[BC] EAS]

[Tom Bosscher]

Bill Croghan wrote:

   >>Matter of fact, I took our SBE 102 email list and started to use it as
>>a Monday Moaning 'Did anyone else fail to get a test from XXX" That
>>worked so well that one GM called me and told me to stop bothering his
>>people. To which I told him that the rules tell me to find out why I
>>didn't receive a test. I asked him if he wanted me to log that the LPx
>>forgot to schedule a test, or that the GM of LPx has a "I don't give a
>>crap attitude"?

>Don't give up!

   Well, Bill, I almost did. What really happened was that I got tired 
of every other week calling two or three other stations to see if they 
got the test, if I did not. I would then log that. But you know how it 
goes. Each call lasts more than needed because you do want to talk shop. 
But pretty soon stations were calling me. So I went to the SBE meeting 
notice email list and started to use it. Every station in the market 
that has talked to me about anything about EAS has said thank you for 
caring to follow up on the tests. Then the GM's of the LPxx's found out 
about the list. Here is a hint to anyone in any market that has any 
problem with any LPx. What motives GM more than anything is peer 
pressure. If they even begin to think that they look bad to others, most 
GM's will move dirt to stop that. Peer pressure worked and works very 
well here. Things have smoothed out really well, so much so that new and 
very responsible LP2, if they make a mistake, will post it immediately.
   I also had to track down why about half the stations in my market 
hard very poor decoding with one of the LPx's, and yet half of the 
stations had perfect records. I started an audit and drove to several 
stations to look at their EAS installs. I visited three that were having 
real problems decoding the one LPx. I made notes of receivers, decoders, 
antennas, audio levels, etc.
   Then I went to my first station that had a perfect record of this 
"bad" LPx. Within ten seconds of looking at their system I said "Oh oh". 
All of us who had problems were using the TFT or Sage receivers. This 
site, with a perfect decode record, was using a Radio Shack digital 
tuner. Stereo. With a red LED lit up. Using just one channel to drive 
the decoder box.
   Yup, the LPx was doing EAS out of phase. I called that station and 
asked when the next RWT was to be run. I then sat in the shop and 
pressed the stereo/mono and sure enough. I had over a year of excuses 
"Well, we were at low power" etc. I then had to inform them that they 
were out of phase.
      Since then, most of the market has had 99% decode success. But it 
took a lowly NCE, with no affiliation with the LECC to "find" it.

         tom bosscher