Clay’s Corner for May 2023 Providing news and views from a broadcast engineers perspective since September 1986
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Congratulations to Stephan Brown on becoming SBE’s newest Fellow. I met him, years ago, , during one of my many trips to Wisconsin…A very nice guy. Fellow is the highest membership level in the SBE. Members must have made significant contributions to the broadcast engineering field or the SBE. Candidates are nominated by their peers. Since the Society‘s founding 59 years ago, 83 members have been honored with the Fellow rank. I’m proud to say that I’m one of them.
The move to eliminate AM Radio from vehicles is getting a lot of attention from a number of quarters. I’m not sure that anyone in the vehicle making business is concerned about the dust-up this has caused. Likely the decisions have been made and they are just wanting for the noise to die-down.
Meanwhile …NAB launched a new campaign to amplify the voices of the 82 million Americans that AM radio reaches each month and highlight the importance of AM radio in the car for news, community engagement, entertainment, and vital public safety information. Read more here –
https://www.wearebroadcasters.com/dependonam/default.asp
The name ‘Shively Labs’ has been associated for many years with their FM Antenna, Combiner, and filtering products for many years. Early this year, Howell Laboratories announced they were going to sell off Shively to concentrate on their other business interests. Essentially, they hung out the ‘For Sale’ sign.
On the 13th of April, a buyer for Shively was announced. AAT otherwise known as American Amplifier Technologies announced they had purchased the company.
If are like me, you have…from time to time, built something with LED’s If you are using them in a circuit whose voltages are in excess of the LED’s rating, you use a dropping resistor to provide the proper forward voltage. Here’s a handy table.
One of my other projects is the installation of a new Auxiliary Transmitter for KING-FM at Cougar Mt. Part of this process was the installation of a piece of Orban equipment. To my surprise, the device was made in Hungary.
How to stop that circuit breaker from tripping -That’s why they put holes in the handles, right?
In the good old days, vehicle radios almost always had a radio antenna shaped like a ‘Whip’. Designers of cars did not like them…and from this came the radio antennas that were make of tiny wired embedded in windshields and rear-windows. Today, antennas have evolved to what’s commonly called the ‘Shark Fin’
Ever wonder what’s inside one of those? Now you know.
Proving that not everyone wants to be on the Radio 😊
That’s it for this month.
Lord willing, I’ll see you here next month.
Clay, K7CR, CPBE
SBE Member # 714
Since March 1968 / 55 years.