The beginning of Big Red’s life…

Yesterday I received several reports from the Casper area of issues with the HD signal.  I could not come to any definite conclusions remotely so I decided to go investigate.  Andrea came along for the ride. 

We loaded up the WPR Engineering Truck (affectionately nicknamed “Big Red”) and headed out.   When we left Laramie the weather was fairly nice…There was a slight bit of rain but nothing bad.  As we got to Cheyenne and headed north toward Casper the weather continued to improve.  While en-route to Casper we stopped in Douglas to check out a failure there as well…No big surprise…It had suffered the exact same hard drive error that had occurred earlier.

Same hard drive error as before…

We arrived at the transmitter site in Casper several hours later.  I immediately found the problem…The HD Exporter had suffered a fault and was intermittently failing.  A reboot of the unit quickly cured the issue.

Checking out the HD equipment in Casper

After finding the problem in Casper we headed back toward Laramie.  It was starting to get dark but the weather still looked relatively good.  As we entered the mountain pass between Cheyenne and Laramie the weather started to get worse with blowing snow, high winds and ice on the roads.  I adjusted my driving accordingly but it wasn’t enough.  A gust of wind blew the truck out of control on the icy road.  Before I knew it we were spinning in circles on the highway and had rolled several times into the snowy median strip.

At least we landed right-side up!

2 of 4 tires managed to come off the rims

No windows left!

Crunchy windshield…

Looks even worse from the rear!

These cinder blocks WERE in the bed…

We stayed warm in the State Trooper’s patrol car until the tow truck arrived.  It took quite a while for the driver of the tow truck to tug Big Red free of the snowy median.  This truck wasn’t going to go down without a fight!

Almost tugged free of the median and up onto the shoulder…

After a couple of hours the truck was finally free and on its way back to town.  Andrea and I finally made it home and got to bed around 2:00 AM.  The rollover happened around 9:30 PM.  Not exactly my idea of a good time on a Saturday night!

At least we’re both OK! It’s extremely disappointing to have this happen to a brand new truck but at least vehicles can be replaced or repaired!