[EAS] Time to make the LP daisy chain an option

[Rod Zeigler]

A few observations from posts in this thread.
In putting together an acceptable State Plan here in Nebraska LP's were 
eliminated due to lack of voluntary participation in strategic places, 
lack of stations in a large area of the state, and the use of internet 
fed alerts where these gaps existed. My first priority was getting two, 
separate, RF delivered Federal monitoring sources, PEP's if you will. 
Due to nighttime patterns and the daytime noise floor none of the PEP's 
in or bordering the state were acceptable for reliable 24/7 coverage for 
most of the state. From that came the idea of using Sirius/XM, Premiere, 
and NPR as a second source. Since the State Relay is our state owned and 
NPR affiliated public radio and TV network, that has been used as a 
primary State and Federal source, it stayed as the primary Federal 
source. It is a Spoke and Hub topography with a waiver from the FCC to 
operate from a single EAS box. This scheme proved its worth during the 
last NPT as one of the SR transmitters was down and Sirius/XM filled the 
gap.

One very good reason that AM's are used for most of the PEP's is that 
you get the most coverage area for the least amount of input power. One 
of the biggest problems in a disaster is keeping power going to an 
operating transmitter site. The number of FM's it would take to cover 
the same area is exponentially larger and financially impossible to 
implement and maintain. There are a very few FM PEP's, but those are 
special cases meant to fill coverage gaps.

State plans can have internet feeds since these are overseen by the 
State and do not have the same prohibitions as a Federal EAN source has. 
This is why we have IPAWS and its subsequent use by State/Local/Tribal 
authorities. Internet sources should be used as much as possible by 
these entities leaving the RF sources for those times when the internet 
is not available.

PEP use is dictated by conditions of the utilities in a given area. This 
is why there was no EAN during 9/11. The infrastructure was not damaged 
significantly and information was being disseminated by multiple 
avenues. This is also why the noise floor becomes close to 
inconsequential should the PEP system ever have to be lit up. No 
utilities means a much lower or close to nonexistent floor. Individual 
PEP sites have been pressed into service for local/regional events due 
to damage in those areas, but PEP's outside of the area were not 
utilized as such at the same time.

Getting into the use of alerts by those agencies authorized to originate 
them is luckily not in the purview of SECC's or LECC's. However they can 
be resources for those alerting agencies if a good relationship is 
created and maintained. I liken it to SECC's and LECC's being a freight 
line. We pick up the freight and take it to where it needs to go. It 
isn't up to us what is in the boxes, but we can suggest palletizing them 
and wrapping them with plastic so they get to where they are going in 
one piece.

I concur that daisy chains need to be eliminated where they can be and 
reduced to the fewest hops where they can't. We have a lot of changes 
coming down the pike with ATSC 3.0 and the changing satellite situation. 
It would be a good idea to keep these in mind when looking over your 
State Plan's when it comes time to put them into the Online State Plan 
database.

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