Friday, September 26, 2014

Dead Air!

     Not the kind you'd notice, or not much.  Not that I noticed, either -- I killed a wireless intercom system used for a very critical purpose while relocating a different and even more critical wireless audio system, which acted up and I had to fix it, and then I went to microwave my lunch. 

     The nuking had just reached the point where the machine goes BEEP!  when the paging system came alive: "We need an engineer immediately!"

     Uh-oh.  As soon as I found out what was dead, I figured I had done it and after trying the easy stuff -- cycle the power, look at the front panel (where the little lights are going blinky-blink just like they were happy) and listen to the audio going in (A-OK!) and via the receiver (dead as a snake mashed on the road~~~) -- I got to do Stupid Ladder Tricks, moving an antenna from the far end of the very thin coax back to a transmitter.  Hey, that worked.  My boss was on the scene, too, and when he and I moved three more, they all worked, too; but from page to fixing took from 4:50 to 5:15 p.m. and they needed 'em at 5:00 straight up, so I guess it was a good thing I had moved one already, earlier in the day: it kept working and the users shared that one channel until I had the rest fixed.

     Did I mention the darned things are mounted twelve feet up in the air?
Click to embiggenate
     Yeah, that made it even more fun.
  
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7 comments:

  1. PaulSeptember 26, 2014 at 12:40 PM

    Altitude always brings a level of excitement to mundane tasks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownSeptember 26, 2014 at 1:42 PM

    Almost as much fun as climbing a mast while underway and hoping that some idiot doesn't ignore the safety tag and turn on the radar while you're up there.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousSeptember 26, 2014 at 4:04 PM

    Maybe bigger coax?

    Merle

    ReplyDelete
  4. JayNolaSeptember 26, 2014 at 10:29 PM

    Is that the "engine room" from a while back?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Don MSeptember 27, 2014 at 2:04 AM

    Aircraft antennas can be located on the top, and the rules are, you have to wear a harness there. And it has to be tight. In the heat of the desert at Edwards Air Force Base. In an airless hanger. Working on an aircraft that recently was outside in the sun. Have I mentioned that our aircraft tend to be black or at least dark gray?

    Ah, never forget the happy days.

    How cool that you could fix it that quickly. We normally have a few hours of troubleshooting, and then opening up aircraft hatches to reach the odd place where the connector was loose, followed by puttying them closed, and then heat curing the putty.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousOctober 2, 2014 at 4:35 PM

    What kind of facility is that? Looks like an unused data center or perhaps a room in an entertainment complex.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Roberta XOctober 2, 2014 at 10:08 PM

    I suppose it's a sort of an "entertainment complex." They tell me it's a TV studio. I'm not so sure.

    ReplyDelete

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