After the tornado and thunderstorm excitement, it was time to start assessing the status of our network. Even though Laramie had been hit the hardest, various other areas of the state had also been hit with severe thunderstorms.

I received a report that our Lander translator was off the air. Attempts to restore it remotely were unsuccessful so I decided to investigate. At the same time, I also received a call from our Casper site reporting an issue with the satellite signal. ARGH!

After a 3 hour drive to Lander, I discovered that the satellite receiver had locked up and stopped producing audio. Rebooting the receiver restored audio.

The issue in Casper did in fact turn out to be a weather related interruption. By the time I reached the site the signal had returned. However, there was a thick coating of wet gloppy snow on the ground. I suspect it had just fallen earlier that morning when I received the outage call.

On the way back to Laramie from Casper, I drove through Douglas and was surprised to hear nothing but silence on the air! I knew it was not a network wide issue since I could still hear the signal from the Casper station. Apparently the Douglas satellite receiver had locked up much like the Lander receiver. *sigh*

Although I have not yet been able to verify the exact cause, it appears that these receivers may be prone to a lockup condition if they encounter an extremely marginal satellite signal for any length of time.

I’m going to have to get the manufacturer to help me with this one…This is not the first issue we’ve had with these receivers…Hopefully they can resolve the issues with future software releases. It’s NOT fun to drive 6 hours round trip just to power cycle a piece of equipment!

One of the satellite receivers in our network…
This one is in Rawlins