Last Friday, in the midst of the student exodus for The Rocky Mountain Showdown, a mysterious ticking noise began to pervade our air waves, here at KCSU-FM.
And that’s never good.
Being a student radio station means that technological issues are never exactly unexpected or shocking. But, this malfunction was uniquely challenging.
Our radio adviser, Hannah Copeland, sent out a news update to the station’s staff and volunteers. In it, she explained what it was that turned our Friday into a story-worthy day:
“The good news is that it was no one’s fault. A piece of equipment fell off our rack in the Atmospheric Sciences building. The piece of equipment receives audio from our station via fiber optic cable, then broadcasts the signal to our transmitter which is about a mile away. Because it was almost Labor Day weekend, and the problem was so strange, it took a long time to trouble shoot.”
And troubleshoot we did. Being a graduate student and one of the directors of production efforts here at KCSU meant that I was in my office come Friday afternoon, far away from tailgating happiness down in Denver.
Much like Samwise Gamgee, I therefore found myself thrust into the throws of adventure alongside Hannah. Rather than returning stolen jewelry to a fiery mountain, barefoot and taunted by classic sympathetic, yet antagonistic characters, we instead needed to venture out just east of Horsetooth Reservoir to turn on our transmitter and get the station back on-air.
Please enjoy our short photo story.
