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Your worst engineering situation?

O

oldnewbie

I enjoyed the thread regarding the oldest automation system. Yeah, I enjoy "War Stories".

Overall, what is the worst engineering job or situation you have ever had? What made it so bad? What, if anything, did you learn from the experience.

Just wonderin'. THANKS FOR CONTRIBUTING!

PS - I just got to say - I am studying Electronics at a local Comm. College with a goal of obtaining SBE certification. I have wonderful instructors, but truth be told, I have learned almost as much reading this board. I almost feel like I should be sending someone a tuition check! Thanks to ALL OF YOU for your posts.
 
I consider tower collapses to be the worst. Lightning strikes come in at number two, and studio or transmitter room fires are number three on my list. Fortunately for me I haven’t personally encountered #1 and #3 (gosh, I hope I don’t jinx it now). But I do know someone who did work for a station that had a tower collapse. On October 12th, 1996, a crew was attempting to install a new antenna on a tower in Cedar Hill, Texas (Dallas County). A strong gust of wind caught a hoisting device the crew was using. It toppled, slicing one of the tower’s guy wires on the way down. My friend said the tower swayed back and forth for a moment before it collapsed. All three of the crew members were killed, one of which was flung from the tower as it fell.

During my 15 years in radio (18 if you count the three years I was a student DJ) I have encountered three antenna damage situations caused by lightning strikes, all of them happening at the same station. The first one happened in November of 1992. We were just shy of a year’s time on our new tower. I work nights, and one night as I was taking a routine meter reading, I noticed there was quite a bit of reflective power. Glancing over the log I noticed the reflective power had been slowly climbing throughout the day. By the time I took the readings, it was up to 200%! Why the other licensed operators on duty before me didn’t catch this, I’ll never know. Another operator told me that very night he had been driving on a nearby freeway and said he noticed severe arcing at the top of our tower.

The last time this happened, was last summer. This strike damaged the antenna beyond repair. It happened while I was on duty and I knew something was wrong as soon as I noticed the decrease in power. As luck would have it, yet another co-worker was driving that same freeway that evening and from her vantage point she said she saw a strike hit either a cell phone tower or our tower (probably ours, and probably the one that sealed the antenna’s fate).

R
 
I once worked at an independent UHF station in Greensboro NC. This was one of the last of the old-guard pre-WB/Fox/UPN stations with no network affiliation at all. We were on the third floor of a building that also housed the Greensboro Chamber Of Commerce and an architechtural firm. The building had a flat room with hardly no drainage. Water often accumulated to a level of two feet or more.

One night in summer 1987 a severe thunderstorm rolled through Greensboro and completely filled our rooftop lake in a very short time. I was sitting in the station’s control room directly underneath the point of deepest water accumulation, although I didn’t know that at the time.

During a commercial break I noticed a few drops of water beginning to plunk on the control board. I looked up just in time to see the ceiling suddenly rupture wide open, allowing a veritable Niagara of rainwater to come roaring in directly on me and my tape machines. Oh, it was awful. I nearly got konked on the head by a falling ceiling beam. Every piece of broadcast gear in the room got thoroughly doused while I was running around in water up to my ankles, soaked to the skin, flipping off high-voltage circuit breakers, moving irreplaceable tapes to a dry area and generally trying to keep the station from becoming a total loss.

We were off the air for the rest of that evening and a good portion of the next day while everything dried out. The architechtural firm on the floor below us had many important blueprints ruined. My friends in the area tell me this station has since become a network affiliate, been sold to new owners and relocated to better quarters. For their sake I certainly hope so.

I managed to turn this into a positive experience though. For a number of years afterwards I had no trouble getting TV MCO jobs. The chief engineers figured that if I could handle that situation I could handle anything.

Another real fun occasion happened at a B/EZ station in eastern NC. We were running a Cetec-Schafer four reel automation system. One evening it was time to set the automation clock back for daylight saving time. The automation systems of the day could not do this on its own. I had the system's manual right there in front of me, taking pains to go through the clock-setting process EXACTLY by the book.

There was a page missing. No one had told me, and at 3 AM I didn't notice the gap in the page numbers. Apparently the missing page contained some crucial information.

I pressed a certain sequence of buttons and wiped the entire system memory in one pop. It was as blank as the day they took it out of the box. 100kw was sitting there dead silent.

I started slamming in reel numbers as fast as I could, and after about an hour the music came back up, although the reels were not in the original rotation sequence. I asked the operations manager about the proper formatic reel rotation the next day, but he could not locate the paper with the numbers on it. It ran random B/EZ reels until the station changed to a "lite" format a few months later.

KL

<a href="http://home.nc.rr.com/gttyson/lastradio.html">The Last Radio Station<a>
 
I knew of a small town FM station running B/EZ in the 1970s from one of those old reel-to-reel automation systems with carts for commercials. The station was totally automated with just a contract chief engineer in another city. The GM had been taking money illegally from the books and was about to be caught by the out of town owners. The GM calmly went to the automation system and removed a card from the simple computer that ran the whole thing. It ran ok until the next commercial break. The GM took the card, put it in his briefcase, told the receptionist he was going to lunch, got in his car, withdrew the cash from the bank account and just kept driving. The station's music played through several machines in a pre-programmed cycle for about 20 mins. until the next commercial break, then the automation system just shut down. There was no one around for the rest of the day who could figure out what to do, once they started running the automation manually, they still didn't have a computer and this was far from the day of PC's so you couldn't just run down and pick up another computer.
 
Well, the worst I've seen wasn't really "my situation", just a situation where I tried to step in and improve things...unfortunately, they just didn't want to be helped. Station is a nearby 5000 watt religious daytimer. In the past I had heard from several other engineers about how bad shape the station was, how they didn't pay their bills, etc... Over the past summer I got a call from another engineer saying the station had been off for almost a week and that no one would help them because they owed everyone money. I'm always willing to give someone a chance, so I called them up. They said that they could hear the station in the parking lot and the transmitter was making 2000 watts. I went down to have a look. Upon arrival I found the dirtiest MW-5 I've ever seen. It was making 2kw and showing NO VSWR...none of the other metering seemed to work (obviously including the VSWR)...could hear the station off the air for about 300 feet from the tower. Did I mention that this station was combined with another AM into a unipole? Ended up finding a improperly installed splice in the feedline that had burned through. TX was making 2kw into a dead short for a week and still running. I installed 2 flanges and a bullet into the feedline and got them back on the air. They were thrilled. Took a while to get paid, but I did. The entire station is a real mess. The transmitter has no working metering, most of the interlocks and filter caps are bypassed, water has been leaking in through the exhaust, and the thing probably hasn't been cleaned in 10 or 15 years...full of dead bugs and lots of dirt. The "studio" is in a trailer that should be condemned...2 windows were missing, every time it rained, it rained in the studio...no working air conditioning or heat, mold everywhere, etc...the only studio gear consists of a WORN-OUT Autogram Pacemaker with only a few working channels, a radio shack mic, 2 DVD players (used as CD players) a Sat. Receiver, a Gorman Redlich EAS, and an Optimod. The place was absolutely filthy, and the console had a terrible hum in the audio. Overall, it's the WORST I've ever seen. Currently, they're back to running at low power because of a burnt PDM filter coil in the transmitter that they can't afford to fix, and the station was recently broken into and most of the studio equipment was stolen. Considering that they were already missing windows, it wasn't really surprising that it was broken into. The local station manager is a really nice guy, and I really tried my best to get in there and turn things around. Seems the owner didn't want to or couldn't spend ANY money. I hate to see a station go to waste like that...it has a decent signal when running at full power. Oh, well. I enjoy the stories from the trenches...keep 'em coming.

-Chris Hall
www.reelaudio.net
www.rfspec.com
 
Ok...I will make this short...but it could go on and on....

A really inexperienced small station owner ran 1570 to their own personal political views...it was local talk with the owners views on local political hot button issues. Often her views were ill informed and controversial. She went up against the large corporate garbage disposal company with blue trucks in favor of a local landfill.

The station mysteriously caught fire in the middle of the night. It was an AM daytimer. The studios and transmitter...in a converted old farmhouse....were ashes and melted metal. The arson investigation found the fire suspicious. No one was ever brought to justice over the blaze.

I was a contract engineer for the facility. We put it back on the air in two days....borrowed transmitter in a tractor trailer, make shift studio in a carnival pizza trailer, phone lines laid on the ground, temporary electrical service, all loaned or rented equipment from other stations...all done and on the air just ONE DAY after the owner said..."put me back on".

It stayed that way for months...Eventually she sold it and I rebuilt it properly for the new owner.


> I enjoyed the thread regarding the oldest automation system.
> Yeah, I enjoy "War Stories".
>
> Overall, what is the worst engineering job or situation you
> have ever had? What made it so bad? What, if anything, did
> you learn from the experience.
>
> Just wonderin'. THANKS FOR CONTRIBUTING!
>
> PS - I just got to say - I am studying Electronics at a
> local Comm. College with a goal of obtaining SBE
> certification. I have wonderful instructors, but truth be
> told, I have learned almost as much reading this board. I
> almost feel like I should be sending someone a tuition
> check! Thanks to ALL OF YOU for your posts.
>
<P ID="signature">______________
employed by a big broadcorping castration</P>
 
> Well, the worst I've seen wasn't really "my situation", just
> a situation where I tried to step in and improve
> things...unfortunately, they just didn't want to be helped.
> Station is a nearby 5000 watt religious daytimer. In the
> past I had heard from several other engineers about how bad
> shape the station was, how they didn't pay their bills,
> etc... Over the past summer I got a call from another
> engineer saying the station had been off for almost a week
> and that no one would help them because they owed everyone
> money. I'm always willing to give someone a chance, so I
> called them up. They said that they could hear the station
> in the parking lot and the transmitter was making 2000
> watts. I went down to have a look. Upon arrival I found
> the dirtiest MW-5 I've ever seen. It was making 2kw and
> showing NO VSWR...none of the other metering seemed to work
> (obviously including the VSWR)...could hear the station off
> the air for about 300 feet from the tower. Did I mention
> that this station was combined with another AM into a
> unipole? Ended up finding a improperly installed splice in
> the feedline that had burned through. TX was making 2kw
> into a dead short for a week and still running. I installed
> 2 flanges and a bullet into the feedline and got them back
> on the air. They were thrilled. Took a while to get paid,
> but I did. The entire station is a real mess. The
> transmitter has no working metering, most of the interlocks
> and filter caps are bypassed, water has been leaking in
> through the exhaust, and the thing probably hasn't been
> cleaned in 10 or 15 years...full of dead bugs and lots of
> dirt. The "studio" is in a trailer that should be
> condemned...2 windows were missing, every time it rained, it
> rained in the studio...no working air conditioning or heat,
> mold everywhere, etc...the only studio gear consists of a
> WORN-OUT Autogram Pacemaker with only a few working
> channels, a radio shack mic, 2 DVD players (used as CD
> players) a Sat. Receiver, a Gorman Redlich EAS, and an
> Optimod. The place was absolutely filthy, and the console
> had a terrible hum in the audio. Overall, it's the WORST
> I've ever seen. Currently, they're back to running at low
> power because of a burnt PDM filter coil in the transmitter
> that they can't afford to fix, and the station was recently
> broken into and most of the studio equipment was stolen.
> Considering that they were already missing windows, it
> wasn't really surprising that it was broken into. The local
> station manager is a really nice guy, and I really tried my
> best to get in there and turn things around. Seems the
> owner didn't want to or couldn't spend ANY money. I hate to
> see a station go to waste like that...it has a decent signal
> when running at full power. Oh, well. I enjoy the stories
> from the trenches...keep 'em coming.
>
> -Chris Hall
> www.reelaudio.net
> www.rfspec.com
>
Chris,

With all due respect, you can't go behind the other contract guys and bail these people out!
I do contract work, and I have done work for stations and not been paid.It has happened to all the other contract engineers I know. Some operators are just "deadbeats!" They were never taught to honor their obligations by their parents and they won't lose a wink of sleep from screwing you. These people take advantage of EVERYONE....not just timid engineering folk.
People like you ENABLE these people. You are not helping some poor, unfortunate soul, who is down on his luck. These people are professional reprobates and are only emboldened by folks like you who want to "give em' another chance." If there is a list of folks who will not work for them, is that not your cue to stay away?
Chris, I'm sure you are a nice guy and really want to help the broadcast community. I applaud your "get er' done" attitude! Those people are damn lucky to run across someone like you......
But you are also a broadcast engineer, and I hope a principled human being, and that means you do not help people who do not pay their engineers. Let them go off the air....have a MW-5 roast....and then they (maybe)will sell to someone who wants to be a REAL broadcaster.
Sorry for the rant! And I do not mean to attack Chris, who is only trying to do it the best way he knows how. But engineering techies, like doctors, should stick together! There is safety in numbers......
 
Not my own, Thank God!

This one happened to a long-time friend some 20 years back; I saw the evidence of it but wasn't there with him when he found it.

Station had fired their engineer for what seems to have been good reason and hired the guy who got victimized. Former engineer had seen it coming and the station gave him a couple of weeks notice -- bad move.

For several weeks after the new guy took over everything went pretty well...normal maintenance but a fair bit of resolving old, but minor, problems. Then the transmitter shut down and wouldn't come back up. This was a pretty old, even at the time, type type 5-kW with nothing in the way of diagnostics. After many hours he discovered a little addition to the interlock circuits. Very neatly done so as to be almost impossible to spot easily. A pair of wires under the floor into the bottom of a rack across the room with a tiny 12VDC relay set up so the NO contacts were in series with the interlocks. The relay was held "on" by a 12 Volt battery of the variety used with automatic backup lighting. Probably a used one from some past scheduled maintenance of the emergency lights. When the battery discharged....slowly....instant OFF!

By then the former engineer was long gone, leaving no forwarding address and nobody felt it worth the effort to chase after him.

The moral: This guy is still out there somewhere, so if you replace somebody who got fired and your transmitter suddenly shuts down, look in the racks! You may have found him.
<P ID="signature">______________
Artificial intelligence is NO match for natural stupidity!</P>
 
> The moral: This guy is still out there somewhere, so if you
> replace somebody who got fired and your transmitter suddenly
> shuts down, look in the racks! You may have found him.

Worst going away present from a disgruntled former engineer ever: the jumpered air interlock pressure switch I found in a Harris 2.5HA after the blower failed and the final tube and socket melted down. In 3 feet of fresh snow in a freak blizzard in Arizona. We knew who did it, but the perp's fake religious act prevented the niceguy owner from doing anything about it.
 
> Worst going away present from a disgruntled former engineer
> ever: the jumpered air interlock pressure switch I found in
> a Harris 2.5HA after the blower failed and the final tube
> and socket melted down. In 3 feet of fresh snow in a freak
> blizzard in Arizona. We knew who did it, but the perp's
> fake religious act prevented the niceguy owner from doing
> anything about it.

Speaking of which...the blowers in my SX-5A are kind of ghetto. Is there a mod for an air interlock or something to fault the transmitter (PDM kill?) if the air stops flowing?<P ID="signature">______________
</P>
 
How do you know it was jumpered intentionally? Obviously it should have been logged and the air pressure switch immediately fixed/replaced - maybe jumpered to stay on the air while a new switch was overnighted.

It is too bad that this transmitter doesn't have two blowers (redundant) in the PA.

>
> Worst going away present from a disgruntled former engineer
> ever: the jumpered air interlock pressure switch I found in
> a Harris 2.5HA after the blower failed and the final tube
> and socket melted down. In 3 feet of fresh snow in a freak
> blizzard in Arizona. We knew who did it, but the perp's
> fake religious act prevented the niceguy owner from doing
> anything about it.
>
 
> > Worst going away present from a disgruntled former
> engineer
> > ever: the jumpered air interlock pressure switch I found
> in
> > a Harris 2.5HA after the blower failed and the final tube
> > and socket melted down. In 3 feet of fresh snow in a
> freak
> > blizzard in Arizona. We knew who did it, but the perp's
> > fake religious act prevented the niceguy owner from doing
> > anything about it.
>
> Speaking of which...the blowers in my SX-5A are kind of
> ghetto. Is there a mod for an air interlock or something to
> fault the transmitter (PDM kill?) if the air stops flowing?
>

Sure there is. Wire an air pressure sensor close to the blowers. The SX-5 has an external interlock interface. Wire the sensor to that. Pretty simple! The RF will remain muted until there is enough air blowing to engage the pressure switch.

I always have a set of blowers/fans in inventory for exciters and TX's. Reminds me that I have an appointment with my SX-5 to replace some blowers that are starting to get loud.<P ID="signature">______________
</P>
 
> Speaking of which...the blowers in my SX-5A are kind of
> ghetto. Is there a mod for an air interlock or something to
> fault the transmitter (PDM kill?) if the air stops flowing?

Check around for a 0 (zero, that's correct)-Ohm relay (may be able to find one surplus out of an old airport rotating beacon) to wire in series with the blower. You could use the grossly over-rated contacts to turn the transmitter off and trigger an alarm. The beacon relay coils (they were used to switch from burned out 1,000 lamps to the backup) should have plenty of current handling capacity to work OK in series with the blower. Used to maintain an airport beacon but that was 40+ years ago and I never forgot the size of that relay. It was over 25 years old at the time and I believe they're still using the originals at some airports today; built like a tank!

I believe you can find microswitches with little flappers on the arm that would at least trigger an alarm but you'd play hell trying to design a bracket to hold it securely in the air stream. And...with the transmitter turned off...you'd have a constant alarm. I'm sure you could work some sort of circuit where the alarm would be prevented but it seems like a lot of work.

<P ID="signature">______________
Artificial intelligence is NO match for natural stupidity!</P>
 
> I always have a set of blowers/fans in inventory for
> exciters and TX's. Reminds me that I have an appointment
> with my SX-5 to replace some blowers that are starting to
> get loud.

When I was tracing some wires with Harris on the phone I had to power the xmtr off because the blowers were so loud.

If you get a discount in bulk, count me in and grab me 3 blowers.<P ID="signature">______________
</P>
 
Check you e-mail.....<P ID="signature">______________
Artificial intelligence is NO match for natural stupidity!</P>
 
> > I always have a set of blowers/fans in inventory for
> > exciters and TX's. Reminds me that I have an appointment
> > with my SX-5 to replace some blowers that are starting to
> > get loud.
>
> When I was tracing some wires with Harris on the phone I had
> to power the xmtr off because the blowers were so loud.
>
> If you get a discount in bulk, count me in and grab me 3
> blowers.
>

I'm hoping that these are a bit quieter...though the Rotron's seem to always be pretty loud! I'll take you up on that, I always try to buy more than I need at the moment if I can get a discount.

I'll keep an eye out for you - I'm always looking for good prices on parts - especially those pesky "Rectifier Fuses" for the PA boards!

Also, it looks like I'll be getting an almost complete SX-5 shipped to me for parts. Woo Hoo!<P ID="signature">______________
</P>
 
> How do you know it was jumpered intentionally? Obviously it
> should have been logged and the air pressure switch
> immediately fixed/replaced - maybe jumpered to stay on the
> air while a new switch was overnighted.
>
> It is too bad that this transmitter doesn't have two blowers
> (redundant) in the PA.

The switch was replaced just to be very safe, but it was thorougly tested as OK. There was no mention of it in the maintenance log. The owner, who was somewhat close to the situation, had never been informed of such a thing. I stumbled into this mess after being their contract guy for a week or two. Unfortunately, this was in line with other weird situations and the ex.
 
> I'll keep an eye out for you - I'm always looking for good
> prices on parts - especially those pesky "Rectifier Fuses"
> for the PA boards!

I have 30+ of the newer 4A guys. I'll never run out again :)

Some ****** put 8A fuses in the old style boards. Almost every FET was dead.

> Also, it looks like I'll be getting an almost complete SX-5
> shipped to me for parts. Woo Hoo!

I have 4 old style PA boards I'll rebuild as soon as the tooth fairy puts some of those $35 FETs under my pillow. Other than that and the to-be-replaced wiper arm on the loading/tuning coils, I have no spare parts.

And still no backup xmtr :(<P ID="signature">______________
</P>
 
Oh...no need for a flame here. I certainly wasn't "going behind any other engineers". Please do not accuse with out all of the facts. Like I said before, I will give ANYBODY a chance. Us contract engineers in this area are all very tight and I did none of my brethren wrong by putting this station back on the air. I billed them my usual rates and got paid (a few weeks late). I did some work for them later on and had a real hard time getting paid (but I did). Now I will not work for them (maybe for money up front). Currently they have transmitter problems and most of their studio gear was stolen. I told them I could not help them because I had plenty of work from clients who valued my services. They understood and there are no hard feelings. I have many miles of contract work under my belt and own 2 companies. I know all about deadbeat stations, and have seen my fair share of them. But, like I said before, I will give ANYBODY one chance and that's perfectly fair. I do understand your point, and appreciate your concern...no offense taken. Just understand that I'm not going around undercutting other engineers and such. I am a professional and will treat any new client the way that I would like to be treated. It's up to them to hold up their end.

-Chris Hall
www.reelaudio.net (Reel Audio Broadcast Engineering)
www.rfspec.com (RF Specialties of GA)
 
> > I'll keep an eye out for you - I'm always looking for good
>
> > prices on parts - especially those pesky "Rectifier Fuses"
>
> > for the PA boards!
>
> I have 30+ of the newer 4A guys. I'll never run out again
> :)
>
> Some ****** put 8A fuses in the old style boards. Almost
> every FET was dead.
>
> > Also, it looks like I'll be getting an almost complete
> SX-5
> > shipped to me for parts. Woo Hoo!
>
> I have 4 old style PA boards I'll rebuild as soon as the
> tooth fairy puts some of those $35 FETs under my pillow.
> Other than that and the to-be-replaced wiper arm on the
> loading/tuning coils, I have no spare parts.
>
> And still no backup xmtr :(
>

Best part of working for a big company...someone always has something sitting in storage!

The backup to my SX-5 is an old RCA BCA-5R1. Still works beautifully!<P ID="signature">______________
</P>
 
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