The transmitters behaved well last night. With no issues to address with them, I spent most of the day on feedline drawing details.

Lorraine treated Virginia to dessert at a shop in the Lifestyle Mall where the SuperSpar is located. They had ice cream cake.

From there they were able to observe the parking lot, with vehicles circling to find a spot. This was the middle of a work day. Wonder what it is like when it is busy!

There is also a nice fabric shop in this mall.

Virginia was able to pick up a lot of nice spices from an Indian shop.

Before I got home from work this afternoon, Virginia slipped and twisted her hip. We would appreciate your prayers as it is extremely painful.

The South Korean pastor that lives next to us gave Virginia some food for our supper. It was some kind of breaded pork with sauce. We finished the pork and have lots of sauce left over.

First thing this morning, Virginia did a load of laundry and hung it on the solar/wind powered clothes dryer, while we took the day to visit some craft shops getting some souvenirs. We are now less than 10 days from our departure date.

First we went to Mantenga Craft Center in Ezulweni, where Virginia found a Swazi dress that she liked at one of the shops.

From there we decided to check out the Mantenga Cultural Village near Mantenga Falls. Previously there were private vendors with crafts, but there are none now. The Gables Mall nearby no longer had a craft shop either.

We then drove through Ezulwini Valley where private craft vendors used to line the road selling their wares. Again, these seem to be a thing of the past.

We ended up driving through Malkerns where the canning factory for pineapple and citrus fruit is located to Swazi Candle Center.

We had stopped there a few weeks ago. They sell candles, but there are several craft shops and food places located around the candle store catering to tourists that stop there. We picked up some things at one of the shops for grandkids—all 18 of them. That shop was delighted to see us and even gave us a small quantity discount! Virginia found a locally made African purse at another shop.

This morning, I again saw warthogs on the way to the transmitter site.

Last night, the transmitter that was repaired had several PA Plate Peak Voltage trips. We spent a while this morning doing test broadcasts. None of the tests using the same frequency, antenna and power level produced the same trips. The trip level was set at 33,000 volts and with high level programming during the tests we observed only 29,000 volt peaks. We set the trip level to 35,000 volts and requested that the operator observe the peaks during this evening’s broadcast for anything higher than 29,000 volts.

In front of the transmitter building is a ‘sausage’ tree. Until last week it had no leaves with ‘sausages’ hanging from it bare branches. Then almost overnight it was full of green leaves.

For the past couple of days, I have been working on feedline drawings in my spare time. Today was trying to draw the insulator that is used for the feedline.

While driving through Dombeya Game Reserve this evening I was finally able to get a photo of some wildebeest (gnu):

Tobi is gone for the week with his family for school break at the beach north of Durban, South Africa. This morning I made the drive to the site by myself. Stopped and took a photo of warthogs while passing through Dombeya Game Reserve.

One of the big vacuum variable capacitors failed in HC100 Serial 3, the older of the three 100,000-watt shortwave transmitters. It was installed in 1992. Salema and Sicelo had done a good job of isolating the problem. I confirmed their diagnosis and let them remove the old PA Plate tuning capacitor and install a new one, just showing them the proper procedure to ensure the new variable capacitor was set to the same capacitance as the old one. The transmitter came right up. I then showed Salema how to calibrate the servo that turns the capacitor, so the transmitter will tune up even more quickly.

The internet connection at the site was very fast and I was able to download the photos that were not downloading yesterday at home.

Good news! The internet connection at home is faster again, so we were able to do some downloading of photos again and post a couple of blog entries.

When we walked into church this morning, we immediately noticed something new had been added.

The large monitors were greatly appreciated by many of us, as the old screen and projector combination was very faint–most of the time Virginia was unable to read it. Today was different!

Brother Eddie Fisher gave the message this morning on texts from Matthew 24:1-14, I Thessalonians 4:13-18 and Psalm 33:18,19. He challenged us to be ready for the imminent return of Christ for the church.

The Fishers invited us to come to their house for Sunday dinner. Bernie, Eddie’s wife, is Thelma Pierce’s daughter and their home is on her property. Thelma and many of her children, and their families, were there too. We had a great time of fellowship and left just before dark.

We have had a couple of frustrating days and evenings trying to download photos from our smart phones. The internet has been very slow and the download stops before the photo is is finished loading. Hopefully, this can be done at the site tomorrow.