Ok, here's a little bit of what I know...
For those who don't know, 2 radio groups here in Lubbock, Wilks and Gap, share a tower site on the south side of town.
An ice storm sometime back caused one of the 2 radio groups to go off-air for a couple of days.
Apparently, some sort of problem related to the ice caused major antenna problems.
So they switched to the backup antenna.
Evidently, switching to the backup began causing interference to the ILS at the airport.
After continued problems with the ILS for many days, the FCC was brought in.
The FCC, according to what I was told, sees lots of "hash" coming from the shared tower site, and initially blames the problem on one of the 2 radio groups. A subsequent review of the combiners, feed line, antennae and associated hardware reveals numerous problems.
The ILS interference is ultimately traced to a combination of spurious signals from several of the co-located stations broadcasting at the site, and the blame then falls onto the second radio group.
The first group brings in an engineer from the antenna manufacturer at great expense, and discovers a few problems, including an exciter that is putting out alot of noise. While a problem in itself, the noisy exciter is not related to the ILS interference issue.
What you heard Eggs was the shutdown of the stations so they could sweep the feedline and do work on the antenna. There's much more to this story than what I can nicely detail here, but suffice it to say that the FCC has warned all parties involved that they have numerous problems that need to be corrected. One group (I cannot say, but I know which) is still on the backup antenna operating at reduced power until the main antenna can be fixed. The other group's GM, after initially allowing the FCC-ordered "corrective and immediate action" to proceed during THE DAY, decided after numerous components had already been disassembled, that the FCC be damned, and told his CE "I'll pay the fines, but shutdown and do the work AFTER 10pm." The CE almost quit on the spot.
Anywhoo, still lots of problems that are being worked on, and I was told that maybe they were done last night, but might also have to look at other things tonight.
The simulcast was inadvertent as they were swapping out STL equipment at the tower site and didn't have anyone back at the studio to swap it out at the same time. So evidently they switched to 104's stl receive unit until the CE could get to the studio and put the studio feeds where they were supposed to go.
Lots of bickering, lots of back and forth with the FCC, showdown with the bosses, fried antennas- yeah it was another typical week for a few CEs I know in this market...
