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Former Summit Director of Engineering Dennis Sloatman, now retired, encountered an annoying issue familiar to any of us who have home offices. Whenever he sent a job to his Brother laser printer, he had problems: monitors blanking, UPS units beeping and lights flickering.

Dennis found the cause. When the printer comes out of sleep mode, a fairly large current spike (some 11 amps) is generated.

His solution involved an NTC Thermistor #3D-25. This thermistor is rated for 9 Amps continuous.

This circuit provides a soft start to a current-hungry laser printer.

“NTC” stands for Negative Temperature Coefficient. So the resistance drops as temperature (caused by the current) goes up. 

The thermistor chosen has a quiescent resistance at 25 degrees C of 5 Ohms, so, when the 11-amp surge rises, it drops 55 volts to the laser printer, but only for a millisecond or so, and gradually allows the normal 120VAC through (or nearly so).

He fixed the issue as depicted in the accompanying schematic. Dennis envisions many applications for a circuit of this type; and of course, there are a range of thermistors available for various applications.

Dennis built his circuit in a quad electrical box with a duplex outlet and extension cable. Let me and your fellow Workbench readers know if you come up with other applications for this circuit.

Dennis’ completed project. Don’t get screwed again

From Malaysia, Workbench regular Paul Sagi sends a link to a professional-grade kit for extracting broken bolt and stripped screws, and it costs under $30. 

The  Alden 8440P Grabit Pro Broken Bolt & Damaged Screw Extractor 4 Piece Kit is made in the USA of high-quality tool steel. The extractors are designed to fit into a variable reversible drill but can also be used with a 1/4-inch hex screwdriver. 

Bolts and screws as small as No. 10 can be removed easily. The bits are designed to work with not only slotted and Phillips heads, but also Hex, Torx, Tri-Wing, Pozidriv, Fearson and most tamper-resistant screws.

The standard Grabit has been advertised on television for years, but the Pro model is tempered twice to provide multiple uses per tool. The 8440P has four bits; you can also buy packages of one to three bits.

Testing, testing

In a previous column I lamented the demise of the Fox and Hound audio signal tracer. 

Bob Clinton of technical consulting firm Cavell Mertz & Associates tells us that Fluke manufactures at least three versions of a similar signal tracer.

If all you need is tones, the Fluke Networks Pro3000 Tone Generator will fit the bill. If you need a generator and signal sniffer, the Pro3000 line also includes a kit that includes the tone generator and a filtered receiving probe. See various options by searching Pro3000 here. And for more advanced signal tracing, look at Fluke’s MT-8200-60.

Fluke’s MT-8200-60 kit locates cables safely and effectively on active networks.

Klein Tools has an advanced circuit tracer that can be used on both energized and non-energized circuits. Search ET450 in the search block here. There are YouTube videos showing the ET450 in action — tracing wiring that’s underground and even behind walls in conduit. 

Bob adds that if you are troubleshooting AES signals, check out the Whirlwind Qbox-AES. This test instrument includes a microphone, a speaker, a test-tone generator and outputs for standard headphones.

Finally, NTi has a Minirator, model MR-PRO, that provides a range of audio test signals.

Thanks to Bob for these choices. Cavell Mertz & Associates maintains the free and useful website FCCInfo.com, which provides searchable information on AM, FM, TV and even Auxiliary Services like RPU and STL channels. Radio World uses it all the time. Find it at www.fccinfo.com.

[Read Another Workbench by John Bisset]

Cool over the collar A very practical job site accessory.

If you wear a hard hat or safety helmet regularly, you may want to consider Klein Tools’ Cooling Fan for Hard Hats and Safety Helmets. 

I stumbled across this as I was researching Bob Clinton’s Klein signal tracer suggestion. Model 60155 is a dual-fan design for efficient airflow on the head, neck or face, providing up to six hours of continuous runtime. It uses a modular rechargeable battery. The easy mount design permits either front or back mounting. Find out more here.

A tale with a twist

Before we wrap, I have to tell you my Klein story.

Many engineers own a pair of 9-inch Klein Journeyman pliers. They are big and beefy — as the Klein website describes them, they have “a precision-hardened plier head, for on-the-job toughness.” They’re a must-have for electrical work.

Well, a former business associate told me about the time a co-worker was accosted. But the victim used that “precision-hardened plier head” to grab a bit of the accoster’s abdominal flesh, pinching and twisting it and bringing the troublemaker to his knees. Talk about “concealed-carry.”

From then on, my associate keeps his own “Kleins” in his back pocket more often.

Tips please! Workbench submissions are encouraged and qualify for SBE recertification credit. Email johnpbisset@gmail.com. 

The post Here’s a Circuit to Snub Those Surges appeared first on Radio World.

Radio World’s “Guest Commentaries” section provides a platform for industry thought leaders and other readers to share their perspective on radio news, technological trends and more. If you’d like to contribute a commentary, or reply to an already published piece, send a submission to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The author is a semi-retired engineer who has been a chief, assistant chief, contract engineer and TV network engineer.

In an earlier letter to the editor, Michael Baldauf told of a disappointing interaction with the support department of a transmitter manufacturer.

When I worked at a TV network, we expected support from our vendors and manufacturers. Contracts didn’t always go to the low bidder; support history played a significant part in our choice of equipment. There were companies with whom we stopped doing business because of unsatisfactory support. 

But the world has evolved. In times past, businesses in the professional equipment world provided free, ongoing phone support; if the equipment was in use 24/7, support was available at all times. In the event of a fire or tower collapse, vendors would even get people out of bed to ship replacement gear. 

Today, while this may still be the case at some companies, many sell “pay for support” plans. The trend started with IT-oriented companies, often supporting corporate data centers. It spread in broadcasting to cover audio or video editing software, automation systems and such. An NPR station with which I was involved paid a considerable annual fee for support of its playout automation. 

What is “full” support?

One transmitter vendor states in its advertisement: “Full Support: You can count on us … A Support Level Agreement is also available for customized support and maintenance.” It’s not clear how much support is free (24/7?) and how much you get with your (presumably paid) SLA.

Another vendor advertises “24/7 service and support.” My experience with the company has been that its telephone service is free and forever; you may wait a bit for a return call if you call at 3 a.m., but they will call you back. 

So, is it possible that the vendor who told Michael Baldauf to “send us an email” did so because the owner hadn’t paid for an available support plan covering telephone support? Or was the vendor just too cheap to provide any support?

An equipment shopper or an engineer making recommendations should ask: What support is available for free, what’s available with a paid contract, and what is not provided? Also inquire of friends at other facilities regarding quality of support.

There is another consideration. What level of redundancy is built into your facility? 

If you have a redundant system, a backup transmitter etc., your facility may not need 24/7 support. You may have a more reliable operation and possibly save money on a support plan. 

Making an investment

Is that 3 a.m. situation an emergency only because the owner was unwilling to invest in a sufficiently robust, redundant plant? With modern remote-control equipment, you, the chief engineer, can probably avoid that 3 a.m. trip to a redundant facility by switching to a backup from home or even automatically. 

This is usually just a matter of money. Is the owner willing to spend to design and build a redundant facility with full remote/automatic control? Are you being adequately reimbursed for those overnight calls, particularly if you are on contract? How quickly are you really required to respond? 

If you have come to hate hearing your phone ring in the middle of the night, perhaps you should look to put your talents to work in a different, and perhaps better-paid, part of the electronics/IT world.

Last, if you are the designer/integrator or chief engineer and believe you have a redundant facility, double-check the design to eliminate, or at least be fully aware of, single-point failures. And check your backup equipment. Routinely run that backup transmitter on the air, not just into the dummy load, for several hours at least, not just a few minutes. Do routine under-load power tests for your generator by pulling the main switch and seeing what happens. Running the generator only with the “exerciser” unloaded is no real test. 

Don’t end up with self-inflicted wounds.

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The post When It Comes to Support, Caveat Emptor! appeared first on Radio World.

Nomono, the Trondheim, Norway-based developer of audio recording and collaboration products designed to assist both podcasters and journalists tell “immersive audio stories,” has closed a multimillion-dollar investment round led by Schibsted Ventures.

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Mark Durenberger, a veteran engineer and longtime member of the Radio World family, is a member of the board of the Pavek Museum outside of Minneapolis. In that role he has written an essay about radio station WLAG, which came into being 100 years ago this month, and about how that early station turned into what is now WCCO.

An excerpt:

“The Star-Tribune of Sept. 3, 1922 announced, ‘Hotel’s Giant Radio to Open with Concert’ and ‘New Minneapolis Set is One of Six Largest in the World.’ No high expectations here! … Johnson knew the mike in front of him was connected to a transmitter that could carry his voice across the country. Nonetheless at 9 a.m. on Sept. 4, 1922, he straightened his shoulders and announced, ‘WLAG, Your Call of the North Station.’ Mr. Johnson stepped back and thought, ‘Now what?’”

Mark’s 30-page essay helps answer that question. Fans of early radio history and of WCCO in particular will appreciate it. 

You can find the essay here in PDF form.

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The post Learn About WLAG, Precursor to WCCO appeared first on Radio World.

Analytics and research firm Veritonic said NPR is using its attribution and “brand lift” services to provide campaign performance data to corporate sponsors. 

“The data from Veritonic’s audio-first measurement solutions will provide NPR sponsors with full-funnel, independent and holistic campaign measurement that will allow them to optimize and further increase the ROI of their audio campaigns,” the technology company said in a press release.

It quoted Gina Garrubbo, president/CEO of National Public Media, saying Veritonic’s data and analytics will be used to show sponsors the performance and ROI of their audio. National Public Media is the sponsorship subsidiary of NPR.

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The post Veritonic Inks Deal With NPR appeared first on Radio World.

On Wednesday, September 7, roughly 24 hours before Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz all but killed the NAB-Backed “Journalism Competition Preservation Act” with an unexpected amendment that gained the support of GOP co-sponsor John Kennedy of Louisiana.

Little did anyone realize that just one day earlier, a Republican Senator from Kentucky introduced a bill designed to give local broadcasters and newspapers “much-needed relief from outdated government restrictions.”

It seems the bill went largely ignored until late Tuesday, when one veteran trade journalist discovered it.

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Radio World’s “Guest Commentaries” section provides a platform for industry thought leaders and other readers to share their perspective on radio news, technological trends and more. If you’d like to contribute a commentary, or reply to an already published piece, send a submission to radioworld@futurenet.com.

Yes, I am a broadcast engineer; but on occasion, I use my skills to help non-broadcasters as well. 

Recently I got a call from a client who said that a website had detected an issue on his PC, so he called the website and gave them access. I screamed NO! But I was too late. 

The PC was compromised — officially screwed up. 

I drove to his office and ran many and multiple scans hoping to clean up his computer. I ran many updates as well. After a few hours and many deletions, I told him that the PC was clean of known viruses. I couldn’t find any malware, though I did find that his DNS settings had been changed and Remote Desktop was turned on. I rectified these, but I was suspicious.

A few days later, he reported that he was getting many “undeliverable” notifications. It was not happening on all of his outgoing emails but on many of them. It was more than a nuisance, so he called me. 

My client uses a hosted exchange service. Outlook is his client mail software. I asked him to forward me one of the “undeliverable” messages as an attachment, and I was able to inspect the email header. It revealed that the destination mailbox was full. This, at least, was good news, because if his emails were in fact going to the wrong place, at least no new mail was getting through. 

Reading further, I found a suspicious, unknown destination email address on the header: me.office365.management@gmail.com. This puzzled me. The address was not a Microsoft email, they would not use Gmail; and I had never heard of anyone using such an address, especially with the user “me.”

I thought about this, then spoke with a friend that runs my client’s ISP. He checked to see if any rules had been added to the Exchange Server; there were none.

[Read more commentaries by David Bialik]

I asked if there was a way to create a rule at the ISP to block emails going to this address. He said rules on this system only block incoming email.

Then I said, “Wait a minute!” This was my Eureka Moment.

I went to the client’s Outlook, opened “Manage Rules and Alerts” and found a rule titled “…” I looked at the rule and found that it was forwarding to the suspicious address all outgoing emails that contained the words “payment,” “credit card,” “account” and “transfer.”

Immediately I deleted the rule. Next I restarted Outlook multiple times to make sure the rule does not somehow re-emerge. Then I had the client reboot his PC multiple times to check that a re-emergence does not happen.

I also instructed the client never to grant access to someone he doesn’t know. Your data is confidential; not everyone is to be trusted; there are plenty of people with nefarious motives. I also advised him to review all passwords in his company, make them more complex and change them periodically.

Now I feel good. The client is happy. And I go to lunch! Next I’ll be replacing his hard drive — just in case.

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The post My Brush With Data Infiltration appeared first on Radio World.

You can’t step foot in the new iHeart facility show above. But you can still enter it.

The photo is from inside iHeartLand, a newly launched virtual location on the Roblox online platform and storefront. (Read: What is Roblox?]

The company hopes this initiative will engage younger consumers through music and “experiences,” part of its effort to establish a significant presence in what increasingly is being called the metaverse.

Here’s a video clip that gives a sense of what it’s all about:

The media company introduced iHeartLand as “a one-of-a-kind location for gaming, live events, music and interactive experiences with popular artists” that is “built to feel like the ultimate block party.”

The company had signaled last winter that it intended to go after the metaverse and tokenized communities.

iHeartLand is an initiative of the iHeartMedia Digital Audio Group under CEO Conal Byrne. The site was created for iHeart by The Gang, a developer specializing in Roblox. Two major early partners are State Farm and Intel.

Each user gets a music studio to personalize and can “build their way towards a music empire” by searching the site for “sound energy” that lets them customize the studio and unlock upgrades and rewards toward becoming music tycoons. Users can also interact with others’ avatars and visit their studios.

The site includes a State Farm Neighborhood where users can complete daily “quests” with State Farm spokesman Jake. They can also play mini games to win “iHeartBucks” that can be used to purchase virtual merchandise and gear for their avatar. (If you don’t think certain consumers might get into an ecosystem like that, you haven’t got a niece who plays Star Stable.)

There’s also an Intel House of Wonder that “will bring a fantastical element to iHeartLand.” Users can exchange their iHeartBucks for in-game Intel Core processors that allow them to “level up” more quickly. “The installation will also be the go-to destination for players to collect Wonderful emotes that enhance their concert experience,” the company promises.

As an example of what iHeart hopes to do with this platform, its virtual State Farm Park will host a video show from singer/musician Lauv this Friday for his new album. “Fans can walk the red carpet and take selfies with his NPC (non-player character),” iHeartMedia explains. Here’s a look at that venue:

The company promises 20 events in the coming year including an album release party with Charlie Puth on Oct. 7 and a podcast with “The Trap Nerds.”

Below are more sample images from the announcement.

 

 

The post iHeart Seeks Out New Lands in the Metaverse appeared first on Radio World.

With swift growth in Central Florida and a long-term battle for listeners in Tampa Bay just getting started, Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) has nowhere to go but up along the I-4 corridor connecting Ybor City to Daytona Beach.

Now, it has decided who will lead its operations in this region, where a pair of “El Nuevo Zol” FMs are on two facilities divested by Cox Media Group through a trust administered by Elliot Evers of Houlihan Lokey.

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In response to David Bialik’s piece on latency: In what world does someone start a stream while still listening to the OTA broadcast?

Very few stations are hosting their own streams; most are using a mobile app, TuneIn, Radio.com or other hosting service, and many of those have so many advertisements built in that the top-of-the-hour news is heard at three past the hour.

Does a station care about the delay when they are asking people to tell Alexa to play WBZ News Radio?

TuneIn is a full 30 seconds behind Amazon’s feed, and I didn’t bother to check how far Alexa is behind the real thing, but my “traffic on the three’s” is playing at 44:30 past the hour on my Alexa device.

That’s the reason that in contest rule disclaimers, stations specifically say that they are not liable for digital delays when asking for Caller 10. By the time the stream listener hears the cue to call, the contest line has already gotten Caller 10’s information and hung up. Do you think iHeart, with their nationwide contests, are figuring out air-chain delays so the whole country gets the cue at the same time?

Even SiriusXM is not heard in real time, either on the app or using a SXM tuner. On my phone I have to configure the app to use the “live” stream instead of what the app sends down.

As for HD and analog switching, for the few stations that still do it, I have yet to hear one that was out of time, even when IBOC was used by WBZ(AM). BTW there is no station in the Boston or Manchester, N.H., market doing IBOC analog/digital so it is no longer an issue.

Going from WRKO(AM) to their HD simulcast on WZLX-HD2 there is a huge delay between the AM and the HD2, a good 20 seconds.

Do you think for one millisecond that iHeart cares about latency at that point?

From my laptop here at home through the modem to a server 20 miles away I get 14 milliseconds for a ping response. Three thousand miles away I get 50, to South Africa it is 250.

Unless your company is incredibly cheap and using a Comrex dial-up over POTS, latency is a non-issue.

The author, now retired, is a former radio chief engineer.

The post Letter: Stream Latency Is a Non-Issue appeared first on Radio World.

NAB Show New York will have radio sessions this year; we have a preview of that event and the co-located AES Show, both of which take place next month in the Big Apple.

Also, handy wire ties to flag your stuff. Car radios of the future. Why IPv6 matters. And a commentary about factory support.

Read this issue.

The post Read the Sept. 14, 2022 Issue of Radio World appeared first on Radio World.

There’s little movement of note on the latest Media Monitors Spot Ten Radio report. But, there is one notable addition to this week’s group of fully paid brands using AM and FM to reach consumers. It involves a giant in the daily fantasy sports contest and sports betting world.

Now at No. 9 in the report is DraftKings. It is thanks to nearly 29,000 spot plays, by total count, as tracked by iHeartMedia-owned Media Monitors.

Otherwise, activity from Wendy’s and DuckDuckGo brings each brand back to the Spot Ten, while Indeed is the No. 1 fully paid advertiser with some 45,652 spots.

 

University students are back on campus, and that means one thing: QSR advertising on spot cable is surging, based on the latest data compiled by Media Monitors for its Spot Ten Cable report.

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In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeks comment through a Notice of Inquiry adopted by the FCC on August 5, 2022, on missions conducting in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing (ISAM) that may involve Commission licensing and rules, including the state of the industry, technological readiness, and what steps the Commission might take to facilitate progress and reduce barriers for ISAM missions, including clarifications, updates or modifications of rules.

St. Barnabas Broadcasting, Inc. enters into consent decree to resolve political file investigation

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