SBE Chapter 139 Reno

Meeting Minutes for January 24, 2007

If you missed last night's meeting, you missed a really good one! We ended up having three different presentations!

The first presentation was from broadcasting legend Harry Pappas. Mr. Pappas told us how engineering made the difference between unsuccessful and successful ventures he had done over the years. He also had a lot of praise for engineers in general, because most of their work goes unnoticed by others. He also talked about how the future of broadcasting will require everyone in a broadcast station to work closely with everyone else, and even share job functions. In any case, it was a really interesting talk, and could have been a meeting in its own right.

The second presentation was from Al Jason of Dielectric Corp., and Grant Cooper of Flash Technology, Al, believing that TV people did not want to hear about HD radio (once again, our radio turnout was very small), deferred to Grant, who talked about tower lighting. Unfortunately, Mr. Cooper quickly found out only one person was present who had a tower that required lights! Still, it was an interesting refresher on tower lighting and air safety.

The third presentation was on the upcoming Ennes Workshop that will be happening in Sacramento on Saturday, February 24th. For those not familiar with these seminars, they are named in honor of famous broadcast engineer Harold Ennes. His books on broadcast engineering and maintenance were the standard texts in the industry for many years, and even today are hard to obtain.

In any case, the Ennes workshop will have something for both radio and TV engineering. There will be a general session for all engineers, then separate breakouts for radio and TV. The schedule is still being worked out, but I do know that two of the presenters are nationally renowned. One is Steve Lampen of Belden Corp. His presentations show he knows how to have fun with technical subjects! Another well-known presenter is Jerry Whittaker, author of many books on broadcast engineering. He will be talking about the future of ATSC. I have a tentative schedule that I will share in a few days, with most of the presenters listed.

That's all for now!

Tim Stoffel

Chairman SBE chapter 139

Reno, NV