-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
KOVE-FM off the air (?)
- Thread starter jt99
- Start date
This could be any number of things, but given it is nearly midnight CST they may have shut down for maintenance. Could be something planned, or could be an emergency that force a quick response.
Usually when a station shuts off completely, it is either an antenna system failure where there is not backup antenna.... antenna issue, transmission line or antenna switching issue.
Could be power failure and the generator did not auto-start. Someone has to get to transmitter site and manually take care of this.
Other, more remote possibilities are things like damage to the transmitter building, flooding, tower fail (meaning it went horizontal) or a precautionary shutdown due to some kind of police or environmental issue in the area (such as natural gas leak, etc.)
But "when you hear hoof beats, think horses and not zebras" so routine, late night maintenance is the most likely.
I’m in Conroe and was hoping for tropos to help bring it in cause I get that area a lot with tropos. When did they reduce power? I drove to Shreveport about a month ago and they were pretty strong
Alpha requested the initial power reduction in December 2020. My QTH is between Lindale and Tyler (close to I-20), and there are conditions in which "Jack-FM" drops out and receives interference to the signal coming from nearly due south in Mount Selman. This was not the case while it was operating at its normal output.
I haven't driven over to Shreveport in some time, so I'm quite surprised and rather impressed with your reception report. In my experience, EMF's 106.7C2 northwest of Minden prohibits any listenable signal coming from Jack.
I didn’t hear them in Shreveport. But I heard them east of Center all the way through south of Lufkin. I’m pretty sure there was some tropos that night because I was getting Shreveport signals further than I would have expected.
I’m hearing audio now
I hear zebras. Because I highly doubt it was late-night manitenance.
It turned out to be power loss and failure of the generator to start up.
Thought so. My understanding is the transmitter is way down in Hitchcock, and the engineer is far removed from that site. And probably sound asleep. I'm sure it took him some time to saddle-up the zebra and ride down there.
I think it came back all by itself when mains power returned.
From my prior post two days ago:
At the very least, it lets them know that the generator is due for service.
Factoid: the best equipment in the world fails occasionally.
I had a case with a well maintained generator that had run for weekly tests for years, been serviced by a diesel tech twice yearly, and operated without fail for the 15 to 20 real power failures a year we had in metro San Juan, PR. We had a hurricane coming, and we ran a manual test on the genny, and it went on perfectly. But when, the next afternoon the power went out, it did not start. Winds were too high to try to service the outbuilding it was in, so we were off the air.
The cause? Over a 6 or 7 year period, a connector that was not tightened quite hard enough had oxidized and the control box would not work. When we later figured it out, we trimmed the wire, replaced the connector box and the generator ran just fine for many more years.
It's the part of serendipity that says that something that will break will do so at the worst possible moment.
My understanding is that Univision's radio sites have remote control and telemetry to allow the engineer to control the performance at a distance, however they all require power, and if the commercial utility fails, and the generator also fails, then that's a problem. A UPS could provide power to critical equipment for up to an hour, but they may have not provisioned for that. There are a number of "what-ifs" to consider, any of which would explain why the transmitter was off-the-air for more than five hours.
I can't think of many if any that have a UPS to support a high power FM transmitter. You could employ a Flywheel type UPS to cover the time between the Commercial power going out and the Generator getting up to speed. But that's about 30 seconds.
The stations I have seen with a UPS at the transmitter is to keep the remote control and STL equipment up. Some Nautel transmitters have a beefy UPS to keep the CPU, Exciter up so it can cycle back on the air when the generator gets on line.
Some lower power stations with under 1KW transmitters, can run on a UPS for up to an hour or more. The LPFM in the community where I live can run 1 hour during a total power failure via a UPS. But for higher power stations the UPS cost is high.
The stations I have seen with a UPS at the transmitter is to keep the remote control and STL equipment up. Some Nautel transmitters have a beefy UPS to keep the CPU, Exciter up so it can cycle back on the air when the generator gets on line.
Some lower power stations with under 1KW transmitters, can run on a UPS for up to an hour or more. The LPFM in the community where I live can run 1 hour during a total power failure via a UPS. But for higher power stations the UPS cost is high.
- Status