Another One Missing From The Dial

[DaveWilliams]

WKBO has been missing from the dial for the last few days, did someone pull the plug on this one?

 

[John-Summers]

According to their web site: "Due to two separate lightning incidents recently Fortress 1230AM is Temporarily Off the Air. Please pray for a quick resolution & the finances to accomplish it!"

 

[DaveWilliams]

Wonder what ever happened to BACK UP? No reason for them to be off. Protection from lightning is not that hard to accomplish.

 

[vetguy]

If the matching network between the tower and the transmitter took a bad hit and burned up the components, it could take a few days to get all of the parts in to rebuild and adjust the network. That could have been one hit alone, let alone two which could have taken out other things.

 

[reelyreal]

There's a modification application pending on the tower which WKBO is located, that very well could be related. I'm not from the area, but my understanding is that the station is co-located on an American Tower structure which also supports other communications antennas. That'd lead me to believe the station is skirted on the tower. It sounds like there may have been a grounding issue, or larger issues with the tower itself.

You'd be surprised how much damage a lightning hit can do to a well grounded and protected station. I've seen lightning hit a steel structure that was well grounded, but the hit caused an electromagnetic pulse which took out a lot of gear. Lightning's tricky...

 

[John-Summers]

Wonder what ever happened to BACK UP? No reason for them to be off. Protection from lightning is not that hard to accomplish.

That may be true in most cases but sometimes a station gets hit with a double-whammy that takes out the backup too. WHTM Channel 27 was off the air for a couple of weeks not long ago due to multiple lightning strikes that caused a severe amount of damage. Their programming was still fed to cable systems and satellite, but if you watched them off the air you were outta luck.