Mission-Critical: Maintaining Your Transmitter Site Tips and Best Practices for Keeping Your MAY 2021 RF Site Safe, Clean, EBOOK Efficient and Profitable
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Mission-Critical: Maintaining Your Transmitter Site Tips and best practices for keeping your MAY 2021 RF site safe, clean, EBOOK efficient and profitable. Sponsored by BURK • BOHN • INOVONICS • NAUTEL • SHIVELY May 2021 eBook www.radioworld.com FOLLOW US Mission-critical: www.twitter.com/radioworld_news www.facebook.com/RadioWorldMagazine CONTENT maintaining your Managing Director, Content & Editor in Chief Paul J. McLane, [email protected], 845-414-6105 Senior Content Producer — Technology Brett Moss, [email protected] transmitter site Technical Advisors Thomas R. McGinley, Doug Irwin Technical Editor, RW Engineering Extra W.C. “Cris” Alexander hether your Contributors: Susan Ashworth, John Bisset, James Careless, Ken Deutsch, Mark Durenberger, Charles Fitch, Travis Gilmour, Donna Halper, Craig Johnston, transmitter site Alan Jurison, Paul Kaminski, John Kean, Peter King, Larry Langford, Mark Lapidus, is collocated with Jim Peck, Mark Persons, Stephen M. Poole, James O’Neal, Rich Rarey, Jeremy Ruck, your studios, sitting John Schneider, Randy Stine, Tom Vernon, Jennifer Waits, Chris Wygal Production Manager Nicole Schilling in a country field Managing Design Director Nicole Cobban W or high atop a Art Editor Rob Crossland mountain, it’s a critical component of ADVERTISING SALES Paul your broadcasting airchain. The RF site Senior Business Director & Publisher, Radio World John Casey, [email protected], 845-678-3839 McLane is more than a transmitter and a tower, Publisher, Radio World International Editor in Chief it’s an entire ecosystem. Raffaella Calabrese, [email protected], +39-320-891-1938 This Radio World ebook relates best SUBSCRIBER CUSTOMER SERVICE practices and tips for maintaining that To subscribe, change your address, or check on your current account status, go to www.radioworld.com and click on Subscribe, email [email protected], site for clean, safe, efficient and profitable operation. call 888-266-5828, or write P.O. Box 1051, Lowell, MA 01853. What items should be on the engineer’s checklist for Licensing/Reprints/Permissions each site visit and for quarterly or annual review? What Radio World is available for licensing. Contact the provisions for redundancy or backup should be taken Licensing team to discu ss partnership opportunities. Head of Print Licensing Rachel Shaw [email protected] into account? MANAGEMENT How can managers help in the creation and execution THIS Senior Vice President, B2B Rick Stamberger of a maintenance program? What should a non-engineer ISSUE Chief Revenue Officer Mike Peralta know if they need to check on a site? Vice President, Sales & Publishing, B2B Aaron Kern We asked Jeff Welton, John Bisset, Paul Tinkle, Buc Fitch, NEWS 3 Vice President, B2B Tech Group Carmel King Best 4 Vice President, Sales, B2B Tech Group Adam Goldstein Josh Bohn, Peter Burk and Sean Edwards to give us the practices at Head of Production US & UK Mark Constance benefit of their experience. your transmitter Head of Design Rodney Dive As always I welcome your comments on this ebook or site FUTURE US, INC. any other Radio World content at radioworld@futurenet. The 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10036 12 com. That email address comes right to me. manager’s engineering All contents ©2021 Future US, Inc. or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of notebook this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 02008885) is registered Life is good 18 in England and Wales. 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We assume all unsolicited material is for publication 29 no-budget unless otherwise stated, and reserve the right to edit, amend, adapt all submissions. tips for better transmitter care On the cover: The transmitter building serving Cumulus Media Keep it cool, 33 station KBOI(AM) in Boise, Idaho, has been likened to an inverted clean and hog trough. Built in 1968 for the station’s move from 950 to 670, it well grounded still looks futuristic. Promotional statements at the time claimed the concrete structure’s sloping walls wouldn’t interfere with the 50,000- 10 dumb 38 watt signal from KBOI’s six towers. What’s more, there was a Cold things smart War-era boast that if the site were ever attacked, radiation would people do when slide off the building’s walls. Photo courtesy Scott Fybush. testing electricity Mission-Critical: Maintaining Your Transmitter Site Best practices at your transmitter site A compilation of tips from Radio World’s popular Workbench column Writer orking more efficiently is a “must” site. Especially for AM directionals, which may be affected John in this day of multiple studios and by new construction, keep an eye out for anything being Bisset transmitter sites — especially when you constructed near your site — especially towers - which CPBE are the sole engineer. could affect your pattern. is in his Even though every site is different, As you arrive, inspect your driveway chain, gate, fencing 31st year of gathering and W you can use this basic checklist as a and locks. Situations like that depicted in Fig. 2 are no fun editing user tips starting point, and customize it for each of your sites. to discover when you are off the air! in Workbench. Be sure to lubricate locks at least twice a year, or Take a drive quarterly in harsher environments, and replace any rusted We’ll start with the drive up to the transmitter site — which locks. After lubricating the locks, work the mechanism to begins in the studio! ensure that the lubricant coats the internal parts. Yes, the studio. Do you have a set of clear driving You can find a variety of cleaning/lubricating compounds Below left instructions to get to all of the transmitter sites from the at the big box stores. Powdered graphite, shown in Fig. 3, is Fig. 1: A studio location? Are the legal addresses also listed, to be one choice. mountaintop site in New Mexico, given to a 911 operator if needed? Is there a site telephone If you need to replace locks, consider paying the a mile above number? Should an emergency occur, it’s important to premium to get multiple locks keyed identically. One key Albuquerque. have clear concise instructions, with a map, for each opens all the locks (and reduces the size of your key ring). 4 Below right location. Inform your management — owner, GM, OM, SM Personally, I like Master Combination Locks. Should there Fig. 2: The start of and PD — of this information and where it is kept. be a security breach, you can easily change all the a bad day at the One engineer printed and laminated small combinations, instead of replacing a half-dozen transmitter site. cards with the site addresses and telephone keyed locks. Middle numbers printed on them, and gave one Always reset your combination Fig. 3: Powdered to each department head. You can’t locks to 0-0-0-0 after opening. This graphite keeps locks functioning be too safe! discourages someone from “reading” properly. Now you’re ready to drive to the radioworld.com | May 2021 Mission-Critical: Maintaining Your Transmitter Site the combination should they come upon an insurance claim. Be sure to snap Left the open lock while you are visiting pictures of damage/vandalism with your Fig. 4: This IP camera monitors the site. And if on your next visit you camera phone. both a door and find anything other than 0-0-0-0, you The invention of the camera-phone is an exhaust flapper 5 know someone has tried to enter perhaps one of the most useful for the on a generator. the site, prompting a more thorough broadcast engineer — use it liberally. Above site inspection. Many engineers add Stephanie also goes out to the Fig. 5: An example another level of security by re-locking guy wire anchor points and makes an of the efficiency of pleated air filters. the lock after entering. inspection. Check for loose ground jumper If appropriate, install an outdoor “wildlife” connections, and visually inspect the condition camera near the gate entrance. These cameras of the anchors, ground rods and connections. She are motion-activated, and some models have the ability tries to do this in the short period after the snow melts and to capture images at night.