Known Technical Issues
Our goal here is to report what problems we're aware of regarding the various technical things on KOHM. Whether it's dead-air, double-audio, or even our webstream being down, please let us know!! DO NOT ASSUME WE KNOW ABOUT THE PROBLEM. Unless we hear it ourselves, or you tell us, chances are we don't know there's a problem. Call 742-3100, 8am to 5pm M-F, or send us an email.
January 22, 2007
Missed 0650 feed of Marketplace Morning Report.
CAUSE: Satellite receiver failed! It was one of the old ones due to be replaced by the new Content Depot, which is only 2.5 years behind schedule in being implemented. Fortunately, the Depot folks say a spare will be here by Thursday or Friday at the latest. I hope so, since the one I replaced the bad one with is needed for some weekend programming. -DG
January 21, 2007
Silence during 2300 hour
CAUSE: Clint forgot to program the 11pm hour Sunday night. I was able to logon remotely and put some music on the air for most of the hour. It's been a long weekend and the visit by Old Man Winter didn't help. -DG
January 21, 2007
Silence during 0500 hour of APM's Performance Today.
CAUSE: NPR no longer produces PT- the show is now under the flag of American Public Media. The frequency for the Weekend PT feed changed and apparently the new frequecny for it didn't migrate completely through our old satellite gear. NPR is curiously silent as to why that happened. Not only did we miss the live feed at 5&6am, but we also missed the playback of Weekend PT later in the day. We aired a repeat of Friday's PT program instead. -DG
January 19 & 20, 2007
Drop-outs/fade-outs during various NPR programs.
CAUSE: Snow and ice buildup on the satellite dish. I swept the dish at 1am Saturday morning and again around 7:45am. Clint took over the dish detail for the remainder of the morning. -DG
Friday November 10, 2006
Dead-air from 4 to 5am this morning.
CAUSE: 4AM Hour of programming missing from automation. -DG
Wednesday October 18, 2006
Missed Morning Edition satellite feed from 0500 until about 0530.
CAUSE: Clint admits he set the incorrect frequency for the satellite. To his credit however, the system we are using is now 3 years past its retirement date, AND, since it fundraiser week, things are quite a mess. Normally we do not switch the satellite receivers since the old system isn't as agile as it used to be, but for pledge week, we must switch to a different frequency to catch the "fundraising version" of NPR programs. -DG
Thursday September 14, 2006
Lost both hours of Performance Today.
CAUSE: The antiquated satellite system we're STILL using since the new system hasn't been tested by NPR yet. I haven't had to host an afternoon music program in what, like 5 or 6 years? Boy was I rusty! -DG
Wedensday July 19, 2006
Various NPR Newsmagazine Segments being "clipped"- Segments of various network programs were being cut-off for the last several weeks, particularly during Morning Edition.
CAUSE: We THINK this was due to a conflict from having two different time-sync applications running simultaneously. We receive a time signal from the GPS satellite system, which in turn is "read" by a computer program to set our local clocks. Two of these programs were running concurrently causing up to a 1 second GAIN to our local clocks. Since the local clocks were effectively 1 second fast, that was causing our automation system to go to its local breaks 1 second early, thereby "clipping" the preceeding NPR segment. By disabling one of the two applications, we noticed the local time now appears to be "on time". Only time will tell if this bug is fixed. Time for me to take a "time-out"... -DG
Wednesday July 5, 2006
No Morning Edition at 5am.
CAUSE: Satellite receiver failed to retune to NPR network frequency. I had to "throw-on" some music this morning until I could get to the station and manually retune the receiver for Morning Edition. By the way, the NEW system that is supposed to replace our aging satellite gear has been delayed AGAIN. Still no word as to when we might be able to toss the old failing equipment... -DG
Wednesday June 21, 2006
KOHM-FM off the air for about 3 hours, Internet webstream also down.
CAUSE: Power outage at Texas Tech University. Here's what we've been told about this "incident"- evidently work was being done on an electrical transformer near University Medical Center. We were told a backhoe (the nemesis of all buried cables) was involved, so let your imagination run wild. Said transformer caught fire and tripped the circuit feeding power to the HSC/UMC facility. Their generators kicked-in (and worked this time!) and at least kept the hospital side in business although HSC was still mostly in the dark. A cascading result of the circuit fault was that one of the two main transformers providing service to the university (at the Brandon substation across form the Rec Center) then tripped, blacking- out most of campus, including our transmitter site on the West side. For those of us keeping score, the last major power outage affecting our on-air signal was also due to something bad happening at the medical center, a failed generator test as I recall. Anyway, most classes were cancelled and TTU employees got to go home early as a result of the 3 HOUR OUTAGE. Suffice it to say that a backup generator is still leading my list of priorities equipment-wise, but the funding for it has yet to appear. Since the Tech Library was also without power, our link to the Internet was down (and so was our online stream). I had to call someone that still had web access to post a message on our website alerting our listeners to the problem. Luckily, we still had power at the studios (yet ANOTHER good reason to be off-campus) so about all we could do was answer calls as to why we were off the air... -DG
Saturday April 29, 2006
Program disruptions to Car Talk, Weekend Performance Today, Weekend All Things Considered, and others.
CAUSE: Catastrophic failure of satellite receiver.
The GOOD NEWS: The failed equipment is being replaced by newer equipment recently installed at KOHM.
The BAD NEWS: NPR will not begin using the new equipment until July. That means we must make do with the old equipment for at least 2 more months.
We hope to have a replacement receiver shipped and installed this week.
Saturday April 29, 2006 ~9:00AM
Dead-air for about 25+ minutes instead of Car Talk.
CAUSE: Related to satellite failure (see above), but silence monitor also failed. Discovered telephone circuit for remote control unit at transmitter site suffered from lightning strike, presumably from last week's storms. Unit could not dial out when fault was detected. Replaced blown surge supressor. -DG
Monday April 17, 2006
KOHM Online audio stream was down.
Cause: The PC that hosts the streaming server software underwent an automatic Windows update and rebooted. The server then hung upon reboot. -DG
Friday April 14, 2006, ~4:00AM
Dual audio during the 4AM hour of KOHM Overnight. I heard the last 14 minutes of it when I awoke this morning. Unknown as to when it started or how long audio duality had been occurring before I heard it.
Cause: Operator Error. Instead of playing the 30-second audio file of Clint back-announcing the last piece of the 3am hour, he accidentally copied the 30-MINUTE song and so it played twice. It subsequently "spilled-over" the top of the hour, presumably played over the NPR newscast, then was joined by whatever compositions were scheduled for the 4am hour. It was an interesting combination of Scherezade and some choral piece by the time I awoke to it- but certainly wasn't intended. -DG
Tuesday April 4, 2006, 8:00 ~ 8:25 PM
Unusual audio followed by dead air. A listener reports that instead of St. Louis Symphony, about 20 minutes of "promos for NPR programs like Fresh Air and others" were heard, AND, "they were from July". This was followed by dead-air for about 3 to 4 minutes until the fill-music kicked-in. We did confirm that the audio file for St. Louis Symphony was somehow corrupted and was indeed old promo audio followed by about 100 minutes of silence.
Cause: Unknown. This problem points to our automation system where an old audio file (from July?) was somehow overwritten on the St. Louis Symphony file recorded earlier in the week. We're calling the tech-support folks for our automation system on this one... -DG
Sunday April 2, 2006, ~01:06 AM
Dead-air (silence) for about 12+ minutes.
Cause: Change to Daylight Savings Time on overnight automation incorrectly set to 1AM local instead of 2AM. This also caused a brief audio duality during the 2AM NPR newscast. No other problems noted. -DG