Not quite as bad… Shasta Bally

As the Carr fire continued in Whiskeytown, we had no power to our site but a remote control continued operating on the generator. The final data I got from it showed 140F stack temp above the transmitter and 122F at its chassis.

The cause: burnination.

Thanks to Matt at Valley Industrial Communications for these pictures and for being a far braver soul than I…

Hey look, it’s still got a roof!

Read more “Not quite as bad… Shasta Bally”

66 block stupidity

I need to find whoever decided to make both 66 blocks with the split down the middle and blocks without it with no identifying mark as to which type is which and pour glitter* over their head.

At left: no split. I’d been putting bridge clips on it for no reason and got a rude surprise (Zeppelin on a country station!) when I expected to have the left three pegs and the right three isolated.

At right: has the split. You have to install bridge clips to join the two sides.

* Biodegradable glitter of course – the sugar or seaweed based kind

Ow. Stop that. Stop that right now.

Just got some CCTV video of the Shasta Bally site. In about three minutes’ time it goes from smoke simply rolling over it to firestorm and *NO SIGNAL*

The high temperature reading I saw at the stack of the transmitter that was powered off was likely due to the vegetation behind the building burning. The vents are on its right side. The building is visible at the bottom center.

I’ll see if I can export and convert this later. It’ll be a while before I find out what’s still up there…

Well my job can’t begin here yet.

Nothing left to do now but get a very strong adult beverage. The Carr fire hit the site—

Left cabinet was a CSI 3KW on KEWB-FM, center rack was exciters and STL and the aux for KNCQ-FM, rightmost rack was a BRAND NEW Nautel VS 2.5 that seems to have just… vaporized. All the aluminum parts of everything just disappeared, including a brand new 2-port Bext combiner that was going in along with the Nautel for a new project. A tech who came up found the propane line burning in the wreckage like a torch and shut it off at the tank.


There was also a VHF repeater for an air ambulance service and the gear for two wireless ISPs in the building, which dated back to the early 1990s.

Note the Fibrebond structures fully intact in the background.

The two towers up there experienced extreme heat, melting every plastic part about halfway up.