I received a message earlier this morning that both of my Rock Springs stations were off the air.  All indications were that the satellite receiver had failed.  This was not an uncommon issue in the past with these receivers but it had not happened recently.  The first challenge was getting to the site…

Interstate 80–Lots of blowing snow!

 

 

Almost to the site–the road to the site is snowy as well but relatively clear.

We did encounter one large drift on the road up to the site but were able to make it in as far as the gate–no way we could drive through the gate!  Reid braves the wind and unlocks the gate.

  

I had just installed internet access and some additional monitoring at the site.  This was able to point me in the right direction as far as troubleshooting before I even headed for the site.

As suspected, the satellite receiver was locked up.  I had never seen this particular failure mode before…Powered up but not responsive and not producing audio.  Usually it is the power supply that fails or the battery storing the BIOS settings.  Both of those issues are relatively easy to fix.

The transmitter is still on the air at full power…No problem there, just no audio.

 

No audio anywhere…

High winds had forced a small amount of snow in through the seals of the door.

   

Lots of snow at the site!  Even the air conditioners on the other buildings are clogged up!

Disconnecting and removing the failed satellite receiver–I’m going to further test it to see if I can figure out what’s going on.

Hmmm…It appears to boot just fine.  Strange.

Seems to be running…

  

Odd indications from the PC Health monitoring in the BIOS screen…The CPU and chassis temperatures are climbing quicker than they should be and the CPU and chassis fans do not appear to be operational.

 

Sure enough, both CPU and chassis fans are seized up.

  

The receiver has been replaced with a spare that we brought to the site and we’re back on the air.

UW88 stands ready to take us to the next stop…