Is your Transmitter Air Conditioning System up to the Task ?
On Friday August 10, 2012, following loss of air conditioning at its mountaintop transmission site, the KEYT-TV [Santa Barbara] transmitter suffered a catastrophic breakdown. The transmitter crash caused the over-the-air signal to vanish.
Viewers using an antenna were not able to receive the KEYT-TV signal on their digital televisions. Ventura County cable viewers also lost KEYT until repairs were completed.
KEYT [Virtual Channel 3, RF Channel 27] uses a Harris Diamond CD digital transmitter with a single exciter and driver. The driver failed and diagnostics indicated failure of the pallet amplifier.
The following is an excerpt from a letter from Dave Williams, Chief Engineer of KEYT-TV: We got our driver module back from Harris this morning (Aug,15) in the first FedEx drop. After completing HVAC repairs at the transmitter building, we brought the Harris Diamond transmitter back up at 1:35 pm. Everything looks fine.Temperatures at the transmitter site are still close to 100 degrees. Our HVAC, though working, is still insufficient. It’s just that way. I’m running at just over 80% until the weather changes for the better at BroadcastPeak. 80% keeps us legal and is plenty of signal to cover our market plus Ventura County. I’ll bring power up as the temperature at Broadcast Peak comes down. I received several helpful and supportive calls from my fellow chief engineers around Southern California. KCET’s Transmitter Supervisor, Jeremy, very kindly offered to loan me a spare Harris driver that would have worked for us. The repair turnaround from Harris was so fast though that it wasn’t necessary.
