[EAS] SiriusXM is an approved monitoring source, says, FEMA

[Rod Zeigler]

Sirius/XM as a second EAN source is working well for Nebraska so far. I 
did not have all of my T's crossed and I's dotted in my home station's 
DASDEC and accidentally allowed an RMT to slip through and go to air. I 
had it fixed immediately after it happened, but the audio was very good 
and it worked as it should have.
Nebraska had never had an approved State Plan until early December last 
year because there was no second EAN source in the plan. The LP1 
structure, including public internet links, was not good to begin with 
and might have worked on a blue sky day with a little luck.  The FCC did 
not like the internet links and Greg Cooke suggested using PEP stations 
as a second source. We might have made that work during the day, 
assuming a low noise floor along with good receiver$$$ and external 
antenna$. HOWEVER.... once the local and surrounding PEP stations went 
to night pattern, it left the eastern half of the state, and vast 
majority of the population, without any reliable PEP service.
I knew that NPR was our primary PEP source via our State Relay (State 
owned public radio system) hub and spoke arrangement. There is one 
central EAS box that feeds every public radio station in the State. I 
also knew that Premiere Radio Network was a PEP provider, though it does 
no RWT's or RMT's. I also knew that Sirius/XM was a PEP provider and 
after speaking with them found that they did forward RMT's on the 
Washington D.C. schedule as well as originated RWT's. One caveat is that 
if there are security concerns in D.C. they may not send an RWT that 
week. We just missed two RWT's, one during the tail end of the Kavanaugh 
hearings and the other during the mail bomb scare.
When I submitted a plan that had the choices of NPR, Premiere, 
Sirius/XM, or a PEP station that could be received reliably 24/7 as a 
second EAN source, we finally had a plan accepted.
My station is only about 25 mi. from the local Nebraska PEP station and 
due to electrical noise in the area of the station we could not reliably 
receive unambiguous EAS alerts from it. This with a good receiver and 
external antenna.
Cost was also another consideration in exploring Sirius/XM. I purchased 
four home receivers with antenna and power supply for about $70 ea. A 
good AM receiver and external antenna is around five times this cost to 
say nothing of the added expense of installation. There may be some 
installation issues with the Sirius/XM antenna, but we were able to put 
it in a window sill in our equipment room and received excellent signal 
level. Sirius/XM as a second EAN source is both reliable and very 
economical and could be used in many areas where there are no reliable 
(able to be unambiguously decoded 24/7) PEP signals.
Sorry I was a bit late weighing in on this thread, but my wife had a 
procedure done this morning at O'Dark:30 and I just got back home.
Rod

-- 
R. V. Zeigler, Dir. of Eng.
Nebraska Rural Radio Assn.
KRVN-KTIC-KAMI
Chairman, Ne. SECC
Exec. Dir. NEBA
www.krvn.com