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Old 25-Nov-2019, 8:04 PM   #3
Tower Guy
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Delmar, NY
Posts: 1,236
Unfortunately you live in a weak signal area for WCAX. I think that they need to be at full power for you to receive them.

The antenna fire covers a good portion of the antenna itself. The repair is likely to be more extensive than the article infers. The antenna is built using 40 panels wrapped around a square spire and covered with a fiberglass radome. Obviously, the radome is heavily damaged. You can assume that a problem on one or more of the 40 panels caused the fire. It is likely that the coax going to some of the panels have melted and will need to be replaced.

In order to get back on the air a temporary antenna may be used, but it won’t have as much gain as the main antenna, and may not be able to handle all the power the transmitter can make. Another approach to getting back on the air is to use the lower half of the existing antenna using panels salvaged from the side that didn’t burn.

Hopefully the transmitters sensed a problem on the antenna and shut down before they self destructed.

I also wonder if the repack was a part of the failure, but it’s also possible that the fire was due to significant ice buildup on the antenna and the new transmitters didn’t turn the power down to compensate for the excess ice.
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