[BC] Pigeon VSWR

[John Buffaloe]

I kid you not about this one.  Several years ago KSON-AM's Nautel was tripping off the air early one morning.  When I got to the site the VSWR light was coming on as the power would attempt to ramp back up and the transmitter would dump again.  I went out to take a look at the spider feed system on the shunt fed tower and there must have been 200 pigeons perched on the four feed wires going out to each leg.  I clapped my hands and yelled, the pigeons flew away and the VSWR alarm went out.  Pigeon VSWR.  Never happened again.
 
John Buffaloe
I-55 expert and driving consultant
 
Message: 4
Date: Thu,  6 Oct 2005 21:54:16 -0400
From: cld at admin.umass.edu
Subject: Re: [BC] bird kill
To: Broadcast Radio Mailing List <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Message-ID: <1128650056.4345d548e690c at mail-www2.oit.umass.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Ahh- I stand, or am perched, corrected!
You just have to wing it sometimes.

Quoting "khcs at juno.com" <khcs at juno.com>:
 
> Perhaps you have gotten the story from the old SBE magazine switched 
around. 
> That told about how engineer/inventor Ward Watt had been having 
difficulty in
> calculating the imbirdance effect of our feathered friends on antenna
> radiation.  Just about the time he had calculated the imbirdance 
value, a
> bunch of birds would fly in and flock-up the calculations.  So that's 
what
> led him to invent the Watt Birdmeter.
> 


		
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