[BC] when you had to bunk at the station

[Andy Linton]

A couple of months ago we had heavy falls of snow here, which is unusual.

At a local mountaintop transmitter site, Mount Leinster - owned by our national broadcaster RTE - the microwave feeds to the TV and radio failed one night. We're talking 100kW of FM on four networks and 100kW of TV on three networks.

(The independent station we contract for has its own microwave STL, this stayed on).

The road to the 3,000' site was impassable in the morning, so the RTE guys called a friend of mine who rents out Argo vehicles (8-wheel drive all-terrain vehicles) and asked would he get them up there. A price was agreed and up they went.

It took two hours to do a trip that normally takes 15 minutes by road, as although it wasn't snowing and was a sunny, clear morning, the drifts completely obscured the road, so they had to make their way the best they could in the general direction of the tower, with many turn-backs and dig-outs.

They arrived to find that falling ice had crushed a waveguide. Shortly after they got there, a small helicopter arrived with two engineers from BT, a large telco. They also had problems with their equipment there.

They were all show-offy - about how it only took them 30 mins to get there from the nearest airport in their chopper etc.

At about 4pm my buddy told the RTE guys that the weather was starting to close in and they had to leave. They offered to bring the BT engineers down too, but they weren't finished and said they'd stay another half-hour and then get their nice helicopter flight home instead.

However,  when after half an hour they emerged from the windowless building to leave, the chopper was gone! Completely engulfed by snow, which by then was falling heavily.

The two engineers and pilot had to stay the night, which cant have been too pleasant, as although the building is warm and has kitchen and basic toilet facilities, the bunk rooms had been converted to equipment rooms about 10 years ago and the big freezers with food in had gone at about the same time!

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Andy Linton
Kilkenny, Ireland.