[SBE] Sat Truck Operator Licensing

[A9xw at cs.com]

The ENG truck is under part 74, satellite is under part 25.  They have 
completely different requirements.  The sat rules require an operator at the 
control point any time it is radiating.  Your CE and news director will fight 
it out about if you stay at the truck or wonder off until some other station 
either blows you off or you blow off someone else because most major markets 
don't have enough ENG frequencies for everyone to be on at once.  With an 
SAT you are the only person allowed on BY THE SAT OWNER, and if you screw up, 
they can tell you to never use their sat again. Then your boss opens the 
check book to write big checks to whomever you interfered with and FCC fines 
for no matter what the cause, you screwed up.  So take the hint, stay with 
your sat transmitter if its on. Sats are international, so if you screw up a 
Canadian, Mexican or some other countries bird figure on being dead meat 
there too. 

On An SAT FEED  the protocol is to call the operator of the bird and ask to 
go up. Some will want a carrier only and check your cross pol, others will 
ask you to modulate, and in any event your eyes are on the spectrum analyzer 
because if you don't see your return carrier at low power, you hit the off 
switch next and hope you didn't mess up.  Then you sit there and call the 
sat operator when you are done and give the good night or pay for more sat 
time as they wonder if you are down.  And if its a hot switch, the sat op may 
tell you to go off and they don't care if you are done or not. And if they 
have a priority customer, not the run around grab a slot wild feed, they may 
pre-empt you and call you to get off at any time. Your response is hit the 
off switcher period. 
 

Henry 
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