The SBE wants your help in recruiting new members, and you can win rewards for your efforts. Sponsor a new Member, Associate Member or Sustaining Member between March 1 and May 31, 2022, and you will be eligible for the prize drawings. For each approved new member application you sponsor you will earn $5 off your 2023 membership dues, up to $25. If you recruit three or more Regular or Associate Members, or one Sustaining Member, you will also receive an upgrade to SBE MemberPlus for the remainder of the 2022 membership period. (If you already hold SBE MemberPlus, the benefit will be added for 2023.)

 Each new member application may have only one sponsor. Applications must be received at the SBE National Office between March 1 and May 31, 2022, to be eligible.

 The Grand Prize is a trip to the SBE National Meeting currently planned to be held during the 2022 SBE22 Broadcast and Technology Expo in Syracuse in September. The prize package includes round trip airfare for one from within the continental US to the meeting; and two nights at the Expo host hotel.

 Prizes donated by Sustaining Members

• Blackmagic Design: ATEM Mini Extreme ISO
• Broadcasters General Store: Six BGS tumblers and $20 Starbucks gift cards
• Davicom: $50 Amazon gift card
• Heartland Video Systems: $100 Amazon gift card; Heartland Video Systems backpack;

Rocketbook smart notebook; lots of HVS-logoed items

• LBA: $250 in LBA online safety courses
• Orban: 1101e card and breakout cable
• Shively Labs: $100 L.L. Bean gift card
• Telos Alliance: Tribit Portable Bluetooth Speaker; Telos swag pack
• Tieline: Two $25 Amazon gift cards

 Prizes from the SBE

• Grand Prize trip the SBE National Meeting
• SBE logoed items
• A copy of SBE CertPreview
• One free SBE Webinars by SBE registration
• One $25 gift certificate for the SBE Store/SBE Bookstore
• An SBE-logoed hat
• Two SBE coffee mugs and magnets

I want to encourage each of you to think of at least one person you can talk to about the SBE and get them to join.  The educational benefits of the MembersPlus pays for itself when you sign up for just three webinars.  That is crazy!  Every webinar is free with MembersPlus, on demand and upcoming.  I have watched many webinars over the last several years since I have upgraded to the MembersPlus.  I find the free webinars to be incentive enough to pay the extra money for the upgraded membership.  If you aren’t a member, have a lapsed membership or just want some more info please contact me: amandahopp@comcast.net or go to www.sbe.org and get info there.  We would love to have you join us!

For our March meeting on the 16th we have LumenServe doing a Zoom presentation on Bringing to Light: The Changes in The Tower Lighting World.  It will be a great presentation.  Head over to our website to get more info and to register.

 On top of our chapter meeting, the national office has put together several webinars in the coming months.  Go to https://sbe.org/education/webinars-by-sbe/ to check them out and to register. 

 If you want us to cover a topic at a local meeting please e-mail me your ideas and we will see what we can do.  We want these meetings to be something beneficial for everyone. 

 I hope you all have a great month.  Go out and recruit some new members!!!

At Crawford Broadcasting here in Denver, things have been somewhat slow.  We are working on moving one of our stations to a new location as we are losing our current one.  But that is really for someone else to plan it out and me to execute when the time comes.  One funny thing that happened, well maybe not so funny, was one of our engineers in another market had our Anritsu MS2721A analyzer.  This analyzer quit charging batteries years ago so we bought a separate charger for the batteries.  It fit in the case so we always sent it along just in case.  This engineer was in a hurry one day and just wasn’t paying attention.  Noticed the analyzer was dead so he grabbed the first plug and used it to charge the unit, not realizing it wouldn’t work.  He grabbed the wrong plug and put 24V into the unit frying it.  We have been trying to find parts to repair it for weeks but unfortunately, this is a discontinued item and finding the parts has proven impossible.  To get us up and running again Cris Alexander found a used Anritsu MS2721B for us to use.  It has a few more features and the setup of it is slightly different but we are figuring it out.  Now the question is whether to get a second one or not to have in another market rather than send ours out all the time.

We are hard at work with getting the new website up and running.  We’ve run into a few issues here and there but I think we are getting close.  My hope is to have it live by the end of the month.  Keep checking back and let us know what you think when it’s done!

We have some upcoming meetings beginning February 16 with a presentation by Joseph Castellano from Leader Instruments on monitoring video, audio and ancillary data in a hybrid SDI-IP world.  March will be a presentation from LumenServ.  Every meeting is held the third Wednesday of the month at 6:30PM.  Currently all meetings are over Zoom so please check the website or your email for a registration link so you can join in on those meetings.  E-mails are typically sent the beginning of the month and the Monday before the meeting.  You can always email us at smpte-sbe48@outlook.com if you have any questions. 

I hope everyone has a great month.  We’ll see you soon!

Ramblings from the Mind of Amanda

By Amanda Hopp
Chief Engineer
Crawford Broadcasting, Denver
amandahopp@comcast.net

January 2022 is here.  I don’t know what’s scarier, the fact that another year has come and gone all too quickly, or that they are saying it is 20-20 too.  Let’s hope it’s not a repeat of 2020, but instead a better year than 2021.

For those of you who are new to our chapter a few things of note.  First, we are a combined chapter.  We are SBE Chapter 48 and SMPTE The Rocky Mountain Chapter.  We tend to do joint meetings, rotating between SBE and SMPTE on the content. Anyone is welcome to these meetings and we encourage you to participate.  I know for SBE you get credit towards your recertification for each meeting you attend.  Plus, we all try to pick topics that will benefit and educate the group.

We have several great meetings already planned in 2022 beginning with the January 19^th meeting.  For the time being meetings will be held over Zoom.  Tieline will be presenting on Surviving Remote Broadcasting During A Pandemic.  February will be on Monitoring Video, Audio and ANC data in a hybrid SDI-IP World by Leader.  March will end the first quarter with a presentation by LumenServe.   If you have a topic in mind you’d like to see covered over the coming months, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on the contact page.

I am not sure when we will go back to in-person meetings, however with the online meeting, we are able to easily record and post to our YouTube account.  We will do our best to continue this when we do go back to in-person.

We are also hard at work at revamping this website.  It has been a long process and to say the current website is due for a remodel is an understatement.  I am hoping to get the final touches done soon so we can have it go live in January sometime.

I look forward to 2022 and to seeing you all at our online meetings.

Christmas is now less than a month away.  For some of us that means it’s slow season.  No major projects on the schedule. It’s a good time to finish the year strong, tidying things up, doing some regular maintenance. For Crawford in Denver, the unusually warm weather and lack of snow means we have some extra time for outdoor work. ATU’s will be cleaned up, all tower fencing checked and repaired as needed, and for one site canal maintenance. While the lack of snow is concerning, especially for the mountains, I am enjoying it.

I look forward to January.  We have been working hard to get some good content for our meetings. January will be on Surviving Remote Broadcasting During a Pandemic. We will continue doing meetings online for the foreseeable future. We record those meetings and post to our YouTube channel. You can view the channel here. Check our website for updates and sign up for our e-mails. This is the best way to get info on future meetings.

I pray you have a safe rest of the holiday season. We will see you in January!

Christmas is now less than a month away.  For some of us that means it’s slow season.  No major projects on the schedule. It’s a good time to finish the year strong, tidying things up, doing some regular maintenance. For Crawford in Denver, the unusually warm weather and lack of snow means we have some extra time for outdoor work. ATU’s will be cleaned up, all tower fencing checked and repaired as needed, and for one site canal maintenance. While the lack of snow is concerning, especially for the mountains, I am enjoying it.

I look forward to January.  We have been working hard to get some good content for our meetings. January will be on Surviving Remote Broadcasting During a Pandemic. We will continue doing meetings online for the foreseeable future. We record those meetings and post to our YouTube channel. You can view the channel here. Check our website for updates and sign up for our e-mails. This is the best way to get info on future meetings.

I pray you have a safe rest of the holiday season. We will see you in January!

I suggest everyone go over to the main www.sbe.org webpage and see all the educational opportunities they offer.  I will warn you  ̶  these are not free.  But, with the SBE MemberPlus membership, the webinars are free.

To become a member, you need to be actively involved in broadcast engineering, have an academic degree in electrical engineering or its equivalent, or have scientific or professional experience in the communications field, including the design or marketing of broadcast-related products; have at least four years of active participation in broadcast engineering or its allied fields and have demonstrated acceptable technical proficiency.  So, someone off the street with no real ties to this world would not be able to join.  You just need to meet one of those criteria. There are some exceptions listed on the SBE membership page.

There are two types of membership: Traditional and MemberPlus.  I highly recommend MemberPlus for educational purposes.  As noted above, with a MemberPlus membership you will gain access to all the webinars for free.  The cost of this membership is $175, which may seem costly to some, but when you factor in that webinars are $62 for members ($92 for non-members), the membership pays for itself once you do three webinars.  And with over 90 webinars and more being added each month, you can do the math.  I wouldn’t binge all the webinars at once, I’ve done the MemberPlus membership the last three years and try to do one or two webinars a month, typically, a current webinar and then an archived webinar.

It is so important for any engineer to keep up with technology, to continually learn.  The more you know, the more valuable you may become to an employer.  I am reminded of when I went through the Broadcast Engineering course from Cleveland Institute of Electronics many years ago.  It was the same course my dad had gone through in the 1970s, and I would go over the material with him, getting advice and knowledge from someone who has been there and done that.  What we quickly realized was that the course hadn’t been updated since he did it decades before.  Some of the material was timeless, some current and good, something I could use for the time, but other stuff I just had to learn by doing because the material was outdated and didn’t help me much, at least at Crawford where we try not to keep transmitters that are more than a few years old.

Not all employers even know about the Society of Broadcast Engineers.  That means it is up to us to do continuing education ourselves.  I have no doubt that if brought to an employer, many would reimburse the cost of a membership if they can see how it will help the company.

We must push ourselves to be active and to find the webinars we need and to go through any SBE University courses that will help us in our career.  We need to make ourselves irreplaceable.  I know this may not always work, but it will also make you more appealing to a potential employer.  I know at Crawford, to join our engineering department, you need to have a certification at the minimum.  But the more you have, the more you know, the fact you show active participation within the SBE, the more appealing you are.

Let me encourage you to join in.  You’re already at the chapter 48 website, which is a great starting point.  Sign up for our email list and attend the local meetings (currently being held online).  This chapter is a combined chapter with the Rocky Mountain Chapter of SMPTE (the global society of media professionals, technologists, and engineers).  While I don’t know much about SMPTE (shame on me), you should also check out their organization and see what they can offer you (www.smpte.org).  We try to keep our web page up to date with local meetings being held and encourage you to attend.  The meetings are free for the most part.  If there ever is a cost, we will let you know.  Join us and you will find a second family.

For most people, education ends when they graduate.  They’ve done it and have the job they want (hopefully).  For some industries like TV and radio, education is never-ending.  Every year is something new to learn.  Because of that, the SBE has worked hard to create educational opportunities with monthly webinars and on-demand SBE University courses. They even have a monthly livestream on YouTube.  This is only scratching the surface of what is offered.

I suggest everyone go over to the main www.sbe.org webpage and see all the educational opportunities they offer.  I will warn you  ̶  these are not free.  But, with the SBE MemberPlus membership, the webinars are free.

To become a member, you need to be actively involved in broadcast engineering, have an academic degree in electrical engineering or its equivalent, or have scientific or professional experience in the communications field, including the design or marketing of broadcast-related products; have at least four years of active participation in broadcast engineering or its allied fields and have demonstrated acceptable technical proficiency.  So, someone off the street with no real ties to this world would not be able to join.  You just need to meet one of those criteria. There are some exceptions listed on the SBE membership page.

There are two types of membership: Traditional and MemberPlus.  I highly recommend MemberPlus for educational purposes.  As noted above, with a MemberPlus membership you will gain access to all the webinars for free.  The cost of this membership is $175, which may seem costly to some, but when you factor in that webinars are $62 for members ($92 for non-members), the membership pays for itself once you do three webinars.  And with over 90 webinars and more being added each month, you can do the math.  I wouldn’t binge all the webinars at once, I’ve done the MemberPlus membership the last three years and try to do one or two webinars a month, typically, a current webinar and then an archived webinar.

It is so important for any engineer to keep up with technology, to continually learn.  The more you know, the more valuable you may become to an employer.  I am reminded of when I went through the Broadcast Engineering course from Cleveland Institute of Electronics many years ago.  It was the same course my dad had gone through in the 1970s, and I would go over the material with him, getting advice and knowledge from someone who has been there and done that.  What we quickly realized was that the course hadn’t been updated since he did it decades before.  Some of the material was timeless, some current and good, something I could use for the time, but other stuff I just had to learn by doing because the material was outdated and didn’t help me much, at least at Crawford where we try not to keep transmitters that are more than a few years old.

Not all employers even know about the Society of Broadcast Engineers.  That means it is up to us to do continuing education ourselves.  I have no doubt that if brought to an employer, many would reimburse the cost of a membership if they can see how it will help the company.

We must push ourselves to be active and to find the webinars we need and to go through any SBE University courses that will help us in our career.  We need to make ourselves irreplaceable.  I know this may not always work, but it will also make you more appealing to a potential employer.  I know at Crawford, to join our engineering department, you need to have a certification at the minimum.  But the more you have, the more you know, the fact you show active participation within the SBE, the more appealing you are.

Let me encourage you to join in.  You’re already at the chapter 48 website, which is a great starting point.  Sign up for our email list and attend the local meetings (currently being held online).  This chapter is a combined chapter with the Rocky Mountain Chapter of SMPTE (the global society of media professionals, technologists, and engineers).  While I don’t know much about SMPTE (shame on me), you should also check out their organization and see what they can offer you (www.smpte.org).  We try to keep our web page up to date with local meetings being held and encourage you to attend.  The meetings are free for the most part.  If there ever is a cost, we will let you know.  Join us and you will find a second family.

One issue we have found with Windows 7 and our NexGen automation system is windows thinks a program has quit responding and forces us to close it down. We’ve tried waiting on it to see if it clears up but unfortunately, it never does. This proves to be an issue when we are recording. Without a secondary record device going, we risk losing it altogether. I’ve put everything to be Windows XP compatible and this has helped out some. As more and more broadcasters move to Windows 7 and beyond, we need to find a way to stop this from happening. So if anyone has any ideas about this I’m all ears.

The next step for Crawford Broadcasting is me typing up a how-to guide for our other engineers for getting all things Wheatstone set up. It’ll be a task but it’ll be good when it’s done.

I think that about covers it for this month. So until next time…73,

Amanda, KD0CIC, CBRE