WCNS is back
September 2, 2022WCNS (1480 Latrobe) is back on the air now that repairs have been made to the station’s transmitter. Earlier this summer a snake crawled through causing a short in the transmitter and ending the snake’s life.
Engineer Nick Markowitz told PBRTV, “We had another snake as we [he and fellow engineer, Matt Lightner] were trying to fix it.”
Someone might want to inform the snakes that a transmitter room is probably not the safest place for them to be slithering through
Ahhh, I remember when I worked at WIXZ 1360, and we had the same snake issue there. I was on the air one night, and the transmitter dumped. I kept trying to put it back on the air, and it kept dumping. Well, then I called engineer, Dick Ruby, who went to the site, fixed the problem, (the snake), and we were back on. He told me, every time I tried to fire the transmitter back up, the snake took another zap. By the time he got there, the snake looked more like a fried piece of spaghetti. I hate snakes. FYI, moth balls scattered help to keep snakes, mice, and even stink bugs, away. I now do this in my storage shed, and it keeps the critters out, or at least, down to “occasional”.
That’s Ruby for ya!
Back in 1981 we had the same problem at 950 WLIT in Steubenville. A snake got into the transmitter and wrapped itself around a transformer inside the transmitter. When we tried to fire up the transmitter at 6am…no luck. When we got to the transmitter the snake was toast. However we found a live one crawling atop the transmitter. we finally got it out of the building and back on the air. We found some broken concrete in the transmitter building. That is how these snakes got in. Once patched we never had that problem during my run at this station.