Ugh. Apparently, Sometimes Radio Stations Just Stop Working

This was kind of a tough week. Not only did the station go off-air, it happened twice, for two totally different reasons (and this is not something that happens frequently).

This story starts at 3:45 AM, when my phone first rang. Honestly, I mostly ignored it and fully intended to go back to sleep, but I am kind of an insomniac, so I found myself getting out of bed. Once in my living room, I checked to see who had called and soon found myself talking to one of our long time show hosts, Lee, who told me, "Sean, the station is off the air."

Lee explained that the station had stopped broadcasting a few minutes earlier, he had tried a few things to reset it, those things had not worked, and now we had to get serious about figuring it out. Roughly 30 minutes from the time the phone first rang, I was at the station, doing my best to make the situation better, rather than worse (did I mention I am not a tech guy?).

My first call was to Jay, our technology and facilities manager, and he was quickly on the phone with one of our volunteers, Mike, who is probably one of the very few professional radio engineers in mid-Missouri (and he is awesome). Mike and Jay started putting their heads together and I prepared to be told what to do.

My second call was to volunteer John because I needed help and he was one of the few people I thought might answer the phone for me at 4:30 or so in the morning. I have mobility issues related to my multiple sclerosis and figured there might be any number of things I would be needed to do -- things I would not be physically able to do -- and that John might answer my plea for help.

Thank goodness I called John because I would have been basically useless without him (well, I would have been basically useless without any of the four people helping, doing heroic work before 5:00 AM).

Without going into all of the details, here is the basic sequence of events:

1. station goes off air at about 3:30 AM
2. everybody needed is working on the problem by about 4:30
3. the problem seemed to be at the main transmitter (miles from the station, outside town)
4. then it seemed to be at the intermediate transmitter on top of Paquin Tower, one of Columbia's tallest buildings
5. then it seemed to be at the station
6. then it seemed to be at Paquin
7. then it turned out to be at the transmitter (yes, at the very first place we checked)
8. the problem was fixed in less than ten minutes and we were back on the air, roughly 13 hours after the initial problem

A key thing to remember here is that large technology set-ups -- such as a radio station with two relays in the transmission system -- can require lots of trial and error to fix problems. Someone really smart and experienced -- mostly radio engineer Mike, in this case -- has to check out every theory until one works. For us, this took trying several things, making several trips, with several different people involved at various points.  Oh, and it was so, so cold, which did not make it more awesome.

In the end, our problem was solved ad we we were broadcasting again, all thanks to the incredible work and know-how of our volunteers and one part-time staff person (including Mike the radio engineer -- the biggest star of the day -- as well as the invaluable John, Lee, and Jay).

To me, the weird thing about the whole situation was that there was almost nothing that could have been done to prevent the outage, and about as much to do to prevent it in the future. Chalk it up to the mystical nature of technology (especially when that technology is years or even decades old).

The story of the second outage is much shorter...

I was sitting in an evening station board meeting when I got a text from staff member Sarah that the station was off-air. I stepped out to deal with it, found Jay on top of things -- thank goodness he was in (at almost 9:00 at night).

Very quickly, the readings from the transmitter told us that it was frozen/covered with ice from the ice storm all around us (unlike with the previous issue, the technology was able to tell us what was wrong with it). There was basically nothing we could do until it thawed, which would likely take a day or two. Radio engineer Mike told us the only real recourse was to turn the transmitter off, so we did that, and I notified programmers that they did not need to come into the station.

On my way out to head home, Jay told me that the first person back into the station the next morning should flip the transmitter switch back on and just see if it worked (the temperature would still be below freezing, but ice shifts and things change). Since there was a possibility it would work, I got into the station at 5:30 AM, flipped the switch and -- lo and behold! -- it worked. I jumped into the air room, began playing a prerecorded program, and called the scheduled programmer into the station (Bruce, who was in the booth maybe 20 minutes after I called him -- volunteers save the day again!).

Today, all's well, the station is working perfectly, and on we go. Until next time...