KURE 88.5 FM, Iowa State’s campus radio station, went back on the air Monday morning after being silent for more than a month.

KURE went off the air May 18 due to a problem with its transmitter.

Kristina Kitson, public relations director for KURE, said the station will be running as usual.

“We will actively hire people again and train them,” she said. “Hopefully, we will have no problems with the current summer schedule.”

Dave Boone, technical adviser for KURE, said the problem that caused the station to go off the air was with the exciter, a part of the transmitter that generates the FM signal.

“It had two blown-up transistors in it,” he said. “Probably one failed and caused the other to fail.”

He said there are several possible causes for the transistors’ breakdown.

“The failure occurred a day or two after a storm, so maybe a surge caused them to fail,” he said. “It wasn’t any major catastrophe. There wasn’t a direct hit by lightning or anything.”

More likely, the transmitters stopped working due to their advanced age, Boone said.

“I inspected the thing, and there was no evidence of burning, so probably its time just ran out,” he said.

The station was unable to correct the problem itself, he said.

“What we ended up doing, since there were several things wrong with it, we sent it back to the factory for a full refurbishing,” he said.

Boone said it is difficult to implement procedures to keep the transmitters from failing again.

“We have a grounding system on the antennae to try and prevent surges and so on, but if you get a direct lightning hit, there’s not much you can do.”

Brad Argo, senior in journalism and mass communication, is a DJ at KURE during the school year and a listener during the summer. He said he missed listening to the station while it was off the air.

“I missed the commercial-free programming,” he said. “The DJ’s probably miss the opportunity to get better for the fall. The summer used to give people practice.”

Kitson said the station did not lose any sponsors because it was off the air and the DJs are ready to go.

“Everyone’s excited to be back on air,” she said.

Kitson said she hopes people will tune into the station.

“We have a lot of really diverse shows,” she said. “There is something for everyone.”