Thanks Kirk - Bill Hudson W6CBS CBT

“Hey! Bisset’s on! Yes! That’s right! John Bisset’s on Episode 705 of the TWiRT Podcast!” Grab your pen and notebook. Lots of great info is coming our way!

The tubes are glowing as Larry Janus shares his expertise on Episode 704 of the TWiRT Podcast. Broadcast engineers will both learn from and enjoy Larry’s life story.

On Episode 703 of the TWiRT Podcast, three very knowledgeable guests provide a fascinating insight into putting a brand new LPFM on the air, just a few weeks ago.

Bear, you have gone to law school.

what about the idea of having the EAS an active audio source in automation, but create a rather dramatic auto ducking so that when an EAS is present it would just squash audio in something like Wide Orbit? just brainstorming during the show.

Updating the reception of EAS alerts to the thoroughly modern digital format is a significant advancement that will improve the stress on many broadcast engineers. On this Episode 702 of the TWiRT Podcast, Bill Robertson explains his problem-solving and innovative approach.

I heard this rumer that mike drove to radio stations and sold 310 out of the trunk of his car ?, used a 310 at KUHL am in Santa Maria CA. it replaced a gates tube unit.

“Plan your work and work your plan.” That’s the watchword shared by Tim Berry on the Episode 701 of the TWiRT Podcast. When you have to manage an extensive network of radio stations, broadcasting sports content, planning is absolutely essential.

Kirk, like you I have/had a speech issue so I started a KZfaq channel to force myself to work on it. I figured doing live streams all by myself would force me to speak better and it has worked.

You’ve no doubt heard about the new trend to construct Tiny Homes. But, have you heard about the construction of sound-isolated Tiny Studios? In landmark Episode 700 of the TWiRT Podcast, Marc Haycock explains in detail the construction of his “furniture box” Tiny Studio. Broadcast engineers will enjoy this entertaining and instructive Episode.

WRT “Mitel” it was founded as mike and terrys electric lawnmowers. They never got to sell them allegedly so they made the Superswitches, SX50/100/200/2000 digital switches the 3300 IP based systems. The brand is so broad because they bought Aastra (formerly Nortel’s analog sets), Shoretel (the orange colored boxes), Toshiba’s Strata line ( just for support customers) and just recently the “Unify” brand that included Siemens and ol ROLM assets. They inched to buy Polycom but didn’t and married with Plantronics instead Oh and they bought Intertel at some point too. They’re the only on prem company left behind Cisco because CNN and CNBC is keeping Avaya alive (I only know two other companies in my area that using Avaya) and they ruined Nortel enterprise customers flocking to half baked Poly/cloud or Cisco’s Unicom offerings. The remark by Kirk with Asterisk is a passive statement and not fully true. Asterisk runs on any Unix or Linux systems and acts as a fancy daemon functioning as a strict PBX. Asterisk is not used by any big name company but their code could run on Linux. I use asterisk professionally but I do not like it personally. Polycom was great for analog conference phones… everything past 2005 stained their reputation.

Marc is a good guy and his studio is the nicest I have ever been in.

In Episode 699 of the TWiRT Podcast, Mike Kernen, Market Chief Engineer at Crawford Broadcasting Detroit, joins hosts, Kirk Harnack and Chris Tarr, to discuss the installation of a new transmitter in a very challenging small space at a transmitter site. Broadcast engineers will enjoy Mike’s tale of woe and also find useful and helpful the solutions he used to facilitate this transmitter swap.

Lastly in this video, it needs it's own comment, a strong ah-ha selling point on containerization. I learned virtualization by using VMware Fusion in the late oughts to run BootCamp of Windows XP on Mac OS, then i graduated to VMware Server then to ESXi for over a decade. Learning the concept of virtualization thru Fusion taught me how powerful it can be. The "dockers", you'll have to sell me really hard on it. It's something I'm very skiddish as a 1/2 tech, 1/2 editorial type of guy.

This video is interesting. A few points. As much as I love to see Macs as a primary desktop, there's a lot of "I" in his IT experience and not a "we" from Information Services model. It was about taking a sledgehammer and destroying everything and instead of taking old elements, it was completely replaced. Because Chuck worked at MSPs, he's jaded and knows too much about the M$ tech to then impose it downstream. While that $12,000 telephone bill comes off very Centrex-y I wouldn't rely entirely on Google Voice, I'd still prefer a POTS line for emergency failover. From what I can tell in this interview, there isn't much stuff done live in studio, so I guess they don't have studio gear or a VoxPro equivalent on the Macs. The problem with IT is they are so dollar centric, and addicting to cutting (I think many should check into a clinic for psychosis analysis), they get obsessed and paranoid to nickel and dimiing. Given he's out in Sedona, ironically lots of IT professionals often throwing much tech away only because it's not Microsoft, Cisco or fully iP based devices. Imagine PCs that can't run Windows 11 or even TDM office phones are being piled up (and fun little fact, not everything that goes to e-waste gets fully recycled.) I didn't "hear" enough about redundancy and backup in the interview. I heard though about the community and how the radio station impacts them, however the methodology of IT is anti-human in the name of automation and lowering costs for the c-suite to maximize "profits" (that's the perception of many, whether its reality that's another's call). TBH there's conflicting logic this IT guy is doing things that are against the IT philosophy, if radio is a community experiment, then i <3 and others big chain IT can't provide that because IT is cutting jobs and lowering costs. I hope this made sense. I partially run IS in a very small media production operation with a couple Macs and Windows ThinkPads and VMware (flipping to something else) in the data center. The true "infrastructure" is creativity and content creation, which those machines are protected to only run apps related to that use-case through systems management (Group Policy or Profiles on the Macs). I do not call my staff "end-users" and I expect feedback from them instead of imposing certain IT viewpoints. It's not on the latest and greatest but we apply similar analogies of the "ten year old Windows security" ideas he mentioned about no IE and admin as a normal user login. Common sense and mitigation is word that most people don't even know what it means practically.

Why didn’t this episode show up on the iOS Podcasts app?

Radio needs IT to design a silence sense that will shock the program director.

A radio “old timer” told me recently that these days he felt radio was absolutely drowning in Information Technologies. I thought his comment was odd, until I considered the fact that many, if not most, radio stations today operate primarily through IT-driven automation feeding IT-controlled transmitters and IT-controlled streaming devices. In Episode 698 of the TWiRT Podcast, Chuck Helstein shares a wealth of knowledge concerning Information Technologies for radio stations. Broadcast engineers will find reams of useful information in this Episode.

O really enjoyed this!

When do we get the Leif Claesson vid?

Kirk, you should get a pfsense appliance. It does dual-WAN auto failure and a bunch of other features. There are a TON of how-to videos that are REALLY good. It is the best firewall in my opinion.

Matt Levin adds many rich details to the discussion on Episode 697 of the TWiRT Podcast.

Episode 696 of the TWiRT Podcast includes a fascinating discussion with “builder” Dan Case. Broadcast Engineers will really enjoy this Episode. (And, thanks for the shout out!)

MSP90

I wonder if adding copper elements to your antenna would help, considering copper is a better radiator.

It looks much like a loop antenna turned horizontal. I operate two part 15 AM stations. I use a loop antenna made out of pvc mounted vertically with a few modifications. I was told it wouldn't work well but it works better than my vertical antenna with a capacitance hat . It also sounds better using the loop .

Three-and-a-half hours (230 miles) east of me here in Erie, PA, lies the heart of a 17-signal cluster of stations managed by CEO Dave Radigan of Radigan Media, who joins host Kirk Harnack for Episode 695 of the TWiRT Podcast. Broadcast engineers will find quite fascinating what Dave has done with his acquisitions. In many ways, this Episode is a learning-packed series of “war stories.” Episode 695 is truly worth watching. There are lots of truly neat implementations of technology to explore.

The Austin transformer is a toroidal power isolation transformer. The primary is wound directly on the toroidal core; together the core and primary winding make up the lower ring. The upper ring is the secondary winding; there is no core in the upper ring, just winding. So long as the secondary winding passes through the toroidal core, the Austin transformer will couple AC, even with the large air gap. Austin is the name of the company whose founder invented the ring transformer.

So prouddd!🥹

Bateando mi amigooo Rafael! Orgullosa de tus logross, tremendo ingeniero! Great interview kirk! Rafael is a very talented and well prepared engineer! Congratss❤

El mío nació, con 40 años de experiencia.

Muyy duroo 🫡

Me encanta 🙌🏼 Rafael is definitely one of the most prepared engineers in the whole Dominican Republic.

Grande Kirk !! Very good interview with Rafael ! a very sharp engineer !!

An excellent look at broadcasting in a unique environment. Kudos extended!

Eso e un macho, un hombre

Very interesting subjects! Nice interview.

👏🏼

moving stuff is job security.

Good job Kirk. You are a very kind person and did a great job with Rafael.

❤

Excellent real-life narratives full of information that Broadcast Engineers will surely learn from and enjoy.

The biggest pain in changing transmitter locations is caused by the requisite FCC paperwork.

I met Paul Walker years ago and he's a true radio junkie, and a fun guy! He loves radio with every ounce of his being! Glad to see hes getting the exposure he deserves! Be well, guys!

Thank you for this video. I believe Todd and I are around the same age. I started on the air at a 50kW FM station when I was 15 years old. I worked in radio for 40 years. Im semi retired but do VO work and audiobooks. I have a PR&E BMX 14-channel, Otari MX5050, and a bunch of other analog stuff that I love. This was an awesome video and I loved it! I listen to Todd's TrikFM. Fine programming!

Another wonderful opportunity to learn from well-informed broadcast engineers.

Kirk you need to add Hans Van Zutphen to your guest list for sure

Nice to see John Bisset again. I have a couple of videos coming soon of him giving RF Safety training on our channel.

Lots to learn from the discussions during this Episode!