As the LBA Antenna Turns

LBA Technology is offering the top-of-the-line Kathrein MSK-200 TV Signal Analyzer for hands-on demonstrations at the following October events:

October 6-7 in Verona, NY at the SBE22 Broadcast Technology Expo presented by LBA Reseller Broadcasters General Store in booth# A18

October 13-15 in Madison, WI at the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association “Broadcasters Clinic“, presented by LBA Reseller Broadcasters General Store.

October 14-16 in Alexandria, VA at the IEEE 2009 Broadcast Symposium http://www.ieee.org/organizations/society/bt/abs09/abs09program.html

October 14-15 in New York City at SATCON, presented by LBA Reseller Satellite Engineering Group in booth# 705 www.satconexpo.com

October 27-30 in Denver, CO at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, presenteed by LBA Reseller Mega Hertz Company in booth# 5065 http://expo.scte.org/

If you are in the area of these events, please stop by to experience yourself the quality and functionality of the Schomandl/Kathrein line of RF Test Instruments.

New and improved MSK-200 Analyzers have arrived!
(LBA Sales Executive Paulo Fernandes)

Since LBA introduced the Kathrein MSK-200 TV Signal Analyzer to the Americas last year, it has been enthusiastically welcomed by TV engineers. As an economical portable or fixed 6 ‘n 1 digital signal test solution it was without compare. And we have had extensive wish list feedback.

Now the German engineering wizards at Kathrein have added a whole galaxy of new features, as you requested, shipping immediately – Same old price!

• ATSC/8VSB analysis for new USA DTV signal standards
• MPEG-4 decoding and transport stream information
• Dolby AC-3 audio decoding/demodulation
• SMPTE-310 HD video analysis
• Automatic loop testing
• DVB-S2 satellite standard analysis capability
• Automatic channel scanning
• MER/BER/Signal-to-Noise automatic measurements
• And more…..

Here is an overview of the major new features and how they will make your engineering life easier. Please contact the LBA Helpline or your authorized dealer to order or for more information.

ATSC/8VSB Decoding:
The MSK-200 has recently been updated to support and analyze the new USA DTV ATSC signal standard as well as measure and analyze 8VSB sideband modulation in real time.  Broadcasters and Cable operators can now diagnose and repair issues in multi-path transmission.  In addition, the MSK-200 can scan and find transport stream information for this new standard and allow broadcasters to find issues in PID, PMT-PID, PCR, CA and elementary stream ID’s as well as decode video images and demodulate audio including Dolby AC-3.  This is essential for installing, maintaining and repairing our new DTV signal standards.

MPEG-4 Decoding and Viewing:
The MSK-200 has always supported MPEG-2 streams. Now it does MPEG-4 decoding! MPEG-4 is especially important as it is used for compressing different formats (audio/video/speech).  Key features of MPEG-4 are improved coding efficiency, robust transmission, enhanced bit rate usage and compressed services.  MPEG-4 is also playing a large role in new HD technologies such as blue-ray.  Now the MSK-200 can decode and view video and audio for picture and audio quality analysis.

Dolby AC-3 Audio Demodulation:
New digital audio formats can now be demodulated and listened to while viewing the image. The MSK-200 becomes a major aid in real-time transmission quality control.  The AC-3 audio format is prominent on HD TV and MPEG-4.

SMPTE-310 HD Analysis:
The MSK-200 now allows viewing and analysis of transport streams using SMPTE-310 for HD video.  It can display video and decode audio to measure HD streams and signals and provide transport stream information.

Automatic CATV Loop Testing:
This new feature will help Cable engineers to measure ingress from headend to subscriber for signal quality issues.  CATV systems need to test nodes for proper distribution of signals to customers and loop testing will allow for these measurements to be made and ensure functionality from headend to customer and provide RF information.

DVB-S2 Satellite Standard Monitoring:
The MSK-200 now supports the new generation of the older DVB-S broadcast standard for high definition via satellite.  This is especially helpful in transmitting HDTV satellite news gathering content back to the station.  When compression is added, DVB-S2 allows for MPEG-4 services to be delivered.  DVB-S2 performs about 30% better than the previous DVB-S standard.  Now you can analyze and monitor these streams in real time.

Automatic Channel Scanning:
Automatic channel scanning enhances a user’s ability to customize their own channel plan in the MSK-200 for quick access to each carrier, channel and frequency of interest.  Users can program modulation symbol rates, frequencies, associated channels, satellites and transponders, so each can be accessed quickly eliminating the need for repetitive manual parameter entry. This is a real time saver- even better, you can download and select multiple channel programs!

MER/BER/Signal-to-Noise Automatic Measurements:
Now signal quality measurements are automatically displayed during measurements to show MER, BER Pre and Post Viterbi and Signal-to-Noise levels.  This allows for users to monitor essential quality levels while making using most measurements in the MSK-200.

 
Installing SAMWAS-200 ATU

Ships sailing in waters near Guam have a new connection to shore. The island’s NAVTEX navigational telex broadcast system has been upgraded by replacing three conventional 300’ vertical towers with one small aperture SAMWAS antenna

The unique SAMWAS medium wave antenna system is a product of LBA Technology, a North Carolina telecommunications firm with over 40 years experience in antenna innovations. The company’s engineered solution for the Guam site is replicable at most other NAVTEX locations worldwide.

NAVTEX Stations World Wide

The coastal telex broadcast system called NAVTEX is a vital link for commercial and military ships operating within 400 miles of a coastline. NAVTEX is a maritime safety system typically operated by navies, coast guards, or lighthouse authorities in coordination with the International Maritime Organization (IMO). The shore-to-ship signals are sent out at either 518 kHz or 490 kHz. 

For the US Navy transmission site on Guam, LBA Technology used a suite of subsystems called SAMWAS-200 that incorporates a grounded 199 foot electrically short transmission antenna rated at 2500 watts. Installed for LBA in the spring of 2009 by Guam contractor AIC International Construction, the antenna’s propagation of medium wave signals has proven effective and efficient, though its physical footprint is much smaller than the three-tower system it replaced.

The short height avoided the need for aviation safety lights and the associated installation and operating costs. The grounded tower reduces system vulnerability to lightning and reduces RF safety hazards.
 
The transmitter building is located fully 3,000 feet from the tower. As the dual frequency SAMWAS-200 Phantom-E™ remote control system can use a coaxial cable as its sole connection for both RF and control signals, an existing coaxial cable was utilized with no new trenching for electrical services. The Phantom-E™ system selects between 490 and 518 kHz frequency modes.

As there are no moving RF parts in the SAMWAS tuning unit, it is expected to function reliably for years with minimal maintenance. Because of the stability of the overall system, periodic retuning is not needed to accommodate changing environmental conditions.

Other SAMWAS antenna systems from 65 to 350 feet high are available to support DGPS, NAVTEX, and GMDSS medium wave transmissions. Dual NAVTEX frequency support and DGPS diplexing are options. Full turnkey projects with transmitters and message equipment are offered.

For tactical communication situations, LBA Technology offers medium wave transmission systems integrated into trucks or trailers, and smaller emergency units that can be assembled on site by hand.

New England radio station owner Bob Vinikoor looked past the momentary inconvenience of installing wireless carrier antennas on his AM radio towers and saw a steady stream of revenue. The same sight awaits almost any radio station owner willing to look into the matter.  

Lawrence Behr Associates can help. We make it possible to generate new revenue from old towers.

Vinikoor – the president of Koor Communications – listened to a proposal from a wireless carrier five years ago and soon thereafter his 200-foot-tall tower for WNTK-AM 1010 was earning him extra revenue. The tower now is home to 4 wireless carrier antennas. In all, three of four towers serving Vinikoor’s stable of radio stations in New Hampshire and Vermont are partnering with wireless companies.
 
To help Vinikoor reap more income from his existing facilities, Lawrence Behr Associates utilized a patented signal isolation device developed by LBA Technology engineers called CoLoCoil.

“I’ve never had a problem with the CoLoCoils,” Vinikoor says, referring to the original installation and several others that followed on his towers. “I would certainly recommend colocation of wireless and other carriers. It is painless.”

Vinikoor believes many AM radio station owners haven’t offered their towers for collocation because they have never been asked. Why? Wireless carries aren’t aware of their towers. Vinikoor recommends that owners have their towers listed – it’s free – by the Federal Aviation Administration so wireless companies know of their existence.

Vinikoor charges different rates. The higher on a tower an antenna is placed, the greater the premium charged. Vinikoor’s wireless partners pay from $1,600 to $2,400 a month to collocate on his structures.

“There is a little down time during the construction phase, some lost broadcast time,” he says, “but the revenue from the leases more than makes up for the lost time up front.”

Can wireless carriers and AM radio station towers partner? You betcha! There is a proven collocation engineering system that successfully weds wireless antennas and AM towers. In this blog, Lawrence Behr, founder and chief executive officer of LBA Group Inc., explains how it’s done.
 
Historically, the wireless industry has been warned to steer clear of AM radio stations. The towers were considered unsuitable by most wireless carriers (cellular, PCS, SMR) because of presumed grounding difficulties, interference and safety considerations.

Not today! We have developed new technologies to overcome these problems and efficiently integrate wireless and AM systems at reasonable costs.

Our technological approach to AM colocation is a proprietary system called CoLoSiteSM. This technology has been developed through the collaboration of two LBA Group companies with more than 35 years of experience in AM broadcast and wireless industries.  The system is based on patented hardware by LBA Technology, Inc. with engineering and integration systems implemented by Lawrence Behr Associates, Inc.
 
With CoLoSiteSM, collocation is practical for both single tower and multiple tower AM antenna systems. Using the system, wireless antenna and coaxial cable installations have virtually no effect on host AM towers and the AM signal has no effect on the wireless antenna.

Moreover, antennas and transmission lines can be added without the use of additional isolation devices. This means a tower owner can lease additional space to other wireless carriers.

On non-directional towers, an isolation system called CoLoPole typically is used. CoLoPole directly grounds an AM tower. The system benefits the AM station with improved efficiency, “air sound” and lightning protection.

Directional stations use multiple towers to form an FCC-licensed radiation pattern crucial to protecting other stations from interference. LBA has developed CoLoCoil to prevent wireless transmission lines from interfering with the operating parameters of the directional AM towers. Because CoLoCoils are modular, adding wireless equipment to a tower in the future is done systematically.

Call Lawrence Behr Associates early in planning AM colocation, because the process really begins with an analysis of a station facility. Not all AM stations are economically or technically suitable for collocation. And where multiple towers exist, choosing the optimum one is critical.
 
Because AM towers operate “hot” at high RF voltages, candidate towers must be carefully selected and worked on. (It is not true, however, that AM stations always must be shut down for installation and maintenance of collocated antenna equipment.)

The best time to call Lawrence Behr Associates is during the site acquisition stage so as to avoid unnecessary costs between the tower owner and a wireless carrier. There are numerous subtleties to negotiating a satisfactory lease or acquisition agreement. Advance screening of potential sites can also eliminate unneeded detuning situations.

Professionally managed AM collocation by Lawrence Behr Associates has been repeatedly accomplished throughout the country for such wireless carriers as Sprint, Nextel, AT&T and Omnipoint. With our help, a wireless carrier and AM host partner can fashion a long-term collocation relationship.

Lightning flirts with a 335-ft tall radio tower. Credit: Jeffrey K. Herzer/Missouri State Highway Patrol Communications Division.

Every radio engineer and tower owner is painfully aware of the toll that lightning takes on broadcast and communications installations each year.

The mechanism for how towers attract lightning is not really understood. But scientists have known for a long time that towers attract more lightning than the undisturbed ground nearby.

Lightning damages have been on the increase in the past 35 years. US government researchers attribute most of this increase to population growth, and where there is population, there are towers! Pennsylvania has the largest number of US Weather Service damage reports, while the highest rates of damage reports weighted by population are on the plains from North Dakota and Oklahoma.

According to Richard Kithil of the National Lightning Safety Institute, most reports of the economic impact of lightning are contradictory and underreported. Kithil conducted a study based on insurance reports and other sources that keep track of weather damages, and said “It seems reasonable to estimate that there may be $4 to 5 billion in lightning costs and losses each year in the US.”

The top ten states in number of lightning casualties.

Lightning accounts for a large number of casualties, as well. All those who work on or around towers are at risk. Therefore, it is important for tower operators to take measures to protect both life and property.

Proper grounding and bonding of tower structures, transmission lines and other attachment is most important in lightning protection. Adjacent buildings housing equipment need to be outfitted with a Faraday Cage as well. This may be achieved by good bonding of structural steel components and metal skins. If of non-metallic construction like may equipment shelters, an insulated halo ground of wire (#4 copper is typical) can be formed around the ceiling edges of each room with downleads in each corner to the system earth ground.

Small LBA lightning dissipator.

Towers can be effectively protected from lightning with top mounted dissipation arrays. These and other lightning protection products and services are available from LBA in various forms to suit the height and physical configuration. They are also available for building protection. Smaller dissipators are recommended for attachment to individual antennas. A typical brush dissipator is shown. These devices have been shown to significantly reduce lightning strikes. This is fundamentally different than the function of lightning rods, which serve only to terminate strikes into the tower, but not to deter them. Tower top lightning rods can not deter strokes to side mounted antennas, but this is done very effectively by dissipators!

Javier Castillo is the resident LBA expert in lightning protection. Contact him for protection to your towers and antennas.

LBA Technology’s presentation of Kathrein / Schomandl RF Test Instrumentation generates overwhelming interest from South American visitors at the LABS’09 (Latin American Broadcast Show) going on now in Miami, FL. The MSK-200 TV signal analyzer can be seen in the center of the photo above.

LBA’s latest Authorized RF Instrument Reseller, 305 Broadcast, was also on hand promoting our products. 305 Broadcast’s President, Mr. Alfonso O Lopez and part of his sales staff preparing to engage eager visitors.

Instruments on display include:
MSK-200 TV Signal Analyzer, 3024 Power Monitor, FIT-70 In-Line Wattmeter, SafeOne Personal RF Safety Monitor. Click here for more info.

LBA Technology’s sales representatives, Javier Castillo & Paulo Fernandes waiting for the crowds.

Geographically isolated and local community analog TV watchers soon can see their favorite shows in high-definition television. The Federal Communications Commission has issued a public notice on how low power television stations can go digital, beginning in rural areas not served by full-power stations.

Though most of the American viewing public switched to DTV in June, TV translator and low power stations were temporarily exempted from the mandated analog ban. Those stations were to be given the eventual choice of switching over to digital broadcast, starting up a companion digital station, or becoming a TV translator station for a full-power digital broadcaster.

Decision time for the stations now looms, probably much to the delight of their long-suffering viewers eager to see if high-definition TV is all it is cracked up to be. Beginning Aug. 25, three kinds of applications will be accepted by the FCC:

(1) new digital-only LPTV and TV translator stations in rural areas;
(2) changes to analog and digital LPTV and TV translator stations in those areas;
(3) digital companion channels for existing analog LPTV stations.

Five months later – on Jan. 25 – the FCC will open a first-come, first-served application period for low power and TV translator stations located outside rural areas. Some of the station applications must be accompanied by a filing fee of $705 – wouldn’t you love to know how a bureaucrat arrived at that figure? – and all must be filed electronically using FCC form 346. Please note that this application schedule doesn’t preclude LPTV, TV translator and Class A analog stations from switching over to digital on an earlier schedule. In fact, the FCC is encouraging the stations to perform flash-cuts to digital any time.

The transition is not expected to occur without some awkward moments, including displacement. We’ll take this opening to plug LBA Technology’s lineup of Kathrein-Schomandl DTV test equipment, which can solve some of these anticipated problems and prevent future ones. For more information on these stellar testing devices, check out the MSK-200 TV analyzer.

Along with procedures for filing the applications, commissioners published a list of cities and geographical coordinates that rural digital LPTV and TV translator station applicants must use in siting their antennas. We hasten to suggest that local AM stations can provide a convenient tower for some of these LPTV and translator antennas. Lawrence  Behr Associates is an expert source of AM collocation solutions. Read more about it at http://www.lbagroup.com/associates/wiream.php.

Much is made of reception problems marring the changeover from analog to digital TV in the US. Typically, these problems are laid on the backs of the TV engineering community. Before you jump too hard on the engineers, please consider that broadcasting is not a technology industry – it is an entertainment industry, pure and simple! In OTA TV, engineers don’t set the course, they just follow.

Few industries in this world are so hidebound as the entertainment industry. The broadcast industry has always used regulation to throttle new technology. TV and FM survived being beaten down at birth by entrenched AM interests. Both eventually did well, ironically, leaving many of their old AM antagonists hoisted on their own petard.

We are reprising that in DTV. The marching orders for it came out in an era of big network domination, and an arrogant disregard of the real destiny of TV (CATV, mobile, SFN’s, etc.). It was birthed without much top floor regard to or respect of the many disruptive digital technologies appearing on the horizon. The voices of the forward thinkers like Sinclair were tuned out.

As a result, OTA TV as we have known it is nearing extinction, and there is little but passing political interest in the few million (1% or so) viewers with OTA reception problems. There are much bigger problems to worry about.

For one, the present system is obsolete with respect to mobile TV, some form of which will surely dominate our viewing in coming years. ClearWire’s nationwide WiMax deployments, followed by the big cell carriers coming conversion to 4G, will finish the broadcasters mobile hopes off. There just is little call for 2000′ towers and megawatts in the mobile world – 250,000+ 100′ cell sites pretty well show that!

So, back to the TV industry being in the entertainment industry.  As a product producer, the industry could care less about how they get the product to you – by CATV, FIOS, 4G, however. No industry cares to serve 100% of their market. So, in the end, it really wouldn’t have mattered if better choices had been made in the HDTV standard. Perhaps, a different technical standard would have delayed a bit the absorption of OTA TV into the broadband soup, but it will still disappear into history sooner or later.

Comments of Lawrence Behr, CEO of LBA, reflecting over 50 years in radio-TV broadcasting and wireless, representing engineering and business development consulting with hundreds of AM, FM and TV stations as well as broadband wireless enterprises. (Link to LBA Consulting Services)

Please join LBA Technology in Miami, Florida for this year’s LABS’09 event at the Hyatt Regency Downtown, July 9th and 10th. LBA will display, in booth# 307, not only our time-tested AM Antenna System products and solutions, but also a full line of RF Test & Measuring instruments from world renowned Kathrein & Schomandl.

Demonstrations will be available on:

MSK-200 Universal TV Signal Analyzer, a top-quality DTV & MPEG-2/4 instrument
FIT-70 In-Line Wattmeter with removable RF heads
3024 RF Power Monitor with remote monitoring over Ethernet connection
SafeOne® Personal RF Safety Monitor, alerts to hazardous RF for 50% less than competition