Paul Thurst – Page 191 – Engineering Radio

Working with Tower Companies

Almost all radio stations use a tower of some sort to support their transmitting antennas. These towers need maintenance from time to time and only qualified people should perform maintenance on towers. Hence, the tower company is formed.

405 foot guyed tower with ERI FM antennas

Over my years of experience, I have dealt with many different tower companies, from one-man operations to big corporations that have multiple crews out in the field on any given day. I have discovered that not all tower companies are created equal. Not only do tower climbers need to be in good physical shape and be trained correctly in all tower climbing safety procedures, they also need to be good mechanics so they can actually repair things on the tower. Climbing a 470-foot tower to repair a strobe light is all well and good. Once the climber gets to the strobe light, he needs to be able to disassemble it without dropping parts or breaking things, troubleshoot if needed, install new parts, and re-assemble the unit, again without dropping or breaking anything.

Applying RF connectors, installing an FM antenna or STL antenna, and repairing light fixtures or conduit all require some amount of manual dexterity and concentration. Assembling high-powered antennas requires close attention to detail. Any pinched O rings, cross-threaded bolts, bent bullets, and the antenna will have problems, likely at the worst possible time.

The sign of a bad tower company is if its climbers cannot carry out those tasks with one or at most two climbs. I have a situation on a tower where our FM station is a tenant. The tower has a strobe light failure near the top of the tower where our FM antenna is located. They have climbed the tower no less than four times to repair this, and it is still not fixed yet. Each time they climb, the station has to reduce power to protect the tower climbers from excessive RF exposure. Each climb it takes them several hours longer than anticipated to finish their work.

A good rule of thumb, If the defective part cannot be fixed in the first two climbs, then the entire strobe unit should be replaced on the third climb. Even though the strobe units are expensive, by the time they get done paying for all this tower work, they could have bought two new strobes. Today will be the fifth climb and there is no guarantee that it will be fixed.

I advised the tower owner that they should be looking around for another tower company because these guys aren’t exactly setting the world on fire.

How stupid do you have to be?

I read through the news coverage of the vandalism at the KRKO transmitter site. Apparently, there is some group of idiots people running around insisting that radio towers are bad for the environment and people’s health. These are the same ones who have torched SUVs and burned high-end housing developments down. Naturally, no pollution is released into the environment during these acts, or else they would be hypocrites.

They make these claims with no merit or scientific basis, instead relying on base fears to make people go crazy, either temporarily or permanently like. It is actually a pretty good motivator as both political parties and all sorts of fringe truthier, birthier, and others have discovered. If enough people insist that it is true, then it must be so.

Unfortunately, there is always some idiot around who thinks it is his or her duty to take action, to protect the rest of us from some terrible fate.

In the meantime, some security cameras at the transmitter site might be a good investment. Chances are, these Earth Liberators that sneak around with bolt cutters and hack saws will likely think twice if there is any chance of themselves going to jail.

By the way, those KRKO towers looked like self-supporters which would have been very difficult to get down. Did they rent that excavator, or was some construction equipment left unattended?

When batteries explode

This is a picture of an exploded battery on a 45 KW backup generator:

850 CCA battery exploded during generator startup

This happened during a thunderstorm. The smoking crew was out on the back porch, during a thunderstorm (you have to have your priorities I suppose) and witnessed the entire incident. What was told to me was lightning stuck the generator. I find that improbable since there are many metal objects scattered around the area that are much taller. What likely happened was lightning stuck something close by, causing the power to drop out momentarily. This caused the generator to turn over. The battery was likely low in electrolyte, so there was an internal arc and the thing exploded in short order.

These events happened in rapid succession, giving the illusion that lightning struck the generator.

I removed the old battery and hosed the inside of the generator with copious amounts of water. There is nothing that can be done about the spilled electrolyte, since it was likely washed into the storm sewer during the storm. After the replacement of the battery, I tested the generator and all is well.

Book Review: Fighting for Air

I just finished reading Fighting for Air by Eric Klinenberg. It is a good book and a great description of what has happened to radio since the major consolidations occurred in 1999 and 2000. Depressing. Just damn depressing is what it is.

The book chronicles the evolution of the Prophet System and how that system was used to replace entire radio station air staff. It discusses the various failures that radio has produced as a result of automated programming, the complete lack of originality, public safety issues, and how major media companies have stripped the heart and soul out of radio.

Something that the book points out that I never really considered, every one of these unoriginal canned music stations diminishes all radio by some increment. For those that think the Clear Channels, Cumulus, and Citadels are only harming themselves, think again. People who get fed up with radio and buy an I-pod are excluding all radio stations from then on. That is another degree of audience lost to a competing medium.

Having worked for one of the smaller group owners since 1999, one that rarely if ever appears on anyone’s radar, I can say I have seen some minor shades of what has happened with Clear Channel in the company I work for. I think everyone who works in radio has seen some of this in one form or another no matter who they work for.

Radio has never been the most stable of employers. Even in the early days, people moved in and out of radio stations, sometimes taking a job with the competitor across town and sometimes moving across the country. It was understood that sometimes changes needed to be made, sometimes people had to be let go. It was a part of the landscape. The difference is in the post-consolidation radio environment, people are leaving radio altogether, replaced by a mindless computer programmed from afar.

During my time as a radio engineer, I have installed a few of these computer automation systems. I think the first one was in 1993 on an AM station doing all news. We used it for the overnight hours, replacing some minimum wage board operators. The general manager was shocked and a little bit in awe of how well the system worked.

This trend continued in 1994, when I installed a BE Audiovault system at an AM/FM combo. There again, the system replaced an overnight board operator on the AM station. Later, the FM station did a sort of mini-mation where the overnight news guy checked on it every 45-50 minutes. Those stations are now completely voice-tracked and or satellite syndicated.

Through the 90s, I installed first-generation computer-based automation systems mostly on AM stations. Things like Digilink, DCS, ENCO, etc.

In other markets, an automation system was used to resurrect a couple of FM stations, starting out voice-tracked, then adding live bodies to fill in day parts, usually having the 6 pm to 6 am time slot voice-tracked. Having three-day parts live is better than none I suppose.

The AM stations in my market cluster now are running some awful syndicated satellite news/talk programming. Why are these stations even on the air? They should be sold to someone who will operate them locally, or turn their licenses in.

For whatever role I have played in ruining radio, I am sorry for it.

It is a good book, I recommend anybody that works in the radio business read it.