I recently had the privilege of putting yet another new station on the air.  This one is 88.5 KZUW.  It carries our “Classical Wyoming” network and will serve the Rock Springs/Reliance/Green River area with 24/7 classical music. 

We launched this service in Laramie on 88.5 KUWY and 91.9 KUWR-HD2 about a year and a half ago and will continue to expand it via additional analog and HD2 services as resources allow.

An absolutely beautiful day up on Aspen Mountain…
A few clouds rolling in but  nothing serious to worry about for the moment.

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Time to hit the road again…Reid and I drove up to Thermopolis to check on a couple of isssues. Much to our surprise we discovered that our generator room was full of snow…and the genset still ran!

Reid stands in front of the access panel to the genset room…Yikes!

Looks like it snuck in through an air vent where the louvers didn’t close…
We were able to shovel it out and seal things up without too much trouble.

Once Ben and I had finished in Newcastle, we continued on to Buffalo to repair an issue with the HD Radio equipment.

Much of this equipment is computer based and can be prone to failure unless kept in an absolutely pristine environment free of dust, heat and power glitches.  Even that is not enough to keep it from failing at times…

Many of those issues have since been addressed by a redesign of that particular piece of equipment but unfortunately it is just not practical for us to switch out all of our existing equipment every time something new comes along.  These units are only about 3 years old!  That is like an eternity for computer based technology though…

Broadcasters used to be able to buy equipment and expect it to last for 20 years or more…That is no longer the case as more and more equipment involved in the broadcast chain changes to digital.  Digital technology tends to move at a breakneck speed with devices quickly becoming obsolete and replaced by newer alternatives.  The only exception seems to be the transmitters themselves.  All other equipment in the chain, however, is rapidly becoming subject to quicker obsolescence than we have ever seen in the past as broadcasters.  This is a very real problem with digital (particularly computer based) equipment despite its many advantages…

We will just continue to maintain this kind of equipment as best we can until parts are no longer available and we are forced to upgrade.

Ben works at the terminal to configure the newly replaced equipment

I had been receiving reports from our Newcastle site of issues with the HD signal…Since I was able to verify that the signal was in fact actually operating properly, it appeared that we had an issue with our monitoring equipment.  This monitoring equipment must be programmed correctly and have  the proper RF level fed into it in order to work properly.  Otherwise, the result can be errant alarms or no alarms.

Ben stands in front of the equipment rack as I explain the issue

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What was I saying about the time of year to deal with translator issues?  No sooner did I finish with Worland I started receiving complaints about our Evanston translator.  Reid and I headed to the site to check it out.  When we got to town we weren’t immediately hearing a problem, but we started to hear the issue the next morning.

What a view!

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Apparently it is the time of year to deal with translator issues…We received a number of reports that our Worland translator was performing poorly.  I had never been to the site before (one of the last that I had never actually visited).  Once we drove into Worland, we could clearly hear that the translator was having issues.

There were strong first adjacent signals on both the input and output frequencies of the translator…Not good.  Since this translator is in the commercial portion of the band, it must be fed over-the-air and can not be fed via satellite like many of our others.

At the site on Rattlesnake Ridge…

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As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are replacing the translator in Rawlins with a full service station (KUWI). Today’s task was to bring the antenna bays to the site for installation by the tower crew which will be scheduled soon…

Unpacking the antenna bays to load into the Argo…

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We had received a number of reports that our Dubois translator was off the air.  This site had recently been switched to a satellite audio feed to replace a microwave link that was being decommissioned…

The site is on a location called “Windy Ridge”.  It lives up to its name!  On this particular day, gusts were well over 100 mph.

One view from Windy Ridge…
To add to the fun, a blizzard was rolling in…

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In addition to the Rawlins station, we are also building a new station in Rock Springs.  We decided to take an opportunity to visit the site, bring some parts for the new station and show our new Engineering Tech around another transmitter site.

The 5 bay FM antenna at the top is ours…14 kw TPO, 35 kw ERP.
Check out the snow in the air!

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WPR has several new stations in the works, including a translator replacement in Rawlins.  The station replacing the translator in Rawlins will be KUWI…2000 watts on 89.9 FM.  This will be a huge improvement from the current 250 watt translator on 89.1 which is subject to interference from a station in Casper.  We are using a transmitter that is being rebuilt after a trip from its former home in California.  I suspect it will perform quite nicely in its new home.  Building this station will require replacing both the transmitter and antenna in Rawlins as well as adding some additional equipment.

The new antenna for KUWI…Some assembly required…

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