NOAA Weather Radio transmitter problems in Louisville, KY

[Jim_Ferer]

This is pretty stupid. A 1,000 watt transmitter can't cost more than a few thousand dollars.

[ver tum]

I just got off the phone with the Weather Service, and they told me that they've figured out that the problems are in the phone lines going from the Louisville office to the Floyd County transmitter. The guy there couldn't tell me how old the transmitter is. He did say that they also received a trouble alarm from the Elizabethtown transmitter, so apparently, more than one transmitter was effected. That's pretty dangerous, especially this time of year.

[AllSafe]

Our local weather radio station, KEC59, uses private tower facilities, which are furnished by KWCH-TV in North Wichita.

[ver tum]

Our local weather radio station, KEC59, uses private tower facilities, which are furnished by KWCH-TV in North Wichita.

Our main transmitter is also furnished by a TV station, KET, the Kentucky Educational Television Network. I'm not sure about the secondary transmitters, but I assume that KET also owns them. The Louisville station is called KIH43.

[bwillcox]

This link is handy if you guys come across a dead/dying NOAA transmitter in your area and aren't sure who to contact to report it.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/outages.html

Usually what happens when we have NWR problems here is the phone lines to the tower site going out, so you usually just get a dead carrier or the transmitter goes completely off. Lightning also occasionally gets them.

Here the main two transmitters (KEC55 F/W and KEC56 Dallas) coverage areas overlap so losing a site isn't catastrophic. Both of them are on private sites as far as I am aware.

I just wish I could get them to back down on the compression on the Fort Worth transmitter so it isn't so nasty and hot-sounding. Very unpleasant to listen to it for long, but it does do the job tripping weather radios when the SVR or TOR comes across.

Vertum, I wouldn't be surprised if many/most of the NWR transmitters in Kentucky are on KET tower sites. KET also retransmits an EMWIN data feed on some of their HD subcarriers, and as far as I know they are the only broadcaster to provide that public service to the state anywhere in the country.

[ver tum]

This link is handy if you guys come across a dead/dying NOAA transmitter in your area and aren't sure who to contact to report it.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/outages.html

Usually what happens when we have NWR problems here is the phone lines to the tower site going out, so you usually just get a dead carrier or the transmitter goes completely off. Lightning also occasionally gets them.

Here the main two transmitters (KEC55 F/W and KEC56 Dallas) coverage areas overlap so losing a site isn't catastrophic. Both of them are on private sites as far as I am aware.

I just wish I could get them to back down on the compression on the Fort Worth transmitter so it isn't so nasty and hot-sounding. Very unpleasant to listen to it for long, but it does do the job tripping weather radios when the SVR or TOR comes across.

Vertum, I wouldn't be surprised if many/most of the NWR transmitters in Kentucky are on KET tower sites. KET also retransmits an EMWIN data feed on some of their HD subcarriers, and as far as I know they are the only broadcaster to provide that public service to the state anywhere in the country.

The problem with the phone lines is exactly what happened here. Until last week, I had no idea that those transmitters used phone lines to operate, but I guess that explains why the voices on NWR always sounded tinny. It would seem better to me if they just used a repeater system similar to police and fire department radios.

BTW, thanks for the link, and the useful information about KET.