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Houston Chapter 105

Chapter Minutes

of the last monthly meeting:

May 9th, 2022

Meeting Location: Univision Headquarters

Attendance: 15

Chairman: Albert Flores opened the meeting at 11:45a

  1. Past minutes, finances were read
  2. Presentation from Drake Tower Lighting and Mark, Boom and Dustin.
  3. Meeting a juried at 12:55p

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April 12, 2022

Meeting Location: Univision Headquarters

Attendance: 10

Chairman: Albert Flores opened meeting at 12pm

  1. Sean Vaughn of 90.5 KJIC was nominated and voted on as the new Secretary of Chapter 105.
  2. Tom led a tour of the new improvements at Univision and Channel 45.
  3. A presentation on ATSC 3.0 was shown via a recorded webinar by Mattalynn Nolen from LG Electronics.
    1. more details can be found at www.atsc.org or nextgeninfo.com
  4. Meeting was adjured at 1:30pm.

March 8, 2022

Meeting Location: Hickory Pit BBQ, complements of Chapter 105

Chairman Albert Flores opened meeting at 12 noon.

Attendance 8

Dan Giesler provided a report on balance

First meeting we have had in quite a while, due to safety concerns over Covid virus. Harris County lowered the virus threat from #1 Severe which has made it possible for this meeting.

Discussion had over upcoming meetings and there topics. Program Chairman George Shank is preparing a May and June meeting program.

Interest expressed in next month’s meeting to see the new digital video wall at Univision, Tom Daniels Regional Director of Technology Texas – Univision will present. Also, planning on having an in-dept discussion on ATSC 3.0

Albert Flores made announcements from SBE Chairs Newsletter.

Meeting closed.

February 11

Chairman Albert Flores opened the meeting.
Attendance = 18.
The Treasurer reported a balance.

Attendee Roswell Clark with Cox Broadcasting discussed national SBE business:
1. Finances and membership are up, in part due to frequency coordination services with a military contract. Locally, our Chapter should have a local coordinator, also working on channel sharing.
2. There are and will be continuing education programs.
3. Website upgrades are planned.

Paul Easter is working on our local membership recruitment and stimulation, via phone reminders.

The Chapter Secretary received a recognition award for three years of service.

A reminder that TAB is July 29 & 30; retiring John Poray and Wayne Pecina should be there.

John Lackness with the Elenos Group, representing Broadcast Electronics and Marti, spoke on the current company history, and the product line. John demonstrated the direct (off air) measurement Avatar interface.

A discussion ensued on products needed (wish list) by our engineers, and a need expressed for bidirectional monitoring with IP.

January 14, 2020

Dan Giesler introduced the new Chapter Officers starting in 2020.

Albert Flores – Chairman
Marty Scruggs – Vice Chairman
Hank Lam – Secretary
Dan Giesler – Treasurer

Albert presented Tom Daniels with a recognition plaque for his service as chairman the past few years.

Marty welcomed the new members in attendance (old ones too).  Total = 13.

Dan Giesler presented Treasurer reports from Nov 2019 to present.

NAB and TAB conventions were discussed.

Bob Orban presented a webinar on the TV processor.

Dan Giesler – (For Hank Lam)

November 12, 2019

The Chapter annual Holiday party and November meeting were held concurrently.

Elections were held and new officers for 2020 seated as follows:
Chairman – Albert Flores
Vice Chairman – Marty Scruggs
Secretary – Hank Lam
Treasurer – Dan Giesler
Programs – George Schank
Membership – Dan Giesler

There were 14 members in attendance:

October 8, 2019 meeting

The Chairman called the meeting to order.
The Treasurer reported a balance.
The meeting attendance was 8.
SBE national announcements were read, including notes on the national meeting webcasts and classes.
The Chapter Christmas party date was tentatively set for the evening of Tuesday December 10th.
Our November meeting will have a discussion on the ATSC 3.0 standards.

This month’s program was presented by Jed Wilkinson and Norman Cue of C&W Veloce Services. Diesel Fuel Basics were discussed, pertaining to the preventive and corrective maintenance associated with diesel storage. The history and status of sulfur additives, their regulation, emission standards, and contamination issues were highlighted, as was the influence of water in diesel, which influences and affects fuel ph by acid excretion, and the role of fungus and microbes. www.cwvelocesvc.com

September 9, 2019
Attendance was 12.
The treasurer reported a balance.

Marty Scruggs opened the meeting, reading national announcements. Meetings and webinars now avcailable were noted. George Schank reported doing frequency coordination for ABC sponsored debates TSU.

Guest speakers were then introduced and a program presented:
Dale Dalesio – Continental Electronics
Felipe Maduro – Tohsiba UPS & Power Electronics
Rob Belle-Isle – Toshiba Director of Marketing – Broadcast & new media marketing.
Dan Valenta – Toshiba local representative.

Rob Belle-Isle introduced himself, and discussed Toshiba’s focus areas and management policy. The broadcast product lineup was discussed.

Dale Dalesio introduced Continental and their products, detailing the use of GaN transistors in UHF TV transmitters. Noted were gallium nitride on silicon carbide ‘s outstanding thermal properties, and the VSWR amp protection systems in their transmitters.

Felipe Maduro discussed Toshiba’s use of IGBT rectifiers and their UPS systems and batteries and energy storage management apps, now used in data centers, commercial installs, and industrial UPS solutions. The design and use of the SCiB rechargeable battery (vs VRLA) was highlighted, particularly their no-carbon lithium ion batteries and the safety of SCiB chemistry.

July 9, 2019
In Attendance = 10

The Treasurer reported a balance.

Bill Porter with NBRI Technology introduced the 360 Systems webinar on broadcast products, which was presented by Alan Jermagian, CEO of 360 Systems.

Alan discussed the company’s line of Audio play-out devices, multi channel and format Video Servers, Video Time Delays, and the upcoming broadcast IP Video Server.   Some server devices include features such as multiple bidirectional I/Os, with playlists, graphics and scheduling.  All products are explained in detail at the website.

June 11, 2019

Chairman Tom Daniels opened the meeting.
There were 8 members in attendance.
The treasurer reported a May and June balance.

Tom discussed offering nominations for both the SBE 2019 National Awards and also the SBE Individual Awards.  He also announced that Fred Lewis, KTMD’s transmitter engineer for the past 20+ years, had passed.

As it is election time, the Chapter is interested in nominations and electing a new Chapter 105 President and Officers.

The monthly presentation was provided by Marsha Bartlett, Business Development of Drake Lighting.  She discussed the Drake product line of efficient LED/IR tower lighting.

May 15, 2019

The meeting was held at the offices of H.C. Jeffries Tower Company.

Tom Daniels opened the meeting.
There were 12 attendees.
The SBE is taking nominations for SBE best engineer for our chapter.

The presentation was opened by Herbert Jeffries, discussing current projects and the company capabilities.   Mr. Jeffries introduced Shawn Doughty who gave a more detail.  We then had a tour of the fabrication facility.

March 12, 2019

Chairman Tom Daniels opened the meeting.
There were 10 in attendance.
The Treasurer reported a balance, with several repayments and rebates forthcoming.

Nathan Cantu said the SMPTE signup was progressing.

The guest speaker was Don Backus, Account Manager over radio transmitters at Rohde & Schwarz USA.

He spoke on the subject of radio transmitters and addressed the company philosophy of “Cost versus Price“, when analyzing Total Cost of Ownership. Detailed were the specifications and benefits of their series THx9 transmitters, which include the 9000 series liquid cooled units.

February 12, 2019

Chairman Tom Daniels opened the meeting. There were 13 people in attendance.
The Treasurer reported a balance.

Current business:
The Chairman has assumed the Certification proctor position.
Nathan Cantu ([email protected]) is trying to re-start the local SMPTE chapter, and requests interested individuals contact him.
TAB will be the first Thursday and Friday in August. There will be the Engineer’s dinner party.

The Webinar presentation was by Robert Orban, on the subject of “Audio processing for radio and digital media: good practices and some pitfalls.” Discussed were sonic and electronic issues related to subharmonic synthesis, clipping and de clipping, phase skew correction, and loudness control. Noted was the fact that physical listening/ears are the final determinant of acceptable quality. Orban’s latest products were displayed.

January 8, 2019
Tom Daniels opened the meeting.
16 people were in attendance.

 

The meeting was sponsored by Dan Sessler of RF Specialties and Dan/Tim Giesler of GBS.
Our speaker was Jeff Wilson of Nautel.  He will be in charge of Regional Sales for the Western US.  Jeff discussed some new and exciting products from Nautel.

November 13, 2018

Tom Daniels opened the meeting.
There were 7 in attendance.
The treasurer reported a balance.

The guest speaker was Bear Poth, President & CEO of LumenServe.

The presentation was entitled “Tower Lighting & Changes in the Tower Lighting World”, covering currnet Rules, Technology & “Lighting as a service”.

This included trends in LED usage, FAA rules AC70/7460 – (avian standards, etc. lighting strength and positions, etc.), LED + infra red efficiency (ECO), and TLaaS (Tower lighting as a service).

TLaaS is unique service offering from LumenServe which includes their compliance, inspections, system, and warranty maintenance packages. lumenserve.com

October 9, 2018

The Chairman called the meeting to order.

There were 13 in attendance.

The Treasurer reported a balance.

National communications were relayed to the membership.

A discussion was held highlighting the basics of NextGen, ATSC 3.0 television as per the ATSC committee, with overviews of the layers; physical, management and protocol, and application and presentation. Further, transitioning issues were discussed, including bandwidth and transmission, as per the present Korean broadcasting model.

September 11, 2018

Tom Daniels opened with National SBE and FCC news and alerts.

There were 14 in attendance.

The treasurer reported a balance.

T-Mobile guest speakers Katie Miller (T-Mobile, National Outreach & Spectrum Management) and Scott Hewett (Spectrum Consultant) presented “600 MHz spectrum deployment as concerns broadcasters. – Frequency coordination and Notification; Spectrum Clearing”.

They discussed T-Mobile’s building an outreach team for spectrum issues, wireless mic interference issues, including up and downlink interference between wireless base stations, handsets and wireless devices, the Repack Timeline between 2017 and 2020, and the moving of broadcasters and wireless users (which has no relation to time as T-Mobile can move anytime).

Also, the future of 5G was discussed, and the need for hardware, such as wireless routers.

For more info, the T-Mobile website (and transition) reference is http://www.howmobileworks.com/spectrum.

Houston repack info graphic

Link to T-Mobile Wireless Microphone Presentation v2 – 2018-09-11 PPTX presentation

July 10, 2018

Chairman Tom Daniels opened the meeting. There were 7 members in attendance.
The Treasurer reported a balance.

The Chairman reviewed the upcoming SBE National elections – check for your ballots by email, or receive and send them by mail. It was noted that John Poray from National will be at the TAB Engineers dinner.
The Chapter received thank-you acknowledgments from the Lions Club and the Make A Wish foundation, as a result of the donations made last month in honor of two of our members.

Bill Porter with Paradigm Marketing ([email protected]) and David Kendal, owner of Link Electronics, demonstrated the newest Link automated closed captioning and encoding system.A software based system on a dedicated Windows frame, it can do English & Spanish language translation (and other languages) and features speech recognition. It is also provides ADA compliance, and does off-line faster-than-real-time archiving.

The October SBE meeting will feature Crystal Vision, presenting their Video over IP solutions.

6/12/18

Chairman Tom Daniels called the meeting to order. Thirteen people were in attendance.

The Treasurer reported a balance, which included the national membership rebate. There was an expense for the 2 yrs. website renewal.

Two member’s have recently had fathers die. The Chapter voted to make a donation to Make a Wish Foundation for each.

National SBE news was reviewed, and membership drive info was discussed.

The annual TAB meeting is August 1 & 2, with the Engineers dinner Aug. 1st.

The guest speaker was Mark Johnson, from LinkUp Communications (703.217.8290). LinkUp does AV systems builds, uplinks and provides content distribution equipment.

Mark discussed some current issues:
1. Broadband’s 5G plan to encroach on C band. He noted that locations need to register dishes, for representation and protection reasons.
2. FCC rules regarding the elimination of the main studio rule, especially as regards community issue coverage and filing.
3. He discussed localizing a station without a main studio; where the satellite receiver becomes a control room, providing a Network & Content Management System. This is a Command & Control scenario using satellite or IP connectivity to operate a complete station in the transport stream.

5/8/2018

Chairman Tom Daniels opened the meeting.
There were 16 people in attendance.

The treasurer reported a balance.

There was no old or new business.

DoubleRadius, represented by Brittany Hilton & Jeff Holdenrid, presented an IP Microwave presentation titled “IP STLs Optimization”. An SAF portable spectrum analyzer was also demonstrated.

3-13-2018

Tom Daniels called the meeting to order.

There were 11 in attendance.

The treasurer reported a balance.

Bill Porter with Paradigm Marketing sponsored a webinar presented by NVERSION, who demo’ed their NFinityView and Aramis server.

A brief discussion of Link Electronics closed captioning technologies also ensued.

2-13-18

Chairman Tom Daniels opened the meeting.

Attendance is 14.

Membership renewal time is now.

The Treasurer reported.

Our guest speaker is Eddy Vanderkerken, Director of  Broadcast Sales with Radio Frequency Systems.  His discussion was titled; “Antenna and RF System Design for the FCC Repack”.

He discussed RFS’ simulation method for pattern replication using computer optimization, the RFS Analysis & Antenna Planning Tool, and their low insertion loss, cast UHF mask filters, designed with computer aided tuning.

A demonstration using RFS’s free software, the Antenna Analysis and Selection Tool, followed.

January 9, 2018:

Chairman Tom Daniels opened the meeting.

In attendance where 12.

The Chapter treasurer reported a bank balance.

It was voted and seconded  that the current Officers will remain in office for the next year.

The various National SBE membership options discussed, including the benefits of various webinars made available to members at the higher level.

For future meetings, the members discussed various roadtrips and securing guest speakers for meetings.

NAB & TAB schedules and conflicting dates were reviewed.

George Schank discussed creating a broadcast-centric post-mortem article on Hurricane Harvey; the  issues, experiences, problems and lessons.  He asked for community info and additions, via the website email to create a future planning guide. Of interest are solutions and stories relating to the storm disruptions, lessons learned, personal and work stories, station and community resources (suppliers and agencies), transportation options and challenges, and backup preparedness.

November 14, 2017

Chairman Tom Daniels called the meeting to order.

Total attendance = 9.

Treasure reported a balance.

Items of business discussed:

  1. the meetings will remain monthly, on the second Tuesday of the month.
  2. the annual holiday party will not be sponsored this year; therefore the chapter will pay for the dinner, with the following guidelines:
    1. only current members and spouses will be paid for.
    2. there will be a cash bar for alcohol.
    3. non members will not be ‘comped; they are be encouraged to join prior to the event and receive a free dinner.
    4. everyone on the mailing list will receive this information.
  3. there is a new SBE membership category, with increased benefits.  The yearly dues is $175 vs. $85.

The presentation by Shure was hosted by Glenn Yates of Highway Marketing and Bill Ostry from Shure.  Discussed and displayed were the new Shure wireless technologies and devices, with new frequency allocations (repack ready), and power outputs.  The buy-back plan was announced.  The flagship product(s), Axient digital, was demonstrated, as was the Wireless Workbench analysis, control and frequency management software. (see pictures on our media pages)

October 10, 2017

The meeting was called to order by Chairman Tom Daniels.
The Treasurer reported a balance.

There was discussion on whether to have meetings every two months instead of every
month.

There was discussion on whether to have a Holiday party this year. Currently, without
any sponsors, the Chapter would pay. A decision on whether to have a members and
partners/spouse’s only private party will be discussed, with an option for non-members to attend should the non-member join the chapter when arriving at the party. Further, a location has not yet been secured.

The need for recruiting of new members was discussed and various attendees volunteered to act on the mailing list participants.

September 12, 2017:

The meeting was called to order by Chairman Tom Daniels.
The Chairman read the SBE National announcements and updates.

SBE informal August meeting at TAB – SBE Engineer’s Dinner, August 9, 2017.


Our Chapter Treasurer and event sponsor Dan Giesler welcomes the guests and co-sponsors.

A great time was had by all!

SBE July MEETING – 7/11/2017

Chairman Tom Daniels opened the meeting.

Treasurer’s report

Chairman’s report and notices:

  1. the upcoming Nautel Webinar notice for SBE re-certification credits.
  2. Use the SBE site to post Houston jobs on the national site.
  3. Jobs compensation survey is now posted.
  4. National elections begin July 24 – expect ballots by email or mail.
  5. EAS Blue Alert comments are encouraged.
  6. National SBE meeting in Denver, Oct. 25-26.

Paul Easter presented the monthly program, which was guest speaker John Ahern from Comlab, speaking on Davicom monitoring systems.  The subject was “Estimating Remote Site Maintenance Costs”.

With over 4000 installs, the company website has a site maintenance cost calculator to assist engineers in designing and budgeting with their intelligent remote control and site monitoring systems.

SBE June MEETING – 6/13/2017

Chairman Tom Daniels opened the meeting

All attendees introduced themselves.

Tom Daniels announced new SBE national business, including

1. a local Chapter Engineer of the year nominee notice, for inclusion with the National nominees, by 6/15.

2. use of the free SBE jobs online form – request service.

3. the SBE compensation survey is complete.

4. the TAB convention, August 9/10.

5. the national SBE meeting in Denver in October 25/26.

Treasurer Dan Giesler reported on the Chapter bank account.

He announced that Errol Coker is to receive the Steve Schott / George Marti award at TAB.

Dan introduced the guest speaker, Oscar Rodriguez, President of the Texas Association of Broadcasters.

Oscar Rodriguez announced this year’s talk-circuit was an Engineer meet & greet. He outlined his work on:

1. meeting with national and state legislatures, and with the comptrollers office.

2. issues relating to the spectrum repack, including fund access for cost coverage available to radio and TV broadcasters for protection, within a 39 month timeframe, and placeholder requests.

3. ATSC3 – as it is pushing forward.

4. Tax issues- including sales tax exemptions protections. He encouraged contacting TAB for issues or questions.

5. the upcoming August Convention.

6. He described the NAB PILOT Innovation Challenge.

7. the current EAS plan, which is waiting on FCC approval.

8. the free TAB email newsletter.

9. the engineering shortage – and the fact that scholarships are available.

A Q&A session followed, which touched on topics including:

1. FCC mandates vs. voluntary, as they concern FM and other tuner technology, innovation (HD radio, ATSC, cell FM chip) and ideology.

2. the Main Studio Rule proposal and comments.

The meeting adjourned.

SBE  May MEETING – May 9, 2017

The meeting was called to order by Tom Daniels.

Preparations were discussed for the June meeting with TAB President Oscar Rodriguez.

National SBE office announcements were read:

  • the engineering awards nomination deadline is June 15.
  • there is a recruitment drive.
  • the National meeting is in October.
  • the membership renewal campaign is underway.

Meeting minutes are posted within a week of the last meeting.