Off The Air..But Not For Long

It happened this morning...that dreaded silence caused by transmitter failure. I hadn't heard it for a few months. I tossed aside my morning DJ and general manager's hat...I donned by engineer's hat, jumped into my S-10 and made the mile long trip to the tower site (you probably don't see this scenario at WCCO or WLS). I opened the door to the building and sniffed the air....nothing smells real hot, that's a good thing! The main breaker on the power supply vault was off. That's not a good thing. I flipped it back on...only to be met with sounds of arcing, the sight of dimming lights and the sound of a contactor that really had no desire to remain on. I had a pretty good idea what the problem was as I have experienced it before. I opened the back door to the transmitter, popped the cover off the RF cabinet to take a look at the final tube (the ONLY tube) and sure enough..there it was...a blocking capacitor which had self-destructed. I have some spares. I replaced the faulty capacitor (after making a thorough run through with the shorting stick)...closed things up powered up the transmitter and "pow"...it came back up to full power (I always dread that period of anticipation while the transmitter is running through the paces before the high voltage kicks in!) After returning to the main studio I became the morning DJ once again. How long were we off the air? About 20 minutes.

This Is Why We Are Here!

I had a listener stop in a couple of days ago who asked me to mention on the air that he had lost the transmitter unit for his dog training collar system. It was found by another listener who dropped it off at the radio station. I called the owner and he was extremely grateful that he did not have to spend a couple hundred bucks for a new unit! This is REAL public radio....I doubt if MPR or NPR offers the same service! We take pride in reuniting dogs and cats with their owners on a regular basis, too!