[BC] More Moseley remote control stories...

[Hal Schardin]

Harold, 
Your story brings to mind an episode that happened when I was at
WCCO radio. We were using Moseley remote controls with a dedicated
line to the transmitter site. The noise on the control line
increased to the point of unreliable operation. One afternoon a
board engineer dutifully took his afternoon transmitter readings.
When he started the calibration, the remote stepper took off through
all channels and raised them. This turned on the filaments and
plates of our second transmitter (which was not a problem as the
dummy was off and the transmitter was interlocked). However, the
last position turned on the "panic tape" at the transmitter. This
was a pre-recorded, 45 minute tape of music and talk allowing us
time to abandon our studios and resume programming from the
transmitter fallout shelter. 
Without remote control, this tape could not be shut off. This tape
rolled for tens of minutes until someone arrived at our transmitter
site and took local control. Then we were able to resume the
exciting Vikings football game that was so rudely interrupted!
Shortly after that, the remote control was rewired. To turn on the
panic tape, you would need to LOWER position 15 and RAISE position
16.

Hal Schardin, CPBE
Minnesota Services for the Blind
651 642-0848
Hal.Schardin at STATE.MN.US

>>> harold at hallikainen.com 6/20/2006 10:26 AM >>>

That reminds me of a problem a local TV station had many years
ago.
Normally, they'd never turn off their STL. One night they did turn
off the
STL to do some work at the studio. The STL did not squelch, so
their
remote control (a Moseley PBR-30) started randomly stepping
through
channels and raising and lowering those channels. It turned the
transmitter on into the dummy load without turning on the dummy
load
cooling (it wasn't interlocked!). Burned out the dummy load.

Harold

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