Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:31 — 12.6MB)

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While not everyone gets to enjoy winter weather, there are many of us who do.   Northern Michigan is an area where winter is enjoyed quite a bit by many— and those of us tending to transmitter sites have an annual ritual in preparation. Of the many items on the agenda pre-snowfall is the pressurization of certain liquid cooled transmitter systems.

With my recent backup transmitter installation, the wiring of external interlocks is hot on my mind.  I’ve been implementing some nice big red ‘stop’ buttons into the antenna interlock lines and find that tower crews really appreciate the added safety they can provide.

This episode is a continuation of my ‘Mic Test’ series and while it may be slightly better than the last podcast, there’s still much more to improve on.   Obviously the microphone (a Plantronics bluetooth earpiece-mic) is way too omnidirectional and picks up a hefty amount of road noise (sadly F250’s aren’t known to be super quiet either).  Improvements to come (though I may not have a new mic in time for the next episode).

Have a GREAT day and remember– BE SAFE!!

John

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:44 — 10.4MB)

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As is so often the case, when observing the way a system is wired it is assumed that proper design and practice was used.

Sadly, assuming that existing wiring and design is proper is NOT always a good idea.   Intuition and gut-feeling can often be better indicators of when to question what appears to be normal and routine.  Sometimes an unsafe condition can be the normal situation for years before being corrected.

My apologies for the audio quality of this podcast, it is yet another ‘mic check’– wherein I just recorded the show on the fly while driving down the interstate, only to hear how terrible it was later on.  Rather than hitting ‘delete’, I figured in the grand scheme it’d be better to publish as-is.   What you’re hearing is the result of using a Plantronics Bluetooth headset-mic going into the ‘voice memo’ app on an iPhone7. I didn’t realize there was a choice of compressed vs lossless for the voice memo app, this was compressed.. I’ll try lossless now.    Improvements to follow, but give me a wee bit of time and patience— I’m a working engineer with more work on my plate than time (typical, I know).

John