Archive
Weekly Update 1/28/2011
Once again another week winds down. No major work is planned on Fridays. How about you? Do you start anything new on a Friday?
Anyways, we had a good week. We attacked our first Nautel NV20 modification. Having the earliest boxes off the line, we get to do field modifications to match the current generation of transmitters. Ours are now two years old and running great. The modifications this week are the AUI/controller cooling fan and the PA modifications. If you have a box without the PA modification, definitely contact Nautel and get the instructions for it: IS10001 is the document number. Our DC-RF efficiency as indicated on the transmitter went from 56% to 70%. We dropped the PA volts down from 45.7V to 33.8V. Even the controller ambient temperature dropped from near 38C to 27C. I cannot wait to take care of the second transmitter.
We did a real world “test” and live segment using the Tieline Field Unit and a new Verizon LTE modem. We purchased a CradlePoint CTR500 3G/4G router and downloaded beta software “engineering release” for the unit. The USB modem supplied by Verizon is the Pantec ULM290. I tweeted earlier in the week, or was that last week, during a bench test we reliably connected the Tieline at 192kbps and took data hits based on movement and proximity to the antenna. Otherwise it was rock solid. In the real world, we ran the same 192kbps. Again one data hit during the segment. We were in a crowd of people smashed into a burger place. Nice and clean with little latency on the network: 60ms. Couple that to the Tieline encoder latency of 70ms and you have a winner. 3G uses the latency ranged from 250ms to over 1s at times. We will continue to look into this as the future of remote, live broadcasts is changing rapidly and the need for a licensed RPU is becoming less of a requirement. Then again, in our city and RPU is only good if you have many receiving points. Terrain is a killer!
A note to Tieline: Upgrade your USB interface to allow a direct connection with a USB modem for LTE! Built in would be real nice, as they say. Maybe even create a little WiFi hot spot with your device to route talent laptops with built-in QOS to favor the broadcast stream. Just a thought. I know, it’s only money!
I checked in with a subcarrier client. It is a shame they cannot get some cleaner equipment. Anyways, a basic clean up job eliminating the need of a second mixer with poor mic-pre’s. I told them to retire their main mic and they came up with an SM58 which actually sounded much better than the old SM7 that was falling apart.
Ending the week with a Radiothon for St. Jude’s Cancer Research Center for Children. What a great cause. I love our SAS and the ability to create the “remote” from our conference room. We aren’t like certain unnamed (CCR) companies that have a “performance” space. We just aren’t big enough.
Next week I look forward to talking with Studer and the product development manager to discuss, of all things, consoles. Should be interesting. Anyone else ever volunteer to spread knowledge? It is rewarding. It is not always about money. Be a good guy sometime.
Have a safe and trouble free weekend!
Weekly Update: 1/14/2011
I am going to attempt weekly updates with detailed posts on those things of interest. As most weeks are pretty mundane, weekly recaps seem to be the best. This week is no exception with the added twist of politics and a day with LTE.
The daily grind stuff is like an ATS (automatic transfer switch) service at the transmitter site. I discovered that it was not switching back to commercial power once restored. I sent the model number and pictures to the company that does the service; they send a tech who did not know the model number or device he was to work on until he saw it. He determined it is a bad timing relay, and of course it needs to be ordered. Part two of the service comes when the part comes in.
The FUN, yes capitalized, was our day with Verizon (lunch), and the USB LTE (4G to those who like buzz words and terms) device and prototype LTE router. After we got back from lunch we jumped on the test bench and connected our Tieline Field Unit to the router. We ran wirelessly at 192kbps! With 3G we were only capable of 33.6 to 38kbps reliably. Now that is an improvement. The item I noticed right off was the latency when locked in was 60ms! With 3G we saw a wandering latency from 500ms to over 1sec! We saw upload speeds approaching 5Mbps and downloads at 12Mbps. Now I must add that no one is really on the LTE network, but we were impressed. The one thing we did notice as we were testing within the confines of the building that as I moved near the antenna of the device we experienced some data hits. So, the speeds are there, you just need reliable reception to maintain. I bet outside without any interfering factors will make this thing fly real well. With a little tweaking of the pre-correction, I foresee some good times. Tieline: Create a way to connect this device directly to a USB port and you have a winner right now.
The political game of business is always fun. I do not take kindly to threats; yet, the third-party company is known to play this way. I kissed and made up with the part that is actually doing the work. It involves and STL move/change. I am wary of the 5dBm margin calculated by Comsearch. If they are a true engineering company this would concern them, too, but I suspect anything that comes under 0dBm of interference passes in their book. I do have the word that the installing party will correct any issues, so we are all playing nice. In our crowded microwave market, and whose isn’t, we try to play as nice as possible.
Next week a little trenching and routine work. Soon some Nautel NV modifications (with full reports) and maybe some thoughts on processing. Have a great weekend!
VPN, VNC, & the iPAD
By digging up some spare parts and unused hardware, my assistant honed his skills on rebuilding a computer that will access our transmitter network via VPN and various applications via VNC. He done good.
I have to say it is cool and our IT dude accessed the computer, opened the browser, and we connected to the Nautel AUI. Very nice. I now others have done this with their iPhones and such, but I still find all the “steps” to access something very annoying. First do this. Then do that. What I would like is for companies, like Nautel, to create a native application for the iPad, iPhone, and Android that can be called up once a secure VPN connection has been made. I wish I could code and create one, but that is not my forte.
Some day, maybe. I am teaching myself Visual Basic, but I am not wired to be a coder. Anyone out there doing such work? I’m curious to know what you have and how well it works.
Be Prepared
An interesting week this turned into. It started with a productive trip to a transmitter site and ended with a visit from the FCC. In the middle, well actually around this was a visit from our corporate officers and a Harris Flexstar update.
The transmitter trip was to our Aux site. In preparations for licensing we did some new remote control wiring and posting of CPs. We discovered a bad switch on the RF load, so a new one will be installed next trip. The cable bridge is still wonky and I have no idea on the repair time frame.
We had a compliance inspection from our friendly FCC. If you are prepared why be worried? We passed with flying colors and I think the inspector was taken by our nonchalance and jovial confidence. Folks, it is not that difficult to maintain EAS compliance. Run the damned things and log them. It helps when a computer does the logging. The public files is the same thing. Get a check list and start making folders and fill them with the appropriate information. Some use binders. Some scan it all and make it available online. Any way you do it, just do it.
Last night I got hit with another mysterious Harris Flexstar outage. My remote reset connection came in handy. After a nice discussion this afternoon we may be testing some more. I am so curious about the cause that I am over the frustration part, though programming has other thoughts. I am at the point where if I do not know the cause I will be disappointed. From a business side we wish we could just replace it. In any case we march forward.
Be prepared for that which you can be and within your means. Try to enjoy the adventure.
Cheers!
Nautel NV LUT (Look-Up Table)
Talking with a colleague there appears to be some confusion on what a LUT is. This is referenced in the new procedures when upgrading to version 2.7 of the software. To be honest, with our NV20’s we do not even have saved LUTs. If your transmitter is running IBOC with either FM+HD or HD only it is recommended that a LUT is saved.
The instructions provided with your 2.7 update will take you through the recalibration process. We performed ours BEFORE the revised procedures came out. Overall ours went well except that one transmitter lost its Transmitter High RF Drive Power threshold. Huh? Yes, we had to manually set the threshold level again so we could make full TPO. A minor annoyance considering how complicated this box is.
I’ve read the new procedures which includes the reset of the LUT. Again, the LUT is a look-up table. If you have one configured, located under Hardware Settings, it contains information on the mode (FM+HD or HD only), TPO, and frequency. The location number is what is referenced in the Preset under Other Audio. The LUT height is figured out to compensate for any overshoot (power) when the transmitter is turned on. In addition the ramp up time or the time it takes the transmitter to achieve full power is indexed and is the LUT gain. Once the height is set, you work the gain to achieve a nice smooth ramp up to full power.
The bottom line is the LUT is used as a reference and target for a preset running an HD mode. If you are running FM Only, the LUT is not required or important. The transmitter references the LUT and then powers up smoothly and stops at the desired TPO. If you run two presets with differing power levels it is recommended you create a LUT for each one. The information is then stored in the exciter.
That is my understanding of the LUT. Hopefully this clears up some confusion on the purpose. As I learn more I will modify this post.
Cheers!
Nautel NV20 Updates and Maintenance
As promised, I will give you an account of our Nautel NV20 maintenance. All is routine and a pretty boring read, but you always have to be prepared for the unexpected. Having the first ones does make for some interesting servicing and surprises. All in all, the maintenance was complete within two hours.
The first part of the process was to upload the new 2.7 software to the “20kW Linux computers.” No surprises here, so there isn’t much to report there.
The second part of our maintenance before apply the software was to remove a power module and place a ferrite on a fan lead which was reporting the wrong speed. The tachometer was reporting varying speeds due to RF getting into the circuit. Of course this only shows up while in hybrid, FM+HD, mode. In FM only the problem went away, so we knew something was up. Removal of the module was a breeze. After taking the cover off, it was easy to clip the ferrite around the lead. We also took note of how the power amps were installed and then we turned the unit over and removed the back panel. All heat sink. I must say the power modules are built very simple and neat. If you wonder why they are so big it is all heat dissipation from what I can tell. The components themselves are compact and cleanly installed. Once the ferrite was in we put it all back together and tested to make sure this took care of our reporting error. It sure did. We have extra ferrites if we see this problem crop up in any other modules.
Third we proceeded with the software updates. The first NV was flawless. At the end of the update we performed the recalibration procedure with no issue. The second update took with no issues. After recalibration the thing would not go over 5kW! Whoa, boy. What the…? Identical boxes and one was not happy? After some checks and comparisons with the first box we checked the threshold settings. Sure enough the update reset the default thresholds. After adjusting to what they should be we were back in business.
Fourth, we had some housekeeping to do. As these are the first ones out there was some test files and configurations that did not get removed causing a bit of network traffice, though not much, was not necessary. So we eliminated the file and cleared that up.
We are now working smoothly. All this “work” took less than two hours. Now if we can get AT&T to maintain the T1’s we will be golden. We keep pushing them to install fiber. We continue to wait and call in trouble as we get it.
What?! Nothing Happening?
Wow, I cannot believe I have not posted in over two weeks! Well, yes I can. Nothing is going on. As my tweets have mentioned I have updated our NV20’s to Version 2.6. Guess what, 2.7 is available. From what I can tell I may not need 2.7 at this time as i am not experiencing the issues of which it contains. I do not update just for the sake of updating, so on this one I will wait it out just a bit and research more on what it is supposed to do. I am quite happy with 2.6. No issues. Uh, Oh, now there will be something.
Harris? This buffer overflow thing seemed to be the issue. I still am surprised that an HD data overflow would mute the exciter. How can you put something on the air that is NOT critical but can cause a critical outage? Flabbergasted is a word for that. Hey, at least we’ve been on the air since I changed the Exgine delay setting.
DaySequerra M2.2R? Not back yet. Still waiting. This better work when I get it back!
Time change. Hopefully everyone who needs to made their changes. When you get down to it I find it amazing how many things have clocks in them. I also find it amazing why. I know my processors have dayparting, but we do not use it. Need a clock? Not really, but we check them anyways. Anything that logs need updating. Now my Nautel transmitter clocks need to be checked so I can get accurate logs on any issues. Nice feature, eh?
The super secret item mentioned in a tweet? It is a Tieline product. I am beta testing for a week coming up here. I don’t think I am supposed to talk about it yet, though it is a product they demonstrated at NAB. I am honored to be able to test something for a company. They trust I will either like it or can find issues with it. I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
That’s all folks. I’ll keep you posted and may even write an opinion on something like HD power increase.
NV Update is Out
I have the new update for our NV’s and will be installing it this week. I have also discovered it will fix an issue we just experienced on one box. We had a mysterious exciter PA over temperature. No reason for it as the readings are will within parameters. Press the Reset and away you go. I inquired if this update will “fix” this and I received a “yes” response.
Now that is support.
Nautel NV Software
After killing an Exgine card due to my own curiosity, I have learned that a new software revision will be coming out soon. Wait for it. The latest has some cosmetic bugs, like the date, and it would be best to wait. Overall the latest works just fine.
We are running the latest embedded exporter software and the iBiquity Left/Right channel swap is fixed. It was a straight forward update.
Carry on!
Nautel NV Software Update
Loaded in version 2.2 of the software. A nice jump from 1.3, eh? Anyways, the update rolled out as planned. Some cosmetic fixes and I noticed email notification is available. I will look into this and see how that works. I sure do like the connectivity aspect of new equipment.
In addition, I spend some time on the phone with Nautel and discussed the efficiency aspect of solid-state transmitters. I proceeded with doing some adjustments to improve the efficiency and I had some good results. I am going to write a tech sheet on the procedures I did. The bottom line is I raised the efficiency from 51% to 55/56% dropping the ambient temperature almost 4 degree Celsius. Stay tuned for this one! (if I’m lagging, please post a comment of this as a reminder.)
Tech Notes from the Field 