It’s a good thing we went to sleep early last night. This morning I headed to the site about 6am to observe the transmitter operating at full power with programming and under normal operating conditions. I’m glad that I did. Multiple ‘shutbacks’ were observed where the transmitter shuts down for 0.2 seconds to clear a possible arc, or other fault in the system. I also observed that the audio level was extremely high and recorded more than sixty flashes of the 100% negative modulation light in a period of one minute. I would consider this as fairly extreme over-modulation. After breakfast and devotions at the office, this information was conveyed to Joe Barker and we did a test from the office.

The transmitter and audio levels at the site can be remotely controlled via the internet, so we turned on the transmitter with the same antenna, same level of audio and even the same program that caused the most problems two days before. The only difference was the time of day. During this short test we heard multiple ‘glitches’ within a few seconds, which were to us indications of ‘shutbacks’. We then reduced the audio level by 0.5db and heard no ‘shutbacks’. As mentioned in a previous blog entry, a 1db change in level is barely perceptible, so this is half of perceptible! We decided to leave things at this level and see how the transmitter reacts. This means I will likely head to the transmitter site again in the morning at about 6am. Short night tonight.

Today the truck arrived in Elkhart at about 1pm to collect the 50,000-watt AM transmitter for Swaziland. The crew there quickly went to work and got it all packed and secured in just over two hours. Please pray that it will travel safely and on time to the port. Pray also that a couple more pieces of paperwork that must be submitted tomorrow morning can be processed quickly.

Virginia felt much better today and we resumed our evening swims. The sunset was amazing once again, The haze level was low and, with no clouds where the sun was setting, it liked like an incredibly really bright orange ball. Unfortunately we didn’t bring our camera this time! Also, saw at least three crabs scurrying around our feet before we got into the water.

Virginia got to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, but I finished putting photos on two of her blog entries, talked to Allan on Skype for almost 20 minutes, then worked on my blog entry for today. Now it is well past time to say good night!