So i was live on air on a weekday everything going well lots of listeners when i started getting some getting some crackling and feedback on the station now as the transmiter is about 2 miles away and im transmitting via x-band links i put it down to just static so carried on but the crackling got worse so i checked the horn to see if it had moved all seemed good. About 5 miniutes later the crackling stopped so i thought nothing of it. Well about 10 minuites of that i lost the link and the station went dead, At this point im putting it down to transmitter issues so i drive to the transmitter location which is inside a lift shaft of a 20 story building so as i walk inside theres a man standing near the lift wearing a hi-vis jacket so i act normal and get in the lift and take it to the top floor when i get to the top floor i notice that the roof accses hatch is open. By this time it dawns on me whats happend so i take the lift down to about the 10th floor and quickly check the escape hatch the transmitter is still there hidden. So i leave the building and wait for the guy to go upon waiting around an hour or so bitting my nails! he leaves so i go and check the damage to my suprise the transmitter is still in place but the antenna and satcan are missing from the roof. It seems he just cut a massive section of cable out and left the transmitter in place. So i eventaully manged to retrive it. So my question is will there be any damage to it since he cut the coax while the thing was on air?
As to the TX...connect it up to a watt meter and dummy load and see if it survived the slice and dice.
I think I mentioned it before, but this is why it's a good idea to have an SWR trip circuit. Not only can it save the TX from a mismatched antenna, but also from a deliberate cut on the coax, and shuts off the TX protecting it from damage.
If you plan to return to the air, might consider a new remote site for the TX, and wait a while too. Many believe that having a remote TX site linked up via STL keeps the evil ones at bay..but it doesn't. They triangulate your broadcast signal...rest assured they can easily triangulate your STL source as well, especially when they find your remote TX site by simply looking at which direction the STL receive horn is pointing..not to mention use their own little horn or yagi and home in on the STL source.
Peace!
K-ROCKS RadioOne
ZeroPointRadio
AM Stereo 1670
FM Stereo 92.1
Worst case scenario the final transistor got cooked. If it is one of the more fancy exciter units then it's likely SWR protected and may have switched off. Just be lucky you didn't get caught at the studio or worse. Sounds like you got off quite easy with just having to replace a few components.
The swr protection circuit as already mentioned is a good idea, if ofcom can't get to the transmitter they will do there best to create as much damage to put it out of action.
A few tips that we've used over the years, put an alarm relay switch on the door to you transmitter location so when any one opens the door your transmitter shuts down, it gives you a warning someone's nosing about.
The lnb for your satcan mount it on a small motorised platform so when the door opens it rotates out of alignment of the microwave horn.
Use two microwave links one from the studio and a mid point to change direction of the link.
Broadband internet is a god send to pirate radio, broadacast out of the studio on the net picked up with a laptop using wifi, into your comp/limter, stereo encoder, rds encoder then to your microwave tx horn, so if and when they get your transmitter you still only lose a transmitter and satcan.
It's very rare these days for a studio to get raided by ofcom but who's bothered if they only get a transmitter and satcan, just have plenty of spares ready to go straight back on air.
Turns out the exciter i use has SWR protection and the transmitter seems to be fine im actualy working a new link system using a raspberry pi and wireless so far seems to work cool just working on some connection drop software which will just resort to playing music stored on a flash drive. The motorised platform is a good idea as is the alarm system idea the location we used wasnt ideal as it was a farily new tower block what i didnt realise is they have inafred beams on the doors im suprised it took this long to find it.
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