[BC] WTEM--Chief engineer

[Dana Puopolo]

My friend Kevin MacNamara built this site. It's well engineered, but ANY site
will fail without proper maimtenance. Quite frankly, if a major storm (ie: ex
hurricane) was coming, I would have manned that site for the duration.

But then again, what the hell do I know?

-D

------ Original Message ------
Received: Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:30:30 AM EDT
From: Art Reed <areed21774 at aol.com>

Unless the site I toured 8 years ago has been gutted, this is 
surprising.  It had three transmitters; a DX50, a Nautel 10 and a Nautel 
5.  It had a main and a backup generator.  It had three audio paths to 
the site, STL, phone line, and Intraplex.  It had fail-over circuits for 
everything, and huge UPS'es that ran all of the supporting equipment.  
In those days, nothing short of a cruise missile would take it off the 
air.   The  antenna field is swampy, but the tower insulators are well 
above any possible flood height.

Art Reed

Mark Earle wrote:
> Jeffrey.P.Bottalico at kp.org wrote:
>> DCRTV reports that WTEM 980 was off the air Saturday afternoon to 
>> midday Sunday due to weather.  Red Zebra (Dan Snyder of the Redskins) 
>> does not have a chief engineer for his cluster.  Penny wise but pound 
>> foolish??????
>>   
> Nah, makes perfect sense. Engineer = $100,000/year or more with benefits.
>
> Off air 12 hours? How much revenue was lost? Less than 100k probably. 
> Pay a contract engineer $500 to get it back on.. still money ahead.
>
> Of course, no preventive maintenance, proactive fixing of things, etc. 
> But that seems to be the trend.
>
>