Lightning Woes

Hi!

I'm again into another evening shift at work. Tonight my supervisor and I are quite uptight because of the dark clouds that signify a heavy downpour is about to come. Also, we heard some sounds of thunder and of course, preceding it were lightnings. We both didn't like the idea of it because three years ago, when I am still new ANSS, we experienced a major trouble ( trouble -is the term we use for equipment malfunctioning) due to lightning.

One of our antennas was struck and following it was the deafening sound of alarm by the Dictaphone recorder.

A Dictaphone recorder is a voice logging system (VLS) that records voice communications between air traffic controllers and aircraft pilots. Our recorder is one of the old models, one that still uses magnetic tapes as a recording media. The supplier even said that this type is already phased-out and replacement parts are not available presently.

Back to our trouble three years ago. We cannot explain how the lightning affected our recorder since it doesn't have an antenna. Yes, it is connected to the transmitters and receivers but only to the audio circuits and not to the RF (radio frequency - the signal that carries voice over the air) circuits so we really cannot comprehend what was its connection with the lightning strike.
Both of our recorders are affected, to our dismay. We always had redundancy in our systems, meaning all equipments have a standby unit in case the main unit malfunctions. The purpose is to avoid disruption in air traffic control. We had to issue NOTAM or notice to all airmen that our recording equipment is out.

We spent a half day of troubleshooting before we finally found the cause and fixed the problem.
The lightning damaged one IC (integrated circuit) of the power supply board and a transistor in the alarm board. We had to replace these components to restore the recorder. Imagine what we all went through just because of an innocent natural phenomenon. And it again happened the next year after that. But at the second time around, it was easier because we had already pinpointed the component that was to be replaced. Same symptoms, same trouble, same remedy :)

That explains why we are on guard tonight. Even if we can anticipate what can go wrong, we will never know what lightning will strike next.....

:-) So long folks!