[BC] RE: That Guy at the PAB who inspected Dana Puopolo'sStation

[Matthew Lightner]

Mr. Puopolo,

	The fact is the station in question was not in compliance with Part
11 rules because many of weekly tests were missing. Maybe it was due to a
technical problem, maybe the operator didn't log them, but it was not in
compliance. The logs showed a test from the LP1 one week, the next week
maybe a test from the LP2, the next week not any tests, etc. So the received
tests were very sporadic. The EAS log had nothing explaining why the tests
were missed. Also many of the events were expired when received due to the
clock being off on the EAS unit. If the FCC walked into this station they
very well would have issued a NOV.

	As far as the local Pennsylvania studio streaming up to
Massachusetts then back down to the transmitter in PA, I guess I was
misinformed. I looked for a local EAS insertion device at the studio and at
the transmitter site and did not see one. I did not go any further with this
since the above issues needed corrected before I could pass the station. It
was not made clear to me at the time that the local studio that is very
close the transmitter site, streamed from PA to MA then back to PA.

	So was my suggestion that your client install a local EAS unit
wrong? I'm looking for the opinion of other engineers on the list. As an
ABIP inspector, I am required to inspect the EAS system. How for sure did I
know the system was setup to automatically interrupt the program chain
without driving over 6 hours to the location of your ENDEC in MA to see if
it was setup correctly. If a FCC field inspector came to inspect your
station in PA, would they send someone to MA to inspect the EAS? Primarily
the suggestion was made to install a local EAS due to the history of the EAS
logs. Something was wrong that caused tests to be missed from both the LP1
and LP2 on many occasions. If the logs were fine, I would have consulted
others to see if it was ethical for me to certify a station for ABIP
compliance without physically inspecting the EAS equipment. 

	I've inspected a few stations were the EAS unit is at the
transmitter site and operated remotely, but I have to admit you had a first
with it being over 6 hours away from the transmitter/local studio. I like
people that think outside of the box. I just worry about the reliability of
the internet if something happens that we need EAS for a national event.
That is a complete other topic. 
 

Thank You,  
 

Matt Lightner - President
Lightner Electronics Inc.
www.LightnerElectronics.com
Engineering Consultant/PA EAS Technical Chairman
Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters
www.PAB.org
(814)-239-8323 Phone
(814)-239-8402 Fax

-----Original Message-----

 From: Dana Puopolo
Puopolo'sStation

>I will imbed comments.

From: "Matthew Lightner" <matt at LightnerElectronics.com> n

Everyone on the list:
 
I am the inspector who inspected Dana Puopolo Client's Station. Before
people starts throwing pitchforks at me I think you need to know the true
story. I need to be careful here since the PAB keeps information from ABIP
inspections confidential. So I'm not going into complete detail, or naming
the station.

Thank you.
 
The fact is when I inspected the station Pupolo is talking about I looked at
the EAS logs and found many discrepancies. Many of the received weekly tests
were missing. I also recall the time was way off on the ENDEC unit. Events
that should have auto forwarded were expired upon reception according to the
printouts attached to the EAS logs. So that was the main problems. I did say
that I felt the unit needed to be at the local studio location. The reason
behind that was because I think the Barix boxes were cutting out, or were
set at such a low bitrate that they had problems passing the FSK data from
the LP1 and LP2 receivers to the remote ENDEC unit. It simply was very
unreliable. Also the ENDEC was installed on the program feed coming from
their remote location. If an EAS event occurred when they were using their
"local studio" I did not see any interrupt unit to put the remote EAS ENDEC
into the program line.

>The Barix feeding the EAS decoder was set for MPEG2, 128 kbps stereo 
>(dual
mono)-plenty of resolution for EAS. I have dozens of customers using the
Barixes in this fashion with ZERO problems. It was tested many times by me
and found to be relaible. Now, in fairness, I have no idea if things were
changed after I left.

>Again, as left by me, the program circuit ran though the EAS encoder 
>via it's
external relay audio switch (this is a TFT unit, and they sell an external
stereo audio switcher) from there it went to a 1:1 Tellabs repeat coil
(transformer) and then straight into the Barix Instreamer that directly fed
the transmitter site. All this was hard wired-there was NO way to remove the
EAS from the program circuit.

>When they use their local studio, they sent the audio back to the 
>control
point in Boston.
It was then mixed with spots, promos and PSAs and sent back DIRECTLY to the
transmitter. There WAS no direct way to get audio from the local studio to
the transmitter-EVERYTHING went through the control point in Boston. This
was done deliberately. Your comment about no EAS while running local
programs is just plain WRONG! 
 
As an ABIP inspector I try to be very fair and do a thorough job. In the
last few years I've been doing ABIP inspection, I've received very few
complaints. I'm not a nit picker. This was clearly a life safety issue. I
take EAS very seriously.  
 
As far as Dana Puopolo's remark calling me a Moran I'm not even going to
dignify a response to that. My qualifications as a Broadcast Engineer are
known to many in the industry. 
>I'm sorry that I called you names. I regret it. BUT the fact is that 
>the way
I set the unit up was 100% legal. Your telling them that was not legal (and
in fairness  since I got it second hand from them they could be wrong) was
wrong, off base and made ME look like a moron in their eyes!  
>Finally, whay didn't you simply CALL ME? I would have gladly explained 
>what
was going on. Your (incorrect) assumptions about how things were wired not
only made both of us look like idiots, but also cost my (former, thanks to
this) client over $5000.00-to fix a problem that didn't exist! 
-D
 
Matt Lightner - President
Lightner Electronics Inc.
www.LightnerElectronics.com
Engineering Consultant/PA EAS Technical Chairman Pennsylvania Association of
Broadcasters www.PAB.org <http://www.pab.org/>
(814)-239-8323 Phone
(814)-239-8402 Fax