Tobi had to stay in town today, so I didn’t go to the transmitter site. No need to take a vehicle with only one person, if there is plenty that can be done remotely.

This morning started out warmer than the two previous mornings and the sun has been shining brightly all day. The forecasted high was 79F so we didn’t use the fireplace. In fact, when it got warmer outside than inside, we opened windows to let the warmth in.

We added four more entries to our blog today, hoping to get it up-to-date. Have experienced cases where one entry overwrote a previous one, requiring the reentering of the previous one. It proved to be a tedious duplication of effort (not once, but twice)! Hopefully, the reason for that has been found and won’t reoccur.

We made a quick trip into town so Virginia could exchange some items. I’m getting a little more comfortable driving on the left side of the road. Today, another section of the new four lane highway through Manzini was opened, so we had to learn a new route into town, and back out. On the way home, we stopped by the Sunnyside Butchery close to us to pick up some mince (hamburger meat). The shop was all out, told us they expected a delivery from the abattoir tomorrow, and to come back then.

We had hoped to be done with blogging earlier, so I was only able to do some preliminary drawing with LibreCAD, but it looks like its going to work. There are a few functions that are more cumbersome than AutoCAD (that I used regularly from 1990 to about 2010). With practice, I’m sure drawings made with LibreCAD can be done more quickly.

This morning started out cold (even colder (about 40F) in the valley where the transmitter site is located, but with the sun shining it warmed up quickly. After site devotions and taking care of the correspondence that came in over the long weekend, I headed out into the antenna field to get more accurate information on the guying of the log-periodic antennas. It was now warm enough that a jacket was not needed – my flannel shirt was adequate and by noon was almost too warm!

It is about a half mile walk out to those antennas and on the way I noticed a large tractor-trailer flatbed truck and a cattle truck. They were being loaded with hay bales. Also noted that the adjacent field’s hay had been cut and TWR tractors were windrowing and bailing more hay. Talked to the truck driver from Mafutseni Ranch while his crew directed the loading and tied down the bales. Watching all that was going on and taking photos, distracted me for a while, before getting back to the original purpose of my trek out there. In all, I was in the field for over three hours.

[Some history—Initally we just mowed down all the grass and left it under the antennas. The antenna field was much smaller then. Eventually, one of the nearby ranchers suggested cutting and baling the grass. He actually did it for us for a while, saving us the cost of mowing. Later still, Steve bought a baler and began selling the bales, which covered all the mowing and hay making costs with enough extra to replace tractors and equipment every few years.]

Back at the building and for the remaining hour of the workday, I started to turn my antenna guying notes into preliminary sketches. I asked Tobi about CAD (computer aided drawing) programs. Only TinyCAD is available for making electrical drawings – nothing for mechanical drawing. Tobi did find on the shelves an old copy of TurboCAD for Windows XP and Vista (compatible with my old laptop). I took it home to try.

Lorraine took Virginia to town today to see a dentist. Last week, a crown on one of her front teeth came loose. She wanted to get it fixed before it fell out. The dentist is from Uganda, but also preaches at International Family Church where the Stavropouloses attend. The crown came right off for the dentist, but he discovered that it was more than just loose. The post had broken, so he cemented it back in place for $47 and told Virginia she would need to have something done when we get back to the U.S. [Virginia texted this information to Samuel (our son) and he replied “I think you’re going to have to see me for an implant when you get back.” BTW, the root canal and crown was done about two years ago, but NOT by Samuel!]

I tried to load the TurboCAD CD onto my laptop and kept getting a ‘corrupted disk’ error. The CD did have some scuff marks on it, so thought that might be the problem. Then tried the tutorial CD, which had no marks, and got the same message. Wonder if it might be my laptop’s CD player?

I now tried to download FreeCad, but it will only work with Windows 7 or newer. Next, I was successful in downloading LibreCAD, another free CAD program. We’ll see how well it works or if something else will be better.

This morning is the coldest since we came — about 43F. Tobi did not go to the site. Initially I thought I would go anyway and put photos into our blog then post them, but decided other wise Good thing, because posting at the site would not have worked. Managed to post three weeks of blog material today. Wasn’t easy – had to email photoes from my laptop to the kindle then copy them from that email into the blog, going back and forth with each photo. If I got interrupted, it was easy to forget where I was in the sequence of transferiUi is me sweetie eeueeieiei in iewuuiuuung! Some photos from cameras, other smart phones, or tablets had to be transferred to the laptop then reduced in size before sending them on to my Kindle to insert into the drafts.

Kept a fire going in fireplace all day. [Keep in mind, there is no central heating in houses here which have concrete walls with no insulation. The windows (single pane) and doors have lots of air leaking around the openings.]. Just wish I had my electric chain saw, log splitter, wedges and sledge to tackle the pile of wood that is available. Much of it is too long, too big in diameter, or both to go into the fireplace.

There was a short power failure again at Evangelical Bible Church. Just like last week, the music program continued. With the keyboard silent, someone moved to the piano to pick right back up with the accompaniment. Brother Gilbert (instead of Pastor Deon) spoke this morning on Mark 8:34-37- “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul.”

This Sunday was being celebrated as International Sunday. People from various countries or ethnic backgrounds wore traditional clothing. In all there were about 16 different countries being represented. We were the only ones from the United States, for that matter from the Americas.

After the service, an International Dinner had been organized as a fundraiser for the Evangelical Bible College of South Africa located in Capetown. The cost was reasonable (less than $3 for food and $0.60 for drinks per person) and the selections were amazing. I can remember cuisine from Eswatini, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Portugal, Scotland, Pakistan, China, Zambia and maybe others we forgot. We were given a large take-a-way box to put our selection in – more than enough to eat. We brought some home for later.

After church we stopped by the pharmacy, next to Pick N Pay, where we picked up some prescription medicine for Virginia [no prescription required] and then did our weekly grocery shopping. The MasterCard that we reactivated this week worked for both purchases.

This afternoon we built a fire, worked on drafts for our blog and had popcorn in the evening.

Sunday 17 July – Since we arrived, Virginia has been taking care of Snowy, the cat belonging to the Kimbers, the former occupants of this house. They had made arrangements for Snowy to be transported to England where they now reside, so today he was picked up and joined two dogs from other places in Eswatini. Each animal had their own cage and were destined to fly out of Johannesburg after a six-day quarantine.

The church service today was similar to last week’s. Several minutes before his sermon, pastor was going to sing a duet with one of the church ladies. As they were getting ready to sing, the power went off. Since they had accompanying music that required electricity, the music leader just moved on to the next item in the service, which was a hymn. Thelma Pierce is still playing the accordian after 50 years and no one missed the electric keyboard and amplified worship team. In fact, it sounded quite nice! During the hymn, the power came back on and the duet took place. Pastor Deon preached on Matthew 6:32 and 34, a continuation of his sermon on not worrying. Not sure why he skipped verse 33. (I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep through it!) Maybe it’s next week’s sermon? Today was the church’s annual general meeting, so they had a break for refreshments outside, then returned to that meeting. We decided not to stay for that.

Rather than make another trip into town this week, we did some grocery shopping before heading home. Since we now knew our Visa card would work without a PIN, that was not a concern. We ended up spending about 1,300L (under $80) which included 4 fried chicken legs and a lot of chips (thick french fries) for less than $5 from the deli for our lunch. There were also chicken wings and necks available.

After lunch, we made a spontaneous trip to Swazi Candle. As we were leaving Swazi Candle, we chatted with the check-out clerk and told her we would be back later. This led to a conversation about how long we were staying and what we are doing. When she heard we were with Trans World Radio, her face lit up and she became quite excited. She listens regularly to the Voice of the Church, which was started by TWR.

In the evening, Virginia popped some popcorn (our regular Sunday evening fare) and we tried to work some on our blog. Virginia got a WhatsApp video call from Angelique, Samuel’s wife. In the middle of that call, I got a Whats App call from Michelle, Philip’s wife, on my phone and I told her how to turn on the video. We held our phones together so the two families from Michigan and Idaho could say ‘hi’ to one another and heard the exclamations of how much the children had grown – all via smart phones in Africa!

The call from Michelle was to announce the imminent arrival of their sixth child (our 18th grandchild) and to request prayer that the baby would turn, because of its breech position. Most of their children had been home births and, without insurance, the cost of a C-section and hospital stay would be a major burden. We contacted our children and other family members with this prayer request. About two hours later, Michelle called again and said the midwife had visited and the baby had turned into the right position. Praise the Lord for His answer to our prayers!!!

After this phone call, we made a last-second revision to our McGuiReport to include a sentence about the anticipated arrival of a new grandchild.

Monday18 July – First thing this morning our revised August McGuiReport was submitted to TWR for printing.

Since we are in Eswatini as visitors, our stay is limited to 30 days. To stay longer would require a work permit. With our relatively short stay, all the paperwork and cost involved to get a work permit, it is easier just to leave the country for a day or so and return for another 30 days. For our previous three trips, we went overnight to Kruger Game Park in South Africa. This time we decided to try to get reservations at Tendele Hutted Camp in Royal Natal National Park, a place where we took our boys almost every year during school breaks. Last week we made the reservations, but were having trouble making payment due to declined credit cards. Today, our reservations were finally confirmed for August 3 to 5. We decided to stay two nights because of the longer drive (about 280 miles) to get there. Would have actually liked to stay August 4 to 6 but everything was booked there, and in Kruger, for the night of August 5, due to a long holiday weekend in South Africa. This means we will have to leave on September 4 and stay a night at the TWR Africa Support Center before catching our September 5 evening flight back to the U.S.

Transmitter 1 had a couple of B+ filter arc faults last night that tripped the transmitter off for a couple of seconds each time. This has been a recurring issue for a while, but not every night. We decided to ‘hipot’ [meaning apply high potential voltage] to that section of the transmitter to see if the arcing could be duplicated. We tested that section up to 34,000 volts with no arcing. We suspect the problem may actually be in the sensing circuit rather than an actual arc. Further investigation is needed.

Since the antenna crew had removed the concrete casing of the anchor rod mention earlier, further inspection was done on how to proceed with repairs. Because the turnbuckle was slightly bent, it was decided to replace the turnbuckle and guy wrap dead-end. The latter was not damaged but must be removed to change the turnbuckle. Once removed, it is not reusable.

Tobi asked me about what the guy wire tensions should be on the two towers of the log periodic antenna that I designed and built in 1984. I easily located the drawing with those tensions that I made back then. Since that time, two similar antennas (directing signals in other directions) have been added on either side of the original one and these newer antennas have one tower in common with the original antenna. I will be doing some calculations, after getting all the needed details of the other two antennas, to determine any revised guy wire tensions. These calculation will be complicated by the fact that each antenna is at a different elevation on the towers, due to the ground slope.

When we got home this evening, we learned that Eswatini’s Prime Minister had announced that the mask mandate was being dropped effective today. The mask and vaccine mandates had been dropped for South Africa on June 22. In mid-June, the U.S. had dropped the negative COVID test required for returning U.S. citizens. We are so grateful that these changes came just in time to make our traveling less complicated.

Tuesday 19 July – No one was wearing face masks at devotions or work this morning! News sure gets around more quickly in Swaziland these days!!

We measured the guy wire to determine what size guy wrap dead-end to use. The guy wire was 3/8”, but the only dead-ends were 10mm. No one at the site knew whether these could be used on 3/8” guy wire, so I pulled up the Preformed Line Products South Africa website to find out this information. Unfortunately, the SA website did not give that information. I then pulled up the PLP U.S. website and found the range of guys sizes that a 3/8” dead-end could be used on. That range was from 10% smaller to 5% larger in diameter. The 3/8” guy diameter is 5% smaller than 10mm, therefore we concluded the 10mm dead-ends would work for the 3/8” guy wire

We went through a similar process with replacing the turnbuckle. The original was a 3/4” open body turnbuckle, which was replaced with a 20 mm closed body turnbuckle. 3/4” is approximately 19mm.

Virginia came to the site again this Tuesday with Steve and Lorraine. She brought with her a bag of macadamia nuts that Ruth Crowie gave us last Wednesday. We were told the best way to crack them was in a vise. Even then, it was took quite a bit of effort to get them to crack. We now know why they are so expensive. She spent around two hours cracking the nuts. I finally ended up helping to finish.

We have been attempting to use Skype to contact MasterCard to activate our card for overseas use. Skype not longer works on my outdated laptop, so I tried using my Kindle. When calling the number on the back of the credit card, a message asks us to enter the number of the card. Unfortunately, my Kindle does not create the tones needed. This afternoon, I decided to try the laptop that TWR lets me use at the site. This time the tones worked and after working through several menus, I finally got to speak to customer service. The representative found the notes of our travel plans that we had previously given before our departure, but said she could not activate our card based on those notes! We would have to provide a code that would be sent to the phone on record (our home phone). I said that would be impossible since I was already on Skype (the only means to check a code on our home phone, assuming they would even leave that code on an answering machine). She then transferred me to someone that was allowed to provide authentication via another method. I had to answer several multiple-choice questions similar to the ones used when requesting a credit report on-line. Found it interesting that at no time did anyone ask for our phone number on record, my birthday, our address or zipcode, or the last four digits of my SS number! Finally, after 25 minutes (fortunately there is no charge on Skype calls from overseas for toll-free numbers) our card is supposedly reactivated. We’ll see if it works when we grocery shop on Sunday after church.

We had to go through a similar process (using Skype on the site laptop) for our Visa card because our on-line access was blocked. Fortunately, this only took 12 minutes to resolve. Interestingly, on-line access to our MasterCard has not been an issue.

This evening we had Jacob Vogelpohl , a TWR intern serving for a couple months in South Africa at the TWR ASC, over for supper. He is serving in the technical department at ASC and came for the week to inventory the computer equipment used here to help plan and budget for future upgrades. Jacob is from Independence, Kentucky and studying computer science in university.

Wednesday 20 July – Tobi asked me about using the quarter-power filament feature on the HC100 (100,000-watt shortwave) transmitters. This feature is used to reduce the voltage of the filaments to conserve electricity and help extend the life of the power amplifier tube (cost around $20,000) during periods of up to 8 hours when a transmitters may be idling for the next broadcast. I let him know this feature would not be of benefit during TWR Eswatini’s current broadcast schedule. I recalled our discussion with Graham Kimber from 2016 about this topic and decided to consolidate all the information in those emails into one file for easier access should this topic come up again. Only one (the newest) of the three HC100s has that this feature installed. The older ones have the software for the feature, but not the hardware. In 2016, Graham and I found an anomaly in this feature that caused a spike in current during the transition from quarter to full power filaments that partially negated the benefits of that feature. As far as I know, that current spike has not been addressed.

While on the subject of the tube filament, there is another feature (also to prolong tube life) used in the transmitter that ramps the filament voltage up gradually at start up using an SCR controller. This SCR controller failed on the first two transmitters, so Hans Van Kampen made a step up circuit with two power resistor and two timer relays for shorting the resistors allowing the voltage to ramp up in three steps. Graham and I also studied these circuits in 2016 and discovered similar current spikes on both ramping methods. With the SCR controller, the spike was when a relay opened the SCR controller and another relay bypassed the SCR controller so that it did not have to operate continuously. With the stepped resistor method, there were current spikes each time another relay shorted one of the series resistors. We did not come to a conclusion as to what method was better or how improvements could be made. I consolidated all the information in those emails, too.

I also walked to the antenna field to try to get an idea how the guy wires were laid out for making the drawings to determine guy wire tensions. It became obvious it would take more time than was available today to gather the necessary information. I was able to approximate the direction (azimuth) to which each of the three antennas were ‘aimed’. I haven’t been able to find that information yet.

We have been trying to refill some of Virginia’s prescriptions on-line, but was unable to do so the on the laptop or Kindle Fire tablets we have with us. I had success using TWR laptop at work.

Thursday 21 July – Tobi had me check out the work he did on radio frequency filtering circuitry that he added to two printed circuit boards for controlling the switch bay, which controls switches to connect the correct antenna to the transmitter for a given broadcast. I only found one open circuit that Tobi quickly repaired.

One of the transmitter technicians found piles of white and gray plastic particles on the floor under the the PA tuning capacitor of Tx1. The only source we could find were the white plastic gears used for the potentiometer used for determining the correct tuning position of the capacitor. We found no evidence of wearing of the gears, nor where the gray particles could have originated. I asked the technician to clean up the particles and check in a day or so to see if more particles reappeared.

I spent a lot of time searching through the site technical files stored on the computer and found more helpful information, including the exact azimuth of each antenna. I also looked for a computer aided drafting (CAD) program to make some drawings of the antennas. Found TurboCAD and Design Cad, but they both required key passwords. Will check if anyone knows if they are useable next week.

Friday 22 July – Today is a holiday, the King’s Birthday (the old king Sobhuza II that is). He died in 1982 and was king most of the years we lived here. He had the longest verifiable reign of any monarch in recorded history.

Since it was a holiday, we got to sleep in past 5:30am and took it easy most of the day. I also continued working on making draft updates to our blog. After supper we were invited again to game night at the Stavropoulos home. This time we played Phase 10, but only got to about phase 4 before calling it a night around 9pm.

Saturday 23 July – Like yesterday, we slept in and took it easy most of the day with some more work on preparing drafts for our blog. Final posting will occur on the site laptop, because it is not possible to edit, add photos, nor post from my old laptop. In the evening, we built a cozy fire in the fireplace. There is plenty of wood piled in a fenced in area next to the yard where we are staying, so we may be making more use of the fireplace on these cool evenings.