Major Detour

For the past several weeks, we had been working hard on the antenna switch matrix.  It would have been really helpful if we had that already in operation.  We were hoping to have part of the matrix operational in early May, so that we could increase the power for a TX7 broadcast.

Last week, ANT2A had one of its cable swage clamps fail.  This caused one end to fall to the ground.  This sort of thing tends to break many insulators and cables.  We had to use jumpers to connect TX7 to ANT3 and reconnect TX2 to ANT2B.  This allowed us to continue our normal broadcast schedule.  Without the matrix, we also had to do our Japanese DRM broadcast on TX6 and ANT1 instead of TX7 and ANT2A. 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The antenna has been reassembled and is now back up in the air.  We are still working on repairing the slew switch and its input transformer.  The slew switch is what controls the direction that the radio waves go when they leave the antenna on their way to the listeners.  The transformer is the set of wires needed to adapt the signal from the transmitter to the antenna system.

 

Once repairs are complete, we can resume work on the matrix hardware.  In the meantime, we do have a short-term visitor who is working on the control software.  We should have a usable software system by the end of the week.