When I arrived for devotions, Joe Barker was already involved in a meeting (via conference call) which lasted a good part of the day. The rest of us (Bob, Donna, Benny, Lionel and I) had devotions and a time of prayer before starting our day.

Bob picked up the VCR, that I had ‘repaired’ earlier in the week, for use in the adult class on Sunday.

My first task of the day was to locate prices and availability of parts to repair the tower light that got shattered by a lightning

strike. It proved to be an intriguing phone call when they asked the name of our company, because the name of the company I was calling was TWR Lighting! The price of a replacement red glass is $44. There are also little pieces of 1/16 inch stainless steel aircraft cable that are use as safety cables so the red glass will not fall if it slips out of the hands of the one changing the bulb. The atmosphere in Bonaire is so corrosive that these cables fail, so I asked about the cost of replacing them. Also looked at the possibility of using another supplier for the cables. Yes, it would have cost a little less, but, with the additional shipping cost and hassle of paperwork for a second supplier, decided it was not worth it.

I ate lunch at home with Virginia, then she took me to the transmitter site so she could have the car for the afternoon. I had checked the

transmitter at about 6am and found that there were a couple of cutbacks in power since yesterday. Decided to back off the audio by 0.1dBu for the overnight broadcasts so the level is now only 0.1dBu higher than when no cutbacks were experienced a couple of days ago.

Before going to the site, I found two types of electrical cleaners to see if one of them could remove the residue of the insulating material that I attempted to remove yesterday, with no success. Neither one of these cleaners worked any better than the rubbing alcohol, so I decided to search around for some alternatives. Since painting of towers and other structures are an

ongoing need, due to the corrosive atmosphere, I figured there must be some thinners for the necessary oil based paints. [Tower manufactures now days use high quality water based paints for environmental reasons. The paints last for many years in most places, so they are astonished when told that rust begins within weeks here on Bonaire.] I found the thinner and it cleaned the residue off completely within a few seconds!

I was now able to complete the reassembly of the modulator module within about an hour. Only hit one snag when the manual stated the nuts for mounting the power transistors were to be torqued to 4 inch-pounds. I found the tool to do this but no adapter to allow it to torque the special socket — remember the thin wall 5mm socket that we had to make? Finally I found a screwdriver bit, which was about 5/16 inch wide, that fit the tool. By inserting the screwdriver end into the 1/4 inch drive end of the 5mm socket, I was able to use the tool to torque the socket. Fortunately 4

inch-pounds is not much torque!

Now the modulation module was installed back into the PA module and measurements made that showed everything looked OK. The manual mentioned some special cables that could be used to test the PA module at 48 volts before applying the full 300+ volts. I searched all over for these cables and decided there must not be any. Joe checked with Nautel to see if they were supplied with the transmitter and was told that they were not. We decided we would just have to trust our work and apply full voltage, but decided to wait until Monday. Later Joe received a message from Nautel, that special cables had indeed been supplied. Guess that I will be looking some more on Monday.

Virginia picked me up about 5:20pm, we went swimming at Bachelor Beach. I think we used to call it Lime Beach. Virginia then served a birthday supper (beef, gravy, rice and baked french fries) and dessert (brownie and ice cream) for my 64th birthday. God is so good in every way!

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