I received a call this morning about 6:30 asking whether I could leave in 10 minutes to drive the mini-bus from the office to the site.  Salema, who usually drives it, had called in sick and Klaus and Graham had been called out late last night for an intermittent transmitter problem.  So this morning, I left the house without shaving or a warm shower.

I was responsible for the morning devotions.  All others present were Swazis, so was glad that Sibonginkosi was able to translate for me.

It was 48F at the transmitter site at 8am. I spent a good part of the day writing up several reports that have been requested from me.

After the morning broadcast, TX1 was opened up to try to determine what was causing problems last night.  Two slight water leaks were found.  Either one could have caused the problem, so the leaky connections were tightened.

Further work was done on TX3 trying to get it to work on 17.8 MHz.  I have noticed that the Driver Grid inductor tuning is at its limit, so decided to turn it by hand just past that limit.  This was successful, and the RF drive problem has been remedied.  It is possible to operate the transmitter on full power now.  When audio was applied, it worked fine at 75kw, but would trip off with PA Reflected Voltage too high.  The balun capacitors are at their limit, and probably not allowing tuning that could reduce the PA reflected voltage.

The transmitter was tuned to its lowest frequency to see how far it is from the lower limit.  There is enough room for adjustment to take care of the Driver Grid tuning, but not for the Balun Capacitor Tuning.  There must be some other way for taking care of the balun tuning limit.

Tonight, we have been trying to book accommodation for one night at Kruger National Park for July 6, but it looks like everything is full — school holidays?  Out of hundreds of possibilities, we only found two bungalows available, but the on-line reservations would not go through.  An on-line form has now been submitted.  Maybe that will work!

Thankfully, tonight the house seems a little warmer. The thermometer reads 67F which is a couple degrees higher than last night.  Hopefully, this is a trend, but July and August are supposed to be the coldest months

Hatsen’s used to be one of the main grocery in town, but now houses several small shops.

Weekly staff meeting was this morning and we had a special treat.  Gottfried played his hand bells and put on a mini-concert.

The Punch Bowl looks the same as it did 35 years ago.

Since we worked last Wednesday preparing for the tower move, today was a day off.  Virginia and I walked around the west end of Manzini and took some photos of old

Across the street from the above shops and in what was an open city block used for South African Railways shipments into Swaziland, now stands the first mall in Manzini. It has two levels of modern stores like many in the U.S.

and new buildings.  The

One of the street side shops in this mall, is King Pie 2 Go, where we had our mid morning snack.

contrast between the old and new is so stark.  For mid-morning ‘tea’ we stopped by King Pie for a ‘pies’.  Allan and Joyce had told that this was a good place to go when they served in Swaziland in the

A woman carrying thatching grass in front of the Manzini Town Council.

The newest of three malls now in Manzini — Riverside Mall — with three levels of shops.

late 1990s.  I had a chicken pie and Virginia had a cornish pie.  The cost was about $1 each.

We also stopped by Chester Young’s business right next to the bus rank.  Chester, a founding

40 plus year old hut style shops in front of the Town Council building.

member of EBC, used to own a butchery on this property.  He

Open markets on the sidewalk across the street from the first mall.

started Hub Hardware behind the butchery and is now expanding the hardware  store into where his butchery used to be.  They hope to open at the end of the month.

The bus rank is less than a block from the first mall and is a place you probably do not to walk unless you plan to caught one of hundreds of mini-buses.

Both Virginia and I were very sleepy and took long naps when we got ‘home’.  I opened the curtains in our bedroom, lie on the bed and soaked up the warm sunshine for about 2 hours, while I slept.

One of two KFCs in Manzini. This one is next to the bus rank.

We think we have figured out why we are feeling so cold

Walking down the sidewalk, we found ourselves passing through a voter registration ‘center’ for the October elections. They receive a voter registration card with their photo on it.  This card must be presented to participate in the election.

now when the coolest weather occurred several days ago.  It is the fact that the tiled concrete floors and the cement block walls have all cooled down.  While the air warms up to 70F during the days after

One thing new in Manzini is a mosque, located across the street to the north of the Catholic church.

nights around 50F, the walls and floors are around 60F.  When the sun

The second mall built in Swaziland is the Hub, across the street from the old Swaziland Warehouse. Pick N Pay is where we do most of our shopping. There is also a branch post office in this mall.

goes down, the inside temperature quickly drops into the lower 60s and remains there until the next afternoon, when the sun warms the air for a couple of hours.

The bananas were really piled high today! Only after taking the photo did I realize the creator of this masterpiece was also in the photo!

This evening, we attended the Wednesday evening service at EBC.  The Bible study was on the last few verses of Revelation 10.  After reviewing who the Mighty Angel was in the first part of this chapter, we considered the significance of the the ‘little book’ and John’s ‘eating’ of that book.  On this cool evening, someone provided coffee and tea, plus ‘cook sisters’ [see — http://www.koeksister.us ].  The pastor invited everyone to stay for some “swallowship”.

It was 48F when we got to the site.  I was responsible for morning devotions today and am on the schedule for Thursday and Friday.

Two reports were written this morning on ‘Antenna 6 Arcing’ and ‘Tuning TX 3 on higher frequencies’.

Last night, TX1 had multiple PA Tuning Capacitor inductive arc trip offs.  These only occurred during the 100kw transmissions, so it was decided to hi-pot (high voltage test) this capacitor.   Salema and a Swazi intern, who will be working with TWR for several weeks, got everything ready for testing the capacitor without having to completely remove it from the transmitter.  High voltage was applied and gradually increased to 27,000 volts — the highest the portable tester will go.  Since the highest possible voltage at this capacitor is 16,000 volts, it appears the capacitor is OK.  We then tested the transmitter on the frequencies that were problematic last night for about 30 minutes without any trip offs.

My investigation into tuning TX3 on 17.8 MHz continued after the above testing.  I discovered the RF drive could be increased some more on the RF Drive Controller.  This was increased to maximum and it was now possible to operate the transmitter at 100kw.  Even at maximum, though, more RF drive is still needed for optimum operation.   Upon adding modulation at 100kw, a tunable filter arc occurred.  Because it was nearing broadcast time, it was decided not do any more testing that might cause damage.

Since I had adjusted the RF drive, it was now necessary to recalibrate the RF Drive Controller to get the transmitter ready for broadcasting.  This involved tuning the transmitter to all the different frequencies used to verity the correct calibration.

At 4pm, Klaus wanted me to go with him to visit John, the owner of Scotts Ranch.  In 1989, TWR was granted permission to build an access road across about 5 miles of his property.  I had signed the 1989 agreement on behalf of TWR for that road!  Miss Scott, John’s aunt, had signed on behalf of Scott’s Ranch.  Mr. Scott, the original owner and John’s grandfather, who died at the age of about 95 (in ~1986), had some amazing stories to tell of his early days in Swaziland.  I had the opportunity to visit him a time or two and hear his stories.

Last week, the sale of that part of the ranch, which had been subdivided into four sections, was finalized.  I had a good time of reminiscing with John, while Klaus listened.  The conversation then turned to obtaining more information on the new owners and on the status of TWR’s access road.  It was time well spent.

On our way back to Singing Pines, Klaus commented that my presence in Swaziland at this time was God’s timing!

Jonathan and Gottfried were at our house for dinner this evening.  Gottfried is an IT expert from the Africa Regional Office and has come here to work on the TWR Swaziland’s computer networks.  We have already seen a huge improvement in our internet access, for which we are grateful.

Our house seems to be getting colder inside!  It’s amazing how cold 65F feels this evening.  We’ll have to go to bed to get warm.

This morning, the temperature was 48F outside and 63F inside.  It only warmed up to 65F inside our house by the end of the day.

I checked the transmitter logs first thing this morning to assess whether there had been any improvement from the installation of the corona rings on Antenna 6 last Tuesday.  Unfortunately, there were some arcs, but the number had been reduced by only 40%.  Will continue looking for a 100% reduction.

Klaus mentioned that he was going to visit the manager of Dinedor Ranch, which is adjacent to the transmitting site, and asked if I would like to go along.  As one of my desires has been to visit some of the ranchers that we have known since the station was started in Swaziland, I did go.  We had a good time chatting with John and his wife, Ann.  They served us tea and coffee and rusks (a hard, dry biscuit — http://www.food.com/recipe/south-african-rusks-11415 ) for morning tea.   The rusk is dunked in tea or coffee to make it soft.

Near the end of the morning broadcasts, one of the transmitters went off with an ‘auxiliary fault’.  As we were trying to figure out what was happening, the other two transmitters also went off.  It was determined the fault was with the PLC (programmable logic controller) that automatically controls the transmitters.  Since the transmitters were not the problem, we bypassed the automatic control and manually switched all the transmitters back on.  The PLC runs off of large batteries kept charged by a battery charger.  The battery voltage was extremely low and it was discovered that the circuitry used to charge the battery had failed.  The fault was rectified in short order.

In the afternoon, I returned to trying to tune TX3 on higher frequencies.  If you look back at my blog from last Monday (2013/06/10), we had aborted the attempt to install two 18″ cables.  Today, I verified these cables were not faulty, then tried again.  This time the transmitter came up and the tuning was nearly perfect with much better efficiency.  It was now possible to tune the transmitter up on all frequencies up to 16 MHz.  It could also be tuned up on 17.8 MHz, but only on low power.  It will most likely work on high power, but it was not possible to get enough RF drive from the low power stages.  This is another challenge that deserves some attention.  For some time, the transmitter was limited to frequencies under 10 MHz.  Now there are several more shortwave bands available for use on TX3.

This evening, I was able to post the last three days of blogs.  For once, our blog is current!  Hopefully we can keep it that way.