This morning I was awakened at 4 AM by the sound a broadcaster, especially a broadcast technician hates to hear; the sound of an electrical arc. My eyes popped wide open and sure enough I could see the “strobe light” effect coming around the shades and curtains of the bedroom window and splashing across the ceiling. More on that later!!!
Left: The source of all the flashing and buzzing. I sprung out of the bed in a flash, with all the reflexes of a “Chief Engineer!” That’s what we were called back in the day despite the fact that few of us had our Registered Professional Engineer’s credentials, even if we were graduates of colleges of engineering. Arcing was bad news in a radio or television station.
Most of the time we dealt with arcing was during thunderstorms where there was plenty of electricity in the air already. During these times the pieces parts of the transmission system were pushed to the limits by direct or nearby lightning strikes. Arcing was their way of letting off steam.
It may be a little perverse of me to enjoy arcs in a controlled environment. I used to open up the doors of the phasor room and sit against the wall across the hall and enjoy the light display at WIS Radio when I was the chief engineer out there. Notice I said across the hall; there was no way I would actually go into that room with all the little lightning bolts flickering across the large capacitors and coils in the phasor. Pretty soon, the smell of ozone would permeate that end of the hall. Sometimes it would get so bad that I had to close the door and let the exhaust fan in the back of the room clear the air.
As much fun as watching arcs in the phasor was, there was always a little nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. For, you see, there was also a larger lightning display flashing around the three towers out in the field next to the station. And that sometimes meant a lot of extra work, when lightning would strike something important and knock the station off the air. Then it was all elbows around backsides to find out what was damaged, and then replace it; sometimes even while the arcing in the transmission system was still going on.
Just this past week, a nearby AM station up in Newberry SC was blown off the air by a thunderstorm. The storm also blew the roof off of the “tuning house,” a little hut near the bottom of the tower that contained more capacitors and coils that matched the antenna to the transmission line that connected it to the transmitter inside the station. Needless to say, the transmitter would not come back on after the storm passed. These days, many stations do not have a person on staff that can repair a lightning damaged transmitter, so they called a buddy of mine who is an old AM wizard. He surveyed the damage and determined that the components in the tuning house were not damaged, but the station still would not come on the air. He quickly located the problem; an old screw in type fuse was not in its socket. The lightning strike had blown it completely out of its socket and it was lying on the floor. If you are of a certain age you will remember those in our homes. He replaced the fuse, and threw a tarp over the tuning house and they are back to rock and rolling again.
But arcs and lightning are not all fun and games. I remember one particularly bad thunderstorm during my days at WIS-TV. The master control room was on the second story of our building. There is a 400 foot tower with its legs passing through the roof of Studio “T” that was on the first floor right next to the control room. There was a bunch of old school tube type TV monitors sitting on shelves attached to the wall right next to one of the tower legs. That night there were arcs everywhere; between the shelves, monitors and the switcher console a few feet in front of the monitors. It got so bad that Cathy my coworker who was operating the switcher that night would push her chair away from the console except for the few moments when she was actively switching a station break.
I was working on a circuit board on a 20 foot long workbench that had one end near another tower leg and the other near a power breaker panel that supplied power to all of master control. Suddenly I smelled ozone in the room. When I looked up from my work I could see a ball of lightning about a foot and a half in diameter hovering over the end of the workbench that was closest to the tower leg. “How cool” I thought and yelled out to Cathy to come see it. As she rounded the corner of the equipment racks that separated the workbench from the rest of master control, the ball lightning started drifting down the workbench towards me. I was sitting on a tall chair on wheels. All of a sudden everything happened at once, I kicked my legs out, almost backing over Cathy with the chair as I pushed back from the circuit board on the workbench and that ball of lightning found that poor defenseless circuit board and zapped it in one bounce before crashing into the power box with a bang that was just below Armageddon level.
That circuit board was toast! The only thing left to do was to look up the part number for a replacement and write up a purchase order. That left me free to alternate with Cathy switching station breaks amidst all the flashes of light for the next hour or so. Fortunately the storm was over in time for me to turn on all the studio equipment I had turned off when the storm first started up in time for the Eleven O’Clock Report.
Back to last night. I called the power company’s emergency line and updated the ‘line down” report I had called in earlier to let them know that the “hot” end of the broken wire that was hung up in a tree was now arcing. The linemen were on the scene in 15 minutes. By that time the arc had burned itself out without blowing the breaker in the nearby transformer and was unlikely to start up again so they decided for safety’s sake to wait until Monday to actually make the repair. So tonight, I’ll be sleeping with one eye open to watch for the next arc in my life. In truth, I hope that doesn’t happen. My Oldies show on WUSC-FM is at 9 AM and I need to be wide awake so I can rock and roll. Oh MY!
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