[EAS] Interpreting EAS Rules for Combined Stations

[Harold Price]

Jim,

Regarding your reference to 11.51 (l)    [lower case L]

This is one of the areas that needs a touchup, yes.

However, this section makes it clear, and includes a laywer-speak 
override for the old stuff:

"11.56   EAS Participants receive CAP-formatted alerts.

Notwithstanding anything herein to the contrary, all EAS Participants 
must be able to receive CAP-formatted EAS alerts no later than 180 
days after FEMA publishes the technical standards and requirements 
for such FEMA transmissions.
"

This seems pretty clear, you must be able to receive a CAP-formatted 
EAS message, that is, one that is in the CAP format.  NOT one that 
used to be in CAP format and is now just EAS.

I've always thought that the intent was that each station gets the 
full CAP message and all the additional text and instruction 
information therein, and then the CAP/EAS device could make a fully 
informed decision as to what to place on the air.

Assume for a moment that you have a single CAP receiver for multiple 
stations in a cluster, and you were getting multiple simultaneous CAP 
alerts for different events in different areas, as typically happens 
when bad weather rolls through.   Station 1 wants to send watches and 
warnings for areas a, b, and c, station 2 only wants to send warnings 
for area c.  The single CAP receiver would have to send all the 
alerts to all the stations.  If station 2 has to sit through three 
analog EAS alerts of 1.5 minutes each, it could be delayed 4.5 
minutes before it even begins to hear the one it wants to air. That 
is why you need the CAP and EAS functions closely coupled.

Harold

At 01:56 PM 3/18/2011, Skinner, Jim wrote:
>All:
>
>I find it interesting that the section below is in the FCC rules.  Are
>there recommendations to change this section?
>
>11.51 (l)    [lower case L]

<snip>