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More Technical Troubles For WICC 600

R

RadioMan203

It seems the station is once again having it's share of technical issues. I just tuned in to be treated to an intermittent motorboating carrier and every so often you might be able to make out a word or two before the motorboating makes it impossible to hear. I checked it on both the house and car radios so I know it's not my receivers.

As of right now they are off again.
 
"Got a voice like an outboard motor... Putt-putt-putt-putt-putt-putt..." - Foghorn Leghorn
 
The sound you describe is caused by a high VSWR RF load problem. It could also be a fault in the transmitter reflectometer, but more likely with the phasor, antenna tuning unit or tower(s). The transmitter continually cycles on and off to protect itself from high reflected power.
 
From what I was able to suss out it sounded like they were doing some work on the tower lighting and something became cross connected. I got the info from another local consulting engineer so I don't know how accurate the description is.

I remember when I engineered a directional daytimer in Westport that I had a bunch of tie-wraps fail that held the lines for the STL receive dishes. It altered the VSWR enough to kick the solid state Harris off the air but the old RCA BTA-1R never missed a beat. Since I didn't have a tower belt I ended up having Pat Allen's guys hike up on the weekend and secure the lines.
 
davect said:
Bill DeFelice said:
DToTheJ said:
"Got a voice like an outboard motor... Putt-putt-putt-putt-putt-putt..." - Foghorn Leghorn
Click to expand...

I gotta find that sound byte
Click to expand...

Here ya go! :) http://www.softneasy.com/putt-putt.mp3
Click to expand...

Thanks, Dave.

Marc: they've been fine since but the latest bet among the other broadcast engineers I know is when is the next calamity going to strike? In the past few months they've been off the air more than they were back in the last three decades.
 
Having been announced since Friday, WICC is once again off the air for maintenance.

At this point it's almost laughable! Come on guys, can't you do maintenance during the overnight? I would have been shot by management or the owners if I ever took any of the stations I engineered off the air during the day to do maintenance. Even when I had equipment failures I made sure the stations got back on the air and then tended to rectify the problem of the day.

It's sad enough that they have no news department to speak of. God forbid something ever happened in Bridgeport on the weekend as there'd be no way to hear about it on the radio.
 
From what I know is over the past few months The United Illuminating company installed new poles
on Pleasure Beach. New wire has been ran on the new poles, this is a stranded type which will prevent the birds
from shorting this type of wire out. The old three phase that ran along the top of the old poles the birds would build nests
across the three phase and would in time short out and cause a fire. The reason for the outage from what I know was the UI moved the transmitter building over to the new feed. I guess the generator out there no longer runs or could be out of propane.
No generator no power off the air for the duration of the change to the new feed.
 
Marc: You're dead on with that one (actually both counts). It's just hard for me to accept a station that was pretty much known for being a beacon of news and entertainment for many many years reduced to something not much more than a blip on the dial.

Ed: You would figure that any group owner worth its salt would invest in its infrastructure and maintain such things like generators. To go off during the day is a sad statement of how the owners regard their property. I would also make me wonder if they hold their personnel in a similar regard.
 
Bill DeFelice said:
Ed: You would figure that any group owner worth its salt would invest in its infrastructure and maintain such things like generators. To go off during the day is a sad statement of how the owners regard their property. I would also make me wonder if they hold their personnel in a similar regard.
Click to expand...

+1 to what Bill said, and to expand on it.
You'd think any group owner would invest in their engineers to maintain said stuff and not let the good ones, like Ed, get away.
 
Necrat said:
+1 to what Bill said, and to expand on it.
You'd think any group owner would invest in their engineers to maintain said stuff and not let the good ones, like Ed, get away.
Click to expand...

Cumulus's loss, Cox's gain. The Norwalk cluster will benefit.
 
I thought Ed was a great addition to the Cox engineering team along with WEZN's Dom Bordonaro and the now retired Clif Mills.

While replace the power lines are a good thing it waves another flag that in case of another utility outage local listeners will know that 600 will once again be silent. I would think Star 99 would capitalize on this idea and perhaps beef up their news staff. Then again I heard that the local ethnic broadcasters actually did a fairly decent job with reporting during the hurricane earlier this year.

I recently dropped my pay TV provider DirecTV over their free HD for life (except for existing subscribers). Due to the surrounding terrain I barely get any over the air signal. Had WICC had a news department like it use to have I wouldn't have even cared about television, but since the news department has basically turned into a one-man team I had to go through the exercise of getting a decent signal for Channel 8 so I would have some sort of semi-dependable news.

If WICC gets their technical issues resolved all they have left to do is revamp their image. I know times aren't great but the news department has deteriorated from what it once was.
 
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