General – Page 43 – Engineering Radio

Take a ski lift to work day, WBEC style

One thing that I like about the radio engineering job, every day is different from the last, at least when doing fieldwork. Access to transmitter sites can be a challenge, especially in the Winter months. Last Wednesday, I was doing work for WBEC in Pittsfield, MA. Their FM transmitter site is atop Mahanna Cobble in the Bousquet Ski Area. The summit is about 1,800 feet AMSL and since the terrible rains last month, not been accessible by vehicle. No worries though, somebody built this nice chair lift for us to use:

Bousquet Ski Area chair lift going down hill — Bousquet Ski Area chair lift going downhill

Going down! I forgot to take pictures on the ride up.

The steep part of the hill.

American tower site top of bousquet ski area — American tower site top of Bousquet ski area

One of two towers, both owned and managed by American Tower Corporation. This is the older tower that has the radio station, somebody’s translator, some paging and two-way stuff, and sprint PCS. The other tower is to the right, out of the picture and holds cell carriers.

View to the north over the valley, WBEC-AM’s two tower directional array can be seen in the lower left hand side of the picture.

WBEC-FM’s transmitter, it’s in there somewhere:

Polyphasor surge protector has seen better days. It suffered some serious damage and was removed from the circuit. Now, it makes a convenient home for rodents. Reduce, reuse, recycle:

Something is missing…

Now where did I put that Nitrogen tank? The site needs a little work and that’s okay, we came to work and get paid.

Goodbye, REM

Off the topic of engineering, but apropos radio, the Alternative Rock band REM has called it quits. REM was perhaps the first band to bridge the gap between main steam rock and punk, using mostly word of mouth and college radio to gain early success when commercial radio shunned them. By the mid-1980s and through the 90’s they were wildly popular until drummer Billy Berry left after a brain aneurysm in 1997.

You are missed, good luck.

Things that make you go Hmmmm? Part IV

The case of the blown fuse, or rather the blown up fuse:

Blown 10 amp fuse on Harris SX5 PA board

F32 is blown into small bits and had to be vacuumed out of the bottom of the transmitter. The reason why is the pair of MOSFETs connected to that circuit were shorted. Of course, the reason for the shorting of MOSFETs needed to be investigated. What I found was on the underside of the PA board where the brass stand-off attacked the toroid combiner board, the nuts attaching the stand-off to the combiner board were loose and there was a big arc mark.

I tightened everything up and replaced the MOSFETS, marking them with a pen in case they short again, in which case the drive section needs to be closely examined.

Keys, combos and contractors

The contracting company I work for takes care of 40-50 radio stations at any given time spanning from NYC and southern Connecticut up to the Canadian border. Stations or groups sign contracts and some go by the wayside on a fairly regular basis. All of this makes for the “Giant Box of Keys,” to be carried around in the work truck or whatever vehicle one is driving while on call.

The problem with the Giant Box of Keys is it never seems to be up to date. New stations or groups join and didn’t get added. Other stations fire employees and feel compelled to change the locks after doing so. Therefore, I have found the Giant Box of Keys to be a hit-or-miss proposition. In my former life as Director of Engineering for Pamal Broadcasting and Dame Media before that, I sought to simplify things as much as possible.

Master self set combination lock — Master self-set combination lock

I found that replacing all keyed padlocks with self-set combo locks made life much easier. All of the tower fences, transmitter site fences, and road gates now had the same combination and could be changed to another combination easily if needed. That eliminated digging through drawers looking for tower fence keys and or long walks back to the transmitter building because I forgot the key or the key didn’t work. Taking that a step further, I began to replace the door locks with these:

Unfortunately, those door locks are a good deal more expensive than the padlocks, somewhere between $300-400 per copy. I only got a few done before the end came. An alternative to this is a key lock box:

Of course, these are not foolproof either. Occasionally, some previous users will forget to put the key back in the box. I have also had one such box frozen under a lump of ice and once somebody swiped the whole box off of the wall with the aid of a sledgehammer or something.

There are some places where this approach will not work, such as high-security sites or leased sites where the landlord dictates the lock policy.

Still, whenever possible, using combo locks saves time and money in the long run. Rather than using precious engineering hours to make and distribute copies of keys, we can be more focused on doing real engineering work.