When we woke up this morning, we were ‘freezing’!  The temperature in our bedroom was 72F, although the thermostat was set to 79F.  Must have something to do with running the air conditioner in ‘dehumidifier’ mode.  The musty smell from yesterday was gone, so we returned the mode back to ‘normal’.

We had a heavy rain last night and everything was wet first thing this morning.  Things dried off fairly quickly, but the humidity remained higher than normal all day.

We were able to work on the antenna switch connections the whole day today.

Jim silver-solders all the small parts that we assembled the previous days in the shop. Here he is working on the lower of the two cross-over pipe that make up the 300 ohm transmission line.

Jim solders the upper pipe now that it is aligned properly in its final position. Three aluminum poles with insulators on top and insulator spacers between the pipes make the transmission line rigid.  These cross-over lines take a lot longer to fabricate and assemble than the straight runs

Now that the cross-over line is finished, the lower straight transmission line is done. If it would have been done first, it would have only been an obstruction while building the cross-over line. [Does it look like the beginning of some kind of roller coaster ride? — just wait til all the connections are done!]    Paul, Joel, Jim and Mike are in this photo.

Virginia and Joanna
Joanna and her husband live in the middle apartment on the first floor below us. They have been married about 7months.

Virginia and Joanne did some sightseeing on their own today and went to Two Lover’s Point.

Two Lovers Point

The Legend — from http://twoloverspoint.com  (if this link does not work, try this one — http://puntandosamantes.com/)

Long ago, in the time when Spain ruled Guam, there was a proud family living in Hagåtña, the capital city. The father was a wealthy Spanish aristocrat and the mother was the daughter of a great Chamorro chief. The family owned land and were held in high esteem by all, Chamorro and Spanish alike.

Their daughter was a beautiful girl, admired by all for her honesty, modesty, and perfectly natural charm. Her beauty bestowed the greatest pride and dignity unto her family.

One day, the girl’s father arranged for her to take a powerful Spanish captain as her husband. When the girl discovered this, she was so distraught that she ran from Hagåtña all the way to the north of Guam until she found a secluded and peaceful shore.

There, on the moonlit shore, she met and fell in love with a young warrior from a very modest Chamorro family. He was gentle, with a strong build, and had eyes that searched for meaning in the stars.

When the girl’s father learned of the two lovers, he grew angry and demanded that she marry the Spanish captain at once. That day at sundown, she stole away to the same high point along the shore and once again met her Chamorro lover.

Her father, along with the captain, and all the Spanish soldiers pursued the lovers up to the high cliff above Tumon Bay. The lovers found themselves trapped between the edge of the cliff and the approaching soldiers. All the young warrior could do was warn them to stay back, and the father ordered the soldiers to halt.

The lovers tied their long black hair into a single knot. Acting as if they were entirely alone, they looked deeply into each other’s eyes and kissed for the final time. Then, they leaped over the long, deep cliff into the roaring waters below.

The girl’s father and all who remained rushed to the edge to stare in great anguish.

Since that day, Chamorros have looked to the jutting peak above Tumon Bay with reverence. The two lovers remain a symbol of true love–a love in which two souls are entwined forever in life and in death. Thereafter, the high point on the cliff was known as Puntan Dos Amantes, or Two Lovers Point.

A list of a few of the wedding that have taken place at Two Lovers Point. It looks like most were from Japan.

Thousands of heart and padlocks symbolically locked to the fence and other places. Two Lovers Point is supposedly visited by more people than any other attraction in Guam and is quite commercialized.

Elkhart has its painted fiberglass elk, but Guam has painted carabao (pronounced care-a-bow [like bow tie])

Our bedroom has started to smell a little musty.  Since our Chinese air conditioner has a dehumidifier mode, we decided to try that mode to see what will happen.  There is no instruction manual in the apartment, and one could not be found on-line.

This morning I rode to work with Paul, instead of Joel. Joel, Jim and Mike went to town to purchase copper pipe and other supplies to allow continued work on the antenna switches

I received an email from Steve in TWR Benin (temporarily there for a year from TWR Swaziland) requesting information for automatic (remote controlled) gate openers. He would like to have one included in a container going to Benin from the U.S.  I spent some time this morning sorting through various options to meet their need in Benin, then answering his request.

When I cut my apple for lunch today, I found that some of the seeds were beginning to sprout! Would I be right in assuming this apple had been in storage for a while? It tasted good — the apple, not the seeds.

The copper pipe and other supplies arrived about noon, so we continued where we left off yesterday afternoon.

Virginia went with Joanna on a tour of the north end of Guam.  They also did some shopping on their way through downtown.  We’ll try to do a separate blog entry for their adventure.

The rainy season seems to have begun.  Until today, most of the rain has been coming at night.

Some of the next antenna switch connections will require that interconnecting ‘lines’ cross-over some of the straight connections.  These parallel lines must be exactly the same length and maintain the same spacing.  The design was finalized for accomplishing this.

During a lull in the rain, I took a photo looking from antenna switches toward the transmitter building. The Matson container (foreground) contains one of the transmitters that we packed up just over a week ago. The end of the second container with the other transmitter can be seen on the other side of the ‘lean-to’ shelter on the left end of the building.

The office section of the transmitter building is on the right. The center section is the transmitter hall and the left section is the workshop. The transmission lines come out of the center section and will eventually terminate overhead on the cross bars, pass through the switches, then connect to various antennas terminated on overhead crossbars on the other side of the antenna switches pad.  The heat exchanger (‘radiator’) on the left end of the roof of the transmitter hall belongs to the 100-000-watt shortwave transmitter.  This modification to the original design keeps excess heat outside the building.

With the rain still coming down, we began to assemble as many pieces as possible for the cross-over lines in the shop.  By the end of the day, we had used up much of the material in stock, so arrangements were made to obtain more pipe, fittings and silver solder first thing tomorrow morning.

Virginia went to the transmitter site today and finished the work that she began on Friday, then sorted through some old files.  She even found some transmitter logs that were signed Carolyn West who had worked night shifts many years ago!

I helped Joel and Jim continue making antenna switch connections.

We began to make some of the longer direct connections today.

Now that some of the switches were their final locations, Paul began to bolt them to the concrete pad to prevent them from moving during typhoons.