Linguini Mountain

Names changed to protect the innocent.

And guilty.

Here we go. Before you read this you will need to take some reasonable precautions:

i love VFDs

The road up Linguini Mountain is the kind of thing either dreams or nightmares are made of. It’s well maintained but narrow and unpaved. One edge is a small anti erosion ditch that could easily snag a wheel; the other edge is…… Let’s not think about that too hard, but man what a view

After a switchback that inexplicably shut down the truck engine and those VFD readouts pictured above went blank…. Umm…. Yeah… I made it

Okay, no clue what’s with that but let’s just go inside.

At the far wall sits this generator. It’s too small to run the transmitter so there’s an emergency backup relay system that switches the exciter output straight to the antenna if the site is on gen power, so it remains on the air at low power.

Beyond this point, uhhHERE BE DRAGONS

This transfer switch….. I have no words.

Not exactly what Burk Technologies had in mind for their ARC-16 control ports but ok

Wait maybe on the other hand that was better

Wait what’s going on here

No this can’t be

That isn’t seriously—–??

The air filter was not in use, it ought to be just squeaky clean in that cavity..

Gonna cautiously assume that’s at least 240vac exposed

Old marti repurposed to send telemetry but wait what’s that?

And where’s it powered?

Wait wait enhance

That’s… A tree spine jamming the wires in

Reportedly this QEI won’t run if you put the cover on

That twisted pair bridge wire runs who knows where

Welp. Looks like i have a project.

13 thoughts on “Linguini Mountain”

  1. Tom:

    It appears you have what is known as “Job security” there that will keep you up on that mountain on a regular basis. The worst is the transfer switch as I have no words for that also. The rest is band aid/patch/parts bin craptacular. What is your boss think about the place and is he willing to let you upgrade anything even if you break it down into bite sized segments for them to tackle this year, next year? Hopefully so as this gig could be a short one if not.

  2. Linguini? Looks more like spaghetti…

    Ive seen worse, at least those exposed wires on the relays were soldered…..

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