WLW has now been silent for several minutes, at the height of severe T-Storms, in AM drive...Wow... I can only guess that they lost the STL. How can this happen? ???
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WLW - NO STL DURING T-STORMS?
- Thread starter stereolane
- Start date
Off nearly 15 minutes... Sheesh. ??? someone probably had to call Jeff Littlejohn.
Tell ya what. I never knew that a Marti STL could get attacked by tropo....
Until some country station, 150 miles away, bleeds over your STL feed and makes its way on the air.
It could have been that perfect storm of power failure and a lost backup T-1 or something.
I have never seen rain fade on an STL...
Until some country station, 150 miles away, bleeds over your STL feed and makes its way on the air.
It could have been that perfect storm of power failure and a lost backup T-1 or something.
I have never seen rain fade on an STL...
jry said:
We had an FM with a 42 mile STL using a large Scala antenna and either a Marti or Moseley... No rain fade, snow fade, or fade of any sort.
JRY, I have seen plenty of rain fade on a STL. When WCET's downlinks were in Hartwell and a heavy t-storm would roll through, we'd temporarily lose our inner city link. Likewise with Ohio Educational Broadcast network. The link between Calhoun and Miami University would drift away at times, only in deep severe weather. Note: this was pre-fiber days.
stereolane said:
J
Josh_Cols
Guest
Maybe 700 WLW intentionally went dark during the storms? They might have shut off the STL, transmitter, and unplugged the studio equipment, to prevent possible damage from a lightning strike? Anyone ever think of that?
Highly doubtful.Josh_Cols said:
Josh_Cols said:
hahaha no station would do that... Well anyone who wants to keep listeners, ad dollars etc..
However, It's quite possible since a line of very servere storms did move in the area that morning when the station was breifly dark that there could have been a lightning hit that took the STL path down breifly. (That's my guess).
A well designed/built system will be almost bulletproof against lightning. When lightning does get in, the prudent response is to find out how it penetrated the facility and put up a proper 'no vacancy' sign at that point of entry. Somehow I'd think if any station has had time to batten down the lightning hathces properly, it would be WLW. I do know of stations that have went off the air during severe storms for protection--but they were countless levels down the food chain from WLW. I once had a station that wouldn't spend a grand on AC power protection so I turned the generator on during t-storms which disconnected commercial power from the facility...worked like a charm.
I had a 50 KW plant that used 480 three phase.
Rarely did we see problems. One time lightening hit and fried the 480 line into the transmitter. Just melted everything in the trough. No electrician would touch it. We did. Man, what a mess. Oil, melted rubber and copper as hard as a rock. Took the better part of a day to replace the 25 feet of wire.
Running the generator wouldn't have helped restore the station to the air. What the heck would you have to buy to protect something like that?
Rarely did we see problems. One time lightening hit and fried the 480 line into the transmitter. Just melted everything in the trough. No electrician would touch it. We did. Man, what a mess. Oil, melted rubber and copper as hard as a rock. Took the better part of a day to replace the 25 feet of wire.
Running the generator wouldn't have helped restore the station to the air. What the heck would you have to buy to protect something like that?
J
Josh_Cols
Guest
Just to clarify, ya'll get that I was just "joking" when I suggested WLW intentionally shut down the transmitter and unplugged the studio equipment, no?
Lightning is crazy stuff. Personally I have lightning rods on my house (on acreage out in the middle of nothing) as well as Panel Guards on all 3 electric panels, lightning protection on the phone and cable incoming lines, etc. With lightning rods on the house, while I'd be seriously bummed if all my cool electronics and home automation got fried, Im more worried about preventing a fire from a direct strike.
At one cluster out West, the building took a direct hit, the strike literally blew bricks off the corner of the building, and it literally took the entire cluster off the air for a better part of the day, everything was toast. To add insult to injury, the building and equipment were only 2 years old at the time. THe building had a Prevectron type lighting protection system, which was useless; in the weeks following the ownership of the cluster replaced the Prevectron type system with a traditional NFPA 780 system, which the NFPA 780 is the only recognized form of lightning protection that UL approves.
Lightning is crazy stuff. Personally I have lightning rods on my house (on acreage out in the middle of nothing) as well as Panel Guards on all 3 electric panels, lightning protection on the phone and cable incoming lines, etc. With lightning rods on the house, while I'd be seriously bummed if all my cool electronics and home automation got fried, Im more worried about preventing a fire from a direct strike.
At one cluster out West, the building took a direct hit, the strike literally blew bricks off the corner of the building, and it literally took the entire cluster off the air for a better part of the day, everything was toast. To add insult to injury, the building and equipment were only 2 years old at the time. THe building had a Prevectron type lighting protection system, which was useless; in the weeks following the ownership of the cluster replaced the Prevectron type system with a traditional NFPA 780 system, which the NFPA 780 is the only recognized form of lightning protection that UL approves.
I've seen lightning do some pretty nasty things to a radio station.. I did some IT/programming consulting for a very small rural FM many years back which took a direct hit to one of the bays of their antenna... fried pretty much everything inside (including blowing out a few light fixtures)... the station had their exciter, amp, eas, processing, automation, production pc, switching, satellite, telephone/data stuff in the same rack (very small station)... the linksys router used for internet/network was blown into about 4 different pieces. (the strike was so powerful/direct it went back thru the T1 line for data/phones and blew out the AT&T Ped 1/4 mile up the road and fried the T1 card back at the CO) Lightning can do some very nasty things.
sometimes all the preparation is no match for a massive strike: Billy Block (Google it) was videotaping a major thunderstorm
in Nashville in August two years ago...here's the youtube link... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMpm7oHNivg
that's the STL tower...I was in one of the WSIX studios about 50 feet from the base when the strike occured.
power remained on...but virtually every console for all five Clear Channel stations...and the satellite radio network suffered damage.
the burning electronic smell lingered for days...and it was weeks before everything was restored.
the engineering staff had everyone back on-air within hours...but the NexGen suffered personality disorders for months.
therapy is ongoing.
again...you can't prepare for this kind of strike.
in Nashville in August two years ago...here's the youtube link... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMpm7oHNivg
that's the STL tower...I was in one of the WSIX studios about 50 feet from the base when the strike occured.
power remained on...but virtually every console for all five Clear Channel stations...and the satellite radio network suffered damage.
the burning electronic smell lingered for days...and it was weeks before everything was restored.
the engineering staff had everyone back on-air within hours...but the NexGen suffered personality disorders for months.
therapy is ongoing.
again...you can't prepare for this kind of strike.
Was the STL tower's grounding system directly bonded to the AC power mains grounding system? That is frequently overlooked when the tower is not within a few feet of the studio. And when it is overlooked, everything between the tower and that AC ground is 1 big expensive fuse waiting to blow.romer979fm said:
J
Josh_Cols
Guest
BobOnTheJob said:
WOW, that was crazy video, I would've jumped out of my shoes if I was only 50 feet from it, but I too have been in buildings that have been struck. 3 years ago I was at a new LIFETIME FITNESS near my house just finishing up working out around noon when it started storming outside, there was one extremely close strike that brought all the power in the building to a brownout state, when just like that there was another strike that I found out later directly struck the building, which knocked out the power and blew about a third of everything electronic in the building. I got changed and left just as the Fire Department was pulling up as their was a haze of smoke in the brand new 6 month old building.
I personally won't live in a house w/o lightning rods and appropriate lightning protection.
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