[BC] Worst 'engineering' ever seen

[Dennis Cope]

My God man, you just undid all the good things that were in place for
lightning protection and servicing.

The long extension cords are lightning impeders, generally the longer and
more knots the better.
Never make the wires neat or lace them in, this makes it harder to trace or
replace, heaven forbid.
By using assorted outlets you are assured one blown breaker will not take
you all the way off the air,
this way you only loose the right or left channel of your AM mono.
With the wires warm to the touch you save on heat and be assured current is
flowing through it.
If you use the third or safety ground connection on the power plug you can
set up ground loops, heaven forbid this happening
their a bear to find and fix.  Of course you can always call the 60 Hz hum
CTCSS and it's supposed to be there.

This type of installation is a work of a forgotten art and should be
preserved.  The pix you took should
be enlarged, framed and put on the wall for all to see.  LOL

I used to be able to receive WRKO down here in Wallops, Virginia but QRM has
now wiped it out (sad)...

Dennis
WESR, WCTG, NOAA


-----Original Message-----
From: broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net
[mailto:broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net]On Behalf Of Sid Schweiger
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 06:46
To: broadcast at radiolists.net
Subject: Re: [BC] Worst 'engineering' ever seen


>>I never left ANYONES transmitter in that shape...<<

I will never forget my first visit to the FM transmitter site at my
first full-time engineering job, almost 30 years ago.  I was the
assistant CE, and the CE was new as well.  Neither of us were prepared
for what we saw.

The transmitter was an old RCA 5-kW (which never gave me a lick of
trouble for the two years I was there...with a TE-3 exciter retrofitted,
it just sat there and worked).  However, the rack of equipment next to
it was a disaster.  There were no AC plug strips or Plugmold, so all the
AC cords were left dangling and were plugged into multiple
cube-taps...the kind made out of lightweight Bakelite for home use.
Extension cords (of the lightweight home variety, with no ground wire)
were run across the floor to whatever outlets were available, and they
were all warm to the touch.  The extension cord connected to the TE-3
exciter was warm to the touch, as were a few of the others.
Breaker/fuse boxes, conduit and wiring had been done only for the
transmitter, and we found out later that that installation didn't meet
code.  The audio and RF cabling in the rack was done properly, but had
not been dressed out neatly as it should have been, so it didn't look
too good either.

The new CE and I took pictures and had a meeting with the GM, who
quickly authorized us to spend whatever we needed to clean up that fire
trap.  Afterwards, we plugged all the cube-taps and extension cords
together and presented them to her as a trophy.



Sid Schweiger
IT Manager, Entercom New England