Digital TV Tower

You may have noticed an addition to the skyline of TV Towers in Randolph County.




WGHP-TV-DT is building a new TV Tower in Randolph County to go full power with a digital signal in the near future.




Fox 8 has been on the air now digitally via a low power transmitter and on digital cable for a while. But with the new tower, which will carry two antennas, WGHP will transmit a full power digital signal from one antenna and the channel 8 analog signal from another antenna.




Caron Myers and I stopped by the site on Monday so we could crane our necks skyward, gawk at the site an get an impromptu degree in Television engineering from transmitter engineer and HMFIC of the transmitter site, Charlie Layno.




I can't wait until I can get an HD set so I can watch NASCAR on Fox in High Definition!!!

Tracking down a Story

We were down by the Yadkin River today in a remote section of Davie County on the story you probably heard about. It seems that Duke Power is inching ever closer to ending their 30 year search for a location to build a Nuclear Power Plant in this region.

Some Reports suggest that the plant could be in Stokes County on Belews Creek adjacent to the Coal Burning plant and although published reports say that Duke Power wouldn't confirm that suggestion, they did confirm today that a Nuclear Plant will NOT be built on Belews Creek. They underlined, CAPITALIZED and BOLD FACED the NOT on their statement.

Davie County, on the other hand, is on Duke Power's list of places to put the plant. They own 1600 acres land along the Yadkin River that is currently leased to several farmers and set up as a Wildlife Refuge by the State of NC.

After spending a better part of the day gathering our usual neighborhood reaction from a selection of nearby property owners and getting footage of the perimeters of the property it was time to head out to a location by the river nearest to the Duke Property.



That's where Caron and I met up with Joe McCloskey, part time Sat Truck Driver, full time Photojournalist.(except for when his gear is locked in his news unit at a service center that won't be open for 2 days.)



So today, Joe is our guy to get us on the air. Driving the Santa Maria to the far reaches of Davie County to digitally impress our images into the sky.



When we walked down to the river to survey our live shot location we spotted what you see in the pictures. Animal Tracks. Several different kinds.



We threw out our best guesses about the large ones next to Joe's Fist. We were thinking maybe bear, based on one of the neigbors telling us about seeing bears in the area. But after looking on the internet, I can see that these large ones are Canine tracks. Probably not dogs since there aren't any houses for miles of there. These large tracks match up really well against the Coyote tracks which also have been reported in this area.



These smaller tracks in the above picture are two different animals. The one on the left is a racoon track, but I can't find a match for the two tracks to the right.



The above is a wider view of the racoon and unknown tracks to the left and another type of track to the right side of the picture.



This one (above) is another raccon and smaller version of the possible coyote track, indicating more than one coyote on the scene.



This is another set of the Coyote tracks that are a bit deeper and more defined.



And then we went live. Despite our facination with all the wildlife tracks we still made our slot on the evening news. I might have to go back down there and check out those tracks again one day.

Randleman Water Main Bursts

What's worse than being in a moderate drought, having a dwindling water supply, being on mandatory water restrictions, and having a water treatment plant that is in dire need of replacement?



Ask Randleman(NC) city manager Tony Sears and I bet his answer would be, "Having all of that and then have a 10 inch water main break!"



It happened overnight on Sunday directly in front of of the town's city hall. Randleman Police spotted a bulge in the road and found flowing water during the 6 am shift change. The water forced the asphalt to rise and sent water, rocks and dirt downstream in the middle of Hillary Street.



As crews worked to dig up the earth around the 10 inch water main, an estimated 200,000 gallons of precious, clear, drinkable, water flowed into the streets only to be reclaimed by the sewage system.



The cause of the failure of the pipe is speculated to be the off and on cold weather over the past week or so. The city manager told us the ground moves alot during the initial stages of colder weather putting extra pressure on the underground pipes.



There was at least one related failure of a 6 inch water main about a mile away. The city manager says that air pockets in the pipes after the original burst formed before the auxillary water supply was turned on.

The city of Asheboro just to the south of Randleman provides a back up water supply in the case of emergencies like this.

Montgmery Gentry (leftover from Charlotte NASCAR)

((THIS IS ONE OF MULTIPLE POSTS TODAY....READ ON PAST THIS DISPATCH FOR MORE RECENT HAPPENINGS))
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If you look hard enough at each picture you can just about see the hard country sound of Montgomery Gentry coming out of each pixel.



It was so good Lugnut did his best Tony Stewart impression.



On the otherside of the fence (literally and figureativley speaking) the fans with frontstretch tickets jammed up againsts the crossed steel all wanting that perfect view.



Eddie Montgomery pounded out his vocals with his near drunken country style.



Fans of all types couldn't take their eyes off the stage.



All of this as T-roy wailed on his numerous 6-strings.



This concert was a big hit. It was part of the Rusty Wallace farewell tour.



Rusty came onstage and thanked the fans (not pictured) and recieved a huge ovation.



After an hour of all the greatest hits of Montgomery Gentry....



Eddie and Troy signed a bunch of autographs and then took off just in time for the start of the race.

New NASCAR Movie

Here are a few leftovers from NASCAR Race weekend at Charlote.

There is a new NASCAR based movie being made and although it sounds like it's going to be corny, a la 'Days of Thunder' and 'Stroker Ace', this one is supposed to be.



It is a Will Ferrell movie and it stars Ferrell and Michael Clark Duncan from 'The Green Mile'. They were set up in the last pit on pit road right across from my rooftop location.



While I was using my Radio Scanner to listen to the NASCAR Teams I happened upon the frequency of the movie crew. They were using the radios to deliver dialog in the scene that was being filmed in the pits during the race.

Some of the lines I overheard as follows:

Movie lines by Michael Clark Duncan:-
"Ricky(Will Ferrell), you're driving like a pissed off teenager."
"It's OK, he's seen this before."
"It's OK, he's a proffessional driver."
"Ricky, I smell a wreck. The track is wicked."
"I've never seen a driver with that kind of car control."

Other Lines overheard:
"Is Ricky in his underwear...Is he on fire"
"Yep"
"It's a fire of the heart."

More information on the movie can be found at Jayski dot com.

First Frost

It's that time of year and it happened literally overnight.



Yes, that's frost on the roof of my truck. I don't think it was even forecast but when I turned on the Fox 8 Morning News, Tom Britt said he was getting reports of scattered frost.



So when I went out to the truck to head in to work I popped off a couple of shots of the first frost-fall of the season.



This all kind of makes it hard to believe that Saturday I was in shorts and a T-Shirt.



I was at a Cub Scout campout with my son and spent Saturday night in a tent.



But waking up at sunrise on Sunday Morning it was a bit nippy and I was forced into long pants and a sweatshirt.



I guess it's time to put away the shorts and break out the long johns.(which I did wear today:))

The American Flag

I was appalled this week watching Hurricane Wilma coverage seeing that people left their American Flags on their staffs to be destroyed in the wind.



I didn't just see this on one network or in one location. I saw several different versions of tattered flags flapping in the wind. I don't understand why people can't have respect for the American Flag.




Here is a short excerpt of the US Flag code that deals with bad weather....

Title 4, Chapter 1: The Flag

Sec. 6. — Time and occasions for display

The flag should not be displayed on days when the weather is inclement, except when an all-weather flag is displayed.

Sec. 8. — Respect for flag
The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.

I don't care if people want to ruin their corporate flags or decorator flags but please people, take down your American Flags if a Hurricane is coming!

NASCAR - Pictures

In the hours preceding a NASCAR Nextel Cup Event there are tons of fans with their garage passes around their necks and cameras in hand, wandering through the pits and the garage area looking for that one picture that says, "I was there!"



or "Look who I got my picture taken with!".



But mostly it's "Check out the picture I got of this car,"



"or this one,"



"or this one!"



Obviously some cars are more photographed than others.



Popular in the Garage area this weekend the 24 car of Jeff Gordon and the 8 ride of Dale Jr.



Everyone was taking pictures too.



From the ladies dressed down and baited to trying to land a million dollar catch, from the quasi-exectutives that run around the garage pretending to be busy.



I even saw a TV Soundman taking a picture or two. I missed the shot of that, and then lost track of him.



All in all life in the pits before an event is quite the event itself.