Got a near-panic call from WCGO in Evanston this morning. ComEd had been playing bouncy bouncy with the three phase power which had managed to trip half the breakers and take out a couple of UPSs at the transmitter site. The transmitter tripped off and wouldn't come on via remote...the remote control UPS was one of the casualties. Upon arriving at the site their engineer also noted that the phasor controller had opened the interlock even though all the towers were properly switched. So, he reset everything, switched back and forth between D and N to get it all back in sync and turned the Nautel XR12 transmitter on.
1100 watts forward, 400 watts reflected. Ugh. Since the day ND and night DA only have the transmitter and tower in common I had him switch to night pattern. 1100 watts forward, 400 watts reflected. Huh?
Off I go from La Grange to Skokie, a 45 minute drive with no traffic.

Get to the transmitter site, everything looks good, no popped capacitors, no alarms on the transmitter. No reason for it to be running this out of whack. Switched patterns once again just to check. No change. So I try to adjust the power. No change. Then I notice that the PA supply current reading is not moving with modulation. Hmmm. Turned the transmitter off.
Display and power meter sez...1100 watts forward, 400 watts reflected. The damn controller that runs the panel is locked up.

I think I liked it better when we didn't have to reboot transmitters to get them work right.
