Alan Spindel is president of the Radio Club of America and senior electrical engineer for Ten-Tec/Alpha RF Systems. He develops hardware and firmware for amateur and professional radio systems.
He will moderate a Monday morning session at the NAB Show’s BEIT conference called “War Stories From the Front Lines of Broadcasting” featuring Bob Orban and Mike Pappas of Orban Labs, and William Harrison of WETA(FM) in Washington.
Radio World: How did this session come about?
Alan Spindel: The Radio Club of America honored Bob Orban with the Jack Poppele Award, which is named after broadcast pioneer and VOA director Jack Poppele, at the club’s 116th annual awards banquet. The award recognizes individuals who have made important, long-term contributions to radio broadcasting.
Bob was unable to attend, so RCA Fellow Mike Pappas of Orban Labs accepted on his behalf. It is customary for recipients to give a talk at the technical symposium that accompanies the banquet; I asked Mike if he could share some practical field experience, as the symposium was heavy on theory this year.
Mike gave a great presentation that included an exploding transfer switch blown to bits on security camera footage; screwdrivers jammed in to hold RF contactors closed; and the results of someone accidentally running full daytime power into a nighttime low-power tuning unit.
When NAB asked RCA as a partner organization to host a panel at the BEIT, I asked Mike if he could reprise his talk and bring in other panelists. He agreed on the condition that I add some of my own war stories, a few of which involved Mike. We agreed the format would be irreverent and lighthearted.
RW: Can you give a few more examples?
Spindel: Mike has great stories and photos from a recent AM site renovation in Utah. Other tales include a six-figure hardline burnout caused by a 19-cent zener diode, and a DJ who panicked when the fire alarm annunciator panel caught fire in the control room and emptied an entire dry-chemical extinguisher into the on-air console and cart library.
RW: What kind of practical knowledge are you looking to impart?
Spindel: There is a common misperception that young, up-and-coming broadcast engineers lack adequate RF knowledge or experience. I believe it is a misperception because if you lack RF knowledge, you will gain it quickly on the job.
Much of the procedural and troubleshooting knowledge that exists in a modern broadcast plant is not in any textbook. These hard-won lessons must be passed down to each new generation.
Our goal is that practitioners of all experience levels take away something useful to apply or pass along. The takeaway: You must survive and thrive where failure is not an option. The show must always go on. We hope every attendee will be both enlightened and entertained.
RW: What else should we know?
Spindel: A station GM, himself a former engineer, once asked me what I thought about a person he was considering hiring after meeting him for the first time. I said, “He’s like us: someone who would never leave the transmitter site in the middle of the night while the station was still off the air.”
Broadcast engineering is a unique field with no formal academic path. It encompasses high power, RF, towers, generators, audio, video, microwaves, winches and four-wheel drives, to name a few disciplines. Knowledge is gained almost entirely through on-the-job experience.
If this forum imparts even a small measure of that knowledge to the next generation through lessons learned, it will be a great success.
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