Month: July 2018

Well my job can’t begin here yet.

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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.

In which I realize I should find a good self-service car wash.

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Sometimes your gear just needs a good power wash with spot-free rinse and tri-color foaming wax. I didn’t have this handy so an ENTIRE CAN of CRC QD went to cleaning this poor old transmitter up. It lost about two pounds in the process and there’s a red mudpuddle in the parking lot where the runoff landed and evaporated.

Before:

After:

Washed the voltage regulator cover right off! Heehee. First time I’ve seen one of those Sanken STR series voltage regulator units before. It looks similar to the STK series audio amplifiers that wound up in a lot of low and mid range BPC* audio amplifiers, usually accompanied by a muddy, dark, IMD-plagued tone. I kinda expected to find that this regulator which powers the 250 watt PA section is of adjustable voltage and that varies the transmitter power output, but no! The output control takes place on the intermediate power amplifier card (IPA) to the right. This may mean that the amplifier isn’t very stable at low power output levels, and may explain why an identical unit I have in service that’s turned down to like ten watts tends to act stupid. Oopsie noodles??!!

* Black Plastic Crap

Can it please be fall already?

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It’s damn hot. One moment while I just pour this over myself.

Changing a tire in 112 degree heat sucks. Changing optimod cards and transmitters in an air conditioned building at 4000′ is preferable. All of them seem to be old age electrolytic capacitor failures.

Also, the Forester works better when the big hose stays on the spigot here.

See this cute little teacup? That’s the CVT fluid heat exchanger. Works fine on highways, urban streets, and literally everything but Shasta Bally…. I wonder if the cooler from an outback would fit?

Flush!

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We were only serious about that whole “plumbing repairs” bit. This is your requisite “broadcast engineer fixed the toilet” story.

Two potties, five radio stations, and one stopped refilling at 6 PM on a Thursday. Luckily I had a Korky valve replacement kit in my cabinet waiting for this moment (but why? who thought to put it there?).

Playing with the new valve in the kit before I installed it, I discovered that you can easily disassemble it from the top. Remove the bowl refill tube. Pull that white cap straight up, revealing the float mechanism. Squeeze the tabs on the side of the float to release it, then twist the round cap assembly that’s below the float. The whole thing will come up revealing the valve seat which is the top of that tall plastic mushroom. You can pull that whole thing out vertically. By just replacing all of those parts with the parts from the new valve, I changed all the rubber parts of the unit out in about two minutes flat… which is good as the shutoff on the wall doesn’t work and I had to cut the water to the whole building to do it.

They aren’t kidding about “Quiet Fill” — a plastic baffle inside the inlet tube makes the whole thing inaudible to the point where it’s actually a little hard to tell it’s working unless you observe the water rising in the tank.

Now, if only I could do something about that cheezy fake tile paneling that’s falling apart back there. Ew, tacky.

YaaaaCHOO

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I replaced my cabin air filter and noticed the pleats were totally full of junk so I threw it on the parking lot upside down.

That’s about a half cup of used mountain.

Gee, the A/C system sure is stronger now. Guess I’ll be changing that more often in summer

Transmit THAT from your Cybiko

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That moment you finish racking in a brand new Nautel VS2.5 and look in the back panel hexagon grill to see what looks like a hell of a happening Y2K futurism looking night club interior

After color filtering:

Before:

Oh and I was not kidding about the hexagons, this would work in a couple different eras of retrofuturism.