It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted about station engineering events, so I thought I’d comment on a few of the happenings.
Amidst all the other excitement of the Independence Day weekend, we lost the connection for all three of our online streams. We tried the usual fixes (several times) to no avail. My thanks to Brian Coburn at Argia North America who got our streaming re-routed around the offending equipment.
The high temperatures of the prior week caused a bit of concern about the transmitter sites but the only outages were caused by power bumps and not by overheating. This year’s Antoine Creek fire knocked KPBW off the air in Brewster for a day or so, due to a power outage.
Some exciting news…we were approached by the Thompson Falls (Montana) TV District with a request to carry KPBX’s program on their local translator. We, of course, gave them the go-ahead. As of today, the translator is still on the previous source, but listen for KPBX on 103.9 in Thompson Falls in the not-too-distant future.
Another project that we’re considering is changing the program feed for KXJO in Saint Maries, Idaho from KPBX to KSFC. The reason for this is that most, if not all, listeners in Saint Maries already get a great KPBX signal on 91.1. If we can make this switch, the KSFC programs will also be available in Saint Maries on 92.1.
I traveled to Omak a few weeks back and, with the help of Mike Peterson of KSPS, we hardened up the support structure for the KOMQ transmit antenna. Even though it survived last winter, it was knocked out of alignment. Ironically, a falling piece of ice did manage to take that station down for several days by breaking the LNB off the indoor satellite dish.
So, that’s just a summary of what we’re doing. This is the season to repair last winter’s damage and try to get ahead of what next winter is planning for us.
Jerry Olson
Chief Engineer
SPR Tech Talk 