Visit to a radio station

[Karl W4KRL]

Iain,

Thanks for your note from the tropics! We have about 10cm of snow and a
high of 0C.

How many listeners do you think would have noticed if the antenna had
fallen?
www.inspirational*radio*730.co.tt/live-stream
<http://www.inspirationalradio730.co.tt/live-stream>

AM radio is pretty well dead up here.

*73 Karl W4KRL*

On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 6:43 AM, Iain McFadyen <ki4hlv at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yesterday morning (first day of Carnival here) there was a motor vehicle
> accident resulting in a car completely breaking a sturdy concrete
> electricity pole in half. The car then proceeded a few extra metres, and
> collided with a large concrete foundation.
>
> The car ended up in two pieces: The whole engine separated from the body
> of the car, and the two parts came to rest about 30metres apart.
>
> Puzzled by the subject of the message yet? Keep reading...
>
> The concrete pole belonging to the electric company supports one of 'my'
> fibre optic cables running from Port of Spain to Chaguanas. So I was called
> and made aware of the situation.
>
> The emergency services and wrecker had left the scene before I got there
> (but I have pics from a colleague)
>
> Arriving on the scene. the first thing I noticed was that the concrete
> foundation a few metres from the broken pole had an anchor shaft with a
> characteristic fantail piece of flat metal, with holes along the upper edge.
>
> http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/Radio/guy-wire-rohn-n3rr.jpg
>
>  Strewn around the foundation was a length of chain, three turnbuckles,
> and... a guywire... for a mast!
>
> Just a few metres from the accident was the transmitter shack of "730am,
> Radio Trinidad". One of the masts, now missing one complete set of guys,
> was leaning at 10-15 degrees. The separated guy wires were lying against
> the fence of the radio station, clear of the crash site, and so nobody
> noticed them particularly as when viewed from the crash site itself, the
> tower was leaning away, and still looked vertical!. I hastily grabbed some
> offcuts of fibre optic cable from the car, and tied off lengths to the ends
> of the guy wires, pulled them back to the anchor, and made it safe. Fibre
> optic cable has a strength member through the centre. Enough to put tension
> on the cable. I used 3-4 lengths overlaid and interwoven.
>
> I then spent a full half hour at least, searching the web and calling
> '411' to try to track down a phone number for the owners of the radio
> station. No luck. Found a few web pages, but no way of getting hold of them
> directly. (I could submit a request for a 'shout out' or a song request,
> but no live way of directly contacting them!)
>
> I called a couple of Radio Ham friends,... one who knows most of the
> Commercial Mobile Radio companies, and another who is a rigger for the
> Police Force. They scurried off to check their Rolodexes.
>
> Meanwhile, I went back to put a little bit more tension on the temporary
> guy fixes. Managed to get the mast back to maybe 5 degrees from vertical. I
> wasn 't worried about an immediate issue: The wind was calm and the weather
> was clear with no forecast of storms. But if the wind had picked up, I
> think the mast could have blown over quite easily, given the weight of the
> other guys pulling it over and the slim cross-section of the lattice, and
> the amount of sway I experienced before even starting the emergency work..
>
> So I am ready to leave: The utility pole has been replaced, the fibre
> re-attached and coiled properly, and a temporary fix in place for the guys
> of the radio station, when a car pulls up, and a person walks up to the
> radio station entrance and goes inside. I ran after him and told him the
> story.
>
> "That probably explains why my telemetry link is down" he said. Turns out
> that they have a 5GHz internet link using a small parabolic antenna on the
> affected mast, and with the mast leaning, it was out of alignment. So I
> explained the underlying issue, and he called out the station Engineer and
> a rigging team.
>
> So, now for the good stuff: I got a tour of the station!.
>
> The station consists of Rockwell 820F, 10kW AM transmitters, on 730kHz.
> Not sure if '820F' fully describes what was there:
>
> Working modulator rack
> Working RF rack
> Exciter rack
> Changeover switch/dummy load rack
> Standby modulator rack
> Standby RF rack
>
> Six racks in all. The only online reference I can find refers to an 820F
> being three racks:
> http://www.oldradio.com/archives/hardware/Collins/820.htm
>
> In addition to that, there was a further suite of three racks, making up
> the 'standard' 820F. Stripped of tubes and some power supply parts.
>
> The modulator consists of a pair of 4CX5000.
> The RF unit consists of a pair of 4CX5000 also.
> The RF drivers are 6146B.
>
> What a fun day for me, but not for the driver of the car.
>
> Iain
>
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>
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