We have a station located on Snow King mountain in Jackson Hole.  This site gets a LOT of snow… As a result, the dish at the site would often fill with snow and fail during the winter months.  A cover only slightly helped the situation.  A heater helped significantly but there were still occasional fades.  The solution was to place another downlink at a site in town that was less subject to snow.  The  signal was then relayed to the mountaintop via microwave STL.  Unfortunately once we got this system up and running, the microwave STL failed.  The manufacturer was able to provide a loaner while ours was being fixed.  Good thing we’re taking care of this now…This site is very much inaccessible once the snow sets in for the winter.

A gorgeous view of the Teton mountain range from on top of Snow King…

Made it to the site in Reid’s truck…

Reid takes this opportunity to snap a few photos…

This site is very well provisioned with redundant transmitters.
The “new” transmitter on the right is capable of analog and HD operation while the “old” transmitter on the left is used for auxiliary service and is only capable of analog operation.  Both are made by a company called Nautel.  Very solid and reliable equipment.  The transmitters are switched via a 4 port antenna switch atop the “new” transmitter.  The blue box on the right hand of the “new” transmitter is a filter to prevent interaction with other transmitters on site.

Loaner STL receiver installed and operational!
We will visit the site again later once our receiver is repaired and back from the factory.