Squirrels Nest in Satellite Dish, Cause WSAZ Signal Problems

[RADIOHEAD 1]

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A | A | A HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- At least two squirrels were living inside a satellite dish at WSAZ that receives NBC programming from New York, causing intermittent outages on WSAZ.

Engineer Isaac Mead discovered the squirrels inside a screened-in portion of the feedhorn on the dish Tuesday morning, according to WSAZ Chief Engineer Aaron Withrow.

The dish is located on the roof of WSAZ's Huntington facility on 5th Avenue.

Withrow said the squirrels have caused the NBC signal to go to black on the air many times, but engineers were not able to pinpoint what was causing it.

Mead and other engineers climbed the roof and ladders to reach the dish -- and were able to remove the squirrels from the dish. They were not hurt during the removal process.

The squirrels did cause some minor damage that will have to be fixed, Withrow

THIS WHY WSAZ IS NUMBER #1 IN ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE...(actually they weren't squirrels but gerbles..}

[Cameron]

..SAZ needs to hire Chris Lawrence. That'd never happen on his watch!



(I thought Aaron was the "chief squirrel").

[genlock]

Isaac better look for moose as well.

[Chris Lawrence]

Well, since my name has been invoked with this post, I'll go ahead and state the first thing that popped into my head when I saw this... Squirrel's don't build a nest in a half-hour (it ain't Deal or No Deal). Don't station folks periodically got out and inspect the equipment to make sure such a thing isn't happening? I don't know much about sat dishes--other than when it snows and you're signing on...you have to scrape the snow out of it or angry affiliates from Logan call and raise hell....but I have to figure somebody should have noticed this before it disrupted the programming. I could be wrong though.

Chris

[Dave Allen]

Angry affiliates in Logan? I'm never angry, if you are referring to me. Just douse yourself in deer piss, Mr. Lawrence, and you'll be fine

[tvchick]

Check sat dishes every day? Hardly. Only when there's a problem do engineers check on things these days.

At my last station we had constant problems with our steerable receive satellite for SNG. For months we lost sat shots from our truck because of low signal problems. Finally, they found a bird's nest in the LNB horn. So WSAZ isn't alone!

[Chris Lawrence]

In the early days of MetroNews, we were having a transmission problem at the uplink in Morgantown...which was/is a dish roughly the size of Rhode Island. Nobody could figure out the problem since everything SEEMED normal--other than the fact NOTHING was going out. Turns out our friends at CSX parked a FREAKING TRAIN in front of the dish. The railroad was literally ten feet in front of the dish. The signal seemed to be having difficulty penetrating two walls of solid steel buffered by 100-tons of coal. Now the track is a rail trail, much easier for the signal to penetrate unsuspecting joggers and mom's pushing those pretentious three wheeled strollers.

[amayo]

During the heyday of The Great 98 in Fairmont, we lost our ABC feed one morning. I went out back to check the dish, and found a huge hornet's nest had been built inside the LNA cover. There were too many of them for me to fight off, so I went back inside for some spray. However, all I could find was a can of circuit freezer in the engineering room. I grabbed that, and a really massive screwdriver, and went back outside. I got close enough to hit the nest with freezing spray, and the hornets came CASCADING out to the ground. There were hundreds, (or so it seemed at the time).

I used the screwdriver to ream out the nest, and began to withdraw. Just about that time, the hornets began to re-appear. Seems they were not dead, but just frozen. I was luck though, only got about five stings. I'm told the sight of me running and flailing away at the swarm was one of the most amusing sights ever seen.

[Big Media]

During the heyday of The Great 98 in Fairmont, we lost our ABC feed one morning. I went out back to check the dish, and found a huge hornet's nest had been built inside the LNA cover. There were too many of them for me to fight off, so I went back inside for some spray. However, all I could find was a can of circuit freezer in the engineering room. I grabbed that, and a really massive screwdriver, and went back outside. I got close enough to hit the nest with freezing spray, and the hornets came CASCADING out to the ground. There were hundreds, (or so it seemed at the time).

I used the screwdriver to ream out the nest, and began to withdraw. Just about that time, the hornets began to re-appear. Seems they were not dead, but just frozen. I was luck though, only got about five stings. I'm told the sight of me running and flailing away at the swarm was one of the most amusing sights ever seen.

Damn good story.

We went through a phase where the satellite signal was great during the day, but then would drop about 6 dB at night. Could not figure this out.

Turns out, the signal was find during the day because the bees only returned to the "nest" at night after a long day of pillaging.

[The Interpreter]

Apparently, one of the squirrels made its way down into the building and into the servers. Lee Collier supposedly chased it out...whilst screaming...so sayeth the closing item on WSAZ News at 6, heard via WEMM.

[Dave Allen]

When I was in Gallipolis, OH, deer used to stand around our dishes to get warm. In Logan, the paint sniffers climb to the top of the Sears Building penthouse to stand by our dishes to get warm.

[lastone]

In 1974, WVOW-FM went off for high VSWR. My friend the Chief (we would sub for each other) called for help. By the time I got there he had found the problem. Ants liked the taste of the grease on the 'O' rings of a 90° miter and had entered thru a tiny hole. Only to be "fried" and fall into the bottom of the 90, blocking the signal and causing the VSWR to shut down the transmitter.

Everyone has at least one snake story. And squirrels just love the tops of insulators on pole mounted transformers!

[Arp2]

...I got close enough to hit the nest with freezing spray...the hornets began to re-appear. Seems they were not dead, but just frozen.

If you ever see a magician "bring back to life" a "dead" insect, that's exactly how the trick has been done. Heat gets applied by the lighting or the magician's own touch, and the frozen insect becomes conscious, works to right and orient itself, and then goes about its ("new") life....

[genlock]

Bad radar detectors have been known to affect C-band dishes.

[Big Media]

...I got close enough to hit the nest with freezing spray...the hornets began to re-appear. Seems they were not dead, but just frozen.

If you ever see a magician "bring back to life" a "dead" insect, that's exactly how the trick has been done. Heat gets applied by the lighting or the magician's own touch, and the frozen insect becomes conscious, works to right and orient itself, and then goes about its ("new") life....

Good lord. Has anyone tried this on a human? How about a cat?

[Dave Harman]

Bad radar detectors have been known to affect C-band dishes.

Not sure about that, but I know that uplink dishes affect bad radar detectors.