Today we arrived at staff meeting and noticed something was up.  Tea cups, cake, and other finger food was being set out.  After staff meeting, there was a ‘thank you tea’ for us, since we will now be leaving Swaziland next Wednesday instead of Thursday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the tea, Virginia and I walked downtown.  Our first stop was to buy some units of electricity.  Instead of receiving a bill for electricity every month, electricity must be prepaid.  There is a display unit near the circuit breaker box that shows how many units are left.  If it goes to zero, the electricity is shut off.  There are many other places to purchase units, but we went to the post office, since it was closest.  Payment is made, then a receipt is printed with a 16 digit number to enter into the display box.  When this number is keyed into the display unit, the amount of units purchased is added on to the remaining units.  Somehow the display unit knows whether the 16 digit number is valid and how many units to add.

We did some shopping downtown, and at the market, for items to take back to Indiana with us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This evening we attended our last Wednesday evening serve at EBC.  Pastor Deon was back from Capetown and spoke on Psalm 91.  Someone else had been scheduled to speak, but had to cancel at the last minute.

Forgot to mention yesterday that Virginia went out to tea (“elevenses”) with Lorraine.  [Lunch is usually at 1pm]  They originally planned to go to Guava Gallery, but found out that it is closed on Mondays.  Instead they went to Sambane Tea Garden next to Swazi Candles, where Virginia said she had the largest scone that she had ever seen.  It had jam and whipped cream on it.  On the way home, they passed the pineapple fields at Malkerns.

There were 14 present for site devotions this morning.  I challenged the group with I Corinthians 9:24-27 to “finish strong” in our Christian ‘race’, or join in the race.

Now that some of the anomalies with the transmitter have been traced to the automation interface cards in the transmitter, all the remaining cards were modified to correct the problems.

Klaus and Graham began working on the automation program to clean up a few problems that were discovered.  Since this was not my area of expertise, I decided to again inspect Antenna 6.  It continues to arc (but less frequently) after our previous modifications.  I also decided to check out the other three antenna similar to Antenna 6, and the rest of the shortwave antennas.  Some observations and thoughts:

1.  The corona rings on Antenna 11 (the one built in 1985) have more ‘wrap-around’ curvature on the outside ring than the newer ones.

2.  The fourth element from the bottom on the east side of Antenna 6 looks about 4″ short.  Wonder if this could be a source of unbalance in the antenna?  Maybe it should be measured.

3.  To determine where the arcing starts from, I wonder if it might be possible to set up a movie camera during the problem 35 minute tranmission and capture an occurrence of the arc.  Replaying frame-by-frame just might give us a clue as to where additional corona treatment might be helpful, rather than using out current trial methods.

4.  Another option might be to have someone with the right computer program to more accurately model the element ends and corona rings to determine where the greatest voltage stress occurs.

This trek around the shortwave antenna field took about an hour.

At lunch I set out a carton of Virginia’s homemade chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.  Each person at the site was able to have two.  Virginia got lots of compliments!  I think they want more!!

After lunch we began testing the automation changes.  Very few of the commands to control the transmitters worked properly!  When the afternoon broadcasts began, I grabbed a list of the timetable of computer commands and manually operated the transmitters as Klaus and Graham continued to tackle the automation system problem.

The first thing they did was to replace the program that they had modified with the previous one.  It still did not work.  I was beginning to think it might be a long night manually doing everything that the computer normally does!  I’ve heard of “replacing a person with a computer”, but this would be ‘replacing a computer with a person’.

Eventually, it was found that the problem was a bad connection of one of the control wires between the automation system and the transmitters.  This was repaired.  Rather than waiting for 30 minutes (until the next set of automated commands) to verify that the problem had been solved, the system clock was adjusted to the time just before the previously observed problem, then we watched to see that it was now working properly.  It functioned properly, and we were able to head for home only one hour late.

We rejoiced in the fact that the problems had been solved with no lost airtime.  A listener would not have known there was anything abnormal happening.

Back to work after a fantastic weekend at Kruger Park.

I spent most of the morning catching up on all the emails that came in over the weekend.  There was no internet service at the bungalow in Kruger, so we didn’t even bother to check.

We learned this morning that the Africa Regional Office wants us to  to meet with leaders there on July 18, before we caught our evening flight back home.  Therefore we will plan on leaving Swaziland on Wednesday July 17, rather than on July 18.

Graham discovered that the interface card in TX3 for automation control was wired differently than TX1 or TX2.  This explains why it reacts differently from the other two, although receiving the same command.  Upon further review, we decided to use this revision, rather than the plan we devised on Friday.

This afternoon, when TX2 and TX3 had their filaments switched on by the computer, instead of remaining with only the filaments warming up, these two transmitters proceeded to go on the ‘air’.  This is unlike TX3, so tomorrow will be spent trying to figure out why?  There should be no problem operating tonight and in the morning under these conditions.

It has been cloudy all day, so when I got home the temperature in the house was down to 64F.  I am almost on the verge of shivering as this blog is being done.  Outside it is now about 59F, so it will likely be a cool morning tomorrow.