Failure to line up electrical contractors early enough in the process is a major impediment that GatesAir is seeing in its repack work for broadcasters moving to a new channel. That’s according to GatesAir Chief Product Officer Rich Redmond, speaking on an NAB webinar yesterday in advance of the association’s Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference.
Installing a new transmitter at the new tower location during the overnight hours takes a lot of advance planning, he said. “The number one delay we’ve found is lack of time for completion on electrical work.” Just like coordinating with tower crews, it’s important to get electrical crews scheduled too. If not, “you can lose weeks pretty quickly,” said Redmond.
Of course, “Tower crews will likely be the most in demand and capacity restricted part of the repack,” he said. He titled this slide “Run, Don’t Walk to The Tower.”
In his Q&A earlier with Inside Towers, Redmond emphasized the importance of completing a site plan to learn what’s on the tower now and what stations will need at the new location. For most of the stations changing channels in the repack, it’s been about 10 years since any major work has been done at transmitter sites, he said, referring to the TV transition from analog to digital.
GatesAir is finding a lot of abandoned analog antennas and transmission line still on towers. “Working through that to figure out if there’s extra capacity” on the tower is important, said Redmond.
The survey should include a detailed electrical RF and mechanical analysis. What might have been in compliance when the tower was built may not be any more. In some cases, he’s seen towers fail the analysis, so “it’s important to get that done early.”
“The tower’s probably the most important piece in terms of site access.” He recommended any needed tower strengthening be done as soon as possible. He suggested adding about 20 percent more time into the schedule for weather delays.
Redmond will give his full presentation at NAB’s BEITC. The conference runs from Saturday, April 7 through Thursday, April 12, starting just ahead of the spring NAB Show 2018 in Las Vegas.
By Leslie Stimson, Washington Bureau Chief, Inside Towers
March 22, 2018
Reader Interactions