Another treat from a CBC Staffer that shared with me under conditions of strictest confidence--
*CBC has few few hardware techs deployed and very little "break and fix" policy -* *That means when anything (and I stress ANYTHING) fails, declines or breaks - it is left to languish until* *such time as it "fixes itself" or completely fails and if in an urban area might get the attention of the 1 or 2 techs* *that are available.* Our own 90.5 FM in Victoria is a great example of a transmitter that shares a tower with some TOP 40 FM stations in Victoria -- and their "technician" who has actually climbed tower has ZERO tech training and uses a "common sense" approach to troubleshooting and fixing... We had a convo some years back when he insisted that FM and VHF was purely line of sight, no skip, no bounce or scatter -- he was convinced that there is no such thing as FM DX as the one line in his "40 page" technician learning manual that he got out of a cereal box said... "AM Distance, FM line of sight..." and that is the tech that might deal with one of the FM transmitters locally. A wonderful byproduct of "race for the bottom" bean counting when it comes to supporting infrastructure... Why would we get a skilled tech on staff *35 years a week* when we can get a dummy to do the same work for minimum wage AND be an on-air person too. Sorry Paul: Not implying *On-air types are dummies* -- but that they shouldn't be touching transmitters and antennas. On Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 10:09 AM Theo <th...@telus.net> wrote: > Well, Radio One/88.1 pretty much disappears while driving once Hwy 99 > turns the Big Bend and heads north from Horseshoe Bay, only about 20km > west of the Mt Seymour tx, and reception from the Squamish FM relay is > spotty till you're well up Howe Sound. Residents in parts of HB and > especially Lions Bay likely would agree with that assessment too. > > Even driving along parts of Marine Drive on the southern edges of the > cities of Burnaby and Vancouver, the steep rise up to the Kingsway ridge > can block the FM'ers from Mt Seymour. > > Mother Corp applied to the CRTC to turn off 690 but the request was > denied because of the difficulties with FM in our, um, mountain-goat > environment... > > Once upon a time, while driving across the southern part of of BC on Hwy > 3, there was constant AM coverage from LPRT's and lower-powered > commercial/private stns in towns along the way. Nowadays, daytime travel > is a blank band, AM or FM, for considerable distances. > > Theo > > -- Colin Newell - Editor and creator *of *Coffeecrew.com <http://www.Coffeecrew.com> and DXer.ca <http://www.DXer.ca> - VA7WWV | Twitter @CoffeeCrew | Victoria - Canada _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com