That saying originates from Greek and Roman times, when Sirius, the Dog Star, aligned with the Sun during July and August and was thought to bring extra heat to the earth. The Dog Days are evil times; seas boil, wine turns sour, dogs grow mad, and all other creatures became languid; causing to man, among other diseases, burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies.
Bad news, indeed. Add to that; air conditioners fail, general managers become cranky, and transmitters overheat causing damage to sensitive control circuits, which is even worse.
We shall be busy dealing with things like this:
Air conditioning condenser with low refrigerant. This unit either has a leak or was not charged properly. I would hazard the former.
Fan blade on condenser coil failed due to metal fatigue. I have seen this in more than one place.
These wall-mount Bard AC units are pretty reliable, however, even they fail from time to time. The best course of action is to have a maintenance plan, a backup plan, and the number of the best HVAC contractor that can be found.
Did you know that you can even get ice when the humidity is as low as 4%! Yep, seen it here in Phoenix. A good A/C maintenance program is key to avoiding such mishaps, especially when you hit 113 degrees! Great blog, Paul. It’s always my first read of the day. I grew up listening to WFAS as a kid, otherwise known as “We Fade At Scarsdale”.
Thanks, Eric. I will have to tell the program director about “We Fade At Scarsdale,” I am sure he will be thrilled.
I had a 3 IOT UHF 75kW DTV TX and a 44kW solid state VHF analogue TV TX in a room without A/C. The analogue TX just exausted the air through the roof and the DTV TX was liquid cooled. Still, even on a mild day, the room could get over 90F. It is a single site station with a large studio building connected to the TX building. So I would just leave the door open to the studio building and “steal” cool air. The drawback was sometimes the A/C would fail in the studio building.
I finally get a 40 ton 4 stage unit for the TX room which did the trick nicely. After the DTV transition, those two transmitters were retired and I now have a 15kW VHF DTV transmitter. I never see the last two stages come on in that A/C unless it it ove 90F outside.
Needless to say, I got very good at rebuilding amplifier modules for that analogue TX!