[BC] WLS dead cxr prob. this a.m. at ~6:50

[Alan Kline]

------ At 09:16 AM 7/1/2006 -0700, The Most Honourable Harold Hallikainen wrote: -------
>
>In this case, where there was an inversion layer causing the STL "beam" to
>miss the receive antenna, I wonder if another antenna at the receive site
>would have suffered the same signal loss at the same time. 

Well, I can say from recent experience (like, 3 hours ago) that a digital
STL receive antenna may hold onto its signal while the analog is "bent".

Shortly after 10:30 Saturday evening, we lost the STL for our analog TX
for about 45 seconds.  Naturally, this was not only during the first
block of our late news, but during a package for which we sent an anchor
and photog to Ohio. And of course, this happened after the newscast had
started off bad... (I need a *long* vacation...)

Anyway, our MC op's first reflex was to run to the back room and start up
the aux. His first thought was that the TX itself had gone off air. Logical
enough, until he came back, we both looked at the TX remote, and saw that
the TX was still on, just kicking out a dead carrier.  He had been fooled
by the "fadeout" of the signal showing static on air for a moment, which
led him (and me) to believe the TX had shut off.

The DTV STL signal was completely solid, so the 15 or 20 people in central 
Iowa with DTV sets saw the whole story.

The fun part was explaining the whole thing later, to an anchor who'd been
crabby all evening...

ak


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