Bench Work

Almost every broadcast engineer has to do some type of bench work. While I enjoy a certain amount of bench work, it is not my strong suit.  I suppose if I had to do it more often, I would become more proficient.  Truth be told, I would rather be at a transmitter site than sitting work chair studying schematic diagrams. It is becoming increasingly difficult to make repairs in the field due to surface mount components.  The company I work for has a repair and rework shop where almost anything can be repaired.  There is one bench tech, who is pretty proficient with power supplies and RF amplifiers among other things.  There is a complete set of test equipment including several Tektronix spectrum analyzers and oscilloscopes.

Likely the most versatile piece of equipment is the IFR 1500 service monitor.

The bench itself is fairly large:

There is also a good stock of spare equipment that can be rented out while repairs are being made:

Repair work includes by is not limited to:

• RF repairs; Moseley STL systems, Marti STL and RPU systems, TFT STL systems, most exciters, IPA modules, etc
• Transmitter repairs and retuning
• Mechanical devices like transmission line dehydrators, transfer switches, etc
• Switching and linear power supplies
• Uninteruptable power supplies
• Remote control equipment; Gentner VRC-2000, Burk ARC16, Moseley MRC-1600
• Audio Processing; All Orban equipment, Symetrix, Valley, DBX
• Audio equipment; Amplifiers, consoles, reel to reel machines, cassette decks, CD players, DAT machines, etc

I am sure there are many other things that I am leaving out.