Productive Saturday

You may laugh when you hear that only just this weekend did I actually meet Mary Piper in person. I know, right? I’ve talked to her on the phone, but never had an occasion to be in the same place at the same time... and, I had the good fortune of the location of our meeting to be her Washington Street Emporium – an interesting place, even before Mary told me the story of the infamous bank robbery of 1930.

It’s fascinating to try grasping just how much times have changed.

Infrastructure – wiring, plumbing, construction, and things of that nature – of days-gone-by is an interest of mine and the Emporium was a trove of details that got my curiosity going. The “panic alarm” accessible to the cashiers at the old bank (I’ll save the details so you can check it out for yourself) is a classic example that elicits the response of, “well, I guess it gets the job done!” Unless, of course, it’s lunchtime... sorry, no more details from me – I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Go check it out.

I also met powerful, influential regional media figure Dori Weber in person for the first time after numerous e-mails.

Oh, and I had a run-in with local law enforcement. No... not really... just a quick check to see what the guy rolling into town at 1:30 in the morning with out-of-state license plates was up to. Nah, I’m embellishing again... Either he’s seen me before, or I have an honest face... and probably the former.

So it was a good time, but I haven’t even gotten to the part about actually getting something done – which we did!

I’ll be careful, now, in the use of the word “we” because my handy installation contractor Ron was the one doing most of the work that “we” accomplished. All I did was plan the job, buy the materials, climb a ladder a couple of times to poke at a wire with a broomstick, and go for lunch (guess where?)... Ron was the workhorse.

You can tell it’s not me on the ladder because the ladder isn’t wobbling.

We (see? There I go with that “we” stuff again) managed to install over 3,000 feet of new aerial cable… in a day… a hot day… not bad.

The new cables serve two purposes…

More Internet Reliability

As I mentioned in a previous entry, we’re going to sectionalize Marquette’s Internet in to two TDMA upstream domains with as many as three discrete carriers on each section – compared to the one domain, one carrier that was here when I arrived, and the one domain, two (or three, depending on the day) carriers we have now.

The end result of this will be happiness and joy for all who surf the Internet via the Blue Sky Cable network, because it will improve the network’s resiliency, because physical problems on the cable line will be far less likely to cause trouble for people on the opposite side of town. The existing infrastructure has more-than-enough bandwidth to go around, but the topology of cable Internet is known as a “tree” topology – it even has a “trunk” – the implication of this is that trouble on one part of the “trunk” can impact distant branches. Now, Marquette will have two instead of one, operating independently.

The new cable isn’t live yet, but I did connect it up and run some end-to-end tests on the first 1,000 feet and it performs exceptionally well. Bottom line, it’s a good thing.

That’s one cable. Hopefully within another weekend or two, it will be all the way to Washington and we can hook ‘er up and git ‘r done.

So, what’s the other cable?

The Overlay Network

The other cable is something I call the “Overlay Network.”

This network opens up the door for some new and exciting possibilities – not the least of which is the ability for us to originate live television programming from anywhere in town within the footprint of the Overlay, and make it available to our subscribers. If you happened to watch Access Marquette during the recent bike rally, you saw that I had some video from the park and from downtown – and it was good – but it was on tape.

But now (once the overlay is ready, give me a couple of weeks)... whether at Marquette City Park, or downtown, or at one of the churches (all part of the first phases of the overlay network), or other places in the city, live, full-quality video and audio can be transmitted back to my head-end facility... and from there it can be placed on Channel 2 and transmitted directly to your living room.

This is a capability that doesn’t exist in many larger towns, or, of the capability exists, it doesn’t get a lot of use or attention, because it is an expensive proposition. Sure, in the big city the television stations and their microwave and satellite trucks can bring in live video from just about anywhere – but the difference here is that we’re not talking about a multi-million dollar affair, which changes the viability of all this – we can use the network for community programming without many of the cost-prohibitive trappings of big city media.

I hope you are getting the idea that I am committed to being a part of this community.

The inaugural event will be Marquette’s 135th Anniversary Celebration on August 1.

If all goes according to plan, we’ll be live in the park all day bringing a sample of the day’s activity to your living room. Mind you, it won’t be the same as being there – when you turn on the TV and see how much fun everybody’s having, you’ll want to come join us. Then, after the sun goes down and everything is packed away, we’ll bring you a rebroadcast of the day’s events. For those who can’t stay out in the heat all day, I think it will be a nice way to stay connected to the community… and ultimately, “community” is what this project is all about. That, and having fun. If you don’t enjoy what you do for a living, well, you know what they say.

Some time between now and then, you’ll probably see me, or some other live video, on Channel 2, for no particular reason – just making sure it all works according to plan.

The overlay network also opens up the potential for future technologies, services, applications, and capabilities that we haven’t even thought of yet. Oh… If anyone asks, plans are underway for live video capabilities in Bentley, too.

Month of May News and Notes

It’s Memorial Day as I sit at home in Oklahoma writing this.

I do love holidays. I’m not specifically referring to “the holidays” as some refer to the Christmas season – I come from a small family and we historically have small holidays... no, I’m afraid I mean holidays from the normal 8-5.

Perhaps it’s not for the most noble of reasons, I confess, but it's nice to have a break from the usual... and a change of schedule, a chance to catch up, and a moment even to smell the roses, perhaps.

A couple of weekends ago I was in Marquette, working at the head-end facility. I just about always have some kind of “background” on – and usually, I’m listening to ABN’s Old Time Radio programming on Access “2” Marquette. This time, I had the television on JCTV, and there was a guy on there reminding me not to focus exclusively on the destination – but to experience and enjoy the journey.

That’s good advice that I’d be well-advised to take to heart. And incidentally, when it comes to the programming from Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN, JCTV, and Smile of a Child), I don’t find that I personally agree with everything they have to say – not at all, so I don’t want anyone to have the idea that I’m a “TBN apologist” who thinks them infallible, but my philosophy on this is to take everything for what it seems to be worth – if it’s uplifting and encouraging, go with it! If it prompts you to think or contemplate a bit of philosophy or theology that you haven’t given much thought to – or much thought to, recently – then again, go with it.

Incidentally, TBN has sent me some “gifts” to share with their viewers. I have “Ten Commandments” key rings, cross necklaces, some CDs and DVDs and a few of the “Sword of the Spirit” letter opener – my personal favorite. I also have a few of the small tabletop “nativity” displays, featuring actual frankincense, actual myrrh, and simulated gold. If you would like to have one or more of these items, please contact me.. and no, I won’t give them your name and address. No catch, no obligation.

Back on the topic of the holiday, and this one specifically, it’s important not to overlook the reason underlying this holiday: remembering those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom of this Nation.

In my own tiny way, I do say: Thank you. I am not worthy of your sacrifice, but you inspire me to do the best I can and not ever to take your actions for granted.

Just this past week, I received my first issue of the venerable Harvey County Independent, which included the “Memorial Day 2009 Roll Call of Honor,” a multi-page spread listing the names of those who served and those who died from Bentley, Halstead, Burrton, and Sedgwick.

I didn’t know any of those people, but it struck me that they all had families whose sacrifices are beyond anything I really even understand.

In addition to this reflection, I've (finally) had an opportunity to come up for air a bit and contemplate what I've been up to for the last few weeks and perhaps muse a little bit about what's coming up in the coming weeks and months for Blue Sky Cable.

It may be less than ideal for me to meander backwards in time and touch on different topics inside of one Insider post (the alternative being a separate post on each topic) but I suspect for now that this will be the way to go if I want to actually get it done. (Ah, but I will endeavor to enjoy the “journey” of this writing.)

Today being the 25th, payments received after today are past-due and I’ll be cutting off billing after I post any payments I receive tomorrow – so tomorrow night, I’ll be busy. Tonight is a good night for this missive.

C-SPAN & QVC, Satellite Dishes

Most of the programming I receive via satellite for delivery on cable are transmitted to me digitally. This has a couple of benefits – of course, there's the improved picture quality of digital signals... but also, digital satellite transmission allows the programming providers to squeeze more signals into the same amount of satellite space.

The satellites used for television transmission in my world are known as “C-Band” satellites. Each “bird” (i.e., satellite, spacecraft, etc.) has 24 transponders. Under analog transmission, each transponder can carry only one television signal... i.e., ESPN is on one transponder, The Weather Channels is on one transponder, TBS, TBN, CNN, C-SPAN... you get the idea. Considering the gazillion dollars invested in each satellite, it does seem like 24 channels is a relatively small amount of content. Digital transmission allows multiple signals to occupy each transponder, and not only is there no loss of quality, there's actually an improvement (typically).

C-SPAN and QVC are a couple of holdouts that are still sent analog, and their picture quality is not where I'd like for them to be (but, in contrast, The Weather Channel and HBO are still analog and they look fine – so it's not “simply” the difference between digital and analog. There are other factors).

And, of course, the multiple signals the programming providers are able to provision on each bird doesn’t directly help you and me, because we still need essentially the same amount of equipment per channel (not per satellite transponder).

About 3 weeks ago in Bentley I spent several hours trying to “tweak” my satellite antenna for better reception. The problem I have is, one of the dishes – which is not intended to receive signals from multiple satellites – has been pressed into exactly such service... so the digital signals come in fine, but the analogs are a bit fuzzy... and QVC and C-SPAN are the guys. Bottom line, here, is that I'm going to need to install another dish in order to get really satisfactory reception.

So that's added to the list.

Backup Power

Backup power means several different things... and I've been working toward a couple of different aspects of “backup power.”

First, there's “online” backup power – this being the most important, in our environment – and I am working towards everything in my facilities being protected by 5 to 10 minutes of online battery backup. Here’s the logic:

If the power goes out for the entire community for more than just a few minutes, it’s unlikely that anybody is watching cable or surfing the Internet – your power is off just like mine.

However, it’s important for the relatively-delicate electronics at my place to be protected from the brief power “hits” we experience, especially during severe weather.

Also, though, consider this: Let’s assume for just a minute that the power fluctuations were not bad for my equipment. Even if that were true, it would still be annoying if you were trying to watch television during severe weather and you had to wait, after the power came back on, for the system to stabilize and for the channels to come back.

So... online backup will keep all of the equipment powered on and happy during outages of 5 minutes or less, to give you the best possible experience.

My objective before summer is over to have 100% of my equipment on backup power that allows me to ride out short disruptions.

Then, there’s “offline” backup – think “generator.”

Now, consider this aspect of generator power that may not be intuitively obvious until you do: let’s assume I had a generator on site at each head-end and it automatically started any time there was a power outage, and ran from a theoretically-infinite fuel supply... what’s the problem that a generator doesn’t address?

Two words: “transfer time.”

Until time travel is invented, a generator can’t start until the power is actually already off, and then it needs to come up to speed, and then take over the load – hard on the equipment, arguably, but also just as annoying in short-duration intervals as having no generator at all, because the system still has a restart-interval when switching to generator, as when recovering from a short-duration power outage.

Annoying, isn’t it? So with a generator-only solution, we could ride out hours and hours with no electricity (not a high priority item, usually, because you’ll have no power either).

But if we combine these two, we have the best of both worlds: on-line backup to see us through short-duration outages using batteries, and then off-line backup to keep us going during longer-duration intervals (and with an added bonus – the batteries allow us to switch to generator after the initial outage, and then of actually recharging the batteries at the same time, so that if we have to take the generator offline to refill, check the oil, etc., we can build back up to a full store of 5-10 minutes of battery while running on generator – although this actually takes several hours, since the battery charger is deliberately less-aggressive than it otherwise might be, since an aggressively-rapid charge deteriorates the batteries).

So for now (to make a long story short), my focus is getting all of the equipment in both cities connected to battery backup.

Bentley is perhaps 75% done (100% of the Internet equipment and maybe 50-60% of the television equipment). A couple of weeks back, I installed all-new batteries in Bentley and we are in far-better shape for withstanding short-duration power hits than we were previously.

Marquette is catching up, with about 55% of the equipment on batteries, and the balance t.b.d. I hope to have both towns to 100% by August 1.

I do have a relatively beefy generator that could keep either facility on-the-air for hours or days as needed, assuming the supply of gasoline didn’t run out... and in the event of an outage that impacts only part of the community, it will be pressed into service.

Equipment Protection – Heat is the Enemy

This past week, I bought a spare air conditioner so that if I should happen to lose a unit this summer, I don’t have to go looking for the money to purchase one – I’ve got one on hand. The cash flow of the cable company is such that about 2 weeks out of the month, I’m eating ramen noodles or beanie-weenies (not both). The other half of the month, I can have an occasional steak (filet is my favorite, in case you are planning to invite me over). I figure if I lose an air conditioner, I only have a few hours to get a new one – hence the decision to buy the spare unit now. It’s connected up at my house in Oklahoma, and I’ll be running it periodically to keep it in good condition – clearly, this is not a purchase that can simply be placed in storage and expected to work when needed.

Meanwhile, in considering the implications of what would happen if I lost enough air conditioning capacity in either town that the temperature began to rise inside my facilities, I have also ordered some safety equipment – thermal cut-outs that will force the electronics to shut down in the absence of sufficiently-cool air.

Come again? Yes, I am going to set up the systems to have a deliberate self-protective shutdown if the temperature reaches an unsafe level inside the buildings. This might seem a bit confusing – installing equipment designed to cause a deliberate service outage? Yes – but consider this: I can restore service by sending Vinnie and Guido and a large box fan to cool the place down while the air conditioning is serviced or replaced, and the equipment will come back online as soon as the temperature drops back to a safe level.

Absent this capability, in an over-temperature situation, the equipment would continue to run, churning out more heat, and ultimately this could cause thousands and thousands of dollars of damage to my electronics, and cause a period of involuntary service disruption that would make the safety-cutoff-caused outage to pale by comparison. Even a fire isn’t out of the question, and I don’t even want to think about it.

Of course, in addition to the self-sacrificing auto-shutdown, I’m also planning active temperature-monitoring equipment to alert me before such drastic actional become necessary – and, of course, there’s the obvious approach of applying the 40% rule to air conditioning.

If you’re unfamiliar with the 40% rule, permit me to elucidate:

If I want to engineer redundancy among two systems, where each system can “cover for” the other, what capacity point am I shooting for?

Typically, the answer is 40%.

Each of two “whatevers” (air conditioners, in this example) that is configured in a reduntant setup should be designed such that its capacity is used as close as possible to 40% under normal conditions... less than this, and you likely have spent too much on “whatevers.” More, and you have a problem in that one unit, operating alone, is not sufficient to tow the line.

On really, really outrageously-hot days, the units will be working at almost 50% – so they are not being strained for capacity by any means. However, in the failure of one unit, the remaining unit will be forced to run at 80% capacity – presumably a very efficient (or at least not wasteful) operating niche. Bring on the outrageous weather, and our lone wolf is pushed to near 100%... but that’s okay, because after all in this circumstance, we’re in emergency mode anyway.

A “triple-redundant” (depending on how you define it – I’m using it to describe 3:2 or N+1 redundancy in contrast to the 1:1 discussed above) arrangement would be different, in that the design assumption is that you’d never be “down two” so you could use three smaller units — which would be nice... but how would you like it if you had 1 unit still working but it wasn’t enough? Ah, well. I think 1:1 will do nicely, especially in contrast to what we have now.

Cable Repair and Replace

Ron has been out driving the cable routes looking for inconsistent signal levels (which indicate loose connections, breaks or defects in the lines). So far, we have replaced almost 3,000 feet of aerial feeder and distribution cable that was sub-par due to improper installation, maintenance, repair, wind, or squirrelification.

I’ve ordered an additional 10,000 feet of new cable, which should be here this week.

With this new cable, we’ll be replacing more sections of line that we’re not happy with. We will also start – and hopefully finish, very soon – our project to have cable and Internet available to every household in Marquette, including the newest part of town. Circumstances permitting, we may also be able to reestablish service on the South side of the bridge, but that’s still up in the air. Get it? The cable is in the air. LOL, sad joke.

In parallel, we’ll be doing a couple of...

New Projects

We’re sectionalizing the town of Marquette into two Internet upstream TDMA domains. The impact of this will be that trouble in one half of town will have zero impact on the other half of town. The dividing line goes right down the middle of Washington Street. Those on the West will remain on the exising upstream infrastructurel those on the East will move to the new feeder. I am extremely optimistic about the potential for dramatically-faster and more reliable connections, especially on the East side of town, around the “crick.”

If this provides the anticipated benefit, then Bentley will be sectionalized into three different TDMA domains (West, Northwest, and North of my head-end). This, like a lot in this business, is a fairly substantial investment, but I believe it will provide a level of performance and resiliency that I’m looking for. And, of course, I’m going out on a creative limb, here — larger cable companies do what they do in a different way that makes less sense in our environment, and there isn’t a lot of precedent among small cable companies for what I have designed.

I’m also actively working on live broadcast capability – the ability to “go live” from just about anywhere in either community on cable channel 2, and I hope to have some tangible progress on this, this coming weekend. One of many applications will be Marquette’s 135th Anniversary celebration in late July/early August. I have already scheduled vacation time away from my day job and to do my part to add some excitement to this event.

I thought last weekend, with the Thunder on the Smoky motorcycle rally would be a good time to test my system’s capabilities and sure enough the live video capabilities are severely limited – as in, it doesn’t work. My predecessor has peppered the network with gizmos that are alleged to improve Internet connections, but which are – imho – snake oil that was applied to mask troubles, instead of just simply repairing problems.

So, no live video last weekend, but I enjoyed the event and was able to shoot some video and play it back on Channel 2 later in the day. I also got some good still shots from my rooftop perch at ArtSpace.

Hopefully, this coming Saturday, we’ll get a new feeder installed from Marquette City Park back to the head-end, which will make for good times later this summer with live video.

I am planning the same type of capability in Bentley, and will take Marquette’s lessons and expand Bentley’s network to include this capacity.

New Programming

I believe I am at the point where a tentative announcement is a safe bet:

Fox Sports Kansas City is coming to Blue Sky Cable, along with Fox Business Network.

Fox Sports does some strange branding with their sports programming, so to avoid (and by “avoid,” I essentially mean “create”) confusion – Fox Sports Network (FSN), Fox Sports Midwest, and Fox Sports Kansas City are fundamentally different names for the same thing – what you see on “Fox Sports Network” depends on where you live. This year’s lineup has 160 Royals games “where we live.”

I purchased Fox Sports reception equipment from the same people who made me a good deal on the recent Turner equipment, as well as some test equipment. In Bentley, I’m good – ready to go, just have to figure out what channel to place it on. In Marquette, it means an additional satellite antenna, and this one will be facing a different direction than the existing ones – the satellite carrying the Fox channels is much further to the East, essentially at 91° W (compared to the eastern-most spacecraft I’m able to see right now, “Galaxy 14” at 125° West Longitude). If you drive past the Bentley site, it’s pretty easy to figure out which one I’m talking about.

Fox Sports, Fox News, and Fox Business are all on this new satellite, along with other things I hope to eventually be able to add... so this investment is a good move going forward.

Ron has a couple of new toys *ahem* tools, one of which I am actually using to write this post... I’ll hand it over to him... eventually... but I had to get it all tricked out for him, first. This is a Dell Mini laptop... tiny little thing, shown with a pencil next to it for perspective... but respectably fast and excellent for plugging in and checking an Internet connection – does this PC work? Your Internet is up. Does it not? Yow, Ron has work to do outside. I’ve also added a television tuner to the laptop so it can be used as a mini digital television, also for field troubleshooting. So truthfully, it’s not a toy at all, and I scored a great deal on it – refurbished. If not for the dirt-cheap price, Ron would still be asking, “do you think sometime I might could have a laptop for troubleshooting?” I don’t anyone to get the idea that I could actually afford to buy anything but refurbished.

I also scored a Sadelco Minimax test set – used, refurbished, but excellent for our applications – this unit reads the level of each channel on a digital display and allows tweaking with a granularity down to 1/10th of 1 dB.

The old meter, a Drake Model “Dinosaur-1” (not really – but by comparison) had a granularity of maybe 1/10th to 1/30th of this one, so it’s a major step up. If it gives you any idea, the unit shown in the photo is newer and nicer than the one we have. It’s still good, don’t get me wrong, but not sufficiently precise for some of the things we need to accomplish.

I’ve scored a bundle of hardware on eBay, too, that’s been absolutely essential for getting things back in shape.

As Ron will attest, I’m sure, I’m nothing if not resourceful, finding equipment and thinking to myself, “I know that’s not what this was designed for – but I’ll bet I can make it do it.” Heh. Creativity pays off.

I’m working on a design for new car signs – primarily to make it just a more simple matter to figure out the answer to the question, “who’s that guy looking up at that pole?”

And, of course, there’s the web site... recently added are links to local weather information from Weather Underground and the National Weather Service.

In the coming weeks, I’ll also be tweaking the Blue Sky Cable Emergency Alert System to interrupt programming – briefly – on all non-local channels – when there is severe weather in the area or if any local, state, or federal emergency is declared... so if you’re watching TBN, Discovery, ESPN, etc... and local severe weather or other conditions threaten, you’ll be greeted with the familiar “attention signal” with a visual message inviting you to tune to Channel 2 for full details, and then normal programming will resume. Total time for the disruption, only about 10 seconds. Then a message about the emergency condition will continually scroll on Channel 2 until the event (such as a tornado warning) expires.

Local stations have requested that they not be interrupted – which makes sense, since if there’s severe weather, they are likely to be talking about it anyway and it wouldn’t make sense to interrupt them.

The EAS system is automated, and obviously, I don’t want this to become like the boy who cried “wolf” so I will be very judicious in setting up the rules for which kinds of emergencies will automatically interrupt all channels, and which events (such as severe thunderstorm watches) will only be displayed on Channel 2, without the message on the other channels suggesting that you tune there.

Of course, there’s more... so stay tuned!

Whoosh!

What was that noise?

It must have been time flying past.

Wow.

Okay, so a lot has gone on in the past week or two. We got the new satellite equipment in for TBS, TNT, CNN, and Headline News in Marquette and Bentley, and Fox News Channel in Bentley.

Got ‘em installed.

Even bought a spare... which was a good thing, because one of them didn’t work at all. Then, another one (TNT in Bentley) “gave it up” less than 24 hours after we got them in. So, I’ll be back to replace that as soon as the vendor sends me a replacement unit.

Last week, I also switched Bentley Public Access Channel 2 to a new digital stream from News Radio 1330 KNSS. Sounds much better. Much better. Much. My next plan for this is an automatic switcher to fall-back to the off-air AM radio signal if the digital feed should happen to drop out.

I did a bit of work on the www.blueskycable.com web site this weekend, adding the channel lineups for both towns... and, true to my usual form, I wasn’t satisfied just to list the channels... no, I also built a table to show which package included each channel, and included links to the web site of each channel.

Also on the web site, a question from a customer prompted me to add a “Check E-Mail” link, allowing those who use a blueskycable.net or blueskycable.com address to check e-mail from anywhere... if you can remember “blueskycable.com,” then you can remember how to check e-mail remotely.

Ron continues to find and repair tiny defects in the outdoor feeder cable – mostly hair-line cracks that are the result of mechanical or thermal stress (translation: wind and heat) and replacing the defective section of line each time he finds one. This will all add up to a generally more reliable system, and specifically will improve some picture quality issues and Internet issues.

And, this past week I received the first of several shipments of items we will be using to further improve Internet performance. More about this as deployment time approaches.

I had my little girl with me this weekend, which makes traveling and working kind of tricky. The only time I can really get anything done is at nap time... at which time I, myself, am ready for a nap.

But, Lord willing, I plan to be in Bentley on 5/9 and Marquette on 5/16 for more testing, refining, and upgrades.

Weekend Progress

I most definitely should be asleep by now, and it’s not far off. But first, a little bit of status to report.

On Friday, Phillip (a.k.a. freelance outside cable technician extraordinaire, who also owns a bucket truck) had a productive day in Bentley, replacing about 800 feet of aerial feeder on Ragan Street. The Ragan Street Feeder (a.k.a. the “A” Feeder) serves everybody southwest of Midland Street. In that 800-foot section, the cable had already been repaired twice (before my time) with little patch-sections being inserted, which means a total of 4 couplings [cable – (1) – patch – (2) – cable – (3) – patch – (4) – cable] and the repair jobs had not held up very well… especially with this wind.

My policy on repairs to feeder cable from here, on out, is very straightforward: We don’t repair feeder cables. We replace the bad section.

I once saw a sign that asks a poignant question:

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

I know, right? Good stuff. How many times have you said to yourself, “I’ll just ‘temporary’ this and fix it later?” Not good.

Sometimes my progress is slower than I wish it was. Sometimes, it’s because I’m trying to do it right the first time.

Stated another way:

Good, Cheap, and Quick – pick any two.

If it’s good and cheap, it won’t be quick.
If it’s good and quick, it won’t be cheap.
If it’s cheap and quick, it won’t be good.

I stopped by Bentley on my way up on Friday, then spent Friday night and Saturday in Marquette, until a migraine took me out of commission.

I started out the morning looking through the channels at a couple of rough spots. Channel 41, the KWCH Storm Team 12 Weather station, has been looking and sounding terrible. I had walked Ron through some attempted adjustments on the phone, but adjustments weren’t the fix – that modulator had to be replaced. Done. I didn’t have a new Channel 41 unit, but I did have an “agile processor” which can be used to transmogrify one channel into another, so I shoehorned it in there and the quality is much-improved, though not as much as a proper modulator would probably provide, so I’ll add that to my list.

Channel 96, JCTV, was very fuzzy. Testing revealed another bad modulator needing replacement. Also done. In this case, I did have the exact piece I needed and JCTV looks and sounds quite amazing. If you haven’t looked at it lately, it’s definitely worth a second look.

Channel 24 (or is it 25? I’m sleepy) HGTV has a “squiggly thing” going on, which also appears to be a… wait for it! Yes, another defective modulator. I’ll add that to my list.

Then Ron and I went out to look at a feeder cable on 3rd Street that has another of those infamous repair/patch jobs. I figured that’s what we’d be looking at, so I brought a couple of hundred feet of replacement feeder cable and that is on his short list of things to do. This should clear up some intermittent Internet issues east of Washington Street.

The wind has really done a number on the cable plant. We sawed off a fallen pole today and then went looking for cable damage.

We recently acquired a very handy piece of diagnostic technology that allows us to locate breaks in the cable line. When I say “breaks,” I don’t mean, “Oh, look, a broken cable,” No, I’m referring to partial breaks – which are much worse that complete breaks. If the line is laying on the ground, just about anybody could drive up and say, “yep, I found your problem, here, yer cable’s broken.” Partial/intermittent breaks are much more elusive, since they still “work,” but they cause reception and/or Internet problems.

So we went out in search of them. All I can say is, “ask and you shall receive.” We found one spot where the wind has flexed the aerial feeder cable to the breaking point, two more that “don’t look good,” and a 4th one with no visible damage, but damaged nonetheless. Things like this can really cause some annoyingly intermittent problems, which get worse when it gets windy, as a result of the weakened cable being flexed over and over. I have 2,000 more feet of feeder cable on order and Ron will jump to it on these issues as soon as they arrive.

We went over to the new (northwest) part of Marquette, and did some preliminary design work to extend the cable system to all of the residents of that part of town. After the repairs I talked about above, guess what Ron will be doing next?

Still no progress with Turner, but I think the coming week has a bit of potential to get the process off high-center and get those stations back on the cable. Progress report will be posted when available.

Sunday afternoon, the headache finally relented to the point that I was able to get out of bed, so I headed to Bentley.

Bentley has a pleasant surprise coming. I dropped a big ‘ol chunk of change and purchased a new Fox News satellite decoder last week. I was planning to install it in Bentley on Sunday, and I did… knowing that it wouldn’t work right out of the box, because I have to wait for the Fox News business office people to do the documentation required to “authorize” the descrambler (i.e. make it work).

Unfortunately, I discovered that Fox News’s digital feed is now on a satellite called Galaxy 17, at 91° W, in the orbital slot formerly occupied by Galaxy 11. And there are no other channels that I’m carrying from Galaxy 17… although I do have a dish pointed at it. Try as I might, I was unable to lock onto the Fox News signal, so that left me with two unknowns – either the receiver I just got is no good, or there’s trouble with the alignment or the electronics mounted on the dish. (Incidentally, the receiver will lock onto the signal and tell you what signal it is, even if it’s not authorized – you have to lock it on before they can send the authorization codes to it – they’re sent over the satellite.) I’m showing strong signal, but the “AFC” (automatic frequency control) indicator shows wild fluctuations – too wild for AFC to lock.

Good troubleshooting calls for eliminating the unknowns, so I took the receiver to another cable system where I have some contacts, and dropped it off Sunday night, so they can hook it to their G-17 dish and see what gives. Meanwhile, I submitted the necessary information to Fox News so they can authorize it. As soon as it’s working, I’ll make a road trip to Bentley. I’ve already re-activated Cable Channel 24 (complete with a “no signal available” screen), so everything is ready once the equipment is good to go.

If you remember from before, when KSAS-TV (Fox 24) was on Cable Channel 24 (prior to it moving to Cable Channel 7), there was something not right about 24 on cable – it had squiggly lines on it, just like 24 in Marquette, which is a totally different station.

Testing revealed that the modulator was in fact not defective this time. When I took the 24 signal off of the cable and connected it straight to a TV, the picture was great. So I reconnected it, and then began going through the other modulators, shutting them off a few at a time until I found one group of 8, which, when disconnected, caused the interference on 24 to go away. Looking at which 8 channels were involved, I contemplated with of them would be most likely to interfere with channel 24. The winner? Channel 13. Because of the way cable channels are numbered, 13 is actually only one channel – 6 MHz – away from 24. (It goes 12, 13, 23, 24… some time I’ll go into the detail of this, which will also answer the question of why the cable system skips from 46 to 95).

As luck would have it, I had a filter in my toolbag that blocks channels 24 through 39. I have no idea just why I had this filter, but I had it. (I don’t generally throw things away if there’s the remotest possibility of using them in the future.) I screwed it onto the back of the Channel 13 unit, and voila – trouble cleared. Apparently, it’s reasonably common for modulators to “splatter” signal outside of the desired range, and perhaps especially so in the case of “agile” modulators, like the one being used on Channel 13. Many modulators are made for one specific channel. They’re called “fixed,” in contrast to “agile” modulators, which can be set to whatever channel you need, depending on the design of the modulator. On a fixed modulator, the manufacturer can attach a bandpass filter to only permit the desired signal range to leave the chassis – if there’s any splatter, it won’t make it to the outside. Apparently, the agile one doesn’t have that.

Incidentally… a “modulator” is the device that takes the decoded video signal I receive from either satellite (cable networks) or antenna (local stations)… or locally-generated video, in the case of Public Access Channel 2, and wraps it inside a carrier signal on the desired channel. For example, the Channel 2 modulator encapsulates the video in a carrier at 55.25 MHz, and the audio in a carrier at 59.75 MHz. All televisions know that this is the frequency we commonly call “Channel 2,” so when you set your television to “Channel 2,” the TV knows what frequency to tune in and display.

On the topic of satellites, how strange is this: the satellites used to relay cable programming are in geosynchronous orbit – orbiting the earth at the same speed the earth rotates. Well, sort of. Technically, they’re higher up, so they’re actually traveling much faster, but from the ground, they appear to be stationary. They’re 22,300 miles up, and over the equator. This altitude is necessary because of Kepler’s third law, which in simple terms dictates that if you’re further away (example, the Moon, 235,000 miles away, requiring 27 days to orbit the earth) you take longer than a day orbit, and if you’re closer (example, the International Space Station, at a paltry 190 nautical miles up, orbits 15.7 times per day) you spend less than a whole day in orbit.

As for the communications satellites, each “bird” occupies an orbital slot on a particular line of longitude. But here’s what’s strange: They name the individual satellites, not the orbital slot (i.e., position in the sky). So, for example, at 135° W, all of my equipment says “Satcom C-4.” But the satellite is now “AMC 10” – they replaced the actual “Satcom C-4” spacecraft (satellite) with a different one, “AMC 10” and instead of sticking with the same name, they change the name that the same orbital slot is represented by — so now, you have to have access to that legacy information in order to make sense out of the current information. To me, that’s about as sensible as changing the name of “Air Force One” when the physical aircraft is different… which, of course, they don’t do.

Tinkering with the Fox News hardware took several hours, so I didn’t get anything else accomplished on the channel lineup changes in Bentley. I’m still looking forward to getting that done – I think it will be nice to have the channels all arranged in a sensible order.

I’ve had some trouble with the new TBN (Channel 98) satellite receiver in Bentley – it’s locked up on me twice now, and had to be rebooted. It’s plugged into the battery backup system, so I don’t think it’s a power-related problem, but I don’t really know what else the problem could be, at this point. I’m going to continue to watch it, and if it continues to misbehave, I may swap it with the Smile of a Child receiver and see if the trouble follows the receiver, or the satellite signal. (These two receivers are the same).

I also will be bringing JCTV to Bentley. The first satellite receiver Trinity sent me was defective – doesn’t even power on. They’ve ordered another one for me. The current plan is to place JCTV on Channel 97. Additionally, I’m working to bring in C-SPAN 2.

Status Report

It seems like practically yesterday when I wrote the previous post, but the calendar tells me that it’s been quite a bit longer than that.  Looking back, I guess I didn’t think of any of my recent tasks as particularly noteworthy... just takin’ care of business.

Retransmission Consent is a done deal, and although I’m not paying as much as the local stations originally asked, I’m still paying too much.

I’ve been working to bring the business affairs of the company into some semblance of order with the various suppliers who make my final product possible.  More unexpected previously-unpaid bills have come up... and as you might expect, this has slowed my progress somewhat on other projects as I do have to work within the constraints of the funds available at any given moment.

There are some technical issues still vying for my attention… although, despite the fact that I wish I had accomplished more in the amount of time I’ve been at this, in the grand analysis I am glad that I have made as much progress as I have.

I’ve begun the process of rearranging the channels in Bentley to put things in a more logical sequence, and repairing or replacing hardware that isn’t performing up to spec.  Distribution of television and Internet signals on a coaxial cable network is a delicate balancing act – and recalibrating equipment to achieve the proper balance is an ongoing process.

Within the next few weeks, I hope to have things going as generally smoothly in Bentley as I have gotten them going in Marquette – and then it’s back to Marquette for more tweaking until the system there too is truly up to my standards.

In Bentley, Fox News will be coming back.  PBS Explore, TBN, JCTV, and Smile of a Child are also coming to Bentley, joining the recently-added channels PBS Create and KWCH Storm Team 12 Weather.  (PBS Explore is also coming soon to Marquette.)  I am also in discussions with Fox Business and Fox Sports Midwest/Kansas City for carriage of their signals on Blue Sky Cable, in both towns.  You probably already know, or could take a lucky guess, that each channel I carry involves royalties paid by me each month to the provider of that signal. Prices vary wildly by channel, from a few cents to several dollars for each customer on the system. These royalties ultimately end up on your cable bill. I very much value your feedback in this regard.

Interestingly, the programming providers (with the exception of the premium channels) flat-out refuse to allow me to let individual subscribers decide whether or not they want a particular channel. No – it’s all or nothing.  If I add a channel to the system – pretty much without exception – I have to make it available to all customers.

I’m not singling them out – just by way of example, here – Question: Do I have the option of selling ESPN or The Discovery Channel to only those who watch them, and not to those who don’t?  Answer: No, I do not have that option.  If I want to offer one channel to any customer, I have to include it for all customers.  These are rules laid down by the people who are in control – the providers of the programming, not the cable company.

The only exception they allow is for “Limited Basic Cable” – and limited basic isn’t permitted to include any of the nationwide services, except for C-SPAN, the religious channels, and The Weather Channel.  Those channels, plus the local TV channels, are all that’s permitted to be included in Limited Basic… which, by the way, is now available for $16.00 per month if you’d like to sign up.