What would you do if you went to your tower site one day and the structure was dark? This is what happened to Mick Rapeer, director of engineering for Connoisseur Media Pennsylvania, after he received a call saying there was no audio going to the transmitter.I was figuring it was another Microsoft Windows error, which is usually the case,” he told Radio World. “So I logged into the automation system to look and it was going about its business playing. I then logged onto the WSBG website and the audio was playing there … OK, somewhere the audio stopped getting to the transmitter. I followed the audio chain and everything looked good all the way to the STL transmitter, which had audio and RF,” he explained. “Hmmm, has to be the STL receiver at the transmitter site.” When Rapeer drove to the transmitter site, he encountered a tower crew leaving the area and asked them what they were doing up there. They told him they were decommissioning a tower, explaining that they took everything off the tower except one that was hot. He drove the rest of the way to the TX site and sure enough, everything but the main antenna had been removed from the tower. “I have never seen this before where a tower company takes everything off the tower, while you’re on the air, and doesn’t even tell you that they are going to do it!” he tells Radio World. The tower manager was just as unaware of the incident as Rapeer was and after a lot of phoning around, Rapeer got the crew sent back to the tower site. But it wasn’t that easy. “The coaxes were all cut in different lengths and one of the antennas was cut up. I had them get the two longest pieces of coax and put connectors on them and get the STL antenna back where it was. After two more hours we were back on the air. Now I have to get that tower company to put back everything with new coax,” Rapeer explained to Radio World.
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