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National EAS Test Failures

WNTIRadio said:
Why can't every station just have a Ku band box to get the national level tests? Or even the states for that matter. Use the daisy chain of stations as a back up in case Iran or North Korea knocks the bird out of the sky. If I can get TV on a little 18" dish, why not do the same thing for EAS for ALL stations?!

Dumb. The whole thing is really dumb. It would be state of the art in 1955, but not now.
Click to expand...

Good point. Or if having a Ku band receiver at each station is too much, then at least have them at each LP1 and LP2...
 
ChiefOperator said:
WNTIRadio said:
Why can't every station just have a Ku band box to get the national level tests? Or even the states for that matter. Use the daisy chain of stations as a back up in case Iran or North Korea knocks the bird out of the sky. If I can get TV on a little 18" dish, why not do the same thing for EAS for ALL stations?!

Dumb. The whole thing is really dumb. It would be state of the art in 1955, but not now.
Click to expand...

Good point. Or if having a Ku band receiver at each station is too much, then at least have them at each LP1 and LP2...
Click to expand...

I wouldn't trust the KU in a major storm... However, KU, with IP backup would be fine by me. This whole system is jacked up. In my building, we have the primary for my market. Crazy that all 5 of the other stations have to monitor it off the air as opposed to a direct feed...
 
Of course, on the report form...the only thing that they ask is "Did you receive the test?" So, if you got interrupted, you did indeed receive the test. But, the question should have been, "Was the test successful, and if not, why?" I am supposing the subsequent report will allow for further detail on today's "debacle".
 
My thought exactly. My 15 year old has made better surveys. He wants to get into politics. Maybe he should head this eas effort. Who ever running this at the national level should be a 9th grader. The system would then work.
 
Northern Missouri...LP-1 box did not relay the test. NPR affiliate only got a partial message relayed thru NPR squawk channel with no EOM...they had to send RWT to clear it.

Central Iowa...poor quality audio with echoes/multiple data bursts, similar to other reports.
 
And who's the brain surgeon at the Today Show who thought it was a good idea to put EAS tones on the air?

Idiots.

Figures it happened during the Hoda and Kathie segment...the producer was probably as drunk as the on-air "talent". :mad:
 
kenglish said:
Faux News Channel disgusts me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6j-DxilH9I

:mad:
Click to expand...

What is so disgusting? That's a morning show, just like the ones on all the other networks. And the anchor was vamping in the time when, in theory, each local cable system was to break away for the test... which did not happen in many places. So what viewers got was the anchor filling, over and over, so that no matter how long the test lasted, cable systems coming back would not miss a beat. I thought she did a pretty good, if vacuous, job, all things considered.
 
600kogo said:
In San Diego most stations did very well, Thank God that AM 600 KOGO installed their PEP gear at the transmitter. It was a decent feed and the test was received well and no real problems with most of the local stations.
Click to expand...

KPRZ 1210 San Marcos started late by about two mins
 
We got it in Philly.

It came through at about 2:02:30 in Philadelphia, though the audio was really BAD----a voice announcing that it was a test with EBS tones, echoes of EBS tones, echoes of the voice, etc. loudly in the background. The voice was (barely) understandable-and I think that had the test been longer so all the crud timed out that the audio might be usable. The problem with this system is that it's a forward system-and audio simply begins to crud up after it's been through a dozen EAS units, STLs, audio processors, transmitters and tuners.

What makes a lot more sense is to have a satellite and/or IP based system based system-with Longwave (and possibly shortwave) transmission for backup. They could recycle a few Loran-C sites and cover the entire USA with a usable groundwave signal with about a dozen transmitter sites.
 
PBS TV station was the ONLY local to have any semblance of the audio message, although you could hear about 3 other concurrent audio streams at the same time. Only station monitored that had the whole 30 second message.

LP1 (FM): Header and EBS tones, and all seemed well except only white noise after the attention tones, so no audio was heard other than the header, the EBS, white noise and then the 3 EOM bursts.

NBC TV Station: Video: excellent top crawl listing Washington D.C. as the source. Audio however was exactly the same as LP1- white noise only.

LP-2-HD2 (FM): Broadcast was an exact relay of LP-1 with same lack of audio, but all tones and program insertion was okay.

XM Satellite Radio: No header, had only EBS tones, then 5 seconds of audio (5 words) ("The Message you are hearing") then one EOM burst, then 14 seconds of mute audio and then back to standard audio.

I thought using XM to feed all stations was a decent idea (until today), as is using the old LORAN C transmitters.

In Ohio, this test was a FAIL ! Sure as sh** glad this wasn't a real emergency!
 
All three of our stations interupted, but had very distorted audio. Most of the stations I've heard from in the area had the same results. I believe the main station we listen to was also distorted as well. We had to abort it because we never received an end tone, plus had to do a RWT to "release" other stations listening to us. The main problem with daisy chains are that they are only only as good as the weakest link. The majority of the stations in Arkansas did interupt, but suffered from the same audio issues. All in all, with this being the first time this has ever been attempted, I believe it was a worthwhile endeaver. I think the FEMA and the FCC just wanted to see how many stations were actually interupted, regardless of the audio quality. They will worry with that later. Look for some changes and letters to go out from the FCC to the stations who didn't air it or had bad audio, etc., and for another test to occur within the next year. I believe the Federal Government is more serious than what they are letting on about getting this system up and running as best as is possible.
 
JohnnyElectron said:
PBS TV station was the ONLY local to have any semblance of the audio message,...snip...........

In Ohio, this test was a FAIL ! Sure as sh** glad this wasn't a real emergency!
Click to expand...

More so: I'm glad this wasn't a government 'take-over' of our....

Well, I'm glad it was only an attempted takeover.
 
grich said:
And who's the brain surgeon at the Today Show who thought it was a good idea to put EAS tones on the air?

Idiots.

Figures it happened during the Hoda and Kathie segment...the producer was probably as drunk as the on-air "talent". :mad:
Click to expand...

Make that two networks to violate...CBS just aired SAME tones during Criminal Minds (they're in Kansas...tornado warning).

Sigh.
 
BDR is suggesting the bad audio started at the source...FEMA. They've posted what I assume is the raw audio from the NPR sat feed. Makes sense that alert audio riddled with multiple sets of data tones would confuse EAS boxes all over the land.

Sigh once again...
 
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