Paul Thurst – Page 136 – Engineering Radio

Nice work, if you can get it

I have been to many, many transmitter sites. They range from mountaintop sites in NY and VT to flat fields with tall towers in Florida to coastal or wetlands AM sites. One site in Massachusetts was located in a state park near Westover AFB. It was formerly the microwave relay site for the Northeast Command and Control bunker, now reused as an FM site for WRNX, Amherst. Access to that site required walking about a mile and a half on a hiking trail, often carrying things like a shop vac, garbage bags, or other stuff. Walking in the woods carrying a shop vac will get you some funny looks by fellow hikers.

Yesterday was my Bridgeport, CT day and I took the time to head out to the WICC transmitter site. There are two ways to get there, one can call the Bridgeport harbor master or harbor police and catch a ride via boat, which is fun. Or one can walk down the beach from the long beach parking lot. If it is not an emergency or nighttime access, I like to walk down the beach. It is about one mile either way. I normally bring my backpack with some basic tools, water, and a sandwich.

I have been working with another engineer who complains about this.

Now that the cottages are gone, it is a very pleasant walk.

This Osprey apparently didn’t get the memo: Radio towers are the arch-enemy of birds, actually sitting on one and using it as a good place to scout for lunch is akin to sleeping with the enemy.

United Illuminating pole mounted circuit breakers — United Illuminating pole-mounted circuit breaker

Circuit breakers on new three-phase power circuit installed by United Illuminating last fall.

I wouldn’t want to hike down this strand of beach at night or in a thunderstorm, but on a nice day, it is a pleasant stroll. There are far worse transmitter site access problems. It is a pain if any equipment needs to be taken in or out, that requires some special equipment.

Contract engineering, vehicles and the price of gas

One of the major differences between working as an employee and working for myself is the use of my car. When I worked out of a central office, going to work meant driving there, then using the company truck to drive to the outlaying studio or transmitter site locations. Now that I work for myself, I drive either my personal vehicle or the truck that belongs to my company.

Our radio clients are in several states in the northeast and covering all that territory on a weekly or monthly basis requires a lot of driving. For example, it is 100 miles exactly, one way from my house to Bridgeport, CT. Depending on what is going on, I can take the 1997 Jeep Cherokee, which has over 210,000 miles on it and gets about 21 miles per gallon, or the 2004 Chevy Silverado 1500 pickup truck, which has 68,000 miles on it and gets about 16 miles to the gallon. With gas being about $4.00 per gallon, it’s choice of shooting myself in the leg or shooting myself in the foot.

1997 Jeep Cherokee in early April snowstorm — 1997 Jeep Cherokee in an early April snowstorm

The Jeep I paid cash for in 1999 and I have kept it in good working order. It is, by far, the best snow vehicle I have ever owned. I don’t know exactly why that is, it has simple four-wheel drive (really two-wheel drive because of the full slip differentials). I imagine the heavy cast iron inline-six engine over the front wheels has something to do with it. This is an important distinction, as many off-air emergencies happen in the worst weather. It is simple and rugged and wearing out. I keep saying to myself, the first major problem, e.g. transmission or engine, I am having it towed to the junkyard.

The Chevy truck is owned by my company, I purchased it three years ago when I started the solar installation company. It has the 5.8 L V-8 engine with the tow package and the “pre-snowplow package.” It has real four-wheel drive with limited slip differentials front and back. It handles like a tank. I use this when I need to haul tools, materials, parts, junk or whatever. I have portable parts bins and tools that I can move from one vehicle to another, as needed.

The problem with these vehicles is the expense of operating them. I generally try not to take gas payments from the company I work for, as I am not an employee of that company, I’d rather take the mileage write-off. Still, there are times, especially at the end of the month, when I am filling up the pickup truck and watching the gas pump turn over the $100.00 mark, that I have to cringe.

Toyota Yaris 5 door hatchback, courtesy of wikimedia commons — Toyota Yaris 5 door hatchback, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Perhaps the next personal vehicle will be something more fuel efficient, like a Toyota Yaris hatchback. They look pretty reliable and get good gas mileage. If I need to take the big truck, I still have it. I have just three concerns:

I am fairly tall; will I look like a weenie getting in and out of this thing?
I drive a lot of interstate miles; if I get into an accident will I get squashed like a bug?
Will all my stuff fit in the back of this thing?

That being said, it would be awfully nice to get 36 miles per gallon…

I will listen to the shortwave broadcast, but not the web stream

Here’s a secret to all those broadcasters that think streaming online is the answer to all the world’s problems: It isn’t all that. I used to like listening to Radio Netherlands (Radio Nederland) on the shortwave. They have some excellent programs like The State We’re In. One problem, the only way to get it these days here in the US is via Webstream.

The same for many other world broadcasters like the BBC, CBC, HCJB, et. al. Most of these former big shortwave broadcasters have greatly reduced their operating hours or left the airwaves all together.

Streaming content on the world wide web is not broadcasting, nor can the quality and reliability be compared. Web streaming is far less reliable and offers lower quality than does HF broadcasting. The former broadcasters who have abandoned the airwaves to the likes of Radio China International will say otherwise, but that is their spin on the situation. Of course, using and maintaining high-powered broadcast transmitters is expensive, especially for governments that are faced with tough financial decisions.

First and foremost, streaming requires that I use my computer as a radio while I am trying to do other things on it. I bit of background on my computer; I have an 8-year-old Dell Inspiron 5150 that I purchased when I was working on my degree. When I got it, I asked our IT department guys what was the best course for buying a new computer. Their answer was to get the best, fastest processor available because everything else can be replaced/upgraded. I did just that, with a 3.06 GHz intel mobile P4. I have replaced the hard drive with a 200 GB unit and upgraded the RAM to 2.2 GB. The keys have most of the letters worn off, it has very distinctive wear marks on the case where I place my hands, etc. It has lived up to my expectations for serviceability and then some.

Even so, it does have its limitations. Listening to streaming audio of watching streaming video is not one of its strong points, especially when engaged in other tasks. Often, when listening to streaming, there are dropouts and other interruptions and the audio just doesn’t sound great coming from the computer speakers. Even external speakers leave something to be desired, quality-wise. Something about the digitized sliced and diced bit reduced stream that I find annoying and worse yet, fatiguing.

We live out in the sticks. Our local phone company, in spite of being the largest dial tone provider in the nation, has some reliability issues when it comes to their DSL service. Several times, the DSL goes out for no apparent reason, returning several hours or days later without comment from TELCO. If you call in an outage, they always act like they never heard of the problem.

Listening to my shortwave receivers offers better reliability and quality than streamed audio. I know I am not alone in this regard as several others have made the same comments. Listening to shortwave is listening to real radio, listening to tinny-thin audio over a computer or smartphone is crap.

There is an ever-dwindling selection of English shortwave broadcasters listenable in North America. Nature, as is said, abhors a vacuum. Therefore, income the religious broadcasters, false prophets, anti-government crackpots, hucksters, other governments with money like China and Russia, pirates, and others to fill the void. That is all well and good I suppose, but I do miss that day that I could get BBC news at the top of the hour on 15400 KHz.

Secretly, I like it when things break, sort of

Not that I am a glutton for punishment or anything, but I enjoy troubleshooting. There is a certain satisfaction in the analytical aspect of tracking down a problem and fixing it, hopefully in a permanent fashion. Figuring out where a problem is requires a good bit of detective work;

Examining the clues; what happened before the failure, what are the fault indications, are there any external factors
Round up the usual suspects; a good maintenance log is helpful here to track re-occurring failures. If the failure cannot be attributed to an external source (such as a power surge or lightning storm), what was the last thing that was changed or worked on?
Following the trail back to the origin; Often the first failed part found is a symptom, not the actual problem. It takes some skill in reading schematics and making sense of a failure to trace it back to the real problem.

It can sometimes be exciting, like turning on the 25 KV high voltage supply and having big blue flashes issue forth from the top of the transmitter. Sometimes it can be quite frustrating, like when the station owners refuse to spend money to fix a problem. Sometimes it can be dull, like fixing the same problem over and over again because of the previously stated money problem. It’s also disheartening when the problem was caused by the stupid DJ spilling soda in the console. Not that all DJs are stupid, just the ones that spill things into consoles.

The challenge of finding the root cause can often be enlightening. I have often discovered unrelated problems waiting in the wings while investigating the why of an outage. It is great to fix those things before they burn the house down, but this approach often goes unnoticed by the ownership or management. Lately, for some reason, an ounce of prevention goes unnoticed or unappreciated.

There is quite a bit of science to troubleshooting, but there is some combination of personal traits that make a good troubleshooter. These are:

Inquiring or curious disposition. It is fairly easy to get to the first failed module or part. Discovering the reasons behind the failure and or getting down to the component level takes a good deal more effort.
Patience. This goes with the second part above, it takes some stick-to-it-tive-ness to trace out the not readily apparent problem.
Good analytical skills. Often failures generate a cause-and-effect scenario. The effects can be startlingly distractive and mask the causes and the underlying problem.
Ability to view the large picture. This is critical to discover outside influences and other issues that are indirectly connected to the system or issue at hand.
Ability to analyze the system design. This requires background training and experience to look at a circuit diagram and discover non-error-tolerant systems. Sometimes these systems can be modified for better fault tolerance.

Poorly designed equipment is the bane of the broadcast engineer. Equipment manufacturers can sometimes fail to follow two key principles: KISS and maintainability. KISS stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. There is no better design criteria than the KISS principle. Adding layers of complexity increases the failure expectations. Maintenance can be something as simple as cleaning or changing air filters. Making maintenance tasks difficult almost ensures that they will not be done.

Eventually, all things wear out. It also takes some large-picture skills to know when it is time to replace equipment and that can vary greatly from situation to situation.