Lamp-Timer - How Does This Work?

[HHalland]

Okay then, holy crap. Bill and I can;t figure out all this stuff about lamp timers and powers of stations. If the lamp timer is set go turn something off at a certain time it just turns it off. It doesn't reduce it power okay? We looked all over Home Depot, and there is not one that will bring down the power. They all turn stuff off and on.

SO IF A STATION IS REALLY USING A LAMP TIMER TO DO THE POWER CHANGES HOW IS THIS DONE?

Does the lamp timer turn OFF one transmitter and antenna at the same time ANOTHER lamp timer is turning on a lower power transmitter and antenna? And in the case of multiple antennas is there a separate lamp timer for all of those towers? If that is the case then there would have to be some way to syncronize all of the lamp timers so they all did what they were supposed to do at the same time. I don't really think this can be done with the lamp timers we have seen here. There is no where for any of them to connect to a tower. I read the instructions and none of the current lamp timers have that jack on them.

And what if the power goes off for a few minutes or ONE of the lamp timers gets out of synch? Then everything gets all boogered up and everything I bet.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

Remember the movie The Day The Earth Stood Still?

Dr. Zorba had all sorts of dead-end formulas written on his office
blackboard...then The Third Man (long before he sunk the Titanic
on The Time Tunnel) broke in (with Bud Anderson in tow) and fixed
all the errors in the equations, much to the consternation of Dr. Zorba's
housekeeper...and probably Ben Casey, too. ;D

Well, those original error-filled formulas on the blackboard are the basis
for how the lamp timer works at Lumberyard 1440!

Or......

The whole lamp timer thing started as a joke. We don't really know
how Gumpdusky does it, but they do it bad!

 

[HHalland]

Wow..Bill counted and the phrase "LAMP-TIMER" is on this board 171 times. Holy crap.

 

[rockjock420]

Wouldn't it be more logical to assume someone at one of the other Sandusky is charged with flipping the switch every night? I was responsible for a few late / early pattern changes in my day!

 

[oldiesfan6479]

Wouldn't it be more logical to assume someone at one of the other Sandusky is charged with flipping the switch every night?

Not really. After they set the lamp timer to what they guess is something close
to the correct atomic time, they go away and ignore it for a month or more, and
it starts gaining time.

Each day between morning and evening it gains 4-5 seconds (same thing on the
backside overnight), so every 24 hours it's 8-10 seconds earlier than it was the
same time the previous day. Like bad clockwork.

After a few weeks KAZG may be signing on five-plus minutes before the monthly
specified time. If Uncle Charlie discovered this, it could prompt a notice of
violation to Gumpdusky. I mentioned in an earlier post in the "KAZG On The Air..."
thread that signing on a minute or two early should be acceptable for a station--
in order to do a real sign-on blurb, play the anthem, and hit a network 'cast at
the TOH (example being April at 0600). But five or more minutes early? Nah.
Fix the @#$% lamp timer Gumpdusky! Then there's the other actionable item,
not IDing the station at sign-on/sign-off, something Lumberyard 1440 has become
very good at. :

This just in: as I was finishing this reply, KAZG just dumped the carrier tonight
(Tuesday May 1) in the usual fashion at approx. 1909:50 (May off is 1915).
BTW, while I don't know when they came on this morning, I did hear them with
music on-air just seconds before (the May on time of) 0530.

 

[boiseengineer]

From the posted times it's got to be a timer of some sort. A lamp-timer (172) is the best suspect.
They actually work good if you bother to visit the transmitter once in a while to set it.
Plug a 120 Volt relay into it. Throw in a couple capacitors and you got a "Lamp-Timer (173)-Pattern-Changer". I could post a schematic, but who really cares.