MARCH 16, 2004

Present:

Terry Spring-KWPX
Don White-KCPQ/KTWB
Don Miller-WSEM
Mark Allen-WSAB
Ted Buehner-NWS Seattle
Shelli Jones-KBCB
John Franz-KVOS
Clay Freinwald-Entercom
Jim Tharpe-Entercom
Roland Robinson-Bates Technical College
Kris McGowan-FCC
Art Blum-KONA
Bob Wyatt-Spokane

Clay's job has changed. He will be spending more time out of town.

The previous meeting notes were accepted, and can be viewed on the WSAB web site.

The AMBER single entry point project is moving ahead. Recently a meeting occurred to work out issues with the various parties involved. There is agreement on the plan, but it is still being polished. Local agencies that have a SECC approved AMBER plan can go to the Washington State Patrol and they will automatically originate the alert. Those agencies without a plan will go to the WSP, and they will either disprove it or approve it and originate the alert. The SECC will still approve the local AMBER plans, but only those parts pertaining to EAS. New plans must be approved by January 2005. No new plans will be approved after that date.

For the state plan update project, Don will work on a revised Tab 4. The WSAB will be sending out a hard copy of the revised state plan to all stations. Tab updates are also available on the EAS remailer as they are issued.

In new business, the recent AMBER alert came to a successful conclusion. The audio message was clipped at the front. Don has not been able to duplicate the problem, but more testing will be done. The test received great PR in Eastern Washington and was successfully relayed into Portland.

A meeting to revise Tab 10, Monitoring Assignments, has been tentatively set for April 3 at 10 AM at Moses Lake. Further details will be on the remailer.

At Emergency Management, the EMnet satellite based system has been installed and will be tested soon. This is a nationwide system that is also internet based and is a possible replacement or supplement for the state relay network. NWS Seattle will be the first test site. Not only is the audio quality better than what we currently have, but there is higher reliability. Comlabs, the company behind EMnet, will be at WSEM on March 29 at 1:30 PM.

The Partnership for Public Warning has come out with some recommendations for EAS, mostly the same things the SECC has recommended in the past.

From the National Weather Service, latitudes and longitudes for the weather radio stations have been removed from the WSAB web site for security reasons. The NWS is officially implementing the new EAS event codes on June 30. New forecast zones are also being implemented. There is some money for EAS in the new NWS budget.

At the FCC, they will be looking at areas with no local plans.

In cable news, Mark Allen recently had a meeting with the managers of the Seattle TV stations to discuss the cable override issue. They will be starting with Comcast.

There is a FCC proposal to require wireless cable networks to force tune set top boxes to a single channel for EAS alerts. This is opposed by broadcasters.

In technical news, there will soon be a Windows based programming tool for the Sage boxes. Only manual programming has been available since the last firmware upgrade. Because of issues with the length of the two tone signal, the standard will be 8 seconds. It will be changed soon on the state boxes. The units are designed to strip off the incoming tones and add their own. This doesn't always work because of noise, distortion, or whatever in the receiver. This can result in long tones after the alert passes through multiple boxes.

A system has been devised to adding ASCII text to EAS alerts. This could be used by TV character generators to provide more detailed information on screen. There will be a demonstration at NOAA in DC.

The Technical Committee is looking for information on the NPR squawk channel and how local public radio stations are using it for EAS.

The SBE EAS presentation at NAB will be on April 19 at 2 PM in Room N255 at the convention center.

An organization meeting was held for the Coastal area recently. The state EAS box is being installed at the local Emergency Management.

Dan Eckis is the new local chair for Chelan/Douglass. Mark Kennedy has expressed interest in helping out in Yakima. Criteria for local chairs was discussed. Broadcasters are preferred, but if none step forward then someone from law enforcement, amateur radio or other interested parties are fine.

In the North Puget Sound area, the last two AMBER alerts had a local connection. This generated a lot of good publicity and interest. It was also brought up that some local areas were having the state generate monthly tests because it was inconvenient for them to do it. This dilutes the value of testing.

It was noted that Eagle County, Colorado, accidentally sent a tsunami warning. They are located at an elevation of around 6000 feet!

There is a tab in the state plan for the local area plan that would pertain to each station. There needs to be a way to distribute local plans. This will be discussed further.

The next meeting will be Tuesday, May 4, at 9:30 AM at the NOAA facility on Sand Point.

Terry Spring
Chief Engineer
KWPX Seattle

_______________________________________________
Eas-wa mailing list
Eas-wa@broadcast.net
http://www.broadcast.net/mailman/listinfo/eas-wa