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Just Like a Natural History Museum Exhibit

Mouse Finds the Ultimate Warm Spot

Bill Agresta, CE of KBRT(AM) on Catalina Island, writes:

We call this sort of thing the "Island Factor". This little guy was exploring our power panel that used to supply our old STL house. The panel was still active supplying some kind of repeater but, whoops, guess it's off air until someone wants to touch this fried thing. Hanta Virus, you know.

A Better Mousetrap

Other Stories of Fried Vermin

KRLA

I don't have any pictures, but the old water-cooled 50kw at the old KRLA transmitter had a reputation of being the worlds biggest mouse trap.

There was a mica bypass capacitor mounted to the floor of the peak tube cabinet. The buss attached to the top was the 12 kv supply (with very healthy amperage too). On more than one occastion, a curious mouse would decide to sniff the top of that cap and BANG! It would cause a single DC overload since the mouse would fall away, to be extracted next maintenance night.

The interesting thing is that it would fry the little guy so well, there wouldn't be any smell afterward.

--Chris Hays

Sharing an Antenna Tuning Unit

In Southern California, there is a 500-watt, 4-tower directional AM station whose ATU contactors are horizontally-mounted. The rodents who had "homesteaded" ATU #3 had taken to relieving themselves without leaving the comfort of the ATU cabinet on the pattern-switch contactor. Besides adversely affecting sanitation, this practice gummed up the contactors and made it necessary to remove the remaining mice from their ATU "homes" to preserve reliability.

Wishing as peaceful eviction as possible and relying on the acoustically-resonating "thud" of the ATU cabinet, I beat a fast and loud rhythm on the sides of ATU #1 to persuade mama mouse to leave. Not appreciating my "drum virtosity" at all, Mama Mouse took a flying leap out of the enclosure, fell 24 times her length to the ground, and scrambled down a convenient mouse hole in the ground. I will not speculate on her blood pressure at that moment, but I've never seen such a scared rodent in my life.

The remaining task was to remove her nest. The vertical inductor was removed, and a shovel relocated the nest intact, with the offspring inside, to a nearby log for protection. The inductor was then returned to original position, undoubtedly with improved Q.

Remarkably, this mama mouse had built her nest inside a vertically-mounted inductor of ATU #1's night-pattern "tee-network" , so she and her offspring were kept warm, during nighttime hours, by RF induced from the inductor. I think station management was in favor of the removal. Somehow, I think Mama Mouse would have opposed a station power increase.

--Don Way

Fun with Translators

In about 1982, I volunteered to look at a TV translator owned by a remote district in the Oregon high desert used to rebroadcast a Boise station. It wouldn't fire up at all. We decided that rather than try to do the work in the poorly lit and poorly equiped shack, we would bring it back to the shop. We cleaned it with some Formula 409, changed a fuse, then warmed up the filaments while we went on to some other task. Our attention was brought back by the foulest smell I have ever experienced. We filled the entire station with the stench of rat cooking in Formula 409. With some hesitation and gagging, I removed the hidden culprit. The good news was that the plate supply was ready for primetime again.

Gary Stigall, KFMB-TV

Photo by Bill Agresta. From Bob Gonsett, Communications General Corporation.