{"id":252,"date":"2026-08-13T23:41:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T23:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/template-preview.com\/wordpress\/avava\/avavastation\/2026\/08\/13\/the-night-the-transmitter-froze-and-nobody-noticed\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T23:41:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T23:41:00","slug":"the-night-the-transmitter-froze-and-nobody-noticed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/template-preview.com\/wordpress\/avava\/avavastation\/2026\/08\/13\/the-night-the-transmitter-froze-and-nobody-noticed\/","title":{"rendered":"The night the transmitter froze and nobody noticed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\n

Output level \u00b7 22:00 \u2014 00:00<\/span>Flat for 11 minutes<\/span><\/p>\n\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n

22:00<\/span>22:41<\/span>00:00<\/span><\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\"The<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n\n
  • \n\n

    22:41<\/span>Tue<\/span>Off air<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

    \n\n

    The relay clicks and does not come back<\/h2>\n\n\n

    It had been clicking since spring. Nobody wrote it down, because it clicked and then it worked, and a thing that works is easy to leave alone for another week. Somewhere between the last record and the one after it, it stopped.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n<\/li>\n\n\n

  • \n\n

    22:52<\/span>11 min later<\/span>Back<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

    \n\n

    What actually went out<\/h2>\n\n\n

    Not silence in the technical sense. The desk kept feeding the transmitter, and what the transmitter modulated was the room: the fridge in the corner, the tram on the bridge, a chair moving.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \u201cGenuinely thought it was some minimal thing you had dug up. Slightly embarrassed, mostly delighted.\u201d \u2014 Joost M.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n<\/li>\n\n\n

  • \n\n

    09:00<\/span>Wed<\/span>Found<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

    \n\n

    The rack on the studio floor<\/h2>\n\n\n

    A relay from 2011, never meant to sit in a warm cupboard for nine years. The contacts had pitted enough that a cold start no longer closed the circuit. We found it because the archive recorder writes a level file for every hour, and that hour was flat.<\/p>\n\n\n

      \n
    • Part<\/span>OMRON G2R \u00b7 2011<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n
    • Cost<\/span>\u20ac 10<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n
    • Cupboard<\/span>8\u00b0 too warm<\/span><\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<\/div>\n\n<\/li>\n\n\n
    • \n\n

      16:10<\/span>Thu<\/span>Fixed<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

      \n\n

      Four things changed<\/h2>\n\n\n

      Two of them are parts, two are habits \u2014 and the habits are the ones that would have caught it on the night.<\/p>\n\n\n

        \n
      • 01 \u00b7 done<\/span>Relay replaced, spare dated in the drawer.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n
      • 02 \u00b7 done<\/span>Signal alarm rings the desk phone after 20 seconds of nothing.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n
      • 03 \u00b7 nightly<\/span>Backup line checked before the first record.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n
      • 04 \u00b7 nightly<\/span>Cupboard door open after 22:00 \u2014 eight degrees cooler.<\/span><\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<\/div>\n\n<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n
          \n
        • 11 MIN<\/span>Of silence<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n
        • 10 H<\/span>Until we found it<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n
        • 41 H<\/span>Until it was fixed<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n
        • 0<\/span>Listeners lost<\/span><\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n

          We are keeping the recording, filed in the archive as ELEVEN MINUTES OF NOTHING. Two hosts have already asked to play parts of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          For eleven minutes on Tuesday we were broadcasting nothing but the sound of the room. Two people wrote in \u2014 one to say it was the best set of the week, one to ask which label it was on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"avava_no":148,"avava_writer":"Ines Roa","avava_headline":"Eleven minutes","avava_headline2":"of nothing","avava_lede":"Eleven minutes of a room in Amsterdam, a flat line in the level file, and a ten-euro part from 2011.","avava_sheet":"4128","avava_hour_label":"11 minutes of silence","avava_hour_from":"22:00","avava_hour_to":"00:00","avava_hour_l":34,"avava_hour_w":18,"avava_drawer":false,"avava_progress":0,"avava_views":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[15,16,14],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-desk","tag-gear","tag-night","tag-studio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/template-preview.com\/wordpress\/avava\/avavastation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/template-preview.com\/wordpress\/avava\/avavastation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/template-preview.com\/wordpress\/avava\/avavastation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/template-preview.com\/wordpress\/avava\/avavastation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/template-preview.com\/wordpress\/avava\/avavastation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/template-preview.com\/wordpress\/avava\/avavastation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/template-preview.com\/wordpress\/avava\/avavastation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/template-preview.com\/wordpress\/avava\/avavastation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/template-preview.com\/wordpress\/avava\/avavastation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/template-preview.com\/wordpress\/avava\/avavastation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}