One Broadcast Engineer's blog…
We had received a complaint of some interference being caused by our Dubois transmitter. It had gotten to the point where the FCC was involved so I decided to act quickly. While there was no reason to believe our equipment was directly involved, I wanted to cooperate in any way possible.
Callie once again accompanies me on this trip…Nothing like a good guard dog!
(OK, she just LOOKS ferocious…)
I’ve been working on a project to add a signal north of Torrington for about 2 years now. This signal is going to serve a large portion of the state where we currently have no coverage at all. Unfortunately the plans have been modified and stalled for numerous reasons several times now. Funding was also a challenge… FINALLY we were able to secure funding earlier this year. However, the project MUST be complete by the end of May 2011. Only one problem…We were not able to locate at the site the permit was originally issued for. This means building a completely new site adjacent to the original one. After two months of what seemed like endless additional hurdles I was FINALLY able to get the first tangible improvement to the site completed…A phone line! It doesn’t seem like much but at least it’s something…
The site is about 25 miles north of Torrington…
Our new tower site will be directly behind where my Jeep is parked.
I had been waiting for some replacement equipment to arrive to install at our Copper Mountain transmitter site. It had arrived just before I left on this trip so I stopped in at the site to install it.
I love the view from Copper Mountain…From the other side, Boysen Reservoir is visible.
From Buffalo I headed over to Cody to install a network switch as well as the monitoring equipment I had just pulled from Buffalo. At this site (since we have a network connection whereas in Buffalo we don’t) I can access the equipment via the network for better monitoring capabilities.
New network switch and monitoring equipment…This site did not previously have a network switch. Installing our own switch will allow better management of network traffic at the site.
I decided to swap out a piece of monitoring equipment in Buffalo so a more capable unit currently at the site could be moved to another site to take full advantage of its capabilities. This required a slight bit of rewiring…
My impromptu “workbench”…
Another day, another site. I had lost contact with our remote control at the site. The connection is via Voice over IP. Apparently the network switch had suffered a failure and needed to be replaced.
The road to the tower site…
While I was on the road (again) I took the opportunity to take care of a few other issues as well. This time I’m dealing with a failure of our digital signal in Buffalo.
UW88 was in the shop for service so I took my trusty little Jeep Cherokee on this trip. Not nearly as “beefy” as my usual chariot but definitely nimble…It will easily get me up to any of my sites without even breaking a sweat. It doesn’t have quite the ground clearance and wouldn’t fare quite as well in snow but for this trip it will work just fine.
Another week…Back to Casper. This time to replace a failed (not so) uninterruptible power supply (UPS). These have been a common point of failure for us…The most common failure is overcharging of the batteries which causes them to fail. This is generally caused by a fault in the unit itself. I generally replace these units as they fail with one that has (so far) proven to be more reliable.
Dead UPS…Oddly enough the site suffered a power failure just as I was about to replace it!
This doe feeding at the site was pretty fearless and let me almost come right up to her to get a photo.
Callie hanging out while I work…
