CINCINNATI — Jason Ornellas, market chief engineer, Sacramento, at Bonneville International, has been selected from hundreds of TV and radio submissions from around the world as the grand prize winner of the GatesAir “What’s Your Story?” content.
Ornellas’ selection caps off a year-long 95th anniversary celebration of the company. One of nine finalists, Ornellas described the marriage of a new solid-state transmitter with a tube model in the same RF system to achieve reduced heat, free up space and streamline maintenance. Ornellas and his team installed a Flexiva FAX40 air-cooled solid-state transmitter as the main transmitter, putting a GatesAir HPX tube transmitter into backup service and retiring a much older transmitter, GatesAir said.
[Read: GatesAir Debuts Program to Teach RF Fundamentals]
“The GatesAir HPX is less than 10 years old, much more compact, and we haven’t even had to change the tube yet,” he said. “In came the FAX40, which solved the heat and space issues, and just makes working inside the building that much easier.”
The winning story earned Ornellas an expense-paid trip to the GatesAir manufacturing facility in Quincy, Ill., a tour of the plant, training sessions and a custom-engraved plaque to commemorate the visit.
Among the other finalists were:
- Jim Davies of Titan Broadcasting, recognized for two entries that highlighted aesthetic modifications of legacy transmitters;
- George Butch of MRBI, who detailed a Christmas Eve disaster recovery story saved by an overnight transmitter shipment;
- And several “still going strong” stories of installations going back as many as six decades from: Carlos Jacobs of Peneiado in Guatemala; David Morgan of Sinclair Telecable; Lemont Bryant of WHEO-AM; Brady Dreasler of Quincy Media; Isabirye Dan of Uganda Broadcasting Corp; and Michael Cote.
More information is available on the GatesAir website.
