KOVE-FM off the air (?)

[SomeRadioGuy]

I can't think of many if any that have a UPS to support a high power FM transmitter. You could employ a Flywheel type UPS to cover the time between the Commercial power going out and the Generator getting up to speed. But that's about 30 seconds.

The stations I have seen with a UPS at the transmitter is to keep the remote control and STL equipment up. Some Nautel transmitters have a beefy UPS to keep the CPU, Exciter up so it can cycle back on the air when the generator gets on line.

Some lower power stations with under 1KW transmitters, can run on a UPS for up to an hour or more. The LPFM in the community where I live can run 1 hour during a total power failure via a UPS. But for higher power stations the UPS cost is high.

I have a UPS at the station here that will run our 180W TPO BW TX300 V2, satellite recievers, Comrex briclink feeding our stream and 6 other FM stations and the computer and console for 2 hours

 

[davideduardo]

I can't think of many if any that have a UPS to support a high power FM transmitter. You could employ a Flywheel type UPS to cover the time between the Commercial power going out and the Generator getting up to speed. But that's about 30 seconds.

The stations I have seen with a UPS at the transmitter is to keep the remote control and STL equipment up. Some Nautel transmitters have a beefy UPS to keep the CPU, Exciter up so it can cycle back on the air when the generator gets on line.

Some lower power stations with under 1KW transmitters, can run on a UPS for up to an hour or more. The LPFM in the community where I live can run 1 hour during a total power failure via a UPS. But for higher power stations the UPS cost is high.

Those are good points.

When I had 9 stations at 5 transmitter sites in Quito, Ecuador, many years ago I had one mobile generator on a trailer I could tow with my Land Rover. At each location, I'd installed an easy-to-connect cable that would attach to a three-prong plug I built onto the generator.

If there was a short power failure, we'd just wait it out. If there was a long one, I'd hook it to the 4WD vehicle and take it to the affected site.

In summers, we'd often have scheduled suspensions we knew about days and weeks ahead. I'd have the generator at the affected location the night before, and then I'd go at 5:30 AM and transfer to it, coming back after sunset to turn it off.

This was all about economics. Our ad revenue was less than a small market US station, and equipment was about two to two and a half times as costly due to shipping, import taxes and, er, "facilitation fees" at the customs clearance office. So there were no auxiliary transmitters, no individual generators, no backup STL. On the other hand, our top talent made less than $80 a month, office rent for 500 square meters was about $150 and my driver/bodyguard was $80 a month.

My point is that every investment in backup is based on some kind of return on investment. When I was in Puerto Rico with a station billing nearly $8 million, we had two generators at the transmitter and also at the studio, double microwaves, double transmitters and even a backup studio. And we had enough spare parts to probably build every piece of equipment from scratch.

Some of us remember when suppliers would do a "same day" parts delivery using unaccompanied luggage services from airlines. The supplier would send the part, and we'd go to our nearest airport and pick it up at the luggage service desk at the airline. No delivery, and lots of extra costs... but if we needed a part, it was fast!

 

[davideduardo]

My understanding is that Univision's radio sites have remote control and telemetry to allow the engineer to control the performance at a distance, however they all require power, and if the commercial utility fails, and the generator also fails, then that's a problem. A UPS could provide power to critical equipment for up to an hour, but they may have not provisioned for that. There are a number of "what-ifs" to consider, any of which would explain why the transmitter was off-the-air for more than five hours.

Fortunately, those were 5 hours that don't matter. That is the kind of consideration that goes into budgeting.

With ratings done where each participant is on the panel up to two years, and the books are issued covering a 28 day period, losing a couple of hours is not as bad as when ratings were just for a single month twice a year!