Dear, ..........,
Namaskar. We had three main areas were we would be asked to do duties. One was at the control room where we could be doing shift duties to enable broadcast of programmes to public. The second one was at the Receiving Centre. And the third one was at the transmitter site. For the first three years of my service career in AIR, I had mainly worked at the studios. I would assist in live and recorded programme transmission. We were to ensure the working of the equipment and systems to enable announcers, news readers and other programmers to conduct the programmes. The programmes would be sent by dedicated telephone cables to our transmitter site at Pampore - about seven kilometers from the studio centre which was located in the city. We had however a transmitter at the studio centre too. This was an American made one kilowatt medium wave transmitter. When Radio Kashmir started, the programmes would be broadcast and made available to public through this transmitter. The range of this transmitter was about 30 kilometers around the transmitter antenna. Later one new medium wave transmitter (2x10 KW power) and one 7.5 KW shortwave transmitter was installed at Pampore. When these two new transmitters started working, the 1 KW transmitter at the studio centre became redundant. The transmitter was then used to broadcast Vividh Bharati Programmes.
Having attained some working knowledge of the studio centre and at the Receiving centre, I was put on duty at the Transmitter site at Pampore to acquaint myself of this branch also. This place was completely technical in nature and only Engineering wing staff would be posted here to work. The main medium wave transmitter was a NEC Japan made two medium transmitters of 10 KW power each. Both of them were normally switched on together and their power combined to make it a 20 MW transmitter. This arrangement had two main advantages. One the higher power meant that the range of reception of this combination would ensure that the programme could be received everywhere in the Kashmir valley including areas in the illegal possession of Pakistan. (However the Tral area of Kashmir would not get covered because a mountain range would not allow the medium wave signal to reach it. Medium wave signal travels along the surface of earth and the signal would be poor across an obstacle. Second advantage was that in case of a technical failure with one unit, the other one could continue to work and ensure continuity of transmission. The shortwave transmission would not be along the contours of land. It would be bounced on to the ionosphere and would be received after reflection. This way the transmission would reach very far away places inside and outside the country. The frequency of the transmission would be changed to three different ones during the day to provide maximum reception because different frequencies propagate differently and we would select the best ones to provide maximum reception. The frequencies would be allocated by a central authority which had the data with them. We had a standby diesel generator at the site to provide power back up in case of normal city power supply failure.
The technical aspects of the transmitter needed deeper knowledge. I lacked this. So I would be trying to study as much as possible. But without a foundation and lack of proper guidance, my understanding was bad. To compound it, the colleagues also did not help. Most of them did not know it themselves and would not share what they knew. Had there been a better teacher/guide, I could have done better. Therefore the progress was slow but as long as there would be no fault, I would operate normally.
Whenever there would be a fault, the system would trip off. There would be rattling of system relays. There would be lot of alarming sound. In such situations we had to ensure that the safety measures would be followed and no system safeguards would be bypassed. We would call our supervisors and they would come and guide us to normalize the system after rectifying the faults. One rule was that we would be there till the fault would get rectified. There would be occasions when the fault would get rectified two to three hours after the scheduled end of transmission. Thus instead of leaving for home at 11 PM, we would leave at 2 AM or later. Those days there would not be any phones at residences. People at home would understand but not panic when we would not reach home on time during night. One night I reached home at 2 AM. I tapped the door normally. No response as everyone was in deep sleep. I thumped the door with more power causing lot of noise. Still nobody in our joint family house did hear the violent knocking on the door. I sat down for about ten minutes and continued the thumping again. Still no luck. I had to find a way to gain entry. I climbed up the varandah from ground to first floor - the way an expert thief would do. I was successful. Then I thumped the my room door. My wife was startled. She woke up and my ordeal was over.
More tomorrow. Bye.
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