KBBI goes off air again </MCC HEAD>

Story last updated at 3:29 PM on Friday, January 16, 2009

KBBI goes off air again

By Michael Armstrong
Staff Writer

KBBI AM 890's ongoing transmitter problem got worse again Wednesday night when Homer's public radio went off the air. The station has remained down through Friday. A replacement part has been ordered and is expected to arrived by Monday or Tuesday. As soon as the part arrives, engineers will start repairs, with the station hopefully back on the air by early next week.

"We're just going to hang tighter, and when those things (the ordered parts) get close to us, we're going to be all over it -- and hopefully all over everybody's radios, too." said KBBI General Manager Dave Anderson.

Chuck Lakaytis, KBBI's contract engineer with the Alaska Public Broadcasting Institute, has identified the part that failed. The issue is with an electronic chip that monitors various subsystems, including the power supply, for the transmitter.

If necessary for an emergency, KBBI could broadcast at low power, about 2 kilowatts, as it did after an earlier transmitter failure on Dec. 15. Anderson said engineers don't want to risk running the transmitter for fear that more expensive failures happened.

KBBI has posted updates at its Web site at www.kbbi.org. Listeners also can sign up for e-mail alerts at the site. Because a streaming audio feature on the Web site comes from the radio transmission, that feature also is not working.

Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong@homernews.com.

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