[BC] And Portland, too: 50kw KPNW 1120 Off The Air - FIRE!

[Barry Mishkind]

KPNW TEMPORARILY OFF-AIR

***KPNW IS EXPERIENCING TRANSMITTER PROBLEMS. ***
Friday morning, July, 3rd at approximately 6:30am KPNW suffered a 
major failure of our main 50,000 watt transmitter.  This failure was 
complicated by extreme heat at the transmitter site both Friday and Saturday.

By early Friday afternoon we had our 60 year old RCA 10,000 watt 
transmitter on the air, but a combination of heat and age only 
allowed us to be on the air sporadically an hour or two at a time, 
and then off for an hour or so.  Saturday evening it appeared that 
the backup had stabilized.  It ran fine for several hours after which 
our engineer left the premises to get some sleep after working almost 
non-stop since Friday.

Sometime early Sunday morning our backup transmitter went off the 
air.  When the engineer arrived on site the room was full of acrid 
smoke and a quick check showed that the transformer had caught fire 
earlier and was still smoking.  We have been off the air continuously since.

As to what originally happened to our 50,000 watt main transmitter, 
it appears to be some sort of system overload.  Many of the 
components of the transmitter are shorted out and will require 
replacement.  Currently, we are both ordering and borrowing parts to 
rebuild the transmitter.

At this time we believe that we may be back on the air by Tuesday 
afternoon at the earliest.  We are also considering bringing another 
transmitter in from one of our Bicoastal Media sister 
stations.  However, depending on the brand re-tuning a transmitter to 
run on 1120am can be time consuming.

As a side note, we have been overwhelmed by emails and phone calls 
from our listeners concerned about the welfare of the station, it's 
employees and our shows. We are okay...a little frazzled, but working 
hard to get back on the air.  Many listeners have postulated that the 
events of the weekend were caused by President Obama, or ultra-left 
wing terrorists.  This obviously was not the case.  Like any piece of 
electronics equipment, transmitters will eventually fail, and 
occasionally the failure is massive as compared to minor.

All of us here at KPNW understand your frustration with the current 
situation, we are working hard to try and restore our signal and the 
programming that you rely on day in and day out. Thanks,

Bill Lundun
Program Director KPNW
<mailto:1120kpnw at gmail.com>1120kpnw at gmail.com

<http://www.kpnw.com/pages/landing?KPNW-TEMPORARILY-OFF-AIR=1&blockID=62091&feedID=207>http://www.kpnw.com/pages/landing?KPNW-TEMPORARILY-OFF-AIR=1&blockID=62091&feedID=207