We’re in the midst of the summer bug season – mosquitoes, ants, biting flies, spiders, Miller moths – all sorts of six and eight legged creatures. And many of them would like to timeshare in your transmitter building.
Can they do damage to your transmitter building and its equipment? You bet!
Y’know that ole phrase “gum up the works!” Miller moths are great at stopping up filters. When Miller moths encounter a bug light, the force of the zapper causes tiny scales to fly from their wings and their bodies. These tiny scales are perfect for stopping up your transmitter’s air filter.
For whatever reason, wasps seem to love transmitter sites. Perhaps it’s the warm temperatures of many remote transmitter buildings. Whatever it is, wasps are a perennial problem. Thankfully once a paper wasp nest is destroyed, they seldom come back. They don’t re-use old nests, either, which is a good thing. Carrying a few of those “they shoot 20 feet” aerosol insecticide cans can keep you sting free!
As of a few years ago New Mexico now has fire ants. These small-bodied ants have terrible bites, and often bite repeatedly. If you’re unlucky enough to encounter fire ants, you’ll likely get a half-dozen or more bites from each of them and not just one-per-ant!
If your transmitter site has an evaporative cooler or even refrigerated air from a unit where the condensate water is available to nuisance bugs, you’ve got a nuisance bug and critter magnet! You’ll attract all sorts of unwanted wildlife, including the New Mexico winged adobe home builder, the mud-dauber wasp.
The water from your evaporative cooler or condensate from your refrigerated air conditioner also attracts larger pests – snakes and small critters like field mice, gophers, rats, mice, skunks and the like, and the predators that feed on them. I once put a 5 Kw transmitter back on the air by removing a very dead mouse from atop the 3-phase power contactor in the transmitter. You might say the critter went out in a blaze of glory!! Hantavirus anyone?
A little time with a caulking gun, some weather stripping, perhaps some window screen around your evaporative cooler or outside air intake and making water sources inaccessible to wildlife both big and small will go a long way towards keeping your transmitter site varmint – and bug – free!