Having studied communications at the University of Tulsa as an undergraduate, Lepine originally intended to go to law school. "Howard Hendricks, a long-time professor at Dallas Seminary, used to tell his students that his goal was 'to dust their minds with itching powder.' So, I hope that as I begin the program each day, I'll do a little dusting and that folks will start to scratch their heads, and then as Alistair begins to preach, clarity will come." A Life In Broadcasting "In my role at Truth For Life, I want to encourage and provoke the listener so that they are already engaged in the subject matter that Alistair will be speaking to," explains Lepine. Lepine will introduce the program each day with the primary goal of whetting the appetites of listeners who have just tuned in. I've benefited from it personally, so when the opportunity to be a part of Truth For Life came along, my first impulse was to do whatever I can to help advance the teaching ministry." Extending an Invitation "The first thing that brought me to Truth For Life is my great respect, and love for, Alistair's teaching. "I share an enthusiasm for the ministry of Truth For Life and want to see it expanded," says Lepine. So I think I'm in good company there," laughs Bob Lepine, the new co-host of Truth For Life who began introducing the daily and weekend programs in September of 2010.Ī fondness for pop music isn't all that Lepine shares with Alistair. "I know that dates me a little bit, but I know that friends of Truth For Life will understand that Alistair and I share a love for the theology of pop music from the 60s and 70s. With a transistor radio tucked safely underneath his pillow, a pre-teen Lepine would stay up past his 10 o'clock bedtime to sneak one last listen of Herman's Hermits' number one hit, "Mrs.
Then there is one more neat tool, for those XDS receivers that do not have any front panel user controls (one certain network uses these), called the “ XDS discovery tool.” I have found this bit of software to be very helpful from time to time.Bob Lepine recalls when his love of radio first began. I also make sure that all automation systems have some type of remote access like VNC so that I don’t have to needlessly drive to the studio to fix a silly computer problem. Something like this can greatly speed up any remote diagnostic trouble shooting by eliminating (or pinpointing) a satellite system failure as the reason for a station being off the air. That should be enough to cover almost any programming situation.įinally, the receiver’s overall operating condition can be monitored via the health screen: XDS satellite receiver health screen XDS relay maping screenĮach receiver has two DB-37 connectors that have 16 relays each for a total of 32 output closures. The programming clock provided by the network will specify which relays are used for each show. XDS satellite receiver weekly programming gridĪny required network closures are configured in the relay screen. Drop down menus allow for programming the audio ports on the receiver and setting up the delayed recording and playback function. Otherwise, the web interface is pretty intuitive. I have carefully replaced several of these fans without turning the receiver off. The network will send a replacement fan if you let them know. A bad fan is noted with the fault light turns red and the unit will return a “Fan stopped” error message. The manufacture must have laid into a supply of defective fans. The one issue I have had with nearly every single XDS receiver is the fan going bad. Before you know it, everything in the broadcast plant will have a web interface. The newest generation satellite receivers are yet another quantum leap over the last, with on board hard drive storage that allows time shifting of entire shows.
The SA 7300 receivers gradually gave way to the SA 3640, which gave way to the Starguide, Starguide II and Starguide III series which finally lead to the XDS and MAX receivers used today. The use of satellite downlinks allowed radio stations to receive an almost unlimited number of programs from every network under the sun.
Starting about 1982 or so, satellite distribution of network audio was a quantum leap over the old TELCO circuits used previously.
There were two flavors of decoder cards DATS and SEDAT. I remember, back in the day, when we all used Scientific Atlanta 7300 satellite receivers.