The Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE), is disputing facts and claims in major portions of a six-month report on 2 GHz "Trucker TV" tests Clarity Broadcasting Systems filed with the FCC in January.
In a letter to Julius Knapp, acting chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, the SBE said Clarity's transmissions at Frazier Park north of Los Angeles, in North Salt Lake City and in Ogden, Utah were demonstrations, not tests. The letter states that, "...these were show and no-tell events offered as a demonstration of the system. To qualify as "tests" Clarity should have included detailed engineering measurements of the undesired Trucker TV signal levels at all nearby electronic newsgathering receive-only sites."
The SBE said that Clarity had demonstrated a "profound" lack of cooperation with broadcasters at the Frazier Park site, which included refusing to allow broadcast station representatives to view their transmitting facilities or transmitting antenna, or allow power levels to be measured or witness those made by Clarity.
SBE also noted that the transmissions occurred at a location 3.7 km from the authorized coordinates, with a site elevation of 1,170.4 meters AMSL instead of the 1,328.9-meter elevation of the authorized location. SBE pointed out that interference would likely have been greater at the higher elevation.
The Clarity report also did not disclose the massive interference ENG operations caused to Trucker TV, regardless of the orientation of the ENG truck transmit antenna.
"Despite the assertion in Clarity's returned Cable Television Relay Service (CARS) applications that it would 'live with this,'" the association said, "SBE feels that Clarity should have disclosed this massive incompatibility in its Six-Month report."
For additional information, see my earlier article in the Dec. 9, 2005 RF Report.
