File under: You can find the darnest things at the transmitter site. Near as I can tell, this computer dates from about 1985 or so, it looks remarkably like my Apple IIe of the same vintage. We used an earlier model TRS-80 in high school, that model had a cassette deck as the data storage device. These have 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. I used my Apple IIe as a gloried type writer, mostly for college papers. I did manage to write some basic programs, no doubt copied from somewhere else.
For the day though, saving something for later editing, even to a floppy drive, was an order of magnitude over the single spaced type written page.
Tandy TRS-80 Model 4D computer
There are actually two of these computers, serial numbers 7086 and 7128. I have no idea whether they work. I’d donate them to a museum if there were one that was interested. Otherwise, they may sit in the corner for another twenty years or so.
Satellite dishes have been a part of radio station technical equipment for years. I am surprised at the number of broadcast engineers that do not consider center of box when aiming dishes. As dishes get larger and focal points get smaller, center of box aiming is not a nice thing to do, it is a necessary thing to do. The latest generation of satellite receivers, (AKA XDS) have a somewhat less than lively RF front end, they require higher E/B than the previous generation Starguide receivers to stay locked.
For years, the majority of commercial radio networks were carried on AMC-8 or its predecessors living at 139° W. On the East Coast, particularly in the Northeast, that makes aiming points relatively low to the horizon, anywhere between 8-10° elevation.
3.2 meter COMTECH satellite dish
This all means that precise aiming the satellite receive dish is critical for satisfactory performance. SES Americom owns AMC-8 and thus they have a web page about all of their satellites and important operating information. SES Center of box for AMC-8 is available in one-month blocks, which makes scheduling the aiming chore fairly easy.
Large satellite dish aiming diagram
I have always used a spectrum analyzer through a 3 dB splitter to look at the 950 MHz LNB output. This aiming setup allows the best combination of Azimuth/Elevation/polarization. Using the satellite receiver to confirm and maintain signal lock, peak the waveform that the receiver is locked to. It is pretty crowded up there, so there will be lots of signals on the spectrum analyzer trace.
It is a pain in the rear end to lug all that equipment out to the satellite dish, especially if it is on the roof. That is why it only need be done once; the right way the first time.
Any shortcuts will likely lead to those annoying chirps and dropouts or complete loss programming, particularly when the weather turns bad.
Audacity is the name of a free digital audio editing software package distributed by Sourceforge. It is distributed under Version 2 of GPL without exceptions. It does require a .mp3 plug-in to generate mp3 files. According to the Sourceforge website:
Audacity was started by Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg in the fall of 1999 at Carnegie Mellon University. It was released as open-source software at SourceForge.net in May of 2000…
Audacity is a free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:
Record live audio.
Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
So, I have downloaded a copy and installed it on my test machine in the basement (hardware requirements here). My test machine is a stripped-out P4 2.4 GHz Windows XP box that I can isolate from the network and experiment with. On that machine with a digigram VX-880 soundcard, Audacity did very well. I did not record multi-track, but with 24-bit sound sampled at 48 KHz, the computer kept up nicely. The basic editing features are intuitive and easy to manipulate with a mouse and keypad.
For a quick-to-install downloadable program, it does very well. Does it do everything like Adobe Audition or other professional editing software suite does? No. But for the price, it can’t be beat.
This is a Hughey Phillips mechanical tower light flasher that has been in service since 1960. Basically, it is a motor connected to a cam that rocks a mercury relay back and forth. These were standard technology for tower lights from the 1930s through about 1970 or a little later. They were very reliable, we still have some with a “pancake motor” in use on some of our towers. They were very robust and immune to lightning damage, RF interference, and other problems. The only maintenance that I can think of is lubricating the motor bearings. Eventually, however, they do wear out. Cold weather seems to take its toll, often causing the motor to stop.
Hughey and Phillips mechanical tower light flasher
This particular unit is mounted inside the tuning house for the far tower (north tower) at the WGHQ antenna array. It has finally reached the end of it’s existence; the motor bearings are shot and it has gotten stuck in both the on and off position this year causing the FAA to be notified of the malfunction.
WGHQ 920 Khz Kingston, NY antenna array
Today, I am replacing it with a solid-state flasher (SSAC B-KON FS155-30RF). Solid-state flasher units have been known to malfunction in high RF fields, such as AM towers. To cure that, the manufacturer has built-in 0.01 uf bypass capacitors, hence the “RF” suffix. Older units did not have built-in bypass caps, so external 0.1 uf bypass capacitors were normally installed on units mounted to AM towers. While I was working on this, I turned the transmitter down to 500 watts, no need to get any RF burns.
Naturally, this has to happen after there is two feet of snow on the ground. Also, it should be noted that this is the furthest tower away from the transmitter building. Now where did I put those snow shoes? Never mind, it has been very cold and the ground is frozen solid, I’ll take the truck… This is good because I will have all the tools, drills, nuts, and bolts without having to walk back and forth several times in the snow.
Hughey Phillips mechanical beacon flasher
I removed the motor and mercury-filled relay. I’ll have to figure out how to dispose of the relay. I then drilled a mounting hole through the base of the old flasher housing and bolted the solid-state relay to it. This is required because the solid-state relay needs a pretty good heat sink.
SSAC B-KON tower light flasher
Turn everything back on and: Ta-da! All works normally, the tower beacon is flashing away up there. Time to leave.
Truck stuck in swamp
Pull forward about 2 feet to turn around and CRUNCH! The truck goes through the ice of a hidden stream. Any attempt to move only makes it worse:
Truck rear burried to axle
Put in a phone call to the one guy I know that can get me out. About an hour later he shows up with chains, a shovel, and a come-a-long. We attach the come-a-long to the fence support post and pull the truck out backward 1/2 inch at a time. It took us about an hour and a half to get it all the way out so I could drive it back across the field. I’d have taken some pictures, but my guy; was a little grumpy.
I won’t do that again.
Still, I did the job I came to do, so it was a good day after all.
