In this letter to the editor, the author responds to our recent call-to-action asking readers to share how Hurricane Milton disrupted their station’s operations or infrastructure. Does your station have an important story to share about emergency preparation and disaster recover? Tell us about it so we can share with readers. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.
Per your request:
Sarasota, Fla., was at ground zero for Hurricane Milton landfall. We all expected power disruptions, but this one was unexpected.
The AM station, WSRQ 1220, went down due to a UPS [uninterruptible power supply] failure. This was no cheap UPS, it was an expensive TrippLite dual conversion, only 2.5 years old. We put our Nautel J1000 on a UPS to both minimize surges to the unit as well as keep it up during those very frequent power glitches we have during the almost-daily summer thunderstorms.
Milton was hard on the electric grid — we had literally over 100 email notifications within a short time of power glitches, but not enough to kick on the generator in terms of their duration.
About halfway through the hurricane, the UPS shut down on inverter error and could not be brought back up. We could log into it, but could do nothing to get it in bypass, etc. It is SUPPOSED to go into bypass, which it said it did, but then it just shut down the output power and we were down for the duration until it was safe to go to the site and physically bypass the unit.
Some may say we could have an ATS to put mains to the transmitter, but I’m not sure I’d want the transmitter to see that constant on/off. Alas, we are ordering a new UPS, but the thing that was supposed to keep us on, took us off, and not the first time a UPS has ever done that.
— Hal Kneller, CPBE, director of engineering, LECOM Radio
[Related: “Beasley’s Florida Stations Survive the Brunt of Hurricane Milton“]