Early Thursday morning my work cell phone rang. I looked at the clock and it was 1:05 AM. When the work phone rings in the middle of the night, that usually means that the rest of my sleep for the night is over. But it has been a while since I had one of those calls. With the new transmitter, it just doesn't happen anymore. But I still begrudgingly answered it. It was the synthesized female voice of the remote control unit at the auxiliary transmitter site saying "Hello...... Hello........ Hello." Translated, "Put in the password dummy and I will tell you what I want!"
Fumbling with the phone with one eye still closed in a dark room, I was hoping that I hit the correct key that would light the keypad so I could enter in the password because if I hit the wrong button that nagging "Hello" voice would hang up and call me again. After I satisfied the computer I indeed was the correct person it was looking for, it very coldly told me in its robotic type female voice that the backup generator was below temperature. Translation? The block heater that keeps the diesel engine at a warm temperature on cold days had stopped working. Since it is at the auxiliary transmitter site and there is no analog channel 8 transmitter there anymore but just the digital channel 8 transmitter waiting for June 12th to make its debut and it was one o'clock in the morning, I acknowledged the alarm, hung the phone up and rolled back over to sleep.
First thing in the morning I arrived at the auxiliary transmitter site and looked over the 1981 generator engine in the water heater jacket area. The wiring from the thermostat that turns on the heat had literally burned up from years of being next to a heating element. I pulled off the wire and went into the building to find some replacement wire. As I was preparing the wire and then installing it back on the generator, I was reminded of the time before we built the other tower and building and installed the new channel 8 and DTV transmitters with all this neat redundancy and I spent all my time at this site. Since we had built the other site as the main site, we had retrofitted this site as a backup with no more equipment than is required to do the job. And since the auxiliary site isn't on line 24/7 as in the old days, nothing breaks at the rate it used to so I don't spend much time there anymore.
As I worked I remembered the first time I ever went in that building and how much has changed in 17 years in this fairly small building. It was 1992 and I was interviewing for my job. The man I was to replace, Roy Allman, was preparing to retire after 30 years and as part of the interview process I was to go to the transmitter and he was to "scope me out" for my soon to be boss to see if I really knew anything about transmitters and about not killing myself around 10,000 volts.
I spent about 3 hours there that day with Roy talking about the old Harris tube transmitter that 13 years later I would remove from the air and ship half of it to sister station KSTU Salt Lake City and the other half to sister station KTBC Austin, TX. I got to know Roy and decided that if I could land this gig, it would a great place to work (still is!). Roy was from the old school of engineering. He never got in a hurry, even if the transmitter was off the air, but his knowledge was vast. Even though I worked with the old Harris transmitter longer than Roy did (his 12 years vs my 13 years), I firmly believe he knew more about that transmitter than I did. Roy had about 11 months before he retired when I was hired so, I got to work with him a for a while. That was a blast. Sadly, Roy is no longer with us, having past away last year just missing the Digital Transition but I think that is the way Roy would have wanted it. Change wasn't easy for him.
I then remembered the time we "remodeled" the building in 1994 updating the electrical systems and changing the microwave antennas and adding a full audio system for stereo broadcasts that we hoped would be coming in the not to distant future. It did, the next year when FOX purchased the station.
I then remembered the time in 1998 when we replaced the center conductor in the transmission line sections on the tower. In those days we only had one antenna and one transmission line so all the work had to be done from 1:30 am to 4:30 am. It took months replacing the fifty-six 20 foot sections of center conductor line in the transmission line in that nightly 3 hour window. About as soon as the tower crew got up the tower, it was time for them to come down! It was also during all this overnight work, I had my gall bladder removed.
The night of December 31, 1999 I found myself at the transmitter "waiting" for Y2K and any possible disaster that might befall the human race. Y2K came. Y2k went. I was home in bed by 3 am.
On September 11, 2001, I was instructed to go to the transmitter and lock myself in and wait. So I did that and watched the pictures all day on our air as we rebroadcast FOX News Channel as I sat in my little office there at the transmitter.
I then remembered the day we put the new site on the air and the original site passed on to auxiliary status. I finished up the testing of the generator, put the tools away, locked the building and headed to the studio.
Man, there are times when I miss those old days when we were just one catastrophic event away from disaster. Now we have back ups for back ups. We have come a long way since I started work here. But it IS the LITTLE things in life. Life is good.
