Preparations for hurricane Milton: A TV station serving its market!

[davideduardo]

Take a look at WFLA-TV in Tampa / St. Petersburg has a huge amount of useful data now.

https://www.wfla.com/

This is worth looking at. Dozens of items, ranging from a clickable map with instructions on evacuation or preparation to information on possible tide flows based on the storm's landfall intensity.

 

[radiofan2023]

It’s great! I was watching their Youtube livestream earlier and the meteorologist was explaining all the hurricane info really well.

 

[secondchoice]

The scariest part of this storm (to me) is the stuff left over from last weeks hurricane. An airborne 2 by 4 in a 100 mph wind will puncture almost any home roof or wall even if rated for 100 mph conditions. I pretty sure being impaled is a painful death. Unless you in a basement there are not too many safe residential structures anywhere when the wind gets over one hundred miles per hour. I would not want to be in a basement during a storm surge either.

Unfortunately there will be idiots that will try to ride out the storm. Then those that do survive will get on TV and complain that nobody would rescue them. The best way to handle this folks is ask who their next of kin and don't risk emergency workers lives.

 

[alok]

Great to hear about Tampa / St. Petersburg area TV, getting ready for hurricane. Hopefully radio in the area is doing the same, I am sure they are.

Hope all do well there in Florida.

 

[secondchoice]

If you had time, would you pack up you main transmitter and move to safe place then let your auxiliary get flooded? I am pretty sure salt water would seriously shorten the life of a transmitter assuming you could get the mud off the boards. Of course after this you know how high of stilts you transmitter building has to be on.

 

[davideduardo]

If you had time, would you pack up you main transmitter and move to safe place then let your auxiliary get flooded?

Transmitters, except for relatively low power ones, are not portable. They have lots of wires, cables and coax coming in and out and are heavy enough to require a forklift or a team of 4 to 6 people to lift them... and a decent size truck to carry them.

Of course, many are modular. A station deciding it can't stay on the air would perhaps remove the plug in modules to minimize damage. However, I think staff members are going to devote most of their time to evacuation and not to disassembling the transmitter.

I am pretty sure salt water would seriously shorten the life of a transmitter assuming you could get the mud off the boards. Of course after this you know how high of stilts you transmitter building has to be on.

For AM stations, we looked for low, moist land for sites. The ideal ones were next to salt water or in salt flats near the ocean. Those will be destroyed.

Depending on how hard the storm hits, I wonder if some AMs will never rebuild.

 

[radiofan2023]

Transmitters, except for relatively low power ones, are not portable. They have lots of wires, cables and coax coming in and out and are heavy enough to require a forklift or a team of 4 to 6 people to lift them... and a decent size truck to carry them.

Of course, many are modular. A station deciding it can't stay on the air would perhaps remove the plug in modules to minimize damage. However, I think staff members are going to devote most of their time to evacuation and not to disassembling the transmitter.

For AM stations, we looked for low, moist land for sites. The ideal ones were next to salt water or in salt flats near the ocean. Those will be destroyed.

Depending on how hard the storm hits, I wonder if some AMs will never rebuild.

They might have trouble getting insurance in Florida, the way some homeowners are, regardless of being near the ocean or not.

 

[secondchoice]

Transmitters, except for relatively low power ones, are not portable. They have lots of wires, cables and coax coming in and out and are heavy enough to require a forklift or a team of 4 to 6 people to lift them... and a decent size truck to carry them.

Of course, many are modular. A station deciding it can't stay on the air would perhaps remove the plug in modules to minimize damage. However, I think staff members are going to devote most of their time to evacuation and not to disassembling the transmitter.

For AM stations, we looked for low, moist land for sites. The ideal ones were next to salt water or in salt flats near the ocean. Those will be destroyed.

Depending on how hard the storm hits, I wonder if some AMs will never rebuild.

A big transmitter over 5 KW could be difficult. Two of us moved an Harris MW1 across the room (bad floor) in about 6 hours. The equipment rack with the STL and controler was the biggest hassle.

The little Natural FM transmitters don't look that hard. A 3 or 4 bay 20 or 25 kw transmitter would be a major pain.

If you can't get insurance*, something movable might be your only chance to stay in business. Decent transmitters are expensive. IMHO something on "stilts" might be the only way to go.

*Insurance or the lack of it might make some large areas of America "uninhabitable" and whammy the market(s). I was thinking about moving to the Big Bend area of FLA. I am not going to pay over $3k a month for insurance.

 

[vchimpanzee]

I was checking to see how outrageous the music is on WVLG in The Villages, forgetting that a storm is coming. There was a news brief that said make your preparations in the morning because it could get bad in the afternoon. Maybe this means everything is automated and no one is changing the information right now. The music still seems to be going.

On the other side of Florida WLML is warning certain people to evacuate and hoping things won't be too bad. The traffic report was pretty much non-existent.

Not about radio but one of the newspapers I look at online had a photo of Helene debris where they are preparing for Milton. Not good.

 

[vchimpanzee]

No one seems to realize WLML is still doing yesterday's weather forecast from CBS 12, with Milton yet to make landfall. The DJ is live.