The rain was heavy on the way to work this morning.  Shortly after arriving, I was able to get a decent photo of a rainbow that appeared in the southwest.

This rainbow arches over the ‘barn’ and one of the antennas.

After heavy rain, water squirts out of the retaining walls outside the west and north sides of the transmitter building.

After settling into my work, I noticed an email from Virginia letting me know that the airlines had changed flight times for both legs of the return flights from her Alaska trip, resulting in only a 45 minute layover in Chicago in the evening.  Chicago is not a place for that short of a layover, especially in the evening, as this leaves no alternatives to depart Chicago until morning.  After assessing several other less than desirable possibilities, it was decided to leave things as they were.  Should she miss the flight into South Bend, I will plan on driving to get her.  That means getting back to Elkhart about 2:30 am.

After addressing the above issue, I began to document what settings were used to program the regulator that was installed yesterday.  This information was printed off and included with the regulator manual, in case it (or a replacement) needs reprogrammed quickly in the future.

This is one of 13 servo motors used on each of the Thompson transmitters.  The cover has been opened to gain access to the inside of the connector.

Mike asked that Phil and I change a servo motor on TX 7 (Thompson 250kw shortwave transmitter) because it seemed to be having intermittent tuning problems.  When we tried to unplug the connector to the servo, it proved extremely difficult.  Eventually, we got it loose and discovered the plastic plug had melted due to overheating.  As a result, it became necessary to change the connector that plugs into the servo.  We also installed the new servo, since the other half of the connector on the old servo was also melted.  It was now established that the servo was not the problem — the burned connector was the problem.

Some of the burning and melting that took place on the connector plug.

After verifying that transmitter was now operating properly, I then replaced the part of the connector that was attached to the removed servo.