BLM Satellite Downlink Coordinator Refresher Training

and Push-to-Talk Tests

**\
A Telecast Originating**

**from the**

**BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona**

**October 15, 2003**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

**Announcer:** The Bureau of Land Management Satellite Network presents
live from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, BLM
satellite downlink coordinator refresher training. An interactive
workshop to help BLM offices manage training and informational
telecasts. Now your instructors, Chip Calamaio and Art Ferraro.\
\
C. Calamaio: Good morning from NTC studio B. Welcome to our satellite
downlink refresher. With me this morning is NTC Producer/director Art
Ferraro. Art art is going to be providing technical details of the
push-to-talk equipment. Hi, art.\
\
A. Ferraro: Hi, Chip.\
\
C. Calamaio: Also with us this morning to help with technical details,
NTC\'s broadcast engineer, Mr. Terry Loftus, who is standing by back in
our engineering area. Good morning, Terry?\
\
T. Loftus: Good morning, Chip. How you doing?\
\
C. Calamaio: Good. On the average how many requests do you get per week
for tech support from our downlink sites?\
\
T. Loftus: It varies quite a bit depending on what we have going on, how
many broadcasts, et cetera, et cetera. But at times it\'s not unusual to
get as many as four calls a week.\
\
C. Calamaio: That\'s great. We\'re counting on you, Terry, to bail us
out if we get some tough technical questions later on.\
\
A. Ferraro: In this program we are going to take a big picture look at
our network works, what it is used for, the equipment you should have at
your downlink site and we\'ll review your role as a satellite downlink
coordinator, what you need to the before, during and after broadcasts.
We will also spend some time talking about interactivity and looking at
the push-to-talk audio system that BLM added to the network last year
and we\'ll address some of the problems downlink sites have been having
with wiring, echo and how to operate things. We hope to offer a number
of solutions to help you keep your system functional. Chip?

C. Calamari: At the conclusion of this refresher, we\'re going to take a
break, then we\'ll go back on the air to go state by state and give you
an opportunity to test your push-to-talk equipment by calling in and
talking with us. The schedule for those tests was sent to you via e-mail
and it\'s also posted on our website. Remember that website, the NTC
Satellite Network website at www.ntc.blm.gov/SATNET. That\'s the first
place you should go for information about the BLM Satellite Network. Sat
net is a great resource of information for downlink coordinators and if
you haven\'t already, this is where you can download the BLM Satellite
Network downlink site guide. The Downlink Guide provides detailed
information on many of the topics we\'ll touch on today. We\'ll be
talking more about that website later.\
A. Ferraro: We hope you will participate with us today by offering your
comments or questions using the push-to-talk equipment at your downlink
site. When you do push to talk, please, as always, say your name and
location that you\'re calling from. As many of our \-- and as in many of
our telecasts, to manage this, we\'ll let you know when it\'s ok to
push-to-talk by putting a green light in the upper corner of your screen
like this. If you didn\'t get the phone number and pass code for our
phone bridge, please feel free to call our operator toll-free at
1-877-862-5346.\
\
C. Calamari: You can also callous a regular telephone to ask a question
or offer a comment, however in this broadcast, primarily we would like
to use the push-to-talk system. Or you can send us a fax at any time.
Our fax number is 602-906-5713. If we do run short on time we\'re going
to get a response back to everyone by e-mail or post questions and
answers on our website.\
\
A. Ferraro: Our goal today is to get as much information out to you
within the time allotted so we\'re going to try to keep things moving
along. Remember, you can always ask a question later this afternoon when
we do get our push-to-talk tests going.\
\
C. Calamari: But our main objective is to help you understand just how
vital a part you play in making the BLM Satellite Network work. We know
that for all our downlink coordinators this is kind of an other duties
as assigned type of position and that many of you in essence really
volunteer for this extra workload. We want you to know that we get
that.\
\
A. Ferraro: No mat for you are setting up a downlink for one person or
100 people, you are the Bulmer with the personal responsibility for
making sure technical arrangements are made, that the push-to-talk
system is hooked up correctly, and that in general things just go
smoothly.\
\
C. Calamari: That\'s right, art. No matter what kind of job everyone
does at NTC, our crews, the people that come here to present on camera
to put one of these things on, if our downlink coordinators don\'t take
things seriously and give us good support, viewers will have a bad
experience or in fact no one will even see the telecast.\
\
C. Calamari: So true. We need downlink coordinators at all offices to
partner with us in taking ownership and responsibility for the success

or failure of BLM satellite events. We really do appreciate your help
and we are all in this together.\
\
C. Calamari: We really are. It is a partnership. To set the stage, we
want to talk about the different ways that BLM utilizes the Satellite
Network and what that means to you as a downlink coordinator. NTC
produces satellite events that fall into really four general categories.
The first one is we broadcast distance learning satellite courses.
Satellite courses vary from one day workshops to multiple day courses to
extensive training series. Depending on the topic for satellite courses,
you may have a number of viewers or at times only one student taking the
class. BLM also uses the network for informational telecasts. These
events include talk shows, forums, all-employee test casts, messages
from upper level management, coverage of national conferences and
multi-agencies telecasts for the wild LAN fire program. These events
draw the largest number of viewers.

At times it could be everyone in your office. We\'ve also produced
special broadcasts to Balm's public land customers. These telecasts have
included interactive programs to the Resource Advisory Councils as well
as public information programming on planning, off-highway vehicle
management, and changes in oil and gas regulations. For these types of
programs, you as a downlink coordinator may be helping to coordinate the
logistics of having RAC members come to your office, industry
representatives or other members of the public coming to your site to
participate. The fourth category really has started during the past
several years. NTC has also begun producing environmental education
telecasts. These highly complex programs are targeted at middle school
science classes and have included programs on Balm's national monuments,
dinosaurs and wild land fire science. For environmental Ed broadcasts
you may be hosting classes of local students from your community.

A. Ferraro: At times you will also be asked to downlink telecasts
offered by organizations producing other programs. The Fish & Wildlife
Service also originates environmental education programs for schools.
The Department of the Interior has been using satellite delivery for its
annual ethics series and other training, one of which is next week, I
believe. Some BLM state offices have worked with vendors to produce
state specific programs and at times BLM participates in commercially
produced training and informational programs where a downlink fee is
charged per viewer. In those instances there may be restrictions on
videotaping the program, though. NTC also routinely partners with the
Forest Service, the National Park Service and the Fish & Wildlife
Service on interagency satellite courses in areas such as hazardous
materials, Air Conformity and wild land fire training.

There\'s also a host of other agencies, state organizations and state
universities that offer satellite events. Some satellite events with
large target audiences are also simulcast on several different satellite
systems at the same time. Many of our programs are simulcast on Fish &
Wildlife Service and National Park Service digital satellite systems and
likewise we simulcast their digital programs on our C-band system. That
is actually how you receive all the shows, for example, from the Fish &
Wildlife Service Training Center in Shepherdstown. They all come through
our facility in Phoenix first. This is what we call a turnaround. Since
the satellite signal is making two hops back and forth into space, there
is an added time delay which you may notice when you call in with the
push-to-talk system or a regular phone call. NTC has also started to
simulcast some of our programs on the dish network and direct TV
extending our reach of our telecasts to millions of subscribers and
there are many more of those possibilities down the horizon.\
\
C. Calamari: Almost all telecasts from NTC include some form of
interactivity where viewers can ask questions live on the air and
participate in other ways. Let\'s stick the green light on for a second
and maybe somebody can push to talk and explain to us or someone can
offer what are the three types of interactivity we have that use
standard phone lines? Anyone?\
\
Caller: Chip, this is Bob.\
\
C. Calamari: Hi, Bob. Can you name one of the forms of interactivity?\
\
Caller: No, but I can tell you that you have a pretty severe echo right
now.\
\
C. Calamari: We hear that echo and what I would liked to right now,
everybody that\'s watching, what I would like you to do is not push the
button on your push-to-talk microphone but say the name of your city out
loud. I\'m going to count to three, when I get to three, I want
everybody to say the name of your city but don\'t push the button. Here
we go. 1, 2, 3.\
\
A. Ferraro: Nobody said anything. That\'s normally how we can test an
echo.\
\
Caller: Chip? This is Jerry in Boise. Your echo went on as soon as your
green light went on.\
\
A. Ferraro: Yeah, Jerry the reason is our audio bridge was down and our
audio person actually put the bridge up. The echo has probably been
there the whole time but we have hadn\'t the push-to-talk bridge open.
The reason why we do that test and it may sound silly to everybody out
there, is because there\'s an open microphone somewhere in our 132 sites
right now and that open microphone is picking up the television that
happens to be in that room. So if there\'s somebody that\'s on a
speakerphone that shouldn\'t be on our system or if there\'s somebody
that\'s got a handset where the handset is out and they actually speak
or actually say very loudly the name of their site, when we do that,
then we\'ll actually hear who that person and we\'ll be able to say, ok,
in this case, I\'ll use an example, Jerry, your microphone is open. We
need to have you log offer the bridge and call AT products. Now, of
course, you\'re not the person causing the problem because I could hear
your microphone key in. That may sound silly but it does work and we\'ve
had success with that in the past.\
\
C. Calamari: In one instance we had a student\'s notebook was laying on
top of the microphone and that microphone was on all the time and they
didn\'t realize it until we did that test. Again, let\'s try that.
We\'ve got a bad line somewhere. If you are using a speakerphone, please
turn that off. The system is not designed for use with speakerphones and
we\'ll talk about that later. Again, everyone say aloud right now the
name of your city and let\'s listen.

C. Calamari: Ok. We still have the echo but nobody said anything. Maybe
there is something else going on we\'re not aware of. Why don\'t we keep
going.\
\
Caller: This is Jill. Is one of the answers to the questions you just
ask that we relay information to each other? What was the question again
on the telephone?\
\
C. Calamari: I was asking what are the three standard forms of
interactivity that we use during these satellite events.\
\
Caller: Would one be to relay information throughout our state, our
Bureau \--\
\
C. Calamari: Definitely. That\'s one of your roles as a downlink
coordinator. There really are three types of interactivity and they all
use standard telephone lines \--\
\
Caller: Chip, would one of them be fax?\
\
C. Calamari: Yes, correct, one of them is a fax. So we have \--\
\
Caller: Would the other be a phone?\
\
C. Calamari: The other is a telephone. What would the third be?\
\
Caller: The AT products.\
\
C. Calamari: Good.\
\
Caller: What was that last one?\
\
C. Calamari: The AT products push-to-talk audio system. We have
telephones, faxes and the push-to-talk system. Now, in the case of phone
calls and faxes, interactivity is usually pre-screened by the program
producers before going live on the air. With the push-to-talk system,
the interactivity is virtually instantaneous. Maybe at this point we
could turn off the phone bridge, I\'m still hearing the echo.\
\
A. Ferraro: Yes. We have some great people in engineering that are going
to be working on that problem while we continue this training right now.
When placing regular phone calls into a satellite broadcast, talking
about ones where you would dial in like Larry King live, we\'d like to
mention that you should \-- sorry, let me back up again \-- when you\'re
placing \-- yes \-- ok. When placing regular phone calls into a
satellite broadcast just like Larry King live, we ask you should never
use a speakerphone when you call in for \-- like you would for an audio
conference call. That means that when you\'re just dialing in and not
using the push-to-talk system, you do not want to use a speakerphone.
Pretty much there is no possible reason to use a speakerphone whenever
you\'re interacting with Phoenix and the satellite system, whether it be
through a regular phone call or the push-to-talk system.

Speakerphones can generate a tremendous amount of echo and feedback, I
think we\'ve already experienced in that some cases today, and if
someone wants to call from one of your officers, especially, for
instance, one of those environmental education broadcasts, have them use
a regular handset or cell phone. What does this all mean to you? It
means to you as a downlink coordinator you need to help make
arrangements for telephone calls and faxes as well as the push-to-talk
audio system in your viewing room and all this is based upon what we\'ll
be doing in the particular broadcast. In fact, it\'s a good idea to have
all three ready at all times if that\'s possible.

C. Calamari: That\'s true. Now, everyone is fair will he familiar with
regular telephone and fax communications. But now let\'s look at how the
push-to-talk system works, just how does this magic happen. When NTC
schedules a satellite event that\'s using push-to-talk, we book a
toll-free telephone bridge with the FTS contractor MCI WorldCom just
like you would for one of your standard audio conferences. And, yes,
they do ask a lot of questions when I order one of these for 135
telephone lines. When you dial into that phone bridge with your
push-to-talk control box, your call is mixed and blended in with all the
other phone lines in that telephone bridge. When NTC dials into that
same phone bridge and hooks that phone call up to our television audio
equipment, we have in essence a giant national telephone conference call
going on. With the push-to-talk system does, if everything is working
correctly, is it mutes your communication into that phone bridge until
someone actually pushes the button at the base of the microphone and
speaks. That sends the sound from that microphone at your site into the
phone bridge and on its way to our studio where the on camera people can
hear it, normally in their earpiece. It\'s then transmitted back out
over the satellite system for everyone around the country.\
\
A. Ferraro: Of course, in the past we\'ve had show where the
push-to-talk responses have sounded like they\'ve been coming through an
echo chamber. Many of you have experienced how these systems is if
hooked up improperly can create feedback. But how does it snap all it
takes to create an echo across the country, all 132 sites, is to have
just one site in the network push-to-talk not using a microphone \-- not
have their TV audio mute. That\'s the key that I want to really
emphasize here. The biggest problem that happens with our system is when
you\'re pushing and talking in your system and you are not muting the
television set in your room, period. I would like to take a second to
talk about the Elmo for a second. And show you sort of graphically what
actually happens in this instance. What we have here is I\'ve got \-- I
just did this kind of last night and I\'m no artist. This is my stick
figure artwork. We have basically the audio path loop that happens when
we do a push-to-talk broadcast. We have the NTC studio which is
originating programming, it\'s going up to the satellite and then it\'s
coming down to the Field Office.

From there the audio signal goes into the push-to-talk system and this
is the device that actually mutes the audio on your TV. When you push
this microphone right here, this audio mutes and you actually speak and
go to the NTC studio. Now, this all happens in a split second, and as
you\'re talking everybody else at their field site is receiving the
signal as well. What the push-to-talk system does is by muting this and
by cutting the signal path, when you speak in your speaker \-- speak in
your microphone, it goes up, come around and it stops right here. You
\-- you can\'t hear what you\'re saying but everybody else can. Now,
when we have an he can echo, we don\'t have this box hooked up properly
and it does not mute the audio. What happens is you push to talk here,
it goes back to studio, it goes out over the satellite, everybody hears
it and then a split second later it comes out of this speaker and goes
right back into the microphone again creating a loop. All this happens
in less than a second.

So in a push-to-talk situation, I\'m going to demonstrate how you\'ll
see this loop happen, I go \"hello,\" and it goes in and comes out and
goes hello, hello, hello and that\'s the essence of how an echo happens
in our system. So the main thing to keep in mind is that you really,
really have to make sure that whenever you\'re talking into a
push-to-talk system that your TV is muting. I\'ll have tips later on to
talk about some ways to kind of make that happen temporarily if, in
fact, your system is hooked up improperly. For this reason we can\'t
emphasize enough that only push-to-talk systems be dialed in.
Speakerphones are really not good in our system. If someone is using on
speakerphone, their microphone is always on and as they watch the show,
this open microphone creates the constant feedback loop which I just
demonstrated. Likewise and sometimes without their knowledge, when sites
do improperly use a speakerphone, our audio person can practically
listen into their entire conversation.

I don\'t want you to get you paranoid about this. If you are using the
push-to-talk system properly, that can never happen, unless for that one
instance where one of the microphones is being depressed but I think it
takes 20 or 30 pounds of pressure in order to make that button actually
depress. If you are using a speakerphone, chances are somebody can
actually hear what\'s going on in the show and I\'ve heard people
respond to shows when I\'ve been doing audio, I can hear them laughing,
having side conversations when they\'re using a speakerphone, please,
never, ever use a speakerphone. When you\'re using the push-to-talk
system we\'d also like you to take a few minutes to use the proper
equipment because it really does affect everybody.\
\
C. Calamari: another real simple test everyone can do, if you have your
system hooked up, like when you called in during the site check-in with
Wayne or just like during the test signal period f you push this button
down, there should be no sound in your office coming from your
television or your PA system. So whenever this button is pushed down, it
should kill the audio in your room. If you push this button down and you
still hear the sound coming out of your television and I think someone
has that hooked up right now, then you don\'t have things hooked up
correctly and that big echo is going on because I hear that happening
right now. So that\'s something you could all do s push the button down
right now and speak, and if you hear sound coming out of your TV, you
ever\' got a problem and you need to log off that bridge because it only
takes one site to corrupt the bridge.\
\
A. Ferraro: I could hear somebody just then.\
\
Caller: This is bee from Las Cruces.\
\
C. Calamari: You sounded ok during the site check-in, didn\'t you?\
\
Caller: I\'m just now checking in.\
\
C. Calamari: We\'ve got an echo. I don\'t know if it\'s from bee. Bee,
when you push your button on the microphone down, does it turn the sound
off to your television?\
\
Caller: No.\
\
C. Calamari: Then you have a problem. We would like to have you
disconnect from the phone bridge \--\
A. Ferraro: Bee talk us to again.\
\
Caller: Can you hear me?\
\
A. Ferraro: I don\'t think it\'s coming from her. I think the echo is
there regardless of whether she is pushing to talk or not. Bee, when you
push your button down, does the TV mute and you cannot hear yourself
coming through the speaker?\
\
Caller: I can still hear the TV.\
\
A. Ferraro: You can still hear the TV? Ok.\
\
C. Calamari: Something is not wired right.\
\
A. Ferraro: Definitely there\'s something not wired right. Let me \-- I
don\'t know \--\
\
C. Calamari: I think maybe what bee should do is disconnect from the
bridge and have her call AT products and let\'s see if the echo is
minimized. Bee, councilperson disconnects and give AT products a call?\
\
Caller: I certainly will.\
\
A. Ferraro: We still have an echo out there somewhere and I did actually
hear somebody talking and laughing correct me f I\'m wrong, I think \--\
\
C. Calamari: The echo went away. Bee just logged off. Las Cruces might
have been the offending site.\
\
Caller: This is Wenatchee, Washington \--\
\
A. Ferraro: Let\'s go with Wenatchee.\
\
Caller: This is Diane in Wenatchee, Washington.\
\
C. Calamari: Diane, you sound g only thing is maybe back away from the
microphone a little bit. Talk to us again, please.\
\
Caller: I\'m \-- further away. Is this better?\
\
C. Calamari: Sounds great. I don\'t hear any echo in the bridge.\
\
A. Ferraro: I think it was bee or it could have been some other site
that just realized what was going on.\
\
C. Calamari: That\'s you guys learn about this.\
\
A. Ferraro: Before we go on, I know I tried to explain in simplest forms
this echo. Did make sense to everybody in terms of how the echo is
generated and why it\'s so important to mute the television, because
that\'s the key to this whole thing. If you understand that, then you
understand the necessity of the push-to-talk system. I was just wanting
to hear from a couple of you whether or not that made sense or whether I
should try to do it again.

Caller: This is Jerry in Boise. It made perfect sense.\
\
A. Ferraro: Thanks, Jerry.\
\
C. Calamari: That\'s another thing. This is kind of informal. If you
want a point clarified, we\'re \-- if we remember to put the green light
or not, we will try to keep the audio bridge open as much as possible.
The thing we just did with bee is asked her to call AT products, and
many of you know that AT products actually has a formal process that\'s
part of our contract with them called site certification, and it\'s
actually one of the best tools to ensure that your system is hooked up
correctly. When NTC originally deployed the push-to-talk system \--\
\
Caller: Excuse me, Chip. We were doing just absolutely fine, but now we
hear people over our box but we can\'t hear you.\
\
A. Ferraro: What you need to do, and I\'m going to pull this up here and
show you, if you can take a shot of this, because it\'s important. I
believe it\'s probably because her satellite audio button needs to be
pushed in. She can\'t hear me now but if she pushes in her satellite
audio button she should hear Chip and everybody else again. . Do you
hear us now in Las Cruces? Bee, do you hear us in Las Cruces?\
\
Caller: Hit the satellite audio, that\'s exactly right.\
\
A. Ferraro: Good job. Ok. Cool. Let\'s go ahead. I didn\'t mean to
interrupt.\
\
C. Calamari: That was good. Took a real life learning situation. We had
an echo, they went to AT products, they fixed that and this was an
operational function, the second issue, in terms of the satellite audio
button and now the bridge sounds clean.\
\
A. Ferraro: I think AT products, what they can do is actually look and
see who the offending site may be, not by actual site, but by which line
out of the 100 and so lines, they can see which one is feeding back and
what they\'ll do sometimes is we\'ll actually ask them to drop that line
because that line is causing \--\
\
C. Calamari: You mean MCI WorldCom.\
\
A. Ferraro: Sorry. They can do a big brother thing and look at all the
sites. By doing that f you find you\'re repeatedly being disconnected,
it probably means there\'s something going on with your system that the
bridge is not liking, however, it takes us a few minutes to call them
and say we\'ve got a problem with one of the lines and they look at and
it they go ahead and basically disconnect that line. So it sounds like
the bridge is doing well now.\
\
C. Calamari: This sounds good. So when we first deployed this
push-to-talk system, AT products took the time to certify that every
site in our network was properly hooked up and functioning. Over the
years we\'ve asked a number of you to recertify on a couple occasions
when there\'s been a problem. Now somebody just did something because
our echo is back. Somewhere somebody did something that just hooked back
up or just dialed in. So I don\'t know who that might be, but if you can
hear me and you just plugged something in or just logged into the ridge,
we have an echo back.

Caller: This is Yvette, the Buffalo Field Office. We were having some
problems, the same problem bee was having in Las Cruces so I just called
back to the technical number and got that straightened out, but I think
we\'re ok now.\
\
C. Calamari: When you push the microphone down and talk to us, are you
still hearing sound out your TV?\
\
Caller: If you say something now, no, I\'m not hearing that.\
\
C. Calamari: I\'m glad you did that. Someone else has logged into the
bridge and we have a problem.\
\
A. Ferraro: We have a site not hooked up properly. Maybe what\'s
happening is that site is getting hooked up and AT products is working
with them trying to get it to work. If that echo comes and goes, I
don\'t think that will throw us. We\'ll press on. We have plenty of
time.\
\
C. Calamari: Let\'s talk about certification. That\'s kind of what AT
does. When we talk about certifying site, really we\'re just talking
about getting on the phone with AT products and having them walk through
testing your system to make sure it is configured correctly.\
\
A. Ferraro: As a side noted, we found at NTC we\'re now going to keep
records of each downlink site so we can better serve you when you have
questions. Both NTC and AT products are going to be tracking basically
which sites have been certified and as well we\'re going to also talk
about problems. If problems recur we\'re going to try to help figure out
on a site-to-site basis how to avoid them in the future. This is really
a critical part of our step in trying to make this as good a system as
possible, by tracking consistent problems that may be occurring in
certain sites. We\'re going to keep a paper trail of almost every
communication we have with you from our staff to the field. We\'re going
to share with that AT products and then when we find patterns, like
we\'ve got something that\'s consistently not hooked up properly, we\'re
going to work with that site individually to do what we can do to make
sure your site is as rock solid as it can be.\
\
C. Calamari: To help and the I.T. support staff in your office, the
instructions for basic connections and operations are right on the
bottom of the box. Maybe we could show that under the document camera,
Art. This is one of the things appear lot of people forget because they
don\'t normally turn their box upside down. That\'s kind \-- there\'s a
basic wiring diagram and also the process. There\'s also a lot of
details information in the owner\'s manual that came with your system in
terms of diagrams, instructions, in terms of the connectivity. If you
can\'t find your paper work since the system was first purchased, please
contact AT products and they\'re going to get you some instructions.\
\
Caller: Chip, this is Jay in Klamath falls, Oregon. There is one thing
that hasn\'t been mentioned, the way the system is hooked up, the TV
must be on video, not the channel 3 or 4 for muting to work.\
\
C. Calamari: Right. That is one of the things that\'s critical. We have
that later on. Yes, you have to have the TV with separate video and
audio inputs and can\'t use the TV tuner.\
\
A. Ferraro: It\'s good you bring that up, Jerry, but I want to emphasize
that not every system is the same. There are actual \-- some sites that
only have a co-ax cable. I might be getting technical for some of you
but I want to respond to Jerry quickly. There are some sites that only
have an old TV with a co-ax cable and as a result of that, they have to
have it on channel 3, but what they do is they then not use their TV at
all for audio. So I would say with Jerry\'s comment in the majority of
instances with people that have video inputs on your television sets,
yes, you don\'t ever want to use channel 3. But there are some nuances
with a few sites.\
\
C. Calamari: There is a waive doing a workaround if you have a separate
audio system. In general, if you have an old herb TV, talk to the boss
and get a newer TV that has separated audio and video inputs.

A. Ferraro: Just to clarify the point one last time, and we\'re going to
be hitting on this later on in the show, probably really soon, we\'re
actually have AT products develop an individual site specific diagram
for every site. 98%, 97% of those are not going to be using channel 3.
There are a couple that will. Jerry f you do happen to be talking to
another site out there and you\'re giving that information to everybody
out there, there may be one instance where that may not be the case but
by and large when you are using the AT products box properly, that is
good advice.\
\
C. Calamari: Everybody should also know the connections are slightly
different if you have a digital rather than an analog phone line in your
building and your I.T. staff should be able to tell you what type of
line you have and help you out with those connections. Also, some of you
were provided with about, really, like five of these push-to-talk
microphones in the smaller BLM offices, while other offices, like state
offices and the centers were supplied with as many as 25 microphones.
Now, that was based on the total number of employees in your office.
Since this system was procured primarily for use with satellite training
courses, an estimate was made on how many people in your office would
take an interdisciplinary course at one time. Then we figured that two
students could share a microphone.

However, as you ever\' seen in most cases, you probably have enough
microphones at your site for each student to have their own. If you have
them, please use them. We found out about one BLM site that was only \--
that had 20-odd microphones but they were only using one microphone
which meant that students had to get up from their chairs, leave their
notes, walk over to a microphone to ask a question. Well, that type of
set-up really defeats the whole concept of having the system create an
easy-to-use virtual classroom experience for students which is the whole
point. That was the point of it, that students would have at arm\'s
length a microphone they could push and talk to very easily so this was
not a barrier to the training dynamics. So if you have enough
microphones, please, plug them in and use them.\
\
A. Ferraro: Remember, and I\'m going to sound like an infomercial, but
you can contact our push-to-talk vendor AT products toll-free at any
time at 1-800-848-2205. You can also visit them at their website which
is\... WWW.ATproducts.com. We also have a link to their site in our web
page. All downlink coordinators need to know that NTC has extended this
push-to-talk service contract with AT products for technical support and
warranty service. So now you have unlimited technical support from this
vendor, unlimited. They will work with you to certify your site and they
will fix your push-to-talk equipment in case something fails. So they
are really there for you to be used as many times as you need. I have
personally talked with Becky and a couple other people there, and they
don\'t have any problem if you have to call back multiple times.
They\'re part of our team to try to make sure that this system is as
easy to use and user-friendly as possible.\
\
C. Calamari: Also to help NTC and AT products increase our support to
you out in the field, we\'ve been gathering information on just what
type of equipment you have and I think art is going to put a sample of
that underneath the camera. We sent this to everyone. This is letting us
know who the downlink coordinators and the I.T. support staff under your
office, what type of equipment you\'ve got in terms of your push-to-talk
equipment, your satellite receiver and how and where you use your
satellite equipment. So all of you have been asked to fill out a form
like this and send it back to us. I think we\'ve gotten oh, maybe \--
maybe five to eight sites we haven\'t heard back from yet. The reason
we\'re doing this is AT products is also developing a custom wiring
diagram for every downlink site in BLM. I think, art, you have a sample
of that, too, we can show. This is based on the information you sent to
us on what type of satellite receiver, VCR and TV you have. These
diagrams are going to be sent to your office.\
\
A. Ferraro: This one is Roseburg, for example, and here\'s one from
Lakeview, Oregon and you can see that in these two specific locations we
have different equipment being used.\
\
C. Calamari: Right, because it really is different all over. So you\'re
going to get a copy, NTC is going to get a copy for our records and we
may even post these on our website at some point. We just wanted you to
understand why we\'ve been gathering all that information. We think of
these custom wiring diagrams are really going to help everybody out.
Art?

A. Ferraro: The heart of your push-to-talk system is the AT products
2001 Harvard elite. It may look a little technical from the outside but
it\'s basically a glorified telephone. Now I\'m going to take some time
to show you the basics of the box. So I\'m going to go into a little
demo here. Again, I\'ll pull this box out and just give you a brief
orientation in terms of what this box is about. So if you take a look
here, starting with the left side we\'ve got a keypad, I\'ll let him
zoom in for you. This keypad is just like your phone keypad you would
have on any sort of phone. It\'s got a pound and star key and basically
all the things you would need to dial into a phone bridge or make a
regular phone call. Now, next to that we\'ve got a volume control. When
you are using the internal spear and I\'m just going to temporarily show
you, when I push this button here I get a dial tone, I can adjust the
volume coming out of the speaker that\'s located on the top of the box.
That is basically your sliding volume control for when you\'re using
this box to actually listen to the program. Now, to the right of that is
your internal speaker button, and this is the button that you would use
when you want to activate the speaker on the top and I\'ll get into that
in a little bit in a second.

The auto answer button is the one button you\'re probably never going to
use because it\'s made for when AT products develops satellite training
systems where the systems actually call out to the people that are
actually listening to the training. So the auto answer button should
always be left in the off position and it should never \-- it should
never be pushed for any reason. Next to that is a satellite audio button
and that\'s a button that we actually just talked about a second ago in
helping some people out. After you\'ve placed your phone call, you want
to then and I\'m \-- I\'m going to do this to show you real quickly how
would it work. I\'m going to use the internal speaker. I\'m going to
push the internal speaker button right here and then I\'m going to use
this manual answer/call button. Jumping ahead I\'m going to say this
manual answer/call button is like when you\'re lifting a receiver off
and placing a dial tone. It\'s basically when you pull the receiver off
the phone to start placing the call. When that I push it in, it acts
just like when you\'re taking the handset off. When I let it release,
it\'s like you hung up the phone. So that is basically how you\'re going
to be placing phone calls when you do that. Once you do that you\'ll
dial the system while you\'re listening to it \--\
\
C. Calamari: You\'re dialing into our phone bridge right now?\
\
A. Ferraro: I am.\
\
C. Calamari: So the box is really a telephone.\
\
A. Ferraro: It\'s a telephone. We\'ll listen to this guy.\
\
Caller: Welcome to the conference calling center. At any time during
this message please enter your numeric pass code.\
\
A. Ferraro: I\'m going to put in the secret pass code.\
\
C. Calamari: Be interesting to see what happens.\
\
A. Ferraro: There is no microphone hooked up to it, so we won\'t have a
feedback loop.\
\
A. Ferraro: I\'m going to get to that.\
\
Caller: Your pass code has been confirmed. Please stand by as you are
connected to your conference.\
\
A. Ferraro: At this point we have hooked up to the conference call and
now a cup other people who had the problem before they had gotten this
far but then they had not pushed the satellite audio button in. What the
satellite audio button do is it basically allows you to listen to the
phone call or listen to the broadcast. So after you do that, in all
instances you\'re going to want to push the satellite audio button in so
now you\'re actually listening to the broadcast that\'s taking place. If
that button is out you\'re probably having problems where you can see us
talking but our lips are just going to be moving. So that is how you
would go through the process of hooking that up and dialing into the \--

C. Calamari: So \-- if everything is working correctly in a normal
configuration, those three buttons should be activated and they should
have three red lights?\
\
A. Ferraro: That\'s not necessarily true. The two on the right should
always be active \-- I\'m trying to remember here. The two on the right
should always be active in an instance where you\'re placing a call and
you\'re in a conference and doing a good job with the push-to-talk
system. So you have to place a call and you have to listen to the
satellite audio. Those two buttons are always going to be red in a
perfect situation. The internal speaker button, and I\'ll get \-- I\'ll
deal with this right now is \-- allows you to bypass using the TV
altogether and instead listen to the program through the push-to-talk
box. This is always a way that will always work for you. You\'ll never
have any feedback loop if you use the internal speaker and turn down
your TV volume all the way. Because what \-- basically what you\'re
doing is abandoning your TV volume at that point in time.

Most systems are configured where you don\'t have to do this but let\'s
say you\'re in a situation where Wayne is out here, you\'re checking in,
there\'s some problem that has occurred and you don\'t necessarily want
to hang up and dial AT products five times in 20 minutes to get it
resolved. If you\'re able to hear us when you dial in and you\'re able
to hear the satellite audio when Wayne is talking to you but still
getting an echo, turn down the volume on your TV all the way and go
ahead and use the internal speaker by selecting this button right here
and turn the volume up, and what that\'s\' going to do is bypass the TV
completely and allow you to listen to the whole show for that show
through your speaker on your AT products box. After the show is over,
then you can go ahead and call AT products and find out what\'s going on
and reconfigure it so you can listen to the television audio coming out
of the TV.\
\
C. Calamari: Which is what we want people to do, the sound coming from
the TV.\
\
A. Ferraro: This is just a way I wanted everybody to know there is a way
you can use the internal speaker here.\
\
C. Calamari: It\'s kind of a workaround when you\'re problem solving.\
\
A. Ferraro: I know before I go on further, I know that I\'ve gone
through that pretty quickly, but I want to address any questions people
may have with that. Is there anybody out there that\'s got a question
regarding what I just covered in terms of those four buttons? Did it
make sense? I\'m just looking for feedback is that made sense and I
didn\'t want to confuse anybody.\
\
Caller: Art, this is Larry from Colorado.\
\
A. Ferraro: Hi, Larry.\
\
Caller: The other thing we do is set our TV to video 1 which also cuts
the sound out.\
\
A. Ferraro: In your instance, that\'s a good application of going to
video 1. Do you actually use this box to listen to the audio or do you
use the TV in your instance?\
\
Caller: A large amount of people in the room I use the TV to do that
with.\
\
C. Calamari: That\'s the way it should work.\
\
A. Ferraro: Does anybody else have any war stories they would like to
share regarding this or any other \--\
\
Caller: This is Wanda from bakers field. We had some questions about the
black box because when I dial in I use the phone, so I get the audio
coming from the television, so I notice, are we supposed to have all
three of those lights on?\
\
A. Ferraro: Let me ask you a question, first, Wanda. First off, if you
can, you\'re talking \-- your system is obviously working well because
you can\'t hear yourself when you\'re talking on the speaker, but you
want to be a little further away when you\'re talking to me. But you\'re
probably doing something different because

I\'m going to assume you\'ve got a PBX system in your office and you\'re
having to use a digital telephone instead of an analog telephone, is
that correct?\
\
Caller: Yes.\
\
A. Ferraro: In the digital telephones, there\'s an instance where the
digital telephone hooks up to this and you\'re not able to actually use
this to place a phone call. And once again, that\'s because everybody
\-- all 132 sites have different systems. If you\'re using the box and
dialing in with the box, then you can use this keypad with an analog
system. If you are using a digital connection, then you ever nut struck
shuns you\'ve been taught in terms of using that digital keypad on your
phone that then takes the handset cord, I wish I had brought one of
those out and plugs into here. Basically this cannot emulate what a PBX
system does in a lot of offices and that\'s why it\'s going to be so
important and why AT products and us have joined up to develop these
individual diagrams and instructions. Does that answer your question?\
\
Caller: Hi, this is MYNA. It answers \-- we were just wondering about
whether we have to have the handset hung up on the phone or do we leave
it off?\
\
A. Ferraro: To answer that question, I believe \-- oh, boy, I wish I had
a good answer for you there. It depends on the site. I believe that you
need to disconnect your handset if you\'re placing the call with the
handset like that, you need to disconnect it physically from the phone
\-- let me just walk through this quickly with you. You actually have a
digital phone that then goes into this box, and you dial on the phone
itself, and then you place the call and then you\'re wondering whether
you take the handset and hang up after you\'ve placed the call?\
\
Caller: Yes, that\'s correct. We just seem to have a problem.\
\
A. Ferraro: Wanted to make sure you step away from the Mike \-- Mike you
raw phone a little bit more.\
\
C. Calamari: There\'s also a point, this is why we I.T. people,
telecommunications staffer at the office supporting downlink
coordinators to contact AT products and sort out some these finer
points, especially when we get into digital rather than analog phone
lines. I think this is kind of an I.T. support situation.\
\
A. Ferraro: To answer your specific question as best I can, I believe
that what you need to do at that point is probably disconnect the
handset from the cord because if that\'s operating, that microphone on
that handset is still probably picking up audio. I can\'t say for sure
because I don\'t know your system specifically. What I would like to do
is I can maybe get clarification at the end of our training broadcast
from AT products or you can call them directly and then when we go ahead
and do our push-to-talk test later this afternoon with you \-- which
site again is that?\
\
A. Ferraro: This is Bakersfield, California.\
\
A. Ferraro: Then I can help you on the air with that a little bit more
or you can call AT products in the meantime. Does that sort of answer
your question?\
\
Caller: Yes, it does. And we will contact AT about that also. Thank
you.\
\
A. Ferraro: This just emphasizes the fact every site has a little bit of
a different configuration and when we do these site specific diagrams
it\'s going to make things go a lot smoother for everybody because I\'ll
be able to look at the bakers field diagram and be able to tell you
exactly what that problem is when we\'re dealing with that issue. Unless
there are any other questions I just want to continue with the
orientation to the box. Anybody else want to jump in?\
\
Caller: This is Kathy from Ridgecrest.\
\
A. Ferraro: Hi, Kathy, how are you?\
\
Caller: Patsy.\
\
A. Ferraro: I have this earpiece and it doesn\'t help me. What can I do
for you?\
\
Caller: I was wondering, when you were dialing in on the pass code, you
didn\'t push the pound sign or did I just not see that?\
\
A. Ferraro: Actually I didn\'t push the pound sign because I didn\'t
know that I needed to push the pound sign. What I ended up doing was
just dialing in the five digit code and I think if I hit the pound sign
it probably would have connected me right away to the bridge but by not
waiting \-- hitting the pound sign it waited that 5 to 8 seconds to
connect me. It did work.\
\
C. Calamari: Yeah, we got in.\
\
A. Ferraro: The pound sign is putting in the code and letting the
computer know you\'ve put in the code right away and it\'s ready to
accept the numbers. I guess that\'s kind of an optional part of dialing
into the phone bridge. Does that answer your question?\
\
Caller: Seems to be ok. Thanks.\
A. Ferraro: Anybody else before I continue?\
\
Caller: This is Greg \--\
\
Caller: Bob from Ely, Nevada.\
\
A. Ferraro: I heard a Greg and Bob. Let\'s go with Greg first.\
\
Caller: Whenever I push my pound key I have to push it twice before it
accepts this. Ferraro Kay. That\'s an MCI WorldCom kind of thing. I\'ll
make a note of that. Actually I\'ll ask our producer to make a note of
that with Eastern States and the double pound thing and maybe when we
get some time later today before we go to Eastern States we\'ll need to
call up MCI and ask them that. Do you think that\'s because of your
particular phone system there?\
\
Caller: No, no. It shouldn\'t. Ferraro Kay. But if you don\'t push in
pound it won\'t accept the code?\
\
Caller: If I push the pound key once and you don\'t hear any tone, push
it again and you hear the tone and it accepts it again.\
\
A. Ferraro: I guess that\'s a good point if there are sites out there
having problems, there might be any combination of pound key scenarios.
No pound key, my situation, one pound key as in the situation with Patsy
and two pound keys with Eastern States.\
\
Caller: This is Andy in Medford. I have the same problem with mine. I
have to push the pound key twice. Ferraro Kay. You guys all saw me. I
put in the five digit code and didn\'t hit the pound button and went
in.\
\
Caller: I didn\'t see anything.\
\
A. Ferraro: That\'s strange.\
\
C. Calamari: We\'ll have to get clarification from MCI on that.\
\
A. Ferraro: We\'ll get clarification from that and we\'ve noted the two
people that use double pound signs and send out a memo on that. Anything
else before I go on?\
\
Caller: Bob from Ely, Nevada. This call-in number and pass code, are
they always going to change with every one we do or do they stay the
same?\
\
C. Calamari: Maybe I could toss in. I\'m the guy that normally books
these things. If I call personally, they will \-- they\'ve kind of
assigned this number we\'ve been using a lot to me personally, but for
some reason, if I\'m on leave or a field shoot and art or someone else
calls in, they kind of assign that number to the person. Normally when
we book it, I\'ve got myself as leader of the call. It\'s kind of their
system. They have he\' been assigning that same toll-free number now for
quite a few telecasts. Normally the pass code will be different.
Sometimes if I book things very closely, like when I booked this
broadcast and I believe the one that we\'re doing with the director at
the end of the month, I think because I booked those on the same day,
they assigned the same pass code, but just from having done the paper
work, I know normally I have been getting that number but the pass code
has been changing, but if for some reason I\'m not in the office and Art
or another one of our producers here calls and books the bridge, they
could assign them a different number. It\'s good to always check, and
that information will always be on the web. Hope that answered the
question.\
\
Caller: Yes, thank you.\
\
A. Ferraro: Is there anybody out there with any last dieing question
right now before I continue on? I\'m going to get back to the box. Any
last questions before I go on? There will be plenty of times later to
talk about different things, too. Ok.\
\
C. Calamari: Let\'s keep rolling.\
\
A. Ferraro: Now that we\'ve talked about the front of the panel I\'m
going to tilt this forward and show you the speaker we have been talking
about, which is right here, and that basically \-- can allow 15, 20
people to hear a program probably pretty good. Now I\'m going to move to
the back of the box, which as many of you can see, looks like this and
you\'ve probably got one of these in your own office. You do have one of
these. What we have here on the back is we\'ve got the microphone input
on the left side, and basically all the microphones go into this left
side input right here through a daisy chain method which I\'ll get into
later. To the right of that we have all the HCA outputs there, and these
are the different ways audio leaves this box and then goes to the TV or
a cassette tape or to an external speaker. Likewise, if we go over to
the right-hand side, we have the inputs that come into the box, and
we\'ve got, for instance, the one that\'s labeled satellite. Most of you
will use that. As well as maybe some of you have actually looked at this
device on top here called \"hops.\" When we talked about having two \--
doing a turnaround where we have \-- where we\'re actually taking the
signal from the Fish & Wildlife Service and then rebroadcast it on the
C-band thing, we\'re doing a two-hop situation. In those situations
we\'ve got this device to allow us to basically control the amount of
delay involved.

What we\'ve found is that basically you just need to leave it on 1 and
it works pretty well all the time on just 1 hop. If you\'re curious in
terms of what that meant, that allows us to select how much delay goes
from this box when you press the microphone button down and release it.
If that you put on it \"no hops,\" you\'ll see that when you release the
microphone your speaker will no longer be muted. If you have it on 1, it
will take 1, and 2, it will take 2. If you haven\'t messed with it, just
leaf writ it is. In some cases it may be on \"none.\" In the middle here
we\'ve got basically the four different types of four connections. I\'m
not going to get into the details because it\'s site specific whether
you\'re going from an analog phone line, whether you\'re using a handset
connection, whether you\'re using a digital phone. It\'s just going to
be \-- I don\'t want to go through and take the time to explain them all
right now, but by and large, you\'ll be using one of these connections
obviously \--\
C. Calamari: Basically where the thing hooks into the telephone system
in the building.\
\
A. Ferraro: Basically the phone interface. And your diagram is basically
going to deal with that on a case-by-case basis. Let\'s see. What else?
The last thing I want to show you, if we go and we talk about daisy
chaining microphones, I\'m going to show you how to do that quickly.\
\
C. Calamari: If you ever 20 microphones, use 20 microphones.\
\
A. Ferraro: If you have 20 people. Don\'t put 20 microphones out for one
person. In order to hook up the microphones I\'m going to show you
quickly, what we want to do is we go ahead and take one cable and we
just plug it into the microphone connection and from there we plug into
it microphone A and now this microphone is basically going into the box.
If we want to daisy chain more than one microphone, with a we\'ll do is
take the second microphone, another cable just like this one and we will
plug it from microphone A to microphone B, daisy chaining the signal
from 2 to 1 and then from 1 into the box and all of these microphones
will be put together into one line that will then ultimately go into
this box and I think if my microphone is still hooked up, I might be
able to talk into the bridge right now and I hope Fred doesn\'t cringe
when I do this. Hello, this is art. This brings me to my next thing \--\
\
C. Calamari: You were too close.\
\
A. Ferraro: I\'m going to show you firsthand here what we hear when you
get to close to your microphone. The fact you have a microphone and you
want to talk into it, most people want to be like radar O\'Reilly and
order 10,000 gallons of ice cream and trade it for a Jeep or something
and you usually want to go like this and say, hi, I need to order 10,000
gallons of ice cream. You could hear how that sounds so over modulated.\
\
C. Calamari: It distorts.\
\
A. Ferraro: Maybe for a second if Fred could kill our microphones, I\'m
going to kill talk. This is art now I\'m 18, 20 inches away from the
microphone. My sound actually sounds undistorted. It sounds pretty good.
If I\'m up here ordering 10,000 gallons of ice cream it\'s art to
understand. This basically gives you a firsthand feeling for what it
sound like when you\'re too close to the microphone, and so we can\'t
emphasize enough that \-- I\'m going to kill this right now. Back onto
regular microphones. We can\'t emphasize enough that we really need you
to try to stay 18 inches away from that microphone.\
\
C. Calamari: This is also part of the downlink training coordinator. We
ask them to do during that pre-broadcast period when people are coming
into the room, getting ready for the class, kind of part of your
orientation briefing, explain to them where the fax machine is bathrooms
are down the all haul. If you have a wildlife person and it\'s the first
time they\'ve taken a wildlife satellite course, they have hadn\'t that
experience. That\'s kind of the standard briefing.\
\
A. Ferraro: So that\'s pretty much just the orientation to the box.
We\'ve already answered a number of questions. I don\'t know if there\'s
anybody with a burning issue out there. Does anybody have anything they
want to jump in and ask quick or can we go on? Ok.\
\
C. Calamari: Let\'s go on. I think we have more time to chat. Again,
we\'re going to kind \-- that was sort of orientation to the chicken
parts. That\'s the parts. That\'s the basic parts and pieces of that
system. You know, when we first deployed push-to-talk in the spring of
2002, we did have some initial echo problems and there were some
operator error problems. Now, the I.T. staff out in the field offices
and the downlink coordinators they worked with AT products and with the
NTC staff to resolve things very quickly until we had very few issues
with echo. Most of those were fixed right away with the AT products site
certification. I remember that spring we were on the air almost once or
twice a week, and things were really working very smoothly. That summer
during the field and the fire season of 2002, we didn\'t produce that
many programs, however when our broadcast season really started again in
the fall, the network was just plagued with push-to-talk problems and we
were really trying to figure out what was going on out there. A lot of
sites that previously had been working great were suddenly having echo
issues or things were not working at all. So we kind of wonder \--
we\'ve \-- what we have found are some of the problems out there and
we\'re going to offer some solutions, but first I would like to put the
green light back up and hear from you to kind of get your perspective or
what some you have found were some of the problems in your office, you
know when the I.T. folks and downlink coordinators partnered and set
things up, it was working great and we started to have problems. Does
anyone have some stories they can share with us in terms of what were
some of the problems at your site?\
\
Caller: This is Patsy from Ridgecrest. What happened in Ridgecrest?\
\
Caller: We had a very old Zenith television and it only had like a
coaxial cable coming out and that was one of our problems but now we
have a brand-new 36 inch television set that has the nice two
connections

in the back, but we had to have somebody actually come in and help me
rewire it so we could use the old television before we got the new one.\
\
C. Calamari: So that was an issue, you had an old TV and part of what
was happening was you had new equipment and it was wired up
differently.\
\
Caller: Yeah, it was quite \-- we had to have the satellite going into
the \-- to have the satellite going into the VCR and had to rewire it
differently than the original schematics. So the AT products sent me a
new schematic I could use until we were able to get a new system set
up.\
\
C. Calamari: That can be an issue, you have old equipment and then you
get new equipment. Things change. Thank you. Anyone else? Some of the
problems that happened out at your office.\
\
Caller: This is Gary in Boise.\
\
C. Calamari: Let\'s go with Jerry at the Idaho State Office.\
\
Caller: Some of our field offices moved from different buildings so they
had trouble reconnecting and they didn\'t get it connected right.
Another problem is having a room \-- one room that is dedicated just for
this which was taken over by other meetings and training and stuff like

that, and so the equipment was moved around a while \-- or \-- for a
while, but getting it reconnected was the problem.\
\
C. Calamari: I see a number of things and art\'s kind of writing some
these down. One was the office moved, physically they had to take
everything apart and might back together. The other issue was that there
was a dedicated room for viewing, and that may have changed. The other
issue is this whole issue of things being disconnected and reconnected
and disconnected and reconnected. So those are at least three separate
things which can cause a problem. Thanks, Jerry. Someone else?\
\
Caller: This is Wyoming State Office. Hello, Wyoming. I think you have a
little bit of an echo. What was your issue?\
\
Caller: Right now it\'s the echo.\
\
C. Calamari: Let me ask you to do, when you push the button down and
talk, are you still hearing the sound coming from your TV?\
\
Caller: Yes.\
\
C. Calamari: Something is not wired up right. You have your TV on
channel 3 or 4, is that how you\'re seeing the program?\
\
Caller: Yes.\
\
C. Calamari: That\'s it. You need to use separate video and audio
cables.\
\
A. Ferraro: Let\'s do this. Wyoming State Office, right?\
\
Caller: This is shortly. Hey, shortly. How you doing? Go ahead and take
the volume on your TV and just turn it all the way down and push the
internal speaker button, push the internal speaker button in and then
turn your volume up a little bit and then try and talk us to again and
see if that resolves the issue temporarily.\
\
Caller: Ok. The volume is down, but I can\'t hear you guys.

A. Ferraro: Push the internal speaker button. Push the internal speaker
button in and turn the volume on your box up.\
\
Caller: The volume is all the way occupy my box and I have the internal
speaker on but I\'m still \-- can\'t hear you on the TV or in the box.\
\
A. Ferraro: I understand what the problem is here. You\'re set up in a
way where you don\'t have the audio going into the box, the satellite
audio is not going into the box. It\'s only going through the TV. So
until we can look into that further and figure it out, your best bet
then is to try to just leave the volume a little bit lower to minimize
the amount of echo because we have to look at how your system is wired
and try to work on an alternative to fix that. I don\'t know, that may
have to do \--\
\
C. Calamari: I think shortly needs to call AT products and get his site
certified.\
\
A. Ferraro: For now f you leave that volume down a little bit and you
try not to have it be super loud and move your microphone away a little
bit you can probably still interact with us for the rest of the
telecast, knowing you have an echo problem that you need to come one a
resolution down the road. Does that help, Shorty?\
\
Caller: Yeah, but what number should I call?\
\
A. Ferraro: The AT products number is 1-800-848-2205.\
\
Caller: Thanks.\
\
C. Calamari: That\'s a point here in terms of us recording, I think that
we have \-- the issue of connectivity problems, just in general, things
not being wired correctly, and that issue of using the cable into the
tuner. So I think that\'s a problem.\
\
Caller: This is Boise.\
\
C. Calamari: Hello, again in that Jerry?\
\
A. Ferraro: There was also somebody else, I think a woman that tried to
call in when Shorty tried to call in originally. I don\'t know if we
lost that one, too. Was there somebody else that was going to say
something?\
\
Caller: This is Bob in Fairbanks. Is my echo gone? Bob, you sound
crystal clear right now.\
\
Caller: Cool. Thanks.\
\
A. Ferraro: Go ahead, Jerry.\
\
Caller: I had to step out of the room for a moment and I probably missed
the certification portion that you have there on your program, but if
our product \-- or if our system is working correctly, do we still need
to call that company to get certified?\
\
A. Ferraro: If your system is working properly, you don\'t need to call
to get certified, but \-- I\'m \-- I was going to hit on this later but
I guess I\'ll talk about it now. But if Becky does call you out in the
field asking you to call her back from AT products, please call her
back. Chances are what she\'s going to be talking to you about are
putting together that site specific diagram. So at this point we\'re not
recommending that all sites call AT products to recertified if you\'ve
been having no problems. We\'re just talking about recertification if
you have had problems and checking in with AT products.\
\
C. Calamari: I think another issue, especially like for Jerry, in Idaho
State Office they have a number of viewing rooms, some of the rooms have
fairly sophisticated A/V systems with projectors and speakers and

amplifiers. Jerry if you are you\'re out on a fire or something and the
back-up coordinator and the back-up, back-up coordinator is there, it\'s
going to be great to have that diagram and paper trail.\
\
A. Ferraro: If Becky calls you, she has been having a hard time getting
some people to call her back f she\'s calling you, she\'s calling for a
good reason. We\'re doing this for all 132 sites. It\'s going to be
beneficial to you, us and AT products. I think we should continue on.\
\
C. Calamari: I think we\'ve heard some of your problems and Art has
noted those. I think we\'re going to turn the green light off at this
point and we kind of want to talk to you about what we have discovered
were some of the major problems and I\'m going to name some of the
problems and Art\'s going to talk about the solutions. We found there
were basically from e-mails and phone calls when things started getting
weird again we checked with the field and this is what we found out. So
I\'m going to name the problems and Art\'s going to talk about the
solutions. There\'s eight of them. We\'re going to roll through these
now. First, many offices disconnected their systems during that summer
and prior to disconnecting things staff didn\'t diagram or note how
things were hooked up when it was all working just fine. So when it was
time to reconnect things it was done wrong.\
\
A. Ferraro: Our first solution is to note your system with a simple
diagram, label cables, use color codes, letters, numbers, whatever works
for you in noting which connectors go to which cables. AT products is
developing a custom diagram just for you.\
\
C. Calamari: Keep it simple. Second problem\... There were downlink
coordinator and I.T. support staff changes and there was no Passover
with respect to connectivity of the system or the staff simply forgot to
tell the new folks about the push-to-talk equipment and train them on
how it works.\
\
A. Ferraro: In someone else is going to be taking over downlink
coordinator duties in your office, make sure you show them the
push-to-talk equipment, how it works and where to go for help. Also if
you find out your I.T. support person is levering for any reason, please
try to ensure that the new I.T. person understands push-to-talk, its
importance and how you may need their help at times.\
\
C. Calamari: That is really critical. Third problem, other staff at
field offices would just go into the conference room and disconnect
things or they would borrow components to use in other rooms like VCRs
or they would rewire monitors and tape machines for special uses like if
they brought in a portable camcorder from the field and then they
wouldn\'t bother to reconnect things or just Wing and it hook things up
all wrong.\
\
A. Ferraro: It\'s important you get the word out in your office this
equipment should basically not be messed with. Send out a group e-mail.
Get your manager involved if need be. If there\'s a need for another
VCR, I know this could be a hard sell to some, see if it\'s possible
your boss could purchase another machine and stick up a sign that says
basically hands off. That \$75 for a new VCR will probably save hours in
terms of work time for you and the people that are trying to make things
right. So please make sure that you put up the hands off sign and tell
people they should not start ripping things apart if it\'s a permanent
configuration.\
\
C. Calamari: Also have a note there that by hands off says they should
contact you as the downlink coordinator or contact the I.T. person if
for some reason they need to use the TV. The fourth major problem we
discovered, and we\'ve seen some of this today and it\'s going to be an
issue with new folks coming and going all the time and that\'s operator
error. When wiring the system people weren\'t using the separate audio
and video inputs on their TVs like we just had an wish Shorty but they
were improperly using the TV tuner cable. That\'s one of the most common
ones. Or staff was not using the satellite audio button or the internal
speaker button correctly. Or they were simply forgetting how to operate
things in general.\
\
A. Ferraro: That\'s right. We have learned the most common wiring errors
occur when people were using a single cable to their TV tuner and not
using the separate audio and video inputs. Now some people, like Shorty,
may have a situation where they have to use that cable, and they\'re
going to have to figure out a way to rewire the audio in his case. What
happens then is that the signal bypassed the push-to-talk control box
and that box can\'t mute the way it needs to and you get feedback since
your system will not be muting any of the satellite audio. There are a
number of places to go for help and we\'re going to hit these again.
There is the standard wiring diagram and operating instructions that are
right on the bottom of your push-to-talk control box. You can contact
your I.T. support staff. Contact us here at NTC for assistance. Most
importantly, you can call AT products toll-free at any time for
technical support and have your system checked out and certified. All
that said, we think that the new site specific wiring diagrams should
help you more than anything. Ok, push to talk problem number 5, many
sites, once the system was initially installed, the I.T. support staff,
they turned things over to the downlink coordinators, and kind of
disengaged from the project and ongoing issues.\
\
A. Ferraro: As best as you can, please get the I.T. people at your
office back in the game. I know they are dealing with all sorts of
viruses and computers and this DVD burner, et cetera. But it\'s really
important that they kind of help out as best they can for you and for us
and for the whole system in general. When the system was first rolled
out, I.T. support was essential to making the project a success and for
the most part that worked. In fact, all system components were shipped
to I.T. staff from AT products. So they initially had the system. Then
they did the changeover to the downlink coordinators. We know many of
the downlink coordinators may not be as technically literate as the I.T.
coordinators.\
\
C. Calamari: Push-to-talk woe number 6, since. Offices have anywhere
from 2 to 5 people serving as downlink coordinators with some in the
lead and some in a back-up role, there was often little or no coordinate
between individuals regarding the connectivity and operation of the
push-to-talk equipment.\
\
A. Ferraro: We hope\'s training will be seen by all downlink
coordinators but if you have people in your office serving as back-up
coordinators and back-up I.T. support, please make sure they are trained
up to speed on the push-to-talk system.\
\
C. Calamari: Ok. Problem number 7, some offices purchased new TVs, VCRs
or even new satellite systems and did not disconnect the push-to-talk
components properly. We just heard about that.\
\
A. Ferraro: If you get some new equipment, please take the time to
ensure that the new hardware connects the same way as the old hardware.
In some cases you may need different types of cables and connectors or
you may need to change your wiring system a bit. Again, at-products,
they\'re right there for you, and they\'re ready to help out. When you
get new equipment if you\'re having problems with the existing
equipment, et cetera.\
\
C. Calamari: Our 8th and final major push-to-talk problem that we\'ve
been aware of here at NTC is that many offices there are only one or two
conference rooms that everyone uses for satellite viewing. Well, those
rooms are routinely used for other purposes, and the equipment cannot be
left permanently hooked up. Different people who need to use the room
just disconnect parts and pieces of the system with no regard for how or
who is going to reconnect things.\
\
A. Ferraro: We hear this one all the time. We know that basically if
you\'re \-- your office \--\
\
C. Calamari: A lot of field offices have basically one conference room
they use for everything.\
\
A. Ferraro: We know in that some cases being able to access that room is
completely out of the span and control of the downlink coordinator, as
much as you may want to try \-- you may want to try to get that room for
when somebody in your office signs up for a supervisory class. If you
need to constantly connect and disconnect things, we recommend you put
together a cart where you can actually keep all of the equipment you
need for satellite viewing and push-to-talk connectivity. This can
include your push-to-talk control box, all your push-to-talk microphones
and cables. A fax machine and a telephone for times when traditional
phone calls are used.\
\
C. Calamari: We have a sample of that?

A. Ferraro: We have the one we use here at the Training Center. You can
also keep your AT products wiring diagram or any of your own diagram
notes on hand and, of course, a big sign that tells people hands off.
It\'s also a good idea to keep some blank fax forms and felt tip markers
on the cart as well. And you can probably \-- you can probably configure
your cart so that a lot of things are already rewired and ready to go.
When a satellite event occurs, you can roll your cart out from storage
and hook things up and here you can see an example of the cart we use at
the Training Center. We find with that with the 13 classrooms that we
use this cart all the time and it works really well for us. So that\'s
the solution that we basically have here at the Training Center. The
other option, of course s to keep everything all together in a cabinet
in your viewing room and try to get a lock for you but we know how locks
work in Bureau of Land Management sometimes. Chip?\
\
C. Calamari: Well, those are the main push-to-talk problems that we\'ve
discovered. So now let\'s turn on the green light and see if any of you
have some other problems, some other solutions that you\'ve come up with
or other push-to-talk comments you would like to discuss with us and
with \-- and share with everyone else that\'s watching today. That\'s
kind of what we found out sitting here in Phoenix. So we would like to
hear from you.\
\
Caller: This is Charlotte gray, Bureau of Land Management, Lander,
Wyoming.\
\
A. Ferraro: How are you?\
\
Caller: Fine. Thank you. We have had a lot of problems with people
coming and disconnecting all the push-to-talk cables and we just had to
get help with AT products again to get that set up again. I hope we\'re
coming in ok now.\
\
C. Calamari: Sounds wonderful.\
\
Caller: Hopefully very much. Hopefully I can slap their hands and have
them keep their hands off the items.\
\
C. Calamari: Put up a signs, put a hazardous materials placard or
something up there. Again, send out a group e-mail just in your office
reminding people that, you know, that they should contact you if
there\'s a reason that they need to get at something. Do you have like a
little diagram? How have you been helping connect and reconnect things?
What\'s been your system?\
\
Caller: We called ATP help desk to talk to Mark, and he\'s helped a
great deal with it.\
\
C. Calamari: I think that wiring diagram is going to help and again if
you\'re on annual leave or something and there\'s a satellite event,
it\'s going to be nice to have a diagram and to have some sort of a
paper trail for the folks who might be backing you up. Once you learn
how to do it. Because that way, you know, you won\'t have to be calling
AT products each time.\
\
Caller: This is \-- can you hear me?\
\
Caller: In order to not hear you talking, he had me take the controller
for the TV and push the VCR button, and that way then we were able to
mute you while I was talking on this item.

C. Calamari: That\'s right. He\'s using the VCR input, which is a
separate input into the TV, which has the mute function.\
\
A. Ferraro: Well, I just was going to say we\'re kind of running a
little long so maybe we could \-- if people don\'t have other pressing
needs maybe we could keep going.\
\
C. Calamari: So the voice in your ear says we need to keep moving?

A. Ferraro: It\'s that voice in my ear. I was thinking maybe we could
get going but then we\'re going to have hours after we\'re done with
this telecast to talk to individual sites about some of the problems but
there\'s some other stuff we would still like to get to.\
\
C. Calamari: We\'re going to kind of pick things up again. I think we
hit most of the things on that list quickly.\
\
A. Ferraro: I believe we did, the old TVs, office moves, ways to deal
with equipment disconnected and dedicated rooms getting reserved for
other uses, all those are problems that we know we\'re facing.\
\
C. Calamari: We have some more question-and-answer segments coming up.
So the green light is off and we\'re going to pick things up again and
keep rolling. Well as we hope you can see, NTC is doing everything we
can from down here in Phoenix to help you make sure your push-to-talk
system works. If you have other ideas or you\'ve found solutions and
we\'re hearing about that today that work in your office, please contact
us so we can share those with other downlink sites around BLM. We\'ll
send out e-mails and stick stuff up on the website. With all the
discussion of problems and solutions, we also want to mention really the
benefits of using satellite delivery for training and the push-to-talk
system. We had a comment that came in recently that questioned if all of
this was really worth hassling with because we had a downlink
coordinator and they had only one or two students in their viewing room
watching an NTC telecast, they say, all of this for one or two people.

Well, we can\'t lose sight of the big distance learning picture, the big
national picture. Let\'s say we have only two students for a satellite
course and this is not uncommon at each of our 132 downlinks. That\'s a
giant virtual classroom of 264 people. That\'s more than our largest
classroom here at NTC here can even hold. So from a national training
perspective, that\'s a huge success and it\'s really a good business
decision and it\'s an excellent return on Balm's training dollars,
training investment in our workforce. Especially if you start
calculating things like travel savings or the lost productivity, the
lost FTE productivity while people are sitting around airports. In a
recent study that we did, NTC determined that satellite training from
just 14 sample courses that we had done saved BLM more than \$3.5
million in travel. This whole concept of moving information, not moving
people. That\'s why we\'re doing this. So please don\'t minimize how
vital your role is in making all of this happen. We really count on our
network of downlink coordinators to make sure that things are working
out in the field and to help insure they\'re a success here. And Balm's
upper management is behind us. Now, back to some basics. I think it\'s
time again for satellite 101. After all, this is refresher training,
right, art?\
\
A. Ferraro: When we first provided downlink coordinator training on the
network in 1997, Chip gave a satellite 101 briefing to explain just how
all that satellite stuff really works. So for our established downlink
coordinators this may be a bit of a refresher and for our new
coordinators here is all that satellite magic works. Let\'s take a look
at some excerpts from that program.\
\
These satellites have a very lonely existence floating above our planet.
Those of you of the Sputnik generation know that our satellites orbiting
the earth. That\'s nothing new. Communication satellites a little
special. They\'re at a special place about 22,300 miles out in space and
these things have really got the right stuff because they are in a
stationary or geosynchronous orbit. What this means is the satellites
are rotating around the equator at about the same rate, exactly the same
rate at which the earth is turning normally. The way we know where these
satellites are in space is a reference point to their degrees longitude.
If you remember from your high school geography class, the longitude are
those big lines going up and down the map. They\'re expressed over North
America in degrees west. For example the satellite wear\' on today is
roughly at 95 degrees west, which forms the line roughly through Kansas
City, Tulsa and Houston. The satellites are up there, they\'re sending
their signals down to us, and this is hitting the earth from up in
space. All the satellites we use are in an arc above high head here
which is called the domestic satellite arc and this is the position of
all the satellites in the arc, also which is known as the Clarke Belt
named after the futurist Arthur C. Clark. The signals come down and hit
the earth much as if you shined the line at a basketball. The light
would be brighter, the signal would be stronger closest to the satellite
and it would get weaker as we go out. For example, this satellite
footprint, you can see in terms of Alaska, it\'s hitting Alaska at a
very oblique angle, and the satellite that is displayed by this graphic
actually is not very usable by the folks up in Alaska. If you combine
the signal strength from all satellites in the satellite arc together,
it makes a pattern somewhat like this, and you can see in the lower 48
states the strongest signals are concentrated roughly over the Midwest,
Colorado and Nebraska.

Now, there are different types of transmissions that come down from the
satellites and there are various bands, various signals. What they are
is just different frequencies. Kind of think of it as a.m. and F.M. on
your radio. Well, C-band, which is the satellite we\'re using today,
it\'s the most common. This is what a lot of folks for years have had in
their backyard. They pick up a lot of entertainment programming, all of
our offices are equipped dishes that can pick up C-band transmissions.
We can also pick up Ku-Band transmissions. Ku-Band transmissions are
used by some other programmers, are used by the television news industry
quite a bit. We anticipate in BLM we\'ll use those if we\'re ever doing
remotes out at special events, for example, at a dedication. Some folks
like the USDA graduate school, they\'re using Ku-Band. If we cannot get
satellite time on C-band, we may go to a Ku-Band transmission. If
you\'re using an off-site facility and you have to do a Ku-Band
downlink, you may want to go and double check ahead of time to make sure
they can do this. Actually go there in person and see that. In term of
how our signals get to you, there\'s a microwave dish we have on top of
our tower here at the Training Center and that signal goes to the large
teleport in the Phoenix area. If we\'re doing a Ku-Band transmission our
signal is unlinked directly to the satellite that from facility but for
a broadcast like today there\'s another link that goes to the C-band
facility on the edge of town out in the desert away from the
interference of Phoenix and that\'s how our C-band transmissions are
sent to you. They go up to the bird, come back down to your dish or
earth station f kind of want to sound a little bit of a trey. How does
all this work?

Inside the satellite there\'s a transmitter that\'s called a transponder
and what this gizmo does is this is actually the electronics that beam
this signal down towards earth. The transponders are different in every
satellite. Some satellites have a number of transponders and every
transponder broadcasts one channel. Other transponders broadcast two
channels by changing the polarity. What the low layer tea is expressed
in either a horizontal or vertical polarity and can that take a
transponder, for example, transponder 1 vertical may be channel 1,
horizontal may be channel 2. They don\'t always alternate 1, 2, 3, 4. In
some cases some transponders will have a whole row of vertical polarity
transponders. Kind of depends on how it was designed. There\'s a lot of
stuff coming down from this satellite. One of the most important things
for you to know is about is the downlink frequency. That\'s usually
expressed in megahertz and you\'ll also see, we will tell you what the
downlink frequency is. You need to know that to be able to do the fine
tuning with your receiver. The audio is fairly standard, normally it\'s
like 6.2 and 6.8 megahertz. We don\'t even mention that in our Brad cast
announcements because it\'s fair will he standard for C-band. If it is
different, we\'ll put that information out so you\'ll NOA head of time.
What\'s key to making this whole thing work is you need to know your
receiver. You need to make sure your satellite dish and reception
equipment is preprogrammed to be able to pick up all satellites in the
domestic satellite arc and there\'s information about that in the back
of the guide, all transponders from those satellites and all channels.
Which means you need to get into this whole polarity issue. Yeah need to
know your receiver.

It\'s very, very important also you need to know your remote. This is
your new best friend. The remote that controls your receiver and
satellite equipment is really key to your success to be able to tune in
a broadcast. If you\'re in a hurry, running late, if you have to make
some fine tuning adjustments, this is what you need to know to do that.
Well, satellite technology is sort of a proven technology. Corporations
have been doing what we\'re doing in BLM now for 10 or 15 years. All of
these satellites up here floating around in space, but sometimes things
happen. For example, about six weeks ago satellite T-1 failed. It went
out of service. T-1 failed. It went out of service. We really don\'t
know why, what happened. They\'re still sorting that out. So it\'s a
good idea to check with us the day before to find out if in fact we are
going to be on the same satellite as we were advertising. Things change.
There are some new satellites coming. For example, galaxy 10, I believe,
will be launched within the next year to 18 months. How do you keep
track of how things change? One thing is to get a subscription to
something like satellite TV week and there\'s information in the back of
your Downlink Guide. Satellite TV week has this kind of specify chart in
it which lists all the satellites and lists all the programming by
transponder and channel. There\'s even little arrows to tell you if
it\'s a vertical or horizontal polarity on that \-- for those programs.
So it\'s a good idea to subscribe to that. We use them \-- use this
quite a bit here. Another publication, outfit called keystone, has
something called the North American satellite guide which comes out
several times a year. It\'s invaluable in terms of getting accurate
information on what\'s going on with satellites. This is a sample out of
the keystone guide. Here you can see what I was talking about. We have
transponder 1, which has a vertical and horizontal polarity which
translates into channels 1 and 2. So depending on how you program your
receiver, if you go to channel 2 you are on transponder 1 horizontal.
Also there is a display of the downlink frequencies. You need to know
this when doing fine tuning. Ok. A few things about what you just saw.\
\
A. Ferraro: What I saw in that was what\'s happened to your hair about
the nine years you\'ve been working in life television.\
\
C. Calamari: I don\'t think it was the nine years of working in live
television. I don\'t think I had a gray hair on my head until the put
the push-to-talk system in.\
\
A. Ferraro: Now I\'m feeling a little too dark.\
\
C. Calamari: We\'ll check in with you in nine years and see how you
look. Picking things up again, that keystone guide you just saw at the
tail of the tape, those folks no longer exist. We wanted you to see that
chart there that shows how there can be two separate channels on the
same transponder. That is key. Instead of keystone we found a website
that\'s actually much better. We have a link to it from our Sat net web
page. It\'s called Staked or Satellite City. This is the mother ship for
satellite technical information. It\'s where we go to get current
information on satellites, transponders and channels. Check it out.
Art?\
\
A. Ferraro: Another point is that we\'ve been operating the network for
about eight years now, and we\'ve never had a case of a Field Office
needing to downlink a Ku-Band program. At NTC we use KU for remote feeds
and video news releases to television stations but we are now
recommending that you delete all Ku-Band programming in your satellite
receiver and just focus on the C-band programming. I want \-- let\'s
check in quickly with Terry Loftus back in engineering. Terry, perhaps
you could quickly explain why eliminating Ku-Band receiver programming
makes sense for BLM downlinks sites.\
\
T. Loftus: Yes, art, the C-band broadcasts that we all pick up on all
the satellites are all virtually the same. They\'re all 24 transponders
and all you have to keep track of is whether you\'ve got odd horizontal
polarity or odd vertical polarity for the satellite you\'re on. Unlike
C-band, the Ku-Band can have as many as three channels per transponder
and all kinds of different formats. You can have 16 channels, 48
channels, all kinds of variations. Those are appropriate for like TV
news stations where they have to dial in the frequencies and AUM stuff
directly, but it\'s a horrendous task for the Field Office to keep one
with satellites moving and changing positions and all that. We do use
the stuff here indication for uplinks, but not on a regular basis.\
\
A. Ferraro: Our point is basically to try to make things as simple as
possible for the people in the field by deleting all of that programming
that\'s going to just confuse matters out there in the field if they\'re
not going to need it anyway.\
\
T. Loftus: Sorry, Art, yeah, just delete all the KU programming. Keep
the K programming. \-- keep the C programming.\
\
C. Calamari: That\'s one less thing they have to mess with if they have
a vendor come in, they can just focus on C-band. Sounds like that
decision is only going to make everybody\'s life easier. We also need to
mention all our transmissions are closed caption Ford the hearing
impaired. This is accomplished in real time while we\'re broadcasting by
our vendor Larry Driver with Closed Caption Productions. Larry uses a
steno machine like a court reporter, which you can kind of see his hands
on here in this picture, and some special equipment and what that does
is that generates the captioning signal and within a matter of seconds
after on camera people speak, that captioning is encoded directly into
our transmissions. So if you have employees with special needs, you need
to remember to turn on the caption display function of your TV in your
viewing room for them. Also, any tapes that you make of our telecasts
will have that captioning signal embedded in there for you for future
purposes. Art?\
\
A. Ferraro: Another thing we learned is satellite pick positions are
changing all the time. You heard how Chip mention how T-1 just died. A
few weeks ago Telstra 4 joined and it hiccupped and went out of service
forever. There\'s some information on that website about the same thing
that happened.\
\
C. Calamari: And we now know that satellites also get moved around. For
example, like satellite galaxy 9 was at 123 degrees when it was first
launched and we used to use that satellite. Now they\'ve moved it. It\'s
at 127 degrees. Galaxy 10, galaxy 10R is at 123 degrees. It\'s tough to
always keep your receiver up to date. One solution we found at NTC which
we think will also help you out in the field, when we program our
receivers now, we now enter in the degrees west in the satellite
receiver, then the satellite\'s abbreviation. Let\'s go back to air in
engineering for details on that. Terry? Talk to us a little bit about
the benefits of programming a receiver by degrees west rather than by
the satellite abbreviation.\
\
T. Loftus: Like the Field Offices, I had to spend a lot of time keeping
the satellite receiver programmed for the satellite by name. What I came
up with is program the satellite receiver to go to an address just like
your home or street address instead of going to your programming the
receiver for the name of who lives there, I program it for the address.
So instead of going to T4 \-- what are we on? We\'re on G3 today? I go
to 95 degrees west and I don\'t care who lives there, by pointing it to
the address instead of who lives at the address, I never have to
reprogram my receiver anymore.\
\
C. Calamari: That\'s great. Can that last for a very, will he long time
unless they put up a satellite in a new position that isn\'t
programmed.\
\
A. Ferraro: So you program all the houses on the street but you don\'t
worry about who is living in the houses and you can always go to the
house when you need to go to the house.\
\
C. Calamari: So in essence what we\'re doing, in the menu, instead of
putting in G3, T4, you just put in 95, 99, 123, put in the degrees west,
so they move these satellites around, they launch new ones, you can
always just go to that position in the arc, because our broadcasts
announcement always mentions the degrees west for the satellite. That\'s
a great idea.\
\
A. Ferraro: Another thing that occasionally zings us is what\'s called a
sun outage. Twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall, your
downlink dish will actually, the satellite it is tuned into and the sun
all come into perfect alignment. When this happens the energy from the
sun completely overpowers the transmission from the satellite and you
will lose your reception. The picture first becomes a bit snowy, then
you\'ll lose the video and audio signal completely, then it will start
to come back snowy again, and then it clears up completely at the end
and you\'ll have normal reception. All this usually happens in about a 6
to 9 minute window while the sun is rotating past that satellite. NTC is
now checking for sun outages at the latitudes of BLM downlink sites
prior to booking satellite times but sometimes it\'s unavoidable. If we
know it\'s going to happen, we will send a note out to everyone giving
you a heads up. One last thing, it only happens twice a year for about a
9-day window. The last one happened October 2nd to 11th. We don\'t have
to worry about that for at least another six months.\
\
C. Calamari: It is a phenomenon as the earth is rotating. For example,
when a sun outage occurs, we had that happen, we started getting
telephone calls from up in the Pacific northwest, in Portland, then I
think it was burns, then it was Boise, and then it was Missoula. So the
sun outage was moving across that latitude. The rest of the country was
fine. It actually is almost like in a band that goes across North
America when this phenomena occurs of the satellite, the dish and the
sun are perfectly aligned.\
\
A. Ferraro: We will do everything we can to not buy satellite time that
will be affected.\
\
C. Calamari: Sometimes we\'ve had times when other program producers
were not aware of that. We would like to briefly go over some of your
responsibilities as a BLM downlink coordinator before, during and after
satellite events. There\'s a lot of information on all of this in your
downlink site guide. We\'re just going to hit the highlights now but
please check out this guide for more information. There\'s a lot of
detail in here and a lot of things that will help you in special
situations. On page 9-19 of this guide are what needs to happen before a
telecast is detailed. Again, you can get this guide off our website.
Once you find out about a program we hope you will get the word out
within your office by e-mail or by putting up signs. You may need to
download writ written materials for students or viewers and make copies
of that. You will need to reserve the viewing room in your office and
decide how you want to set up tables and chairs depending on what\'s
happening.

A lot of information about that in the Downlink Guide. All your
technical equipment will need to be assembled in, including your
push-to-talk system if it\'s going to be used. If you can, wire
everything up at least the day before and do some testing. You may need
to bring in a fax machine and telephone, or if you have a cart like
we\'re suggesting if that there\'s not a phone and fax machine normally
in your viewing room. You should also have some blank videotapes ready
to record the telecast. For many programs you\'ll need to have a sign-up
sheet or a course roster ready as well as program evaluations. You\'ll
get information about that prior to the telecast. You should also make
sure that your paper work with the satellite coordinates, the
push-to-talk phone number, the push-to-talk pass code and all that stuff
is where you can get to them the next day.\
\
A. Ferraro: Now the broadcast day. On pages 20-23 you can find out what
you need to do on the day of the show. It\'s a good idea to get to the
room before the test signal starts so you can turn your \-- turn on your
equipment and get everything ready. As soon as the test signal time
starts, use your satellite receiver to pick up the transmission and
adjust the picture quality and sound level on your television if needed.
If the push-to-talk system is used, you should next use the keypad on
your control box or whatever you\'re going to be using to dial in and
dial into the audio bridge and enter in the pass code, 1, 2 or three
pound pushes depending on the situation. You or one of the viewers at
your site should try to participate in the pre-event site check-in and
push-to-talk test if there is one.\
\
C. Calamari: Like what Wayne did this morning.\
\
A. Ferraro: Exactly. Have participants sign in as they arrive. If that
is requested and adjust the room lighting for TV viewing if you can. You
should start your VCR recording when we show the recording prompt that
usually looks something like this, and then during the telecast you may
also be asked to stop your recording to change tapes and to resume
recording and that usually looks something like this slide right here.
Try to keep an eye on things during the telecast, help get people back
in from breaks and discourage distracters from making sidebar
conversations. You\'re kind of the room police.\
\
C. Calamari: Kind of the teacher, really. In essence, it\'s the
facilitation role in addition to the technical stuff. We have been
talking so much about technical.\
\
A. Ferraro: Whatever authoritative term you would like to use.\
\
C. Calamari: Finally, after the broadcast has been completed, on page 24
of your Downlink Guide is some information on what you made need to do
after that telecast is over. Afterward, you may need to take care of
program evaluations and rosters. You should rewind and label your
videotapes. My kids never do, but it\'s a good idea. Also, a lot of our
downlink coordinators are keeping a library of some our events. You need
to turn off your TV, your VCR and your satellite receiver. You may need
to store some equipment like your push-to-talk interactive system.
Afterwards you may need to get online to complete an electronic program
evaluation. Sometimes that\'s on our Sat net website or more and more
our clients during this through a Lotus Notes e-mail link.\
\
A. Ferraro: A couple things to remember\... make every attempt to train
the back-up coordinators in your office. Support may be needed if
you\'re not there for some reason. Continue to coordinate with the I.T.
support staff in your office. They\'re your first folks to go to help
solve push-to-talk problems. Call AT products for any help you need with
your push-to-talk system. Again, NTC has funded this national
maintenance and warranty contract to help keep your system working. Use
it if you need it. Contact NTC for other technical support as needed.
And basically it\'s impossible for our engineer Terry Loftus to go to
the field to support 132 downlink sites, but Terry and everyone else on
our staff will do everything we can to help you out and even find you a
vendor in your local area if need be. Beside, we like Terry. We don\'t
want him gone for 12 months going to all 132 sites when we have all this
stuff around here that needs to be fixed.\
\
C. Calamari: Isn\'t that the truth. The other thing to remember is as
we\'ve discussed, things are constantly changing. New programs come up.
Program dates change. Very common. Satellites die. New satellites are
launched. Some programs get postponed, even canceled. You have to stay
flexible. NTC will post all changes on our website as fast as we can
when things happen. And as you ever\' seen, we will also send all
downlink coordinators a group e-mail whenever we need to. We also have a
group e-mail built now for the I.T. staff at all BLM field offices that
we\'ve been told are supporting the push-to-talk system at downlinks. So
they\'re also going to be hearing from us when we know that they may
need to lend you a hand or we need to get word out to them.

At times we\'ve been alerting each downlink coordinator lately
individually by phone or by e-mail or both prior to every training
telecast. Once we get a student from your office registered for that
satellite course with NTC. Well, in the big picture long term, that\'s
not going to be practical. There\'s Tom things going on. We\'re not
going to be able to do that for all courses in the future. So we\'re
counting on you to keep communicating with others in your office, keep
checking the website, keep looking at e-mail and find out when things
are coming up and find out what you need to do in your office to get
that in the planner and schedule that to support it. Also, we really are
counting on you to take the lead in partnership with your I.T. staff to
keep your system wired correctly and functional.\
\
A. Ferraro: You also need to remember that the BLM Training Center
website is a great resource. Not only can you obtain information on
programming, satellite downlink and push to talk, but also transcripts
of telecasts, links to other program producers a directory of all BLM
downlink sites and the Satellite Downlink Guide.\
\
C. Calamari: I think I\'m going to kind of show real quickly \-- take a
look at the website. When you come to the NTC homepage, right on our
homepage for the Training Center is a list of \-- like right here
there\'s four broadcasts in a row. Here\'s the program we\'re on right
now. We have ethics training. We have a supervisory course on
classification and position management. And we have a national broadcast
with the \-- featuring the BLM Director at the end of the month talking
about this fiscal year. From our main page, you can actually go to the
NTC main page and if you navigate off this pick list and you hit
Satellite Network it will take you to the main page of the BLM Satellite
Network and here we have a little piece on \-- we talked about satellite
4. Here\'s the press release if you want to know some details about what
happened to the satellite that it suddenly went away.

If you have issues in your state where you need to know or get in
contact with other downlink coordinators, we have a directory of all the
downlink coordinators. Here is a list of everybody in California and who
the downlink coordinator is and the phone number. This is used a lot of
times by our interagency partners in getting back in touch with you.
Here\'s the push-to-talk support site. With the link, bingo, to AT
products. AT products, their site has technical support. For example,
here\'s just some standard wiring diagrams they have, which is something
that you might be interested in, also your I.T. folks might be
interested in. We have right now some generic wiring diagrams and these
may go away once we get custom diagrams.\
\
A. Ferraro: They will go away. We will take those off the site. What we
may do is replace them with a list of all the individual site specific
diagrams once they\'re produced. Chances are we\'re going to put those
on the website so if you lose it for any reason you can go ahead and go
to our website and you can actually find your individual setup page.

C. Calamari: There\'s also under the technical information, here\'s a
list of all satellites under programming your downlink site.\
\
A. Ferraro: If you have a vendor come out and doing programming you
could print that off our website and hand it to him and say, this is
what I need to have you program. You don\'t have to net any more
technical than that.\
\
C. Calamari: This is a new piece we added that Terry worked up a guide
for locating C and Ku-band satellites. There\'s nine different steps
listed here and there\'s a chart. It talks about how do you \-- you can
use these like shopping network channels or the NASA channel or some of
the university channels that are 24 hours a day 7 day as week to help
verify you\'re on the correct satellite. So there is a lot of
information on the Sat net website and we really encourage people to use
that.\
\
A. Ferraro: Great. We hope you find that that website and use it,
because once again, it\'s all there for you. And we\'re trying our best
to get you as much information as we possibly can.\
\
C. Calamari: We have just a few minutes remaining. We would like to once
again provide an open forum for questions, comments or discussion about
anything we\'ve covered so far in this training. So let\'s put the green
light on \--

Caller: This is Beatrice from the field office.\
\
C. Calamari: You sound loud and clear.\
\
Caller: I was worried because I have been trying to call you and I
didn\'t get any response.\
\
C. Calamari: We had the bridge turned down.\
\
A. Ferraro: Up sometimes we have the bridge turned out down in those
instances even though you might be pushing and trying to talk to us,
because our audio guy has the volume turned down basically.\
\
C. Calamari: So you contacted AT products and sounds like everything is
fine.\
\
Caller: I did and everything is in order now.\
\
C. Calamari: Photographs the problem?\
\
A. Ferraro: We just want to know what was the problem in 10 seconds or
less?\
\
Caller: We didn\'t have it connected properly.\
\
C. Calamari: There you go. Make sure you take notes, draw a diagram so
next time it\'s all set to go.\
\
A. Ferraro: I think we just have five minutes or so to deal wishes.\
\
Caller: This is Boise, Jerry.\
\
A. Ferraro: Go ahead.\
\
Caller: One of the problems I had because of our location at the State
Office, we\'re in a little complex with the Forest Service, Social
Security, Fish & Wildlife Service, we have trouble scheduling our
conference rooms and what I was wondering, on your homepage, can you put
more than just one month of broadcasts? Could you go up to like three
months because our rooms are reserved three and four months in advance?\
\
C. Calamari: We used to do that but the problem that has happened is
that so often if we tried going that far out in advance and with us
it\'s more of a client management issue, somebody will say, we\'re going
to do something on March 15th, and so we\'ll put that \-- we\'ll post it
on the website and then you get around middle of February and they say,
oh, we\'re not sure we can get it \-- it\'s going to be ready. Let\'s go
in April instead of March and then we have to keep changing the date.
Then we forget about it and along comes March 15th and people have
recorded it and the satellite help line starts ringing offer the hook,
and we say, oh, no, that was moved. The problem we have is as soon as we
know one of these things is for sure for sure and we book the satellite
time, really within a day or less, it\'s on the website. So \-- like,
for example, we had one \-- we found out yesterday that we scheduled a
NEPA show that was a training thing scheduled for early November. We
found out yesterday that that has been bumped for a variety of reasons.\
\
A. Ferraro: It\'s been postponed. I understand what you\'re saying,
Jerry. It\'s a big problem. All of you out there have these rooms that
are multiple use rooms and you only have the system hooked up into maybe
one, two sites. The people wanted to fire training or refresher \--\
\
C. Calamari: Or there\'s a RAC meeting.\
\
A. Ferraro: Those rooms get booked up and a lot of you call and ask for
tapes. We will do our best to try to give you as much lead time as we
can on that website, and I don\'t know if \-- are we \-- we\'re sending
e-mails out when we put thing on the website.

C. Calamari: Once we get \-- I book a satellite or whoever books the
satellite, we get it to our web person and use the e-mail group try to
get you guys an e-mail.\
\
A. Ferraro: You\'re involved in that more than me.\
\
C. Calamari: So as soon as it\'s if firm booked we post it. Also as soon
as we find out about sufficient from Shepherdstown, lot of this stuff
from DOI, we find out on it a very short fuse, sometimes like even a day
or two ahead of time, they\'ll forget to mention to us the Secretary of
interior is going to do a broadcast. Some of these things come up
quickly.\
\
A. Ferraro: I don\'t know if that\'s the answer you\'re looking for but
we\'ll certainly do our best to try to give you guys as much lead time
as we have with those things and maybe we need to look at the longer
term issues of client management.\
\
C. Calamari: The voice in our ear \--\
\
Caller: This is Yvette, the Buffalo Field Office.\
\
C. Calamari: Yes, Buffalo.\
\
Caller: I was calling to ask a question when we wanted to program our
satellite to get it updated so that we have all the programs we should
have, who do I call about that? How do I go about doing that?\
\
A. Ferraro: What you need to do, ideally is you probably either \-- you
need to find a local vendor that can come in and do that for you if
there there\'s somebody not already available. In some offices the I.T.
people or telecom people or some cases the radio folks have got enough
expertise they can look at the manual and they have done that. Some
offices do their own. Other people bring in a vendor.\
\
A. Ferraro: As Chip showed you on the website, when you need to get new
stuff reprogrammed, go to our website and print off that page. We keep
that page updated in terms of what are the satellites you need to
program. If you are having problems finding a vendor in town locally,
call \-- Terry Loftus would be probably the best person to call.
Necessary Lotus Notes and he is on the website or you could call the
main number here and just say you\'re looking for satellite help and
they\'ll pass it to somebody on our staff and we\'ll get back to you and
help you try to find a vendor if you\'re not able to find one.\
\
Caller: Thank you very much. That may be a problem in Buffalo for us.\
\
A. Ferraro: I know there\'s long travel times out there but we\'ll
search around and try to help you out.\
\
Caller: Thanks, guys.\
\
C. Calamari: The green light is going off and we\'re at the point we
need to wrap up our discussion. Believer it or not we\'re at the end of
this training session. We appreciate everyone visiting with us and
remember during the test this afternoon, we\'ll have another opportunity
to chitchat. Or send us e-mails and we\'ll get some things posted.\
\
A. Ferraro: Again, remember, for more information on the BLM Satellite
Network and the push-to-talk audio system visit our website at
www.ntc.blm.gov/SATNET. We hope this refresher training has been a value
and that we have helped solve some of the network push-to-talk issues.\
\
C. Calamari: We look forward to working with you as partners and
ensuring the future and success of all BLM satellite events. We look
forward to hearing you pushing and talking to us out there.\
\
A. Ferraro: Thanks again for being with us and so long from the National
Training Center in Phoenix.