[BC] P.O.ed by transmission line damage

[SHAFFER, RANDY L]

 Neal wrote -
(snip)
>I recently  had an Electrician ( IBEW) come to my site to install a 
>Voltage/current meter
> and I was on my way to the site. when the station went off the air..
> the kid  defeated the Power interlock switch on the back of the 
>transmitter  and opened the back door with the transmitter still on to 
>hook up the CT coils.. He had No idea  of the Voltages inside. Thank gd 
>when the transmitter door is opened. there is an RF interlock that 
>shorts the Antenna output. good thing he didnt blowup the transmitter. 
>and the SWR trip shut it down.
(snip)

I had something like this happen a few years ago.
We went off the air one afternoon and after a minute popped back on the air.
I called the transmitter to talk to the site engineer to find out what happened. 
He said, you won't believe this, but the HVAC service company caused it. I said
how in the world did that happen? This company has worked at our site for many
years.
Apparently they were servicing the air handler in the main TX room and they needed 
a part. The one service guy went out to the truck. The other guy decided that he
wanted to see what was behind the blue metal door with a fan, so he opened it. It
was the main door on the RCA TTU-55. Thankfully, the interlocks turned off the HV.
I'm glad he didn't think the black bar was a limbo stick. As it was, he just looked 
inside, and was clueless as to what he had done until the site engineer entered the
room.

Randy Shaffer
WLYH-TV/WHP-TV