A Useful Tower Maintenance Checklist
[May 2015] Good maintenance practices usually entail regular inspections of each part of the studio and transmission plants. Of course, no matter how many things you check, it is all too easy to miss something important. Starting with a general list, and then adding to it as appropriate for your situation will give you a solid maintenance program.
Question: One of the other stations in our town recently was inspected by the FCC. Among the Notices of Violation (NOVs) received was one dealing with failure to maintain the tower structures properly. What are your suggestions to help us avoid a similar NOV?.
Cary Tepper: Recently one of our clients in the Midwest was cited by the FCC for not properly maintaining its three tower structures.
As part of the investigation process, the FCC wanted to know if our client had a tower inspection checklist that it routinely used.At the time there was no such checklist existing at the station.
In an effort to mitigate the situation, we compiled a modestly comprehensive tower inspection checklist for future use.As you might expect, no individual checklist can apply to all tower situations. However, our checklist is a very good starting point.
We invite you to please review the following Tower Inspection Checklist.We recommend that you incorporate this checklist into your routine inspection process of your tower structures. You should keep a record of the date & time of every tower inspection in the event the FCC ever questions your diligence with regard to these matters.
Furthermore, help us improve this checklist. If you notice something you regularly check is missing from this list, please do let us know so we can update the list and make if even better.
If you have any questions, please call or email us at tepperlaw@aol.com
