WELH proved problematic this week. We DID have a generator, and it worked fine, once started, during an outage the week before the storm (transformer blew at the Wheeler Farm...suicidal squirrel, we were told). But then during the storm, it didn't work. It refused to work through the existing breaker panel wiring, and was very unhappy any time we tried to power up the main Elenos transmitter. Eventually we gave up and ran an extension cord to the backup transmitter, which is only 300 watts but uses an omnidirectional v-pol folded dipole instead of the DA pair of panel antennas the main uses.
The rub was that the generator was gasoline powered and had to be turned off to refuel...and it only had enough tank capacity for about five hours of operation. Then it decided to get harder and harder to restart after every refueling, so refueling outages got longer and longer.
By Tuesday morning Wheeler managed to get a diesel generator that allowed refueling while running, and that made life a lot easier. Street power was restored by Tuesday night at 11pm.
Throughout this, we had a 30 watt "aux site" transmitter running from 1 Union Station (which never lost power, but we have a big nat'l gas generator here anyways) which is not much power and a very low height. Didn't cover much beyond downtown Providence but it was better than nothing. We also brokered a last-minute deal with WDOM for their to carry us on 91.3 (all student shows were cancelled Monday and Tuesday) and they VERY graciously agreed to do so and were very helpful. Many, many thanks to everyone at PC for that, especially the student GM, Brennan.
So the upshot is that I'm in the process of ordering a 14kW Kohler generator, auto transfer switch and three 100lb propane tanks for WELH right now. Also a nice UPS to carry it between power loss and generator startup. Tomorrow I do a site visit with the contractor to get the final quote and with luck that sucker will be installed before Thanksgiving. Working on some ideas for a more robust aux site at 1 Union Station, too.
For the record, though, we had generator backup at WCVY if we needed it (fortunately, Coventry High School never lost power) and also a hefty one at WRNI-FM in Narragansett and that genny's been running since Monday and is still going. Still got at least another day or two of fuel if we need it, but power's supposed to be restored today, I'm told. As far as our listeners were concerned, neither WCVY nor WRNI-FM had any problems at all during or after the storm.
;D