One hour ago the area was put under a severe storm watch. The sky was blazing with lightning, so KDX went on alert.
One hour ago the area was put under a severe storm watch. The sky was blazing with lightning, so KDX went on alert.
We shut down the 3 AM transmitters, disconnected from grounds, antennas and power. Computer off. Basement prepared for emergency shelter.
Some rain and one very close BLAM! of lightning/thunder, then things moved east.
One station only was doing a live trivia show, and did a joking version of weather reporting. Their AM transmitter kept sputtering, I’m not sure what was happening with that.
Will re-connect everything in the morning.
Glad you and the Transmitters
Glad you and the Transmitters survived the storm 🙂
The Return Path
A peaceful, wet night passed quietly.
KDX 1680 was reconnected and running by 7 AM.
Skies are very dark as morning thunderstorms are possible for the next several hours.
The carrier current disconnect is achieved by an electric pull-out, of the type used by air conditioners, and that is due to be reconnected for testing by 9 AM.
AM 1550 is off pending reconnection to its new triangular (instead of round) loading coil. At present AM 1550 is only grounded through the internal RF connection through the power transformer, but a center-fed 2-radial ground system is due to be added soon.
Streaming online returned at 7 AM.
Most weekends KDX broadcasts continuous around-the-clock programming from Friday morning through Sunday night.
UPS
Perhaps consider putting those transmitters on small UPS power supplies so they are protected and stay on.
A quote..yes from Star Trek! The Next Generation.
“Mr. Worf, your a crew member of this ship and you will not go into hiding every time a Klingon ship uncloaks!”.
Brave the storm! Stand tall! Show the big boys who run and hide what little fleas can do!
:p
RFB
2 Responses
To Carl: Glad the storm didn’t
get you. I’m very interested in
your indoor antenna set-up, especially
the coil.
To RFB: I love your “Next Gen” quotes.
I can’t think of a comeback right now,
though.
Bruce, DRS2
UPS Considered
The idea put forth by RFB for employing small UPS units to keep transmitters alive during weather is being taken on for consideration.
What about the computer? That’s where the audio feed comes from.
When lightning hits the UPS I might change my mind.
Damn The Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead…
I figure if the All Mighty (or Thor) want to throw a bolt at my house it won’t make much difference. So, I usually don’t worry about it. I do have a UPS to keep things running until I can fire up the generator if we lose power.
Storms are when I have my biggest group of listeners looking for information.
I get way more “hits” on my NOAA streaming audio. I’ve had it max out with 32 listeners at one time. Being just spoken audio, I run at a bit rate of 24kb, 22kHz mono. This is hosted on my home PC.
The NWS found my streaming audio for the Akron, Ohio area NOAA WX broadcast. They requested my permission to link my streaming audio on their website. I said “Sure, that would be cool.”
The stream runs on ShoutCast from an old Ipaq pc running Win2K.
Not to Sneeze About
MRAM it is extra cool that the NWS links your WX feed. That is being right in with the center of action.
Not Alone in Shutting Down
Last night we heard the most recent Allan Weiner Worldwide broadcast from WBCQ, the shortwave stations in Monticello, Maine, and Allan said they now shut down their 4 shortwave and one FM transmitter during electrical storms, because of the wide-spread and costly damage recent storms have caused. They are keeping their AM on during storms.
Therefore, emboldened by this example, KDX will continue closing shop during severe weather. We are not saviors sacrificing ourselves for the benefit of listeners. They should get weather radios.
STORMS ABOVE!
With 95-degrees the sky has turned very dark and I hear the rumbles. I am poised to disconnect everything, hopefully before the power fails or the windows blow in.
But it’s not here yet. It’s a slow mover.
Watch out!
Sailing the Storm
The storm may still be in progress, it’s hard to tell. KDX did not leave the air, although I came very close to pulling the plug.
Extreme darkness in midday is threatening all by itself, although poses no real danger.
There seemed to be some confusion, as if the storm was doing things out of order. It rained very nicely for 20-minutes, much needed, and half-way through the rain the wind started to gust, but apparently was out of step, as the winds usually precede the rain. Thunder was mostly at a distance, except for one overhead burst. As the rain ended, it actually got the darkest of all, and the light has slowly increased very slightly. More distant thunder comes and goes, so if this weather is being generated by HAARP, I think they have a novice at the controls.
More Storm
Just before seven P.M. the dark sky began to rain and thunder grew close, so KDX disconnected for safety.
45-minutes later things were quiet, so we re-connected all the antennas, grounds, and power.
Calm near 9 PM
Another Storm Watch
The sun from the day was still coming in as I trimmed some vines out in the garden, and I noticed dark piles of cloud building in the north/northwest.
Rather quickly the clouds reached the path of the sun and the full color gave way to that shadowed sense of looming weather.
A few crackles have been noticed on the AM dial, and the weather service puts us under a storm watch.
Certain areas are under storm warning, and I think those areas usually move around.
“Some storms may be severe”, they say.
How is your weather?
Storm Update
5:24 PM the skies are dark, but the static on the radio has reduced.
The weather service shows tornado warnings down south of here, several hundred miles, and thunderstorms north of here.
The more serious threat, especially on Saturday, appears to be for the northeastern U.S. where serious wind events are possible.
We stay on until the storms enter the immediate area, at which time we shut down to protect our electronic equipment.
Was that thunder? Did you hear it?
This has been….
More Storm Events
Storms were skimming the edges of the scene all day and several times I came very close to shutting down for safety, but the big one arrived at 6:45 PM CDT with electric bolts falling all around, so I decoupled everything and kept the battery light handy.
Around 7:30 PM everything got reconnected and the programming resumed.
During the outage I heard an interesting moment on sports 1380, 5 kW, with static wrecking the signal. The caster was describing his situation following a power outage that shut down the station computer, and he had no idea whether he was back on the air or not. His skylight was being hammered with rain. He said that they needed to keep a radio in the station so they could run outside to see if they were on the air. Then the station engineer called in from across the river in Illinois at the transmitter, and assured the guy he was on the air. The conversation quickly lurched into back and forth sports opinions.
Then, while I was warming up the Spectrum Analyzer, I noticed that sports 550kHz, 5kW, was dropping their carrier at regular intervals, so I tuned in on the radio, where a bunch of guys, sponsored by American Patriot Beer, were covering some kind of game. They seemed unaware that every few seconds the carrier dropped.
8:10 PM Power off/on in 1/2 second. New storm rising.