{"id":48372,"date":"2021-02-23T23:26:04","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T06:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ksut-back-on-air-in-durango-after-antenna-feedline-repair\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:42:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:42:38","slug":"ksut-back-on-air-in-durango-after-antenna-feedline-repair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ksut-back-on-air-in-durango-after-antenna-feedline-repair\/","title":{"rendered":"KSUT back on air in Durango after antenna feedline repair"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A crew on Monday was able to repair a damaged antenna feedline that had taken down KSUT-FM\u2019s 90.1 frequency, the main frequency serving Durango, on Feb. 5.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

KSUT-FM\u2019s main frequency in Durango, 90.1, went back on the air Monday after a crew repaired a damaged antenna feedline that took the frequency off the air Feb. 5.<\/p>\n

Tami Graham, KSUT executive director, said the station\u2019s technical operations manager, Rob Rawls, was on Smelter Mountain on Monday with a crew from Visionary Broadband and managed to repair a damaged feedline to the point where the signal is now audible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still not at full strength, so we might not be as strong as normal, but we\u2019re audible, and that\u2019s what\u2019s important,\u201d Graham said.<\/p>\n

Graham was unsure when 90.1 would be back at its full strength.<\/p>\n

\"A
A crew on Monday was able to repair a damaged antenna feedline that had taken down KSUT-FM&#x2019;s 90.1 frequency on Feb. 5. The line was hit by a snowcat.<\/span>Courtesy of KSUT<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The feedline was inadvertently hit by a snowcat during an early-morning unscheduled repair by another operator using the towers on Missionary Ridge.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re working diligently, it\u2019s been over two weeks now,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s been pretty tough, because it\u2019s our primary Durango signal.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the outage, KSUT could still be heard in Durango proper on a weaker signal, 89.3, but that signal does not extend into the north Animas Valley or much beyond Durango proper, Graham said.<\/p>\n

The station can also be streamed online, and it has just updated its streaming service, offering Air Pocket Player<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The feedline runs 30 feet underground and 80 feet up a tower. Graham said a $500 connector was used to repair the line where it was damaged and the entire feedline did not need to be replaced.<\/p>\n

The transmitter was tested and it was not harmed when the feedline was hit by the snowcat.<\/p>\n

The antenna feedline is pressurized with nitrogen to keep it dry, and damage to the line released the nitrogen and automatically shut off the transmitter.<\/p>\n

The broken feedline initially dropped KSUT\u2019s signal to Farmington, on 88.1, and Montezuma County, on 106.3, but those frequencies were able to be rerouted, Graham said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have equipment failures and damage to equipment, there\u2019s not much you can do until you actually repair the problem,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it\u2019s good to have redundancy of a backup signal and the ability to stream.\u201d<\/p>\n

parmijo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Efforts under way to bring 90.1 signal back to full strength<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29,3617],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-48372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter","tag-radio-industry"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87365,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48372\/revisions\/87365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48372"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=48372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}