One Broadcast Engineer's blog…
After my last visit to the Thermopolis site, I needed to order the appropriate equipment to make repairs. Unfortunately the failed equipment was no longer manufactured so I needed to retrofit the current equivalent replacement instead.
Finally fixed! The new unit appears to have resolved the issue.
Earlier this month I had been at our Thermopolis transmitter site trying to figure out why the station would often go silent after the top of the hour ID. I think I finally found it this time!
Towers atop Copper Mountain
I had to travel to our Jackson transmitter site in order to do some troubleshooting and verify the coordinates of one of our towers. Since I was in my personal vehicle (and this was an unscheduled trip) I once again had some ‘help’.
Beautiful view of Jackson Hole from atop Snow King mountain
We had been having issues with our Thermopolis transmitter. At the top of the hour, occasionally audio would not return after the legal station ID. At our stations, the local station IDs are injected by the satellite receiver at each site, triggered over the satellite uplink from the studios in Laramie. I had spent a considerable amount of time troubleshooting this but had not yet caught it in the act…
Troubleshooting equipment with my laptop…
Not going to catch the problem this time, apparently…
I was driving around the state and needed to stop at my Gillette transmitter site in order to check out some HD Radio issues. Since I was in my own vehicle and had not really intended to stop, I had some ‘helpers’ with me.
Callie and Betsy at the Gillette transmitter site
KUWG, Gillette operates at a power level of 500 watts. The transmitter is a Harris Z4HDc and the site broadcasts an HD Radio signal in addition to the traditional analog FM carrier.
Our Copper Mountain transmitter (91.3 KUWT, Thermopolis) is another very difficult site to access. I had received a note from an engineer installing another new station that apparently there are some RF hot spots on site. I immediately went to the site to investigate.
A device called a “Narda Meter” tells the tale…Sure enough, we do have a spot that is over the limit. We will need to construct a fence to protect the public from RF exposure.
I recently received a report from our Jackson site that there was no audio on the air. Fortunately I was able to switch to the newly repaired alternate audio link…Even though the problem was temporarily solved, however, I needed to make a trip to the site to see what was going on.
There was no apparent problem by the time I arrived at the site. The main audio link was working once again. I hate intermittent problems…
Since we had been having some issues with the power supplies in our satellite receivers, I decided it would not be a bad idea to replace it. The old power supplies were 150 watts while the new ones are 180 watts.
One satellite receiver on the bench ready for a power supply transplant…
The new supply sits ready and waiting to the right of the receiver.
We have a station in Sheridan atop Banner Ridge. The site is home to some absolutely beautiful scenery but can be treacherous to access.
We had been having some issues with heat in the building that housed our equipment rack.
Central Wyoming College operates Wyoming PBS. While they are a separate entity from Wyoming Public Radio, we share a number of sites and resources with them.
They had just placed a new building on Banner Ridge so we asked if we could move our equipment into their building which would provide us with much better cooling as well as network connectivity to this extremely remote and difficult to access site.
The Big Horn mountain range as viewed from Banner Ridge
Over the past couple of years, we have been in the process of re-wiring the remote control systems at our transmitter sites to give better information in the event of a failure.
Afton was one of the last sites remaining to be re-wired, however, when we attempted to re-wire the site we found that the remote control had been invaded by mice. It was still functioning but I did not want to leave it in that state. We removed it and cleaned it in an attempt to make it work. Unfortunately the unit was not quite working properly after it was cleaned out…It will be sent back to the manufacturer (now cleaned of mouse residue) for repair. In the mean time, we had another remote that could be installed so we could finish the project.
Reid gently cleans mouse gunk off the boards in an attempt to repair this remote control…
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…
