Closure

Well I think I can finally put the new tower project to bed. The last milestone that needed to be done has finally happened. To myself and Ross the Boss and a few others, it was a monumental event. To a small band of viewers it was a relief. To the rest of the world, it didn't matter.

Since we got the digital transmitter setup in February, we have had some issues with the RF tubes in it. The transmitter manufacturer and the tube manufacturer have been to the site many times in the last 6 months trying to get things in order. I jokingly say that Denver Jim has been here so many times now, he needs to just buy a house for him to stay when he is here. Alex from Canada has been here several times as well. Both have gotten to know the area well. Alex so well, he has gotten a speeding ticket! Anyway, if I am reading the tea leaves correctly, everyone is just about on board that the transmitter isn't the issue and they think they have the situation finally under control. Only time will tell.

The beast FINALLY on the air

While all of this was taking place, we have been quietly waiting for the FCC to approve what is called a "minor modification of the Construction Permit" so we can turn this beast on to the masses. It really is only a paperwork thing that usually takes 45 days at the most. The most recent I saw was taking about 3 weeks. We had filed for our modification in May of 2005 and we still had not heard from it in February when we wanted to turn this thing on. And we continued to wait for another six months beyond that. The government gets real cranky if you do things without their blessing and turning this thing on without their blessing would have brought the rath of God down upon us. They said they had been too busy with other things. It turned out that about 200 other stations were in the same boat we were in. So we waited and used the time to fix the problems with the tubes.

The last thing of this project was to turn the DTV transmitter on. We had gotten tired of calling the lawyer (I am sure she was tired of hearing from us to) and just moved on to other things this summer. Yesterday, about 11:15, Ross the Boss and I were at the old transmitter building stripping it out, getting it ready for its new life as a backup site. A job we have been doing all week. It is starting to look pretty good, if you ask me. Anyway, Ross' cell phone rings. I didn't know who it was, but by the conversion I assumed it was the lawyer telling us the mod had been approved and he was trying to get the specifics. It was actually the general manager of the station relaying the information. Before I could figure all of that out, the building phone starts to ring. I go and answer it. It is one of the corporate VP's of engineering. He is asking me if I have seen my email yet. I say no that we are working in the old building. He then tells me that the mod has been approved and the authorization is in an email. About that time Ross comes into the main transmitter room where I am and he tells me what I have just heard. I tell him I am heading over to the other building and get things going and did he want to talk to the VP. He said yes and I take off.

Time begins to speed up and slow down at the same time. This isn't the first time I have turned on a new station. It is only the, ah, let me count here, sixth new transmitter site I have put on the air in 25 years of doing this job.

First thing is to look at the authorization to see if there are any caveat's. Nope. All looks like a standard CP with Program Authorization testing included. I did have one AM station where we had to get permission to even test the thing, much less put it on the air for real. That was my first one in 1984!

Second thing is to power down the transmitter from the dummy antenna. Since the main and standby antennas have never been powered up before, you don't just hit them with full power. You "nurse" them up meaning you run the power to zero and then switch to the antenna and then bring the power up in steps and then waiting a short time at each point to see what happens as you check all kinds of meters until you either reach full power or you burn the damn thing up!! The latter does happen every now and again. A station in North Dakota found that out about 2 years ago when they put their new DTV on the air and the antenna literally caught fire! There are pictures of flames shooting off of the antenna on the tower! Once you see that things are stable, it doesn't matter if you hit it with full power or not in the future.

Since we have two antennas on the tower, one main and one standby, I need to test both of them before we go on air. I spend the next five minutes nursing and then watching what happens with the standby antenna. Everything works just like it is suppose to. I run the power down, and switch to the main antenna and start the process again. 10 percent power. Wait 30 seconds. 20 percent power. Wait 30 seconds. 30 percent power. Wait 30 seconds. 50 percent power Wait 30 seconds. 70 percent power. Wait 30 seconds. Run up to 80 percent and when it reaches about 75 percent the transmitter trips off. A VSWR warning light comes on. Usually this means that the antenna has a problem but since this is the first time this antenna has had any power to it, it probably isn't anything, but to make sure I run the power down to zero and start again, this time only stopping at 25 percent, 50 percent and 70 percent and enough time to check meters and then move on. I then move to 75 percent and stop. Meters look good. Nothing happens. I then move to 80 percent. Check meters again. All OK and then move to 90 percent. All still OK. Then I run it up to 110 percent and run it there for about 2 minutes. All runs OK. I then drop it back to 100 percent. This time checking all of the meters on the transmitter (about 30 of them). Certify all is OK. Check the clock. It is 11:35. I call Master Control and tell them we are at full power, 1 million watts of digital power!

So THAT is what 1 milion watts looks like, eh? Well 50,000 out of the transmitter and the antenna makes up the rest!

Of course this was happening so fast that the news department didn't even get a chance to get a photog down to the site to record the "historic moment" (and I have already heard about that) but of course there is nothing visually stimulating in watching someone push buttons! Like I told my wife, when I hit 100 percent the first time, no brass bands played. No show girls danced through. No confetti fell. Just the sound of fans running and circulating water, the same sounds it has been making for the last 6 months. The only difference was the antenna switches were in a physically different position and if I screwed up, I would have the transmitter off the air. In reality, it was all pretty anticlimactic after the long wait to be honest. It was more of a relief that it was finally done. But then it should have been. Even the factory admits that transmitter has been the most evaluated transmitter in the companies history with all of the tube problems we have had so at least I know the cabinets are sound! I did miss the usual hoopla that goes along with commissioning a new transmitter. Usually you have the transmitter sitting there ready to go, the tower crew is finishing up the antenna and the general manager or station owner is breathing down your neck to hurry them up so you can get it on the air faster! That didn't happen this time since everything was done and we still couldn't turn it on, so when it did happened, it happened quick and unceremoniously. It just happened. I guess I just missed the pressure!

The other day in doing some clean up in the old transmitter building, I found the original 1963 "Proof of Performance" when the station signed on in 1963. It is a document each station has to have for every transmitter and is updated yearly for each transmitter. It shows that the transmitter meets the FCC specs before it is put on the air. With today's state of the art, Proofs are done in a couple of hours tops (the new channel 8 transmitter took 2 hours and the DTV transmitter took about an hour once everything was set up) and you usually do not find any problems. In 1963, it took them 10 days, from October 1 through October 11 to get the original RCA TT25DH transmitter to make Proof! Shows you how far we have come and how routine these transmitter christenings have become. Back in those days, you put on a new transmitter and it was a celebration. The newspaper came out. The mayor pontificated. Speeches by other dignitaries were spoken. It was really celebration. Today the engineers celebrate and the rest of the world yawns. We are a fickle bunch aren't we!!

End of this chapter. Time to start a new one.

Are you ready for some football?

In the last few years fall as moved up on my list of great times of the year. That is because that is when football season begins!

I have never been a big sports fan. When the Carolina Panthers franchise came into existence in 1993, I was attending a transmitter school in Quincy, Ill having been with WGHP less than a year. The franchise had been awarded 3 days before I left. I went to the only place you could buy a Panthers sweatshirt then, Belk's, at Four Seasons. I bought it because I really thought that it was a good thing for our state and I wanted to show my support. I then went on my trip.

One day into my week stay there I pulled out the sweatshirt and put it on. It was a chilly fall day and I didn't want to tote a coat around. When I arrived at the factory, many of the guys wanted to know what a "Carolina Panther" was. Most of these guys were from the Mid West and were Bear's or Viking's or Lion's or Brown's fans. Most were amused that the NFL had come to the Carolina's. But all of a sudden, I was "one of the guys" since my area had a team. It didn't matter that we were a team in name only since no coach had been named yet, no players had been signed, no plays run, no touchdowns, no wins or no loses. It was the "well my team has so and so and he will do so and so" followed by someone else arguing that when so and so played for HIS team he did this and this.

When you "have a team" in your area, it is different that when you "have someone else’s team" because you are not in a teams market. When you live in a secondary area of a team, like the Carolina's did for many years, many people have many "teams." No one team dominates. In the northern and eastern parts of the North Carolina, many people were Washington Redskins fans. People from Charlotte west and south into South Carolina were Atlanta Falcon fans. Growing up in the eastern part of the North Carolina, my dad was a big Skins fan. My wife’s family, living south of Asheville followed the Falcon's. The Panthers come to town and now we all root for the White/Black and Blue.

Oh sure, you still have Falcon fans, and Redskin fans around here, but for me, the Panthers brought me into football in a way that the Redskins and Falcons never could. They were always someone else’s team. The Panthers are MY team!! That chilly day in Illinois opened my eyes to that fact. And I STILL have that sweatshirt. I don’t wear it as much anymore since it is starting to get thread bare and is now 13 years old but every time I see it, I get chills and can’t wait for the team to hit the field. I am still not a sports fan, (I could care less about hockey or baseball or basketball) but when football starts, I get pretty rabid about it.

So far things look pretty good this season for the Panthers, but it is only preseason. HHHMM. Tine to make sure I am NOT working Super Bowl weekend.

Yes, I am still alive, but just barely

I have so much to say and no desire to say it. I chalk it up to the summer heat. Of course, I let myself get talked into starting a blog on our new station website, http://www.myfoxwghp.com by one of the IT guys and so I felt I needed to get a couple of posts in the can on there, so to speak, and so with the heat, I am kinda literallaly (is that even a word, much less spelled correctly!?) drained at the moment.

Plus a couple of weeks of intense issues at work and looks like another ballbuster beginning thanks to what I think is poor quality in a product (God, if I could just say what I REALLY think on that subject, but too many people stealthly read my blog, or at least they keep telling they do. Who knows? And I do like my job. Even on days like yesterday when I think the only way it could be worse would be to get fired!!)

Maybe when things cool off outside and inside, I will be more in a "blogging mood." Strap in. The fun is just beginning. Of so they say.