Pastor Deon is gone to Capetown for a training conference with the former pastor Neil and the intern.  This morning, Pastor Healy had a really good message on the last part of John 3 with an emphasis on John the Baptist’s proclamation, ” He must increase, but I must decrease.  Pastor Healy recently celebrated his 71st birthday.

During the first part of the service and before children’s church, we had two little girls creep over to sit with us.  One is the little girl that Virginia is tutoring and the other is her older sister.  They are feeling comfortable enough to come climb on ‘grandma’s’ lap.  Makes us feel good, too!

This Sunday, we brought Ruth to our house for dinner.  We had arranged for her to talk to her daughter, Sharon, and grandchildren using Skype, but they had to unexpectedly leave earlier to their church.  Maybe something can be arranged for Wednesday.

Today we went to Hlane Game Park with Steve and Lorraine.  The new intern, Samuel, also came along.  The clouds from yesterday were gone and the sun quickly turned a cool morning into a rather warm day.  Below are some photos from today:

Impala are found in abundance at all the game parks.

We marveled at the narrow ‘wheelbase’ of the rhino. Want to try some rhino tipping?!

It looks like it is possible to see the ribs of this rhino

Several female nyala, the most abundant antelope at Hlane after the impala.

Warthogs and male nyala

A scorpion emerged from the firewood used for the grill

The scorpion ‘high tailing’ it from the fire.

The male nyala is much darker than the female.

The juvenile warthog kneels to graze while the adult does not.

Just as the sun was setting, five elephants arrived to drink from the waterhole at Ndlovu (elepant in Siswati) Camp

There were clouds all last night, so the temperature was 55F this morning instead of in the 40s.  If the clouds remain, it will not warm up.  At 11am the temperature at the site was 53F.  I’m glad I took my jacket today, because the buildings are cooling down without the sun shining to warm them up.

While the transmitters were on the air this morning, I reviewed the HCJB drawings for the grounding switch and found that the TX3 grounding switch had been made according to that drawing.  Based on our successful modification yesterday, suggestions will be made for changing the drawings to the more reliable configuration.

TWR Swaziland does not have an easy way to read AutoCad files, so Jonathan volunteered to convert all the HC100 drawings to PDF files.  Unfortunately, he found out that, before the conversion can be done, about 20% of the drawings need to be modified.  This would be a long, tedious process, since there are about 2,000 drawings.  I will check to see if it can be more easily done at HCJB Elkhart, if they have not already done it.

Graham has been testing some spare metering boards to determine if they were functioning properly.  If so, then he would place them into the stock room.  While doing the testing, he discovered that the driver ambient air temperature on TX1 was reading 204.7C and someone has raised the metering limit to 500C to prevent it from tripping off the transmitter.  This reading was an indication of an open circuit.  It was found that the sensor’s plug had come apart.  After putting the plug back together, the temperature read 27C and the limit was returned to its normal 50C.

When the transmitters started to tune up for last evening’s transmissions, something happened on TX3 to cause the filament circuit breaker to trip.  It was assumed that the controller was allowing the voltage to ramp up too quickly, thus causing excessive current.  Today we checked the controller and it was functioning properly, then we heard a relay pull in, which bypassed the controller.  I recalled that this transmitter has a 1/4 power filament feature and suspect the relay is part of that circuit.

We decided to see if it was possible to repeat the sequence of events that tripped the breaker, but this time watching the PA filament voltage.  When the filaments went to 1/4 power, the filament remained at 9.8 volts (full power).  The driver was switched on and the PA tube filament voltage remained at 9.8 volts until the ‘driver on’ delay ended.  At this point the voltage dropped to about 4 volts and climbed slowly back to normal.  This time, the breaker did not trip, but was probably very close to the tripping point.  I am guessing the relay that bypasses the controller dropped out at this point.  Since the controller senses current, I suspect it instantly goes from sensing no, or little, current (due to the relay bypass) to full current.  There is likely a delay in the controller’s ability to handle this rapid of a change.  Since it was almost time to begin broadcasting, the transmitter was put on the air for the evening.

TX2 had a 40 minute break in broadcasting just before we left for the weekend.  It has often failed to come up when the automation called for it to come on after this break.  I decided to switch it on manually, since it was due to come on within a few minutes anyway.  The filament on light was flashing, indicating 1/4 power filaments.  When I pressed driver on, an ‘undetermined fault’ message came up and the filaments were turned off by the computer.  By manually turning the filaments back on, the transmitter came on properly.

I am beginning to suspect the problems of both TX3 and TX2 filaments unexpectedly turning off may be associated with this 1/4 power filament power feature, which is supposed to reduce the filament power when the transmitter is off to save power costs.  All three transmitters have this updated software installed.  TX1 and TX2 do not have the circuitry to implement it and I now suspect TX3, which is newer, has this circuitry bypassed.  It looks like further investigating will be done on Monday.

Tomorrow, Virginia and I have been invited to go to Hlane Game Park with Steve and Lorraine.

It has not been as cold in the mornings with temperatures around mid 50F the past couple of mornings.

Today the problem with the ‘ground switch down’ indicator not functioning on TX3 was addressed.  Graham removed the grounding switch assembly and it was discovered that the ‘cam’ that is supposed to operate the ‘down’ limit switch was jamming on the end of the limit switch lever.  We checked the other two transmitters and found that each one had this switch mounted differently.  The one in TX2 was mounted upside down compared to TX3.  This reversal virtually eliminates any possibility of it jamming, so it was decided to remount TX3’s limit switch in this configuration.  It did require carefully marking out and drilling two new mounting holes.  It was mounted back into the transmitter and now works great.

This afternoon, another intern, Samuel, from Canada arrived via the bus from the Johannesburg airport.  Did not meet him yet, but hope to see him tomorrow.

This evening, Virginia and I were invited over to Steve and Lorraine’s for desert.  They had also invited Jonathan, whose 23rd birthday is today.  We had cake and tea, then played a few rounds of Mexican Train dominoes.

When we got back to our house, I forgot to remotely switch off the alarm.  The alarmed sounded for a few seconds, but I managed to get it switched off before it started alerting anyone via cell phone text messages!

After staff meeting this morning, we celebrated Jonathan’s 23rd birthday with cake and tea.

Today was a work Wednesday, but, since everyone else had to shop for various supplies to take to the site, I went home to wait for someone to pick me up to go to the site.  While waiting, I did some cleaning and waxing on the car that we have so graciously been allowed to use by a missionary couple on deputation.  We are also staying in their house.

My work today did not involve directly working on the transmitters, but mostly on correspondence.  TWR’s Africa Regional Office received a DX (long distance listener) report from Pennsylvania claiming to have heard a test transmission on 10 June 2013.  I was asked to verify the validity of this report.  After looking through the logs and reviewing what had been done, this person had heard part of an hour long transmission that we had done on 15,475 kHz while testing TX3 after getting it to tune on higher frequencies.  His report was exact including the exact times of a break in the transmission and of its ending.  This is quite amazing considering this listener was over 8,000 miles away and to the side of the main beam of the antenna, where the power radiated is less than 3% of what it is on the main beam!

Occasionally, we receive a questionnaire from a supporting church that we need to complete.  Often these ask for things like ‘what were your past personal and ministry goals?’, ‘were they reached?’, ‘what are your future goals?’ and other similar questions that can not be completed in a couple of minutes with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses.  Today, I completed such a questionnaire.

On the way to and from work, several of us engineers have been having an interesting discussion on sunrise and sunsets around the time of the solstices — the longest and shortest days of the year.  Did you know that the latest sunrise, nor the earliest sunset, occurs exactly on the winter solstice?  We notice this because we are driving to and from work at these times.  The winter solstice (in the southern hemisphere) was on June 21, but the earliest sunset actually took place about June 9, while the latest sunrise is not expected until about July 2.  We have learned that the same is true for the summer solstice, but not as pronounced.  This phenomena is also more pronounced at the equator than higher latitudes.  To check out this for where you are (or anyplace) check out http://www.gaisma.com [this site also has an interesting ‘Sun path diagram’] or http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunrise.html

Having noticed this, the discussion has turned to why this is so, which is not so simple to explain.  Did you know that a solar day is not always the same length  as a clock day?  At the solstices, the solar day is about 20 seconds longer than 24 clock hours, and at the equinoxes, the solar day is slightly shorter than 24 clock hours?  One of the more understandable scientific explanations that we found was at — http://www.larry.denenberg.com/earliest-sunset.html and one of the more simplified explanations was at —http://earthsky.org/tonight/earliest-sunset-today-but-not-shortest-day.  Here are two more interesting explanations talking about the analemma —  http://www.sciquill.com/analemma/page2.html — and — http://www.analemma.com

This evening the Bible study at EBC was on Revelation 11.  This is the chapter about the two witnesses who were killed and returned to life.

I remembered a humorous thing (to us) that happened on Sunday.  There is an intern pastor who leads the opening of the service.  At some point he referred a young fellow as a ‘guy’.  Later in the service, he apologized for using the word.  In this culture, it must be an unapproved slang expression.  We did notice that when he apologized there was a suppressed congregational chuckle, which seemed to indicate that it is probably more accepted now than in the past.

On Monday night, when our guests left our house after supper, we noticed that the alarm did not give the usual ‘squawk’ as they walked across the yard.  Tuesday evening, I checked the motion sensors and noted that they were working.  Tonight, Steve brought some fruit over that his wife bought and was splitting a box with us.  I asked Steve to help figure out what was happening.  We found out that there was a blown fuse in the Auto Bleep — that part of the system that automatically sets the various levels of alarms and calls cell phones, if there is a problem.  The basic alarm system was still working, if set manually, which we do every evening, or when away from the house.  The fuse was replaced, but Klaus had to come with his laptop, plug into the Auto Bleep and set it to the correct time.  Now everything is working normally again.