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The horse has left that barn


LarryF

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The second I heard about the sell off I sold my 600mHz gear well ahead of the game. Some of it I purchased used and came in at a profit, and had no losses overall. Why so many people waited until the market was flooded I’ll never understand, but it’s those guys that are late to the game who keep me in business. 

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4 hours ago, JonG said:

Some of it I purchased used and came in at a profit, and had no losses overall.

 

But you charged a rental fee, right? So after some years of that there shouldn’t be a loss at all anyway. It’s all profit. 

 

While I quickly had my Lectro gear reblocked when here the 700 band went away, I never bothered with my cheap-ish Sennheiser G3 gear. Now as I was just getting ready to dimp it on Ebay I realized that there is a rather spacious duplex gap starting around 734MHz. That’s exactly where Sennheiser‘s C block starts. So now I can keep all of that gear and don’t need any further block changes. Especially as here in the EU we‘ve been told we’re pretty safe with our current blocks until 2030. 

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On 8/12/2018 at 12:44 AM, JonG said:

The second I heard about the sell off I sold my 600mHz gear well ahead of the game. Some of it I purchased used and came in at a profit, and had no losses overall. Why so many people waited until the market was flooded I’ll never understand, but it’s those guys that are late to the game who keep me in business. 

 

Nice for you.

 

I can't answer you about anybody else, but in my situation there is no way I am going to sell our 22 channels 600MHz gear (that are still functional, legal, and that I need to do my job) until I have funding approved to replace them.  Because I cannot unilaterally decide where my organization spends its limited resources, all I can do to get funding is to make my best case for the capital expenditure and send my request up the chain of command.

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I hear you, and think that especially if you are working at a fixed install (like a church, TV station, theatre, music venue etc) then you should be compensated for having so much expensive hardware declared illegal to operate, with no good way of selling that stuff off either.  People like to posture about how hard the FCC and other RF Policemen are going to come down on people who have not been able to get out of sold-off bands yet,  experience with previous auctions leads me to believe there will be a gap between stated policy and actual enforcement unless someone very visible is affected in a big ongoing way.  But the other side of this is that you will have to have the convo with your bosses (in my case that is me) about what the future of wireless usage will be in your organization, and make a plan about how you can transition out of 600 in the least painful way possible.   And I don't believe this is the end of the RF shuffle, either, despite what anyone official says.

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And I can assure you that we (a group of pro audio wireless manufacturers including Lectro, Shure, Sennheiser and AT) DID make an effort to bring about compensation for those displaced, in a pro-rated manner (the more recently you bought it, the more $$ back from proceeds of the spectrum sales). This is what they did in Japan, and also to some extent in the UK for the West End Theaters. 

 

I was at the meeting at the FCC in DC in 2014 with my industry colleagues when this question was brought up. The FCC representative's response was "You will run into significant legal challenges if you choose to pursue this".  No matter than a mere 1% of the 19B spectrum sale would have funded the replacement of probably every professional wireless mic in the 600 MHz band.

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9 hours ago, Matthew Steel said:

 

Nice for you.

 

I can't answer you about anybody else, but in my situation there is no way I am going to sell our 22 channels 600MHz gear (that are still functional, legal, and that I need to do my job) until I have funding approved to replace them.  Because I cannot unilaterally decide where my organization spends its limited resources, all I can do to get funding is to make my best case for the capital expenditure and send my request up the chain of command.


You should make the case that if you replace them NOW then it will cost them less, as you'll get a better price for the sale of your existing equipment now than in a couple of year's time. 

Additionally this is the less riskier approach to fix the problem now before it becomes an issue, rather than after it happens. 

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I think Matthew works with/for a university or similar large organization. I.e., not a stand-alone theater group or something. I could be wrong about that, but if so, then the whole funding process probably takes a long time; at least, it sure does for the major university down the street from my house (and where half the neighborhood works and waits for funding to come through). 

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On 8/11/2018 at 6:51 AM, ProSound said:

Still angers me that the FCC did not require any payments to us for having to replace our equipment. I wish I could charge my clients a "FCC Fee" to help cover the cost 

 

I can see the conversation “my rate is $XxX plus the $xx mandatory FCC fee”. Maybe saying mandatory will make it sound like it’s required by the government 

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16 hours ago, IronFilm said:


You should make the case that if you replace them NOW then it will cost them less, as you'll get a better price for the sale of your existing equipment now than in a couple of year's time. 

Additionally this is the less riskier approach to fix the problem now before it becomes an issue, rather than after it happens. 

 

Yes, that is the case I have been making for the last few years.  It's just that everybody else is making their cases too...

 

16 hours ago, Jim Feeley said:

I think Matthew works with/for a university or similar large organization. I.e., not a stand-alone theater group or something. I could be wrong about that, but if so, then the whole funding process probably takes a long time; at least, it sure does for the major university down the street from my house (and where half the neighborhood works and waits for funding to come through). 

 

Yes, that is true.

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5 hours ago, Rich Reilly said:

It all sucks, honestly.

Pardon me but..how much is involved in re-blocking?

Maybe a supply/demand/group buy is somehow workable in this context..

"Sucks" is a weak but polite description.

 

On a transmitter, re-blocking usually involves a new RF oscillator. It always involves new or retuned intermediate stages and a retuned or new output stage. New firmware has to be loaded since it is rare that there aren't updates. Then the modified unit has to go through several levels of QC testing as if it were a brand new unit. Ninety-nine times out of 99, it is more cost effective to simply replace the RF board since new boards are built and tested in quantity. If the new RF board has different parts than the old board, it may be necessary to replace the audio board also, as it usually has the controlling CPU. We have seen many discontinued parts over the years and the old audio board may not be able to control the new RF board. 

 

Receivers are much the same. For receivers, it is changing out the front end filters, the diversity components, and probably the local oscillator. This is particularly onerous if it is a tracking front end. Sometimes it is cost effective to modify the old RF board with replacement parts. The rest of the process is the same including occasionally needing a new audio board.

 

"Sucks" is a weak but polite description.

Best Regards,

Larry Fisher

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