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Calif. fire to reach TV transmitters, Mount Wilson Observatory

4K views 25 replies 7 participants last post by  Wharfe 
#1 ·
Not looking good for OTA in Los Angeles County at the moment.
source
LOS ANGELES — Authorities say flames from a major wildfire north of Los Angeles are about to reach Mount Wilson, home to a historic observatory and transmitters for every major television and radio station in the area.

Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Mark Savage tells KABC-TV Sunday that "it's not a matter of if it impacts Mount Wilson, it's a matter of when," and estimated that the flames could leap to the top of the mountain within a few hours.

<deletia>

Television stations say if the antennas burn, broadcast signals will be affected...
 
#3 ·
In 2007 fires, Mt San Miguel in San Diego was overrun by wild fires taking out a small building
and the power line feeding four of our DTVs, Analogs & several FMs. After a short outage for
personnel evacuations, most stations returned on-air using fall-back power generators.

Fuel truck brigade was active for quite a while as the high voltage lines were reconstructed.

In L.A. 86% of households subscribe to cable and/or Sat which are fed via direct connections,
so only those TVs not connected to cable/Sat would be affected in those households....
[Although there may be some cable headends that use OTA....soon to be revealed....]
However most of the other 15% have no fallback....except bite the bullet and subscribe....

Two San Diego stations (not on San Miguel) can be received in S-W parts of L.A. and there is a
PBS station in Riverside (E end of L.A. smog basin), plus a few scattered Low Power stations.
But if Mt Wilson is off the air for any significant period of time, people will be stringing
backup systems on top of tall buildings downtown.....another advantage for implementing
Distributed DTV Systems....BTW: there are actually TWO antenna farms on Mt Wilson...
the other one, a few miles away, is called Mt Harvard.

One network is simulcasting an English subchannel on their non-colocated Spanish language
station....many of them on Mt Harvard...

Mt Wilson Solar Observatory TowerCam:
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/towercam.htm
Keep trying....it's overloaded...
Here's a recent picture....there are NO FLAMES in this photo...just lights....
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=151435&d=1251699446
 
#6 ·
Thanks for the webcam link. Found that last night but it wouldn't load.. loads now today, I was expecting it not to work and the towers to be burned..

Wondering if they stand a chance or not.. Will keep looking as long as the site works.

Great links HDTV101.. Fybush is a great site, didn't know they had pics of this site.
 
#7 ·
According to this article http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fire-mount-wilson31-2009aug31,0,6711216.story

Los Angeles police and fire departments do not use the tower, and neither does the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Also says that cell phone service would be disrupted. I can't see how it would be too bad for phones unless there is some type of large site there for the phones. Otherwise wouldn't they just lose the coverage provided from this location? Couldn't be that bad..
 
#8 ·
more articles/pics

At ~6:26 am local time, you can see the heavy smoke approaching:


This one has a picture, but no indication of where it is taken (it may be stock, taken during a different fire), and includes a link to an interactive map on page 2 (Mt Wilson is one of the "volcano icons":
http://www.whotv.com/ktla-angeles-fire,0,5724046.story?page=1

holl ands and HDTV101, thanks for those great links. It will be a real shame if the observatory is lost.

Found that last night but it wouldn't load.. loads now today
I think at this time of day (6:44 AM), there would be a lot of LA'ers still in bed ;)
 
#11 ·
The GOOD news: Mt Wilson is UPWIND from the fire, which makes it slow moving and easier to fight.
More GOOD news: Fire crews worked yesterday and through the night laying down fire retardant chemicals,
cutting brush and SETTING BACKFIRES.
Even better GOOD news: Fire fighting aircraft are being reinforced TODAY for a total of TWO DC-10s
and (now THREE!!!) CL-415 SuperScoopers:
http://www.wildfiretoday.com/news/2009/8/30/the-air-tanker-fleet-at-the-station-fire.html
http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/bombardier_415/
Better late than never.....

Apparently the humongous 747 was being shown to prospective customers in Alaska earlier this month:
http://www.examiner.com/x-11680-Wildfire-Examiner~y2009m8d1-747-Supertanker-drops-on-Alaska-fire
Can we pay by the hour???? Or is it just too big and fast to be integrated into the Fighting Fire Force...

The BAD news: Nothing is going to stop this fire until Hurricane Jimena dumps some rain in the
area...and it won't make landfall near Cabo San Lucas (S top of Baja Calif., over 1000 miles away)
until tomorrow, which means moisture won't hit Mt Wilson until MAYBE the end of the week:
http://www.wunderground.com/wunderm...hur.cod=1&hur.fx=1&hur.obs=1&fire=0&ft=0&sl=0

Best, continually updating website w current Station Fire status:
http://www.inciweb.org/incident/1856/
 
#12 ·
Too bad they're having trouble with one of the collosal Martin Mars flying boats from Canada. Those things are astounding in action!
holl_ands said:
what's a CL14?
Must be a misprint since Canadair/Bombardier "CL" water bombers aren't numbered like that.

I would not be surprised if those planes from Quebec are actually coming from a closer location since the Canadian provinces each contribute their own planes to joint firefighting operations all over Canada and sometimes into the U.S.A., and the people on the ground teams are always travelling like that too. We've occasionally had Australians and New Zealanders up here for the extra manpower and work experience during their off-season, as Canadian and American ground crews go down there too.
 
#14 ·
San Diego paid for SuperScoopers last year....but this year our budgeteers declined, so L.A.
picked them up instead.....whatever.....all assets eventually are under CALFIRE control and
get deployed where they are most needed, rather than being "tied" to the budget source.

Here's Sunday night's 2-hour video loop off the Towercam:
http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/towercam+large.gif
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/56266907.html

and Mt Wilson Observatory running commentary:
http://www.mtwilson.edu/fire.php
 
#20 ·
Compare my picture above with HDTV101's first pic from post#15.
Some of it is fire but there are clearly lights. They may or may not be on generator as I read most of the power is cut off on Mt Wilson. Clearly the aviation avoidance lights are working on at least one tower as well. The webcam is powered, but I'm assuming that is solar powered since it is on the Solar Tower.
 
#21 ·
There are NO FLAMES at the base of the towers...just bright lights.
Flames might be off to the right...but image was at sunrise....so hard to tell...

Apparently sometime during the night there were some hotspots down on South slope (behind towers)
and either another hotspot on the short road to Mt Harvard....or fire crews burning scrub brush.
Here are some additional towercam images for comparison and latest MODIS IR GoogleEarth overlays:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=191672&page=202

Mt Wilson Observatory says the NEW High Voltage feeder is down but the old one is still good
and that the Towercam will stop working if they lose power:
http://www.mtwilson.edu/fire.php
PS: Although they may be experts in Solar observations....and maybe even Solar Energy, but
bear in mind the entire Internet infrastructure on the mountain would also need constant power.
Which is why TV Stations have backup diesel power generators....but prob. not the Observatory.
 
#25 ·
Post #4 provided in-depth descriptions of the towers and the buildings beneath them
containing the transmitter and other equipments....gotta keep those runs short as possible.

Fol. has latest updates, including a towercam with even more WHITE smoke
(believed to perhaps have been from backfires set by fire crews):
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=191672&page=202

Here's a towercam from Noon on 29Aug without any obscuring smoke:
http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/8439/towercam2.jpg
Note that the towercam was zoomed in slightly since this shot.
Current activity is somewhere in all that scrub brush between the towercam and the towers.
Famous Mt Wilson Observatory is to Right and Behind towercam.
 
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