Re: Phasing; was: "QUAD" Broadcasts......

[ehenness@natick-amed02.army.mil]

I said, about WLKW-FM:

> One Saturday during a thunderstorm, the FM suddenly went off the air.  
The 
>engineer at the WNAC transmitter site in Rehoboth said that lightning had 
>struck the tower and had knocked the electricity out of phase.

And Dan Strassberg replied:

>Either the engineer didn't know what he was talking about or he realized
>that he was talking to a nontechnical type and figured he could string
>buzz-words together and satisfy the listener. A lightning strike to a 
power
>transformer (not a tower) could produce a short between the transformer
>windings for the three-phase ac power. This would destroy the transformer
>(which would have to be replaced) and would, of course, shut down the 
power.
>But this explanation does not fit with the engineer's statement as you 
reported it. 

I had called first, and the jock called later to ask him a few questions 
because of readings he was getting from the telemetry.  (We spoke to the 
channel 64 engineer, not  the 'LKW engineer.)  We both were given the same 
answer, about the power phasing.  Granted, I know now more than I did then, 
but the two of us were scratching our heads, since that explanation really 
didn't make too much sense.  The bottom line was, though, that there *were* 
thunderstorms in the area, the FM *had* been removed from the air, and the 
problem was not originating from the studio end.

Perhaps the power line took a hit, and not the tower.  It would have been 
obvious that a strike had happened, in any case.  I suppose in the 
confusion immediately afterwards that they might have suspected the tower 
was hit.  Rehoboth is far enough from Providence that we would have only 
known that the station was suddenly no longer on the air.

Odd.  Thanks for the explanation.

Ed Hennessy

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