At 4am today, I was awakened by a call from our station Manager John Paisley. KOLU’s transmitter was running, but there was no sound going over the air.

I checked the usual suspects in our automation system remotely from my home, and all was running fine but no sound. I also had a message that communication with our site was down. Time to head to the studio…

…at the studio, all equipment was working well, and I could see that the “backhaul” that communicated with KOLU’s equipment was working on the studio end, but there was nothing on the transmitter side. Time to visit the transmitter site…

…arriving at the site after a 40 minute drive, the transmitter was humming along well, but as I looked at the receiver that gets the signal from the studio, I noticed it was dark, not a good sign. Going behind the rack, I checked the recently installed “UPS” (uninterruptible power supply that provides power to important equipment), and all lights appeared to be on. While I considered what that meant, I moved the power cord from the receiver to bypass the UPS, and all of the sudden we were back on the air!

A closer look at the UPS revealed that it has a “GFI” (ground-fault interrupter) outlet installed on it that had tripped for an unknown reason. Resetting the GFI brought power back to all equipment.

Feeling that I didn’t want the same problem to take us off the air again, I temporarily bypassed the UPS (it only keeps the equipment running while the generator starts up during a power failure) and will look at ways to keep the GFI from causing this problem again. Hopefully, we’ll have a permanent solution soon.

Thanks for listening, and your prayers are always appreciated!