[EAS] The end of DST/UTC settings

[Larry Wood]

OK, here is my question. One of the stations we monitor installed a Sage 3644 a couple of months ago. Since then every test I get from them is received as "Expired" by three hours. I have suggested to them that their UTC may be set incorrectly, but so far they have not corrected their unit. I just make a note in my EAS log that the station sending the "Expired" tests has been contacted. What is going to happen to them? Will their unit ignore the EAN, or pass it anyway? I called them again today so they still have a chance to fix it before the BIG test.

Larry Wood, CPBE
KQED-FM

-----Original Message-----
From: eas-bounces at radiolists.net [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Harold Price

An EAN is subject to all the rules of any other EAS message (with the 
exception of the two minute rule).  If the EAN is expired, or issued 
for the future, it should be rejected.  Sage ENDECs (all models) will 
reject expired alerts, and alerts for more than 24 hours in the future.

Some manufacturers allow some fuzz in checking expiration times, and 
the Sage ENDEC has a time check bypass for special cases and is not 
meant to be used in normal cases.  It is difficult to predict what 
will happen if your time if off by an hour - it depends on the fuzz, 
and on the duration field of the EAN that will be sent.

EANs should be time checked like anything else.

Stations should have their time set correctly.

EAS works in UTC, it is possible to have your UTC time correct, even 
though your local time of day is not displaying properly.  This is OK 
for the EAN - UTC is what matters. This will typically happen for 
users with pre 2007 equipment that does not have updated software to 
handle the post 2007 daylight savings time changes.

It is also possible to have your local time display properly but your 
UTC be incorrect, typically people with old equipment who didn't 
update for 2007 DST, and forced their local time to display 
correctly, but didn't also change the UTC offset manually.

Sage has a long explanatory file for users of model 1822 that did not 
upgrade to version 6.2 - they have to fudge the time to make local 
and utc match, or do nothing and have UTC be right but local be 
wrong.  See http://www.sagealertingsystems.com/docs/SageDST.pdf

Speaking for Sage, if you have an 1822 with version 6.2 software, or 
a 3644 with any version of software, you are ok. Otherwise, if you 
didn't have to make any changes to your EAS equipment when we started 
DST earlier in the year, you are probably ok.  If you have to change 
time manually at each DST transition, you'll need to get to it before 
the test.  The time changes Sunday, Nov 6.

Harold