Best Plans Made

Recently, I have been thinking about the time when we had the challenge of connecting two church campuses with live video/audio feeds. I was working at Second Baptist in Houston at the time. We were given the requirements, time frame, and budget to ‘make it happen’. The requirement was to have live, interactive video/audio between the main campus at Second Baptist Church in Houston and the new West Campus of Second Baptist. This took place in 1999 – 2000, so there were no high-speed Internet options at that time. Dial-up internet was the state of the art and not an option.

I surveyed how to get the signals from the source, which was the main campus at Woodway and Voss in Houston. I had designed and integrated the video side of the system in that facility in 1996, so I was very familiar with how to get that signal. The destination was in Katy, Texas, 18 miles away. I also designed and integrated that video system, so I knew how to get the signal into the system and distribute it to the locations specified in the requirement. The challenge was to get the signal from point A to point B, 18 miles apart.

I contacted several video engineers I knew and came up with a temporary solution of using microwave transmitters and receivers. The long-range plan was to lease fiber optics that did not yet exist in the corridor where we wanted the signal to travel. In a meeting with a company that provides microwave transmission, we did a path survey and found that the 18 miles were just outside of the line of sight. Microwave communications require a line of sight. In other words, the transmitter must see the receiver with no obstacles between them. The curvature of the Earth prevented a line-of-sight connection in our case. About halfway along the route was a building about 8 floors high. We went to our management and said that we may need to lease roof space on that building and add transmitters and receivers to provide a relay. One of the Pastors said, “Doesn’t so and so (I don’t recall the name) own that building?” Long story short, we were granted free access to the roof of that building.

Once we had a plan that worked on paper, it was time to put equipment in place. I pulled cabling from the second floor to the roof, which was a four-floor building. I tested a good signal at the end of my cabling. The microwave company brought their equipment and set it up, pointing west toward the relay building. At the same time, we set up the microwave receiver at the West Campus and ran cabling from the roof down several floors to the control room. From the control room, we could distribute the signals anywhere we wanted in the building. We tested the transmitter and receiver, but since we did not have the relays set up, we did not have a connected signal.

The next step was to set up the relays at the building, which was about halfway along the route. I was not part of that install since I needed to be at the source, then at the destination. I had to make that 18-mile drive many times to tweak the signal. When we had a good connection, the first issue was humbars. Humbars are thick horizontal lines that slowly move from the top of the picture to the bottom. That is usually an indication of a grounding issue at one of the microwave sites. The guy I was working with at the transmitter side said, “Let’s try a humbuckler.” A humbuckler is a brick like device that is basically a large coil of copper windings inside. You connect the video cable in one side and the cable to the other side that goes to the transmitter. When we got that in line, the video signal cleared up! I went to my boss’s office to update him on our success. I asked him, “Do you know what a Humbuckler is?” He responded, “No, but if you hum a few bars, I will catch up.” Funny guy.

We tested everything all week leading up to the day that we needed the signal to work. Every test worked perfectly! On the day of the event, there was thick fog, and you could not see past 10 feet. Driving to work that morning was a challenge. We turned the system on and got the transmitter working. With our radios, we talked with the guys at the West Campus, but no joy on the signal. The fog was too thick for the microwave to work. No matter what we did, we could not get a signal to the other campus. We did everything we could to get it working, but it failed.

During the next week, the weather was perfect, and so was the signal. Sunday came, and the weather was good. We got the signal working perfectly. The plan was to take the camera signal through a dedicated switcher, then via microwave to the West Campus, where it would be shown on the large screens. The West Campus was to have the worship time locally with their orchestra and choir, but when the Pastor goes to the pulpit, we would switch to the main campus, with the Pastor preaching to both campuses at the same time. We all agreed that at a certain time we would make the switch. Who knew everyone’s watches would not have the same exact minute? So, the switch that first Sunday took place, but the Pastor started preaching during the last part of the last song at the West Campus. This was before smartphones, when everyone had an accurate time.

During the following week, I got the idea of sending time code that was generated at the source down one of the microwave channels to a receiver at the West Campus. We put a timecode reader where the people on stage could see the timecode we generated. As the switchover approached, they had to speed up the song's final verse to end on time. It was now getting better. Later, I installed a GPS antenna that synced with the time code generator to ensure the most accurate time possible. Eventually, we connected the two campuses with fiber-optic cabling, which reduces the risk of signal drop.

Through the evolution of this project, I learned that no matter how well-planned the process is, something like the weather will prove you wrong. The idea originated with our leadership, who expected us to deliver solid results. The project was breaking new ground, so we had to invent ways to make it work through trial and error…. lots of error. I loved working at Second Baptist for almost 15 years. I grew a lot with my engineering skills as well as spiritually. Working at a church like Second Baptist had more benefits than a career path, it had lasting benefits that goes beyond what we can imagine.