By Norm Dyer, Antenna Assembler.
Dielectric’s history mirrors the history of the broadcasting industry itself. In my more than 26 years here at Dielectric, I’ve witnessed many dramatic changes in over-the-air broadcasting technology, as well as the growth of this company into the industry-leading antenna and RF systems provider it is today.
Over the decades, I’ve seen demand for high-power antennas, followed by a shift to low-power antennas. At times, TV antenna sales were brisk, while at other times, making FM radio antennas sustained us. And now, we’re looking forward to yet another transformative event—the U.S. DTV spectrum repack.
As Dielectric celebrates its 75th anniversary, it’s important to consider what’s led to our success and the trust our customers worldwide place in our products. We combine innovative antenna product designs, testing and manufacturing to meet or exceed the technical specs we promise. Rather than taking shortcuts, we routinely use high-quality materials and components, like choosing copper and brass over aluminum because they resist moisture and weather damage better.
This is not to say that we haven’t had challenges and stumbles along the way. For example, during the mid-1990s, when we helped our U.S. customers migrate from analog to DTV and HDTV, we learned a great deal from that complex, time-challenged process. And now we’re better prepared to help them through the next big challenges, like the repack, channel reallocation, and adopting ATSC 3.0.
While our engineers used to have to build and test physical antenna models, today they do much of their planning and calculations using our advanced simulation software and automation tools. This greatly increases our capacity at a time when many broadcasters must relocate their channels in a limited timeframe.
Learning from failures and successes, and continually making improvements, has resulted in a product our customers consider bulletproof. I’ve heard from many consultants in the field that they love that our products rarely fail, and that we stand behind them. That’s why I’m looking forward to tackling the industry’s upcoming repack challenges as a member of the Dielectric team.
