[EAS] Should the RWT EAS Code be abolished?

[Kluger, Michael]

Darryl raises a very good and valid point about the RWTs being useful for testing reception and ability to decode EAS tones.  At one point, after it had been working fine for years, port 1 of one of our EAS decoders failed and would no longer reliably decode messages.  It was hit or miss, but I knew about the problem because of the fact that we were missing the RWTs from one of our sources on that box.  And when I wanted to narrow down the problem to see if it was a bad decode channel, we moved that source to another input channel on the EAS unit and then checked whether we reliably got the RWT from that same source for the next several weeks (which we did).  If RWTs were replaced by RMTs, the testing, diagnosis and correction of the problem that I was able to get done over the course of a few weeks would have taken a few months if I could only count on receiving one message per month per source.

Mike

Michael Kluger

Director of Broadcast Operations and Information Technology, WNYE-TV & FM

NYC Mayor's Office of Media & Entertainment

718-250-5808

mkluger at media.nyc.gov

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

One point that has not been raised in the discussion of whether or not to abolish Required Weekly Tests (RWT) is that of the value in diagnosing receiver and decoder problems. Twice each week a given EAS decoder should receive two RWTs or a substitute therefor. This provision gives a Chief Operator a means to determine whether or not the station's EAS decoding system is functioning properly. Without RWTs, this tool would be lost.

Regards,

Darryl E. Parker

TFT, Inc.

________________________________________

From: eas-bounces at radiolists.net [eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Dave Turnmire [turndave at isu.edu]

On 11/24/2011 4:17 PM, Barry Mishkind wrote:

>...        I think I'm going to stop here. Yes, RWT's might

>        be among the simpler ways. But only if it

>        is actually used and broadcast - and checked.

...

The above would eliminate RWTs that serve no testing purpose because they aren't being observed

...

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