I have forwarded this to Derek. He's just down the hall from me.
Michael
Mark W. Croom wrote:
> Here's one for you:
>
> A few weeks ago I got a call from one of my stations. His Unity 4000 was muted
> on all four audio channels and the front panel said "Warning: Audio Program
> N/A" as we have occasionally seen when somebody's T1 dies while you're tuned
> to their channel.
>
> This had happened between noon and 12:30--he had used SRN news (from MBN) at
> 11:55 but it was gone by 12:30 headline time. Because he's 80 miles away, we
> did some troubleshooting by phone. We found all 4 channels with the status
> "CMD" which I believe is a mute issued through the COMPEL stream.
>
> We tried switching the receiver manually with SatSked, but what we found was
> that we got a message declaring that "Local control must be enabled" to
> process the command. We found that message by watching the terminal screen in
> SatSked after issuing a SETAUDIO command. I presume the local control was
> disabled in the same command stream as the mutes.
>
> I called Moody Satellite Control, and Tom re-enabled local control for us via
> his COMPEL stream. Actually I asked him to do a COMPEL reset since this often
> clears up funny problems of this kind. We set the audio ports to where they
> belonged, and we were back in business.
>
> Until midnight, that is. The same thing happened at midnight, so all his
> recordings were flatlines and he had no satellite during the night.
> Unfortunately we didn't know this until morning, but that's another issue.
>
> I buzzed down there with my spare receiver and got him back in business
> permanently, and brought the funny receiver back to HQ with me for later
> troubleshooting. Finally I got to it a few days ago, after the Sharathon rush
> was over. I made a couple of phone calls to people with some knowledge of
> COMPEL who suggested that perhaps my problem had something to do with SRN
> since they do a lot of COMPEL switching.
>
> My working theory was that the receiver's serial number had been inadvertently
> keyed into the COMPEL database of some network that was restricting receivers
> for some reason--I wondered if perhaps it had been a network using video but
> not audio or something like that. Anyway Derek at SRN was very helpful in
> working with me to ensure that we were *not* in any groups with SRN, and I
> also checked with SkyLight and Moody during the process, too, to ensure that
> we were NOT in any COMPEL groups that we shouldn't be.
>
> Derek issued a COMPEL command that flushed any group information that might be
> cached in the receiver, and I reset the thing yet again. Apparently that was
> the needed fix, because the receiver has been working normally for the last
> few days since. Normally we keep this receiver on the shelf, or in the rack
> but not plugged in, so if we have a lightning disaster perhaps we could get
> back on the air with MBN using the spare receiver. So this morning I
> disconnected the second receiver again for safety and I'm declaring the
> problem is solved.
>
> All this to say--if you haven't had any of these "unexplainable" problems with
> your receivers, consider yourself fortunate. I've had two receivers in
> particular that have had more than their share of funny anomalies not
> connected with the usual interference issues or overload problems that are so
> common. In both cases, they would get strange command mutes--one receiver used
> to get muted occasionally on various channels, like port two left, port 3
> right, port 4 left and right, or something similar. In each case it required
> the help of a COMPEL headend to get us running again. So the lesson is: When
> weird things happen to your Unity 4000, make sure you call your network
> provider to see if they can help clear things up.
>
> It's also really nice to have a spare receiver. This one is my backup for four
> stations, and I've used it least once a year since I've been here, usually more.
>
> Fred Gleason -- could you forward this to Derek so he knows what the final
> outcome was? He asked if I could keep him informed but I forgot to get his
> address. Thanks.
>
> Mark
> MN
>
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