the G8 when I was in that area a few years later, those stations coming in on the Sony XDR-F1HD that was the GT node at the time. I kind of miss that receiver.
 
Actually, people here have been VERY critical about stations that have had technical problems. You might have just missed my point about the Vashon stations being knocked out by an errant backhoe. People were pretty hard on those stations for not having multiple back-ups. Before that, there was the KOMO problem. Few would have foreseen that one, yet, in spite of what I understand is/was a first-class engineering department, they experienced a serious problem that had a dramatic effect on several stations.

I take care of a few smaller-market stations that, today, think nothing of turning off their carriers so towers and antennas can be maintained. These are not bankrupt operations, either. They've just changed their view of whether an obsessive effort toward on-air performance is really necessary. In the past, you'd expect some compromise power level that would keep the station on the air and satisfy the tower workers they wouldn't get fried or cease to have kids. Now, they just shut it down, get the work done and move on.

Soon after the DTV changeover, KIRO (I think) shut their over-the-air transmitter off completely, so workers could pull their analog equipment down from the tower That took something like a week, IIRC. This wasn't a bust for the company, as they still had their satellite and cable feeds going.

There are others I know of first-hand, just in this general area. One is a high-wattage station that's frequently challenged, both in terms of its transmitter and program link performance.

Another broadcaster, who has a decades-long history in this market has had recent problems with homeless folks breaking into their transmitter buildings. One recent cased took one of their stations down for a week, while the owner and police worked to evict people who had moved in. In that case, the property in front of the building had been turned into several people's front yard, effectively blocking access to the equipment building itself. While the weather was hot, they took an exhaust fan off one of the buildings, wired their own cord to it and, using the owner's power that they'd tapped into, were set it up as their private air conditioner. They also ran extension cords from one of the buildings to an encampment of tents, some 400 feet up the road. I was the engineer on-call and pulled in long enough to get pictures, then backed out of the job until the owner and police cleared the property, including a large collection of garbage, burned out cars and hundreds of needles. It took a week, including several visits to arrest repeat offenders and convince them a trespass order really meant they had to move, and stay out. They were very aggressive.

An associate of mine has a similar problem in the San Francisco area. One of his tower sites is down a 5-mile road, mostly lined with homeless tents. When one of his stations out there has a problem, it's usually the result of vandalism. Over the past year or so, he's required a police or security escort, depending on whether it's night or not, before he'll go out there.

None of this stuff was commonplace, back when radio was far more relevant than it is now. In any case, I think you can make a fairly reliable connection between a station's financial performance and management's budgeting for good engineering, monitoring, security and back-up scenarios.
 
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Grounded Grid said:
I think you can make a fairly reliable connection between a station's financial performance and management's budgeting for good engineering, monitoring, security and back-up scenarios.
Click to expand...

I suspect the OP wants the station to devote more of its capital budget towards the transmission system, and perhaps this outage can be used to justify that expense.
 
TheBigA said:
I suspect the OP wants the station to devote more of its capital budget towards the transmission system, and perhaps this outage can be used to justify that expense.
Click to expand...

I wonder how many millions would have to be spent to avoid a few minutes of downtime a year?

KEXP, per the FCC file, has two installations at a single site; one at the maximum facility and one with lower power and height.

https://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/...&slat2=&NS=N&dlon2=&mlon2=&slon2=&EW=W&size=9

As previously said, I'm guessing that the off-air incident was such that all the redundancy in the world would not have prevented and which required a drive to the site.

A second site, complicated by the fact that the station is directional and can not build "just anywhere", would be costly and likely the board of directors would think that such money could be best invested in programming given the minimal downtime risks.
 
DavidEduardo said:

As previously said, I'm guessing that the off-air incident was such that all the redundancy in the world would not have prevented and which required a drive to the site.
Click to expand...

That may be true but this outage was PREVENTABLE had the engineering staff figured out where their points of failure were and eliminated them. You don't need millions of dollars to do that - just a little sense (cents?).
 
Rob Piotrowski said:
That may be true but this outage was PREVENTABLE had the engineering staff figured out where their points of failure were and eliminated them. You don't need millions of dollars to do that - just a little sense (cents?).
Click to expand...

Well... again... it's easy to armchair quarterback from a safe distance.
 
Well I will admit it. Every radio stations that transmits from Vashon was off the air for about 10 seconds during a brief morning power outage this Sunday morning, at 5:03am. Everyone except Voice of Vashon, they can run their 7 watts on a UPS till the generator starts.

Last Saturday morning there was another brief outage that lasted 20 seconds. One of the stations I take care of had a generator failure during that one so good it only lasted 20 seconds. But that station was not the only one with a generator that did not start on Vashon. There was another station that had a bad transfer switch since the summer and were dragging their feet on the ASCO replacement.

Last Saturday afternoon (after the outage) I went down and had to work air out of a recently replaced fuel filter so it would start properly. Good thing I did because the power went out again last Monday morning at 9:11am. All the generators started and ran with the exception of the station waiting for the ASCO switch, they were off the air for 20 minutes. That station has now put in a temporary switch last Thursday night (they had to go off the air to do it.)

I'll admit over the last 3 weeks I have ad issue with program and T1 circuits and a bad DA. This was with 3 stations from different owners.

The stations I work for don't like to publicly announce when they go off the air with an article about the failure.

This morning I will be doing a mini transmitter tour to make sure things are OK (exhaust flaps closed, no wired blown fuses or breakers.) The good news is there are only two flashing stop lights and 3 stop signs to deal with. And the Homeless deer that hang out at the transmitter, they get pushy when you show up with no apples.
 
Grounded Grid said:
Actually, people here have been VERY critical about stations that have had technical problems. You might have just missed my point about the Vashon stations being knocked out by an errant backhoe. People were pretty hard on those stations for not having multiple back-ups. Before that, there was the KOMO problem. Few would have foreseen that one, yet, in spite of what I understand is/was a first-class engineering department, they experienced a serious problem that had a dramatic effect on several stations.

I take care of a few smaller-market stations that, today, think nothing of turning off their carriers so towers and antennas can be maintained. These are not bankrupt operations, either. They've just changed their view of whether an obsessive effort toward on-air performance is really necessary. In the past, you'd expect some compromise power level that would keep the station on the air and satisfy the tower workers they wouldn't get fried or cease to have kids. Now, they just shut it down, get the work done and move on.

Soon after the DTV changeover, KIRO (I think) shut their over-the-air transmitter off completely, so workers could pull their analog equipment down from the tower That took something like a week, IIRC. This wasn't a bust for the company, as they still had their satellite and cable feeds going.

There are others I know of first-hand, just in this general area. One is a high-wattage station that's frequently challenged, both in terms of its transmitter and program link performance.

Another broadcaster, who has a decades-long history in this market has had recent problems with homeless folks breaking into their transmitter buildings. One recent cased took one of their stations down for a week, while the owner and police worked to evict people who had moved in. In that case, the property in front of the building had been turned into several people's front yard, effectively blocking access to the equipment building itself. While the weather was hot, they took an exhaust fan off one of the buildings, wired their own cord to it and, using the owner's power that they'd tapped into, were set it up as their private air conditioner. They also ran extension cords from one of the buildings to an encampment of tents, some 400 feet up the road. I was the engineer on-call and pulled in long enough to get pictures, then backed out of the job until the owner and police cleared the property, including a large collection of garbage, burned out cars and hundreds of needles. It took a week, including several visits to arrest repeat offenders and convince them a trespass order really meant they had to move, and stay out. They were very aggressive.

An associate of mine has a similar problem in the San Francisco area. One of his tower sites is down a 5-mile road, mostly lined with homeless tents. When one of his stations out there has a problem, it's usually the result of vandalism. Over the past year or so, he's required a police or security escort, depending on whether it's night or not, before he'll go out there.

None of this stuff was commonplace, back when radio was far more relevant than it is now. In any case, I think you can make a fairly reliable connection between a station's financial performance and management's budgeting for good engineering, monitoring, security and back-up scenarios.
Click to expand...

Which KOMO problem? The only major one I can think of was almost 10 years ago, when a fire took out the studios for a day. That sure made for some interesting radio. It would be a few years until I would find the thread on here discussing that. As for the power outage on Vashon last Monday, that explains why KOMO went off for about 10 seconds. That combined with some of the sounders firing out of order gave the impression that they were really having technical difficulties. Which other stations are really suceptable to technical difficulties? When they first moved here, KMCQ was probably the most technically challenged station in the market.
 
Grounded Grid said:
Gosh, Steve... 20 seconds? Really?

Not getting old or anything, are you? :)
Click to expand...

If it's at night it can take 30 seconds or longer.

These have been the first power bumps/outages since installing a new NX50 and Burk Arc Touch upgrade at two stations. So it was the real first live test of alarms and labels for a power outage. The PPM decoder monitor was not on the UPS at the transmitter so it would alarm during the brief outage when the generator started. I moved them to UPS power this morning so that's two less alarms when the power goes out.

So this morning post power blip inspection was one modulation monitor fuse blown, unit provides a silence sense to remote control. Interesting it does not alarm when fuse is blown. Lets just say Harris.

Switched two PPM detectors to the UPS power so they don't alarm during a power outage.

Flip the generator exhaust flap so rain won't get in on a generator. Need to get Bids and paper work for that...Fun!

Watched the silence sense go off at the one station that really didn't have an issue but was having an "Automation" issue in Seattle. But before I could get my Ipad hooked up to the Optimod and play Kokomo.....normal program audio came back, Darn!

And then there were the cute goats at one site. I much prefer them to the prostitutes that would try to jump in my car when I drove to the 106.9 transmitter on capital hill when stopped at a certain intersection at night or after dark. Or the time some one in a car pointed a gun at me while I unlocked the fence gate at the same site. That was the fastest I unlocked and got inside the building.

Looping this back to KEXP. Maybe the engineer was waiting for an armed person to escort him to the transmitter at capital hill. Might be wise to use the Buddy system when visiting a transmitter on Capital hill so you don't get mugged or electrocuted. Theft from the Ch11 transmitter from people just walking in through the open gate is legendary.
 
Closing the loop on this thread: Steve brought this matter (aka rant) to one of the Broadcast Engineering forums on another site. The rep from Nautel (transmitter manufacturer) who regularly follows that site confirmed, it was indeed an SD card failure on the KEXP transmitter that caused the outage. Not sure why it took so long to switch the backup on, but the article posted here was at least accurate as to the cause.
 
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