We heard reports this morning that the signal is loud and clear all over Cuba, including in Havana.  Alberto is elated over this news!

The transmitter had fewer momentary shutbacks last night due to the modifications done yesterday, so there has been encouraging progress.  We are praying that the TWR team here will be able to take care of  any minor issues that might remain.

This morning I helped Tom King do some more tuning in the phasor for the north pattern.  This ended up taking longer than anticipated, but in the end there was great improvement with the reflected power dropping from around 1000 watts (not bad) to about 100 watts.  With 440,000 watts of forward power this is excellent!

Both the Van Dykens and the Kings departed this afternoon.  Tomorrow most of the rest of us ‘temporary workers’ are departing, leaving just the TWR Bonaire permanent staff.  This afternoon and this evening, we are packing in preparation for our departure after church tomorrow.

Before sunset, we went for an hour swim at Bachelor Beach.  By the time we got out we were well cooled off–to the point of having ‘goosebumps’ and close to shivering! We continue to feel cool three hours later.

Pray as we return to Indiana.  Virginia and I are scheduled to leave tomorrow on Delta 380 leaving Bonaire at 4:05 pm and arriving in Atlanta at 7:22 pm.  We plan to stay overnight with my niece and her family in Snellville, Georgia.  Our departure from Atlanta is scheduled on Monday at 3:07 pm to arrive in South Bend at 5:04 pm where the temperature is forecast to be in the teens!

Steve Shantz just came over (7:15 pm EST–8:15 pm Bonaire time) with his computer that was accessing a remote receiver in Key West, Florida.  The program sounded loud and clear with no static, like a local FM station!

Please pray with us for a great spiritual impact from this Bonaire Power Up project.  We have seen God at work in so many ways while we have been here!

This blog will likely be our last entry from Bonaire about this trip.

Ivan and Donna taking the virtual TWR tour. Virginia had her turn next. This was one of the ‘tours’ offered on dedication day, but most staff were too busy to see it.

Devotions were held at the office/studio this morning.  Afterwards we stopped by a couple of hardware stores before both of us went to the transmitter site.  Virginia helped pack up some of the things left from the dedication to bring back to the office.

TWR Bonaire studio and office building

The mural on the studio building was repainted a few months ago. The old mural had faded badly after several years from the tropical sun.

Jim Mosher at Kintronic suggested swapping the capacitor that tested good only to 20,000 volt with one of two others (that do not require as high voltage rating) used in the phasor.  These two were both hipotted and neither one tested to the rated 35,000 volts.  One did test to 31,000 volts so the swap us made using this one.  After the swap was completed we tested the transmitter on the Caribbean pattern.  Yesterday we were getting Fast SWR shutbacks at 110,000 watts with 125% modulation.  Today we were able to increase the power to 275,000 watts with 130% modulation and experienced no shutbacks at all.  We are limited from going any higher in power on the Caribbean pattern because of signal strength limits at the airport.  It looks like the capacitor was the problem.  Tom King will be sending a replacement capacitor.  Meanwhile, we can continue operating at full power.

Jonas and I went to the antenna tuning hut for tower 1 to observe whether the insulator change and additional grounding straps installed yesterday had any effect.  The transmitter was operated up to 420,000 watts with 130% modulation into the north pattern with no sign of the arcing seen yesterday.  Again improvement has been observed.

TWR Bonaire staff, including us, were invited by Tom King to a luncheon at Captain Don’s Habitat.  The restaurant is called Rum Runner!  Again, we had a great time with TWR staff, but with NO rum!!

TWR Bonaire staff lunch at Caption Don’s courtesy of Tom King.

Since Tom King was not going to the site this afternoon, but would be going at 8:30 am  tomorrow (Saturday morning) to do some final adjustments, we decided to take the rest of the afternoon off.   I took Virginia to a fabric store and to another store in town.  There was a huge traffic jam in town caused by an accident involving a pickup and motor scooter.  There appeared to be little damage to humans or vehicles.

I got home and took a nap for about an hour.

Virginia has had some braised beef tips on rice ready for several days and invited all the people in the duplex for supper, including Alberto who has moved in to the other side of the duplex.  It seems like everyone had other plans except for Jeheil, who will be leaving at 6 am in the morning to head back to his home in the Dominican Republic.

We are praying that the transmitter will operate tonight with a great reduction in the amount of shutbacks!

Virginia and Ethelyn Schultz went with the ladies for the morning at Kanuku Rooi Lamoenchi, a historic plantation house.

I took Bob Schultz, 95 year old TWR engineer, with me to the transmitter site for the morning. After morning devotions, we had a joint meeting with Wendell from Nautel and Tom King from Kintronic to discuss the reason for occasional momentary shutbacks of the transmitter. We have come to the conclusion that most are caused by arc detectors in the antenna tuning huts, especially antennas 1 and 3.

Tom King and I watched inside these tuning huts from behind a safetly barrier while the transmitter was operating and discovered several places where there was arcing from points (that were supposedly grounded) to copper straps connected to station ground. The safety barrier, sits on on top of two of these 4″ wide copper straps, and two wider copper straps next to the wall–all going to station ground, The ends of the safety barrier are ‘grounded’ at two points on each wall. With all this grounding, there is still occasional arcing occurring between the safety barrier and one of the 4″ copper straps.

There was also arcing at the ‘grounded’ end of an 18′ long insulator to ground. We swapped this insulator out for a new one to see if the original one might have been faulty.

While Tom King and I took some measurements in the phasor, Daryl made ground straps to tie the barrier fence directly to the 4″ straps to see if this eliminates that arcing. At Tom’s suggestion Daryl and Jonas hipotted (tested using a high voltage tester) several of the capacitors. Some of these are rated at 55,000 volts. They did find one capacitor (that is supposed to be good for 35,000 volts) that would arc over at 20,000 volts. This could be a problem. The men at Tom’s company are looking into possible temporary solutions for us to make tomorrow.

Jonas using a hipot to test on of the capacitors.

TWR had a BBQ on the beach near the airport starting at 5pm. Our measurements in the phasor were not completed until about 5:15pm. We quickly checked to make sure the transmitter was ready to operate at full power on all three antenna patterns before leaving the transmitter site for the BBQ. Although we didn’t arrive at the beach until 5:30pm, the food was not being served yet.  Hamburgers and chicken kebabs were grilled.  Salads were brought by various staff, including Virginia.  Virginia also made her special baked bean recipe–must have been well liked because there were no leftovers to bring home!

TWR staff and visitors at Te Amo Beach, near the airport, for an evening BBQ.

I had a good time chatting with Joe and Jenny Emert from a Christian station near Atlanta.  Joe worked with Sam Rowley of the HCJB Engineering Center (now SonSet Solutions) to set up the FM network in Papua New Guinea.  They also know Alan and Sarah Good from SonSet Solutions.

Te Amo Beach Sunset with Tanker delivering fuel to airport in background.

There was a beautiful view of the sunset at the beach, but it gets dark quickly afterwards. By the time everything was packed up and we drove home, it was almost 8 pm.

Reception reports keep coming in from North and South America, but one report came in last night from a listener in Norway!

We picked up Ralph and Mary Jane to take them to the airport at 8:30 am.  They were scheduled to fly Insel Air to Curacao at 10:30am, but we learned that their flight only left at 2:30pm.  From Curacao, they were to fly on to Aruba.  We heard they were still waiting to leave for Aruba at 8:30 pm!  Recommendation–avoid using Insel Air to fly anywhere.  If you’re not convinced, just look at the reviews written about Insel Air.

Nautel’s transmitter engineer, Wendell, came to the dedication and led one of the Techtalk sessions.

This morning a session called Techtalk started with an 8:30am breakfast at Pure Ocean Beachside Dining Restaurant.  I joined the group later at the transmitter site where a review of the Bonaire Power Up project was given, followed by a tour of the transmitter given by Wendell, a Nautel engineer, and a tour of the antenna phasor and tuning units by Tom King.

Huge ‘mountains’ of salt at Cargill waiting to be loaded onto ships for transport around the world.

In the afternoon, we had a tour of  Cargill Salt Bonaire.  We learned that the salt harvested in Bonaire has a crystal size of about 1″ cube.  [We were given some samples] Most of the salt is used for water softeners.

TWR Bonaire transmitter site with one of Cargill’s salt pans in the foreground. These salt pans and the Caribbean Sea provide a near perfect ground for sending AM radio signals for very long distances.

Watching the live broadcast through the studio window.  Brad (at computer, then clockwise around table), Annabelle, Estaban, Jeheil, and Alberto.

At 5:30pm we watched a live broadcast, originating at the TWR studio, to Cuba and Venezuela done by Brad, Annabelle, Estaban, Jeheil, and Alberto.  Andre will be broadcasting live to Brazil at 5am, so he headed to bed early this evening.

We took Bob and Ethelyn Schultz to Hillside restaurant for supper tonight.  Reservations are not required at Hillside in contrast to most of the eating places along the beach.

The day of the dedication of the new transmitter and antenna system has arrived!

The dedication hall with 200 chairs is ready.

This morning, in addition to preparing for the dedication this afternoon, we received numerous reception reports resulting from full power–440,000 watts–tests overnight.  Using the north pattern, the signal was clearly heard in Key West and Miami.  It was also heard in New England and there was one report of it being weakly heard in Montana!  Using the south pattern, the signal was heard in Sao Paulo, Brazil and in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  All these places are well beyond the primary target areas, which will have even stronger reception.

Virginia, Sandy Alary and Joyce Walker serving snacks.

The pre-dedication activities started at 2:30pm with snacks being served, various TWR memorabilia, a virtual tour using virtual reality headsets and real tours of the facilities.

Tours and a lot of visiting and renewing friendships took place before the dedication.

TWR president Lauren Libby met the Governor of Bonaire before the dedication. Lauren received a Bonaire coat-of-arms pin from the Governor during the dedication. After the service, when the governor learned about 95 year old TWR engineer, Bob Schultz, being present, he presented a Bonaire coat-of-arms pin to Bob also.

The dedication service began about 4pm with speeches given by the Governor of Bonaire, Edison Rijna, (we learned that his father worked for TWR in the early days climbing and painting towers), TWR President Lauren Libby and TWR Cuba Director Alberto Gonzales.  The dedication culminated with the governor and Alberto cutting the ribbon and  Lauren switching on the transmitter to officially begin broadcasting.

TWR Director of Cuba, Alberto Gonzales, spoke at the dedication.

You can see the video of the dedication at Facebook–TWR-Bonaire:

There was lots of music lead by this group from the International Bible Church. Most are members of the Francees family.

After the dedication, everyone went to Foodies Restaurant on Lac Bay for a buffet dinner starting at 6 pm.  We had a great time of fellowship with Ralph and Mary Jane, Amado and Sue Felix and the delegate from TWR Netherlands.  We arrived home around 10:30 pm.

I has been a great day celebrating what God has done!!