Engineering Notices

May 11, 2010: Idaho Public Television engineers have repaired and reinstalled the translator on Mount Baldy outside Salmon, and the translator is back in operation.

The translator, which was out of commission for approximately five weeks, first became inoperative after a spring storm swept through the area. The resulting snow barred access to the mountain until late last month, leaving the Salmon area without an IdahoPTV signal until this week.

May 4, 2010: Our St. Maries translator is down. There was a power outage on St. Joe Baldy last night due to the heavy winds and the building generator failed to come on. The power is now back, but not our translator. There is an outside chance it may come back on with a DTV receiver power reset at approximately 4:00 p.m. PT. If not, I have further issues. This is not a winter-friendly site, so I will have to do some planning if a trip to the site is needed. [Mike Cramblit]

May 4, 2010: Idaho Public Television engineers are working to repair and reinstall needed parts to put the translator on Mt. Baldy outside Salmon back into operation.

Rich Van Genderen, director of technology for IdahoPTV, says the translator, which has been out of commission for approximately four weeks, first became inoperative after a spring storm swept the area. The resulting snow barred access to the mountain until April 27, leaving the Salmon area without an IdahoPTV signal.

"Because the microwave receiver was not working, the part was brought back to Boise for parts and repair," Van Genderen says. "But the problem has turned out to be at the microwave transmitter site on Grouse Peak outside of Challis."

Engineers anticipate returning to reinstall the newly serviced receiver to Baldy and then travel to Grouse Peak to repair the microwave transmitter by May 15.

"IdahoPTV certainly appreciates the patience of the great viewers in the Salmon area, and we apologize that this has been such a long outage," Van Genderen says. "Travel into high mountain sites without 'application specific' vehicles, such as Snow Cats, has always been somewhat of a gamble. Sometimes it can take a while for site conditions to stabilize enough to allow safe access.

"The need for safety, coupled with limited financial resources force us at times to take much longer to get mountain access than we would prefer. We don't like this situation any more than the viewers do."

April 27, 2010: Our field engineer, John "JD" Davis, phoned in from Salmon this morning and said that while they were able to get to the mountain, it was extremely tough and hazardous. The guys who took him in suggested they get the heck out of there ASAP or risk being stuck for a long couple of days.

That being said, the microwave that feeds into the site is kaput. We do not know which end has died at this point, and of course, the other end is at Challis, which will also be a bear to get into. JD will try to bring the microwave receiver down with him for testing, and then we will evaluate how we get back up there. It may very well be that when the weather breaks, we will hire a helicopter to drop off one technician at Challis and one at Salmon Baldy. Or, we may wait until we can drive in, possibly around late May, early June.

The Salmon translator has already been down about a month now. This site is just a very nasty one to get to in this time of transition from deep snow to slush to mud. The gents who took JD in said they won't be able to get in again via snow machine — the slush is just too bad and the mud will only get worse for a while. The description was, Picture yourself trying to drive a snow machine across a lake that is full of crushed ice. One slip up and you are in deep!!!

We'll let you know more as we get it. This digital microwave transition can't happen soon enough!!!

February 3, 2010: For viewers of our over-the-air digital signal: We have had some data errors in our broadcast stream in the last few days. Some receivers ignore these errors; others do not. If you have recently lost the IdahoPTV digital signal for all four channels (Idaho, HD, Learn, and World), please perform a re-scan of your available channels, and that should re-train your tuner's brain to see us again.