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Storm outages

MarcB

MarcB

3 Stations on West Peak in Meriden went down at 11PM last night - Hot 93.7, Country 92.5, and 102.9 The Big D. Hot 93.7 was back on before 11:30PM, Country 92.5 came back sometime before 5:30AM this morning, but The Big D was off until well into this afternoon.

Also off the air:

98.3 WILI-FM Willimantic (CHR)
104.9 WIHS Middletown (Religious)
610 WSNG Torrington (Talk simul of WDRC 1360)
910 WLAT New Britain (Tropical)
990 WXCT Southington (Spanish Christian)
1120 WPRX Bristol (Tropical)
1150 WMRD Middletown (Talk) They were on the air last night, but off the air Sunday Morning.
1380 WFNW Naugatuck (Spanish)
1550 WSDK Bloomfield (Religion)

Bomba 97.1 was off the air for Saturday Night. They were back on before Noon Sunday. (Not sure how because I thought Bolton was 100% without power)

TV:

8.2 WTNH Bounce TV (They came back on for a while Saturday night, but then were having technical issues)
18.3 WUVN Telefutura (Picture was frozen for several hours last night)
30.3 WVIT Universal Sports TV (Picture was frozen for several hours last night)

Today as of 10:40PM:

WUVN 18.1 and 18.3 are off the air. On COX there is a frozen image from a show on Univision on Channel 18. On DirecTV is a slide from DirecTV informing viewers that they were aware of the problem and not to call. Telefutura is blacked out on COX.

WRDM-LP 50 Telemundo - Off the air.

I feel sorry for my Hispanic Friends. So much of the Hispanic media is down.
 
From what I see on the WDRC FM web site today 10/31.
It indicates the generator ran out of fuel.
Maybe WDRC can tells us what happend Saturday night into mid Sunday
when they went off the air. I find off air stories interesting, as I work in the radio
Engineering field myself. There are so many things that can take a station down.
Good luck to WDRC and I hope they come back soon as I enjoy the station.
 
Ed B said:
I find off air stories interesting, as I work in the radio
Engineering field myself. There are so many things that can take a station down.
Click to expand...

New Years Eve celebrating the New Year of 1987....WICC. Al "Late Nite" Lawrence did a 10-second countdown to the New Year and the station quickly went off the air. This is because some kids lit firecrackers on Pleasure Beach and knocked out the power line to the transmitter.
 
Sometime after 6:30PM I discovered DRC-FM back on the air. :)

According to their Facebook WILI-FM just went back to FullPower at 745PM. (after being at 8 watts)

Could be a while before WMRD, WESU, and WIHS return to the air as I heard Middletown is 100% in the Dark. Same can be said for WLAT 910 as their tower site is in Farmington and Farmington is nearly 100% down. Nutmeg Community TV remains off the air as well as their studios are off of Brickyard Road in Farmington.

It should be noted that in my car in The West End of Bristol I was picking up WMNR on 88.1 with WESU down.

On TV, now that my Comcast is back up WUVN Channels 18.1 and 18.3 are back up.

610 WSNG, 1170 WCTF, 990 WXCT, 1120 WPRX, 1230 WNEZ, and WSDK 1550 remain off the air.

A good portion of Manchester and Bloomfield remain in the dark. Most of Bristol is in the dark as well. Harwington and Southington were also hard hit.
 
I just checked at 9:40 PM: 1150 AM, 88.1 and 104.9 from Middletown are still off the air. The carrier for 910 AM of New Britain is on, but with no broadcast. 1120 of New Britain/Bristol is still off the air. The proof of that is I'm getting a decent signal of WBT-AM 1110 from Charlotte again.
 
MarcB said:
8.2 WTNH Bounce TV (They came back on for a while Saturday night, but then were having technical issues)
18.3 WUVN Telefutura (Picture was frozen for several hours last night)
30.3 WVIT Universal Sports TV (Picture was frozen for several hours last night)
Click to expand...

You do realize that these are just programs within a master stream. "8.1 & 8.2", are one RF signal, on VHF channel 10.
Same with 18.3, which is on the same signal as 18.1, 18.2, and 30.3 is on the same as 30.1, and 30.2

Sounds like a bunch of satellite dishes became covered with snow, and suffered from "snow fade".
 
How much does a high power genset cost to power up a station.I see these carnaval tracter trailers gensets at the carnavals running.I dont know what the KW hours on them.Reading about WDRC's genset running out of fuel also gives me a question about if someone supposted to be monitoing the fuel tank levels and having a load of more fuel on stand by and pumped into the tank before it died.
 
I heard that the road to get up to WDRC-FM's antenna site is/was impassible, so engineers can't get up there to refuel the generator until it's cleared...
 
MarcB said:
Also off the air:
990 WXCT Southington (Spanish Christian)
Click to expand...

In all fairness, hasn't WXCT been off the air for about... um... when did you part ways with WXCT again? ::)
 
DToTheJ said:
In all fairness, hasn't WXCT been off the air for about... um... when did you part ways with WXCT again? ::)
Click to expand...

Joe, it does not matter anymore. What I do know is through the "You know you're from Southington Group" on Facebook and talking to people in town while at work a lot miss the old days of when said station served the community. The problem of course is none of these people actually have $700K to buy the station, which is what I heard DMG would be willing to sell the station for. But you need much more than that. That building on Old Turnpike Road is in bad shape. New energy efficient windows are needed, a new roof is needed, the inside and outside needs a good paint job, a commercial generator is needed, and new modern equipment is needed. And plus there's the cost off filing paper work with the FCC to change the call sign from WXCT back to WNTY.
 
Yay! I Have power! (actually, I had backup power from an inverter in my car if the need arose at any time, I could have made it back online with my dsl and laptop, but instead I used it to power my Dish Network box and hooked up a portable tv (only uses 12 D-cells!) and had TV this weekend, when I wasn't at work (in the dark).

Note: to all, this is in no way meant to be critical of any radio stations or the staff, techies and suchwe all know they work very hard in times like this to keep service running, this is meant as observations only and if some of this information is helpful in some way, all the better (except for my digs at WMNR for somehow getting co-channel with an existing station in the first place, if they weren't there, WESU would have a massive coverage area)

In the past, when just about all operations for WESU were mainted from Clark Hall, there was a backup natural gas powered system that took over, but such systems do not exist from the current locations of the studios nor transmitter sites for whatever reason, which I do not believe were decisions of the radio station. At present time, I'm showing WESU off the air, but look for it to be back soon as segements of Wesleyan University come back up. The Usdan Univeristy center has been powered up all morning (possibly as long as I have been with power as well as my power came back at 3:47 AM this morning). I wasn't surprised to see WIHS back up this morning as they are pretty much just down the road.

Over the weekend, I was out and about in much of southern Hartford county and found it disturbing just how well WMNR came in, if not for the programming, I would have mistaken them for WESU. I have to wonder why when WMNR was in the works that no one from WESU protested with the FCC. (when was that anyway? early 70's???)

At one point, I was at Home Depot in Berlin and was checking the band, WDRC was ... well, they weren't exactly out, they were failing, or the generator was, because when I listened closely, I heard what sounded like a weak pulsating signal with DRC's programming on it. It was as if a hampster was in it's wheel and had a bad leg, the signal would be out, then a small hint of it as it came to power slowly rising to a point here it was ablmost audible over the static level, then poof! gone again, repeat this in 10 second intervals and you've got the idea. Suspicious that this was a transmitter having trouble powering up, I checked 102.7 and at the same intervals, I heard a small signal burst as the transmitter nearly reached proper operating frequency as enough power to stabilize it was reached.

With WIHS out, I noted that I had great reception of Power 105.1 from NYC.

Over the entire weekend WTIC-AM was important in it's play by play action of the situation (as it still is) but I have heard frequent signal drops lasting about 1 to 2 seconds at a time.

At some point, I noticed WWYZ off as well, or just dead carrier, but they werten't like that long enough that I really paid attention.

At curent time from my location the following is observed,:
WESU is off the air, I expect they will return within 24 hours, but I cannot be 100% certain of that, it is an assumption due to surrounding areas at Wesleyan already being restored.
WWYZ - RDS but no HD (as usual this might be due to my poor location)
WKSS - not quite getting a lock on the HD, so not sure of status of HD2
WPLR - see WWYZ
WDRC-FM - Um, well, I know they were on earlier, but I'm not getting anything now, although when I hold the antenna a certain way the static drops off and it almost sounds like a weak dead carrier (the way I'm talking about usually brings in better recption from West Peak stations).
WMRQ - No HD3 (is this gone for good? I'll stop mentioning it when I see it verifyed, which I'm not sure that I have yet)
WHCN - No HD2, getting a solid lock on HD-1

and as I was in the downtown area of New Britain sunday night, I got a good solid signal on 1620 AM as usual, I think when Irene hit, and downtown NB was out, so was 1620, so, even if I didn't have a clue where they were, this narrows it down a bit for some.
 
Follow-up at 10pm:
WESU is down, Usdan is up, power in parts of campus continue to go up and down, so who knows when.
WWYZ - Unchanged
WZMX - No HD, only RDS "mid-day mix"??
WKSS - Unchanged
WPLR, hey, HD is back! (it seems really strong and I can't get it to drop out, maybe it wasn't my location afterall)
WDRC-FM is on, but with a weak signal, running Tom Kent, but they sound like they are being fed by phone line right now, RDS is up but only displays "102.9/WDRC-FM" and there is a stereo pilot light but I don't hear stereo (also note, at 2:30pm when I was in the car, I noted them with the same weaker signal with no audio but also in stereo) do they have a backup transmitter at Blue hills? I forget.
WMRQ - Unchanged
WHCN - Unchanged
 
DJKraze said:
WMRQ - No HD3 (is this gone for good? I'll stop mentioning it when I see it verifyed, which I'm not sure that I have yet)
Click to expand...

The HD3 was only ever turned on when it was leased by WYCM Charlton... WYCM was also rebroadcast on WYCM-LP Ashaway RI... both relationships ended. WYCM-LP is now WSUB-LP and the HD3 was turned off on WMRQ.
 
MarcB said:
Also off the air:

1150 WMRD Middletown (Talk) They were on the air last night, but off the air Sunday Morning.
rry for my Hispanic Friends. So much of the Hispanic media is down.
Click to expand...

Are you sure it was WMRD last night? Did you hear an ID? It could have been another 1150 via skip. As far as I was told, they had been off until sometime this afternoon(Tuesday). WLIS also went down as a result, except for some segued music today, prior to the WMRD restoration.
 
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