Everybody Loves Ramen

My Maruchan Instant Lunch is in the final three-minute soak and soften stage, so I'll bat out a brief piece before going back to wiring the electrical service for the new CW racks. It seems odd that the most important step in preparing an instant lunch is to wait.

Had a fellow show up at the station's front door yesterday: 60-ish, grizzled, trying to get the door open and maneuver his walker through at the same time. I went out to hold the door for him, but instead of coming in he thrust a VHS cassette at me, telling me about his problems with the VA hospital. Apparently he's a Vietnam veteran, but the hospital is denying him benefits (he says) because he is dead. The tape (he says) is proof that he is not dead. I promised to give it to the news assignment editor, and he went away happy. Why a VHS tape would constitute better evidence than his own physical presence is a question that remains unanswered.

Okay, the instant lunch has soaked for the prescribed amount of time, but the vegetables on top are still in their hardened state... to the bottom they go for another couple of minutes.

Went to Home Depot this morning for some electrical supplies and some hardware. Found everything I needed, although the bolts and washers don't come in boxes... it was necessary to count out 100 of each into a plastic bag. Went to the self-checkout and scanned everything else, leaving the two bags for last. I've done this before, so I had written the SKU numbers on the bags. Hit the button to look up the bolts, entered the stock number and waited for it to ask me how many... but it didn't, instead adding one bolt to my receipt and telling me to put it in the bagging area. I didn't want to have to do that another 99 times, so I asked the young lady at the central console to key in the rest of the bolts. She looked up the order and said no, they are already entered. But look, I said, that's just one bolt and I have 100 in the bag. I wound up having to persuade her to charge me for everything, and then had to show her how to enter it. Very strange scene, and had she asked if I wanted fries with that, I would not have been a bit surprised.

At least I didn't have to deal with the diminutive but feisty woman in Electrical who plainly doesn't want to be there and actually growls, mostly to herself. It's not unusual that when she's working, customers shy away from her and come instead to me looking for assistance, even though my shirt isn't orange and has a nice big NewsChannel 9 / WSYR logo on the front.

The instant lunch has now been consumed, and I have outlets to wire and racks to bolt in place.

By the way: I'm alive, too. I can send a tape if you need proof.

Slug Fest 2006

One question you should never ask on a Monday: "What else can go wrong today?" — you will surely find out.

Syracuse's digital transmitter has been flaky since the middle of last week, and down completely since Saturday. Thankfully, a replacement exciter arrived this morning and the transmitter guys are installing it. In the meantime I have been getting phone calls from people who wonder if we realize it's off the air.

The computer networking between Syracuse and Watertown is down, with the result that I get an email every ten minutes telling me so. Fine, I know already.

One of our engineers was loading a piece of equipment into a pickup truck and managed to break a spot-welded hinge on the equipment. We have someone coming in with a welding set later this afternoon. As if that wasn't bad enough, the equipment also went through the back window of the cab. They're cleaning up the broken glass now.

I'm cranking out construction drawings for the build-two-CW-stations-in-a-month project... or I was until my plotter, a large Hewlett Packard, suddenly stopped with a nasty noise and an error code that isn't listed in the manual. The main drive belt that moves the printer head back and forth is shredded; a bit of research on line tells me that I really don't want to try fixing this myself, not that I have the time. A local HP repair center should be sending someone out today or tomorrow to have a look.

Had a phone conversation with my Dad yesterday... it was an early day and I wasn't terribly alert, but after comparing notes about his station's CW migration from UPN and the project I'm doing, it made me think that perhaps we were making some incorrect assumptions about the Rochester station.

We were. It turns out that Watertown is a CW-Plus system, and Rochester is CW... not the same thing at all. We have the new satellite dish installed and aimed for CW-Plus, so we thought we were all set... but the feed for ordinary CW is on a completely different satellite. Blast. So this morning I ordered another satellite dish, just like the last one. At least now I know all of the secrets and won't be surprised by the mislabeled hardware bags and the petal sections that don't want to fit.

The state department of transporation picked today to deal with the stream that separates our property from interstate 690. When we built the place 22 years ago, this was little more than a four-foot ditch several inches deep; now it spans about fifteen feet and is several feet deep. Much of this is the result of cat-tails and other vegetation that has accumulated over the years. It also doesn't help that the neighborhood has become heavily developed; what was once an open field is now a Home Depot with a huge parking lot. Rain no longer has anything to soak into, and the runoff winds up flowing past our building. A heavy storm will bring the stream up and over our parking lot.

This DOT crew is running a Gradall and a bulldozer back and forth, right behind the gazebo that the Bridge Street show uses for their live outdoor cooking segment. Not only is this making a real racket, every time the bulldozer goes past it sends a wake of muddy water up the lawn. So the production crew pulled everything back inside and set up to do the segment indoors.

It didn't matter... a special report for President Bush's 10am press conference killed the whole show. So the crew set up twice for nothing, and the guests (including a lady from Wanderer's Rest with the sort of mangy dog you would find in a Booth New Yorker cartoon) left untelevised and mildly grumpy.

Lunch is over, so my little reality avoidance mechanism needs to end. I'll leave you with a sight that greeted Laurie and me when we got home from a meeting last night and pulled up in front of the barn:



I had no idea that slugs had patterns... but in my book, they're still ugly. I also have no idea exactly what they were doing on our barn door. A note to the potentially helpful: that's not a request for information. There are some things we are better off not knowing.

Bang!

That's the sound of the starting gun going off for the two CW stations: they are scheduled to go on the air September 18th, and we received the approval to start buying the equipment today. Yup... that's two new stations, one month.

We did jump the gun a bit, buying the satellite dish before the approval was in hand. A risky play, but it paid off. The dish is in place and aimed at the right satellite, so that's a week's worth of work behind us. The referee didn't catch us, so we got by with the false start.

Of course, no project would be complete without political dimensions. One of the stations is trying to use this as a springboard to break away from the technical hub here in Syracuse, and that just isn't going to happen right now. And we're out of space in the control room (no surprise there — we're already running six high definition and seven standard definition stations out of a facility built when "standard definition" was something you found in Webster's.

So we need to take back part of the room that we let the production department use for an edit area about twelve years ago; it originally housed our film islands, and it made sense when film disappeared to make use of the space. But now the edit room goes mainly unused, except for someone dubbing a tape once every few days: the production folks have three new Avid computer-based editing suites over by their offices, each of which is far more powerful than the old edit room ever dreamed of being. So it shouldn't be a big deal to take out the unused gear and get our technical space back, right?

The insane laughter will stop in a minute.

Nobody likes to give up turf, even when it's not their turf to begin with. There was a lot of resistance to clearing this area, but we finally prevailed — but under the condition that we move the equipment to the old master control booth. But they aren't very happy about it.

That bang... that was a starter's gun, wasn't it? Those are blanks... aren't they?

Better run.

We are driven

So I'm driving to work on Seneca Turnpike this morning, about halfway up the hill where construction crews are building the new overpass for route 81. Traffic is slow but steady until a flag-lady steps out and stops everything to let a cement mixer pull out. The truck makes its move, the flag-lady waves traffic on, and the Toyota two cars ahead lurches and stalls. I see the driver, a young woman apparently not too experienced with her manual transmission, becoming more and more flustered as she restarts the engine, lurches and stalls again. Twice.

After the third attempt, the car between us starts honking, its driver wildly gesticulating and hollering. I can't make out the words — for which I should probably be grateful. The woman kept at it, and with some mighty revving and a jarring screech, finally managed to get her Toyota moving up the hill. The honking bonehead in front of me stayed right on her tail, swerving around her at the traffic light and gunning down Brighton. But before it disappeared, I did manage to catch two of the stickers on the back:

PRACTICE RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS

HATRED IS NOT A FAMILY VALUE

Yup. I see.

It's a guy thing.

The dish is done. Actually, I finished the construction yesterday... a gazillion bolts to fit through holes that didn't want to line up. There is a trick to it, involving five tapered alignment pins, which I had to go out and buy first thing yesterday morning at an industrial supply house. Put one of the wedge-shaped petals in place and insert the pins in the holes so that everything lines up properly, then install the bolts... so say the instructions. The reality is, you horse the petal in between the supports and get three pins inserted. When you go for the fourth, pin number two comes loose and hits you on the head.

Did I mention that this thing is put together with an insane number of bolts? No problem — I had bought a pneumatic ratchet for a similar project last year, so I wheeled the compressor outside and let it chug. And chug. And chug. About a dozen bolts later the compressor quit; it's a Husky, which is an unfortunate use of the word. It has a large plastic shroud that looks impressive in the store, but actually conceals significant internal wimpiness. I must have a talk with the fellow who bought this abomination: No wimpy tools!

I probably could have torn into it and fixed it, but repairing a crappy wannabe compressor really wasn't high on my list of priorities. Home Depot is around the corner, so I rented a contractor-grade Ridgid. Thirty bucks well spent: it came right up to pressure and cycled off. All day it just sat there and did its thing.

For the rest of the day I inserted petals, lined them up, ratcheted bolts in place, aligned brackets, installed circumference skirt sections. Even got the feed assembly built and put that up. Over 1,216 pieces of hardware, neatly sealed in plastic bags plainly marked with numbers that didn't match the instructions. But they're all in, and all tightened. Happily, the last bolt went together about half an hour before quitting time, so I got cleaned up and returned the compressor (grudgingly) just in time to go home.

Today's task: find satellite Galaxy 11 and make it work. I wheeled out the test cart with analyzer, receiver and video monitor and hooked it up to the dish. Moved the dish around (this is not motorized — you horse it left or right and use a big honking wrench to move it up and down) and finally found a satellite. Nothing familiar on it: the only analog signal was a jewelry shopping network. After some more searching I found IA-5, one of the satellites ABC uses. An excellent start: now I know which way to go. Found IA-6, then Galaxy 4. Galaxy 11 should be exactly between those two. Split the difference, and up popped a satellite. Scanned around and found a feed from the Centers for Disease Control, plus a digital carrier where I was expecting to see it. Hot dog! Locked the dish down, tweaked up the feed assembly that sits in front of the dish, disconnected the test cart and put the permanent cable in place, got everything sealed up and weathertight.

Went into the control room and turned on the receive equipment: nice clean pictures of the CDC program. More than I wanted to see about skin diseases, but that's okay: my project works! Just to savor the victory, I thought: let's move one of the steerable dishes to Galaxy 11 to compare its signal against the new dish. Tuned the receiver to the same channel and told the dish to move. Snow gradually gave way to the CDC lady — wonderful! — and then the picture went back to snow. Rats. And when the steerable dish finally stopped on Galaxy 11, what should appear on the monitor? That's right: the jewelry shopping channel I stumbled across right at the start.

At least the real Galaxy 11 was easy to find again, though having to cut out the nicely weatherproofed feedline to reconnect the test cart had me quietly growling. But it's all working now and sealed up again, and the video operators can watch the Jewelry network to their hearts content.

Now for the final male ritual of project completion: time to go out and stare at the dish. And to think about getting a truly manly compressor.

Out with the old...

We're caught in one of those "catch-22" situations at work right now... we have two new CW stations that go on the air September 18th, and need to get the equipment ordered, installed and ready to make that deadline. Problem is, there are still some final legal details to settle in the contract — and until they are completed, we can't get corporate approval to even order the equipment. This should happen sometime next week, which gives us one month to put two stations on the air.

We aren't just sitting on our hands or biting our fingernails (and definitely not both together)... we're cheating. We went ahead and ordered the satellite dish, figuring that we can pull the money out of somewhere if the paperwork doesn't come through on time.

This isn't the only sleight-of-hand going on... some of it is mechanical. We have an old dish that doesn't work very well that we want to replace, but the space isn't large enough for the new dish. We also have another dish about the same size that works quite well, and is in a wide open area. Solution: get a crane to lift the crappy dish off its mounting pipe and set it aside, then lift the decent dish off its pipe and move it to where the crappy dish had been, thus freeing up a pipe for the new dish. That's what we were doing late yesterday afternoon when the crane showed up.

Here's the decommissioned crappy dish, protected by cones. It rained overnight and left a pool of water in the bottom, which our resident garage sparrows enjoyed rather loudly this morning.


The pole was already the right diameter (hooray!) and set in a large amount of concrete, so that unpleasant bit of preparation was already done.

Within an hour I had the crate opened, large parts carried out, instruction posted on the wall, and the mounting base on the pipe.

Colin arrived about then and helped me hoist the grey center drum up onto the mounting base and secure it. It pivots on two large bolts and is secured by a big piece of threaded rod — you can see it hanging down in front.

By lunchtime I had bolted sixteen angle brackets to the drum and bolted the white support braces to the angles. Sometimes things just go too well!

The next step is to put the edge skirts on the braces, and the instructions tell you to use specifically labeled hardware for this step. Problem is, none of the bags of hardware are marked as the directions state. Called the manufacturer: it turns out that they've changed how they pack the hardware, but the directions didn't get revised to match. It also turns out that I used the wrong size bolts to install those braces... so forty-eight 1/4" bolts had to be removed and replaced with 5/16" bolts. Bother.

That freed up the 1/4" hardware I needed to mount the skirts, which went uneventfully, thank you very much. Then on to putting the wedge-shaped reflector petals in place. You might think that this would be the easy part: wrong. The instructions tell you to use tapered alignment pins for this step; a more accurate translation would be "none of the stinking holes will line up, so you need to force things a bit". I tried using several center punches, but the taper just isn't right. Tomorrow morning I'll swing past an industrial machining supply and pick up the proper drift pins; given the FCC's vigorous enforcement action lately, it's best to avoid situations that could evoke inappropriate language.

There is one good thing about this step: the dish is starting to create its own shade. I can already feel the sunburn... good time to go home.

Quick blip

This is turbo Monday... after a turbo weekend. I have about 15 minutes before a crane shows up to move two satellite dishes. Hopefully the thunderstorm cell that just showed up moves along.

Work on WSYR-AM's towers is moving along... I broke free for a few minutes yesterday afternoon to have a look.

They've finished the northwest and southeast footings and have moved the temporary jacks to the opposite legs. I notice there's an upgrade next the southeast leg:

This is less than a mile from the Onondaga reservation... maybe they plan to simulcast smoke signals.

Aha -- crane's here. More tomorrow, I hope...

Looking back...

Saturday's post gave a glimpse of the repair work in process at WSYR-AM's transmitter site, particularly at the south tower, where the foundations are being replaced. The original two towers date back to the 1930s, before Onondaga Creek was straightened; the south tower came later. I've been looking at old maps to see where the creek originally ran, but the precision for terrain features was rather low in 1860. As it turns out, you can see some of the course of the original creek bed in current aerial photos, more than fifty years after the work was done.

This is a clip from Microsoft's Live Local imagery, looking south. You can see where the Army Corps of Engineers filled in the old creek — it's the browned grass that swings out next to the south tower. No wonder they have had problems with the ground settling! I am supposing that the brownoff is the result of salt that has leached up from the original bed -- the creek carries an enormous amount of brine and mud from the Tully salt deposits.

In the course of looking for information, I ran across this: someone's unofficial history of WSYR, containing all sorts of photos, which I wish had more information! There's the transmitter site on Valley Drive, and I'm placing the date in the 1930s. The photographer must have used a red filter on the lens to get such sky contrast! Notice the call letters on either side of the door: WSYU, and W8XHW.

And a view from inside the building:

That's the transmitter to the right: it's an RCA BTA-1C, good for 1,000 watts. That model was current up to the late 1930s, which is how I fixed the date. The "old" transmitter I remember was a 5,000 watt BTA-5D, and was built into the wall to the left, if I have my bearings straight — that must have been installed in the 1940s. I don't know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if the increase in power was accompanied by the third tower, to direct the signal away from New York City and Youngstown Ohio, which also had stations on 570 kHz.

It's funny about perspective: what I think of as the "new" transmitter was a late 50s or early 60s vintage BTA-5T like the picture below. But that's been gone for a number of years.

Things certainly change.