[BC] Why you wanted to be an engineer...

[Joe Rother]

At a 3 tower DA in Ohio, I was getting ready to replace one of the towers
that had been damaged beyond repair (tornado damage). We were running Omni
off of the reference tower, but the mutual induction was enough to really
make a shovel head lightly held across the base insulator sing quite well.
One of the non AM radio type helpers I had there was amazed that a shovel
could produce better fidelity than any AM radio he had ever heard.

Joe


-----Original Message-----
From: broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net
[mailto:broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net]On Behalf Of Stevan A. White
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 10:03 PM
To: Broadcasters' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [BC] Why you wanted to be an engineer...

nakayle at gmail.com wrote:
>  Reminds me how you can draw an arc off a hot AM tower with a
> screwdriver and hear the music in it.
Or a shovel if you really want to hear something!  I had a crew doing
some work and a backhoe digging next to the reference tower of a 5 tower
array and the operator wasn't paying attention very well and swung the
bucket up and knocked the Johnny balls together and shorted out the
world.  I was in the transmitter building and saw the VSWR light come on
the front panel of the ND-10 so I went out to investigate.  I found
everyone standing around scratching their heads and picking their noses
asking if it hurt anything and what should be done to "fix it."  I found
a shovel and reached up to separate the balls and pulled a small
lightning bolt off the base of the tower.  You could hear the program
audio, a lot of crackling, and a lot of "wow, cool man" type comments.

Steve White, W5SAW
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