Yellow Warbler

This morning I drove to the transmitter site alone as Marco takes Fridays off. He is a retiree from Holland and volunteers to work at TWR. I arrived at the gate a few minutes early and had to wait for someone to open it. While waiting I noticed a small yellow bird that kept momentarily landing on the passenger side rear view mirror. Every time it saw me it took off, but it kept coming back. So I grabbed the camera and waited. The photo is not the best, because it was into the sun.      [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOlfg-657Q4]

Dave and Jonas moving the second cabinet into place

After devotions at 8am, we began to move the four transmitter cabinets for the 400,000-watt AM transmitter into position. The plywood covers had already been removed, but each cabinet had been wrapped in heavy plastic sheeting, then 1″ sytrofoam sheeting and then wrapped in plastic film, which all had to be removed. By noon, all the units weighing about 800 pounds each were moved into place onto their concrete pad.

Since all the other missionaries went home for lunch, Dave Pederson took me to his home. He lives next door to the TWR duplex. We had quesadillas for lunch. This was even better than the PBJ sandwich I had taken for my lunch. (When the large team is here next week there will be plenty of people staying for lunch at the site)

Jonas installing the antenna ground switch

After lunch we continued to follow the Nautel installation instructions and install items including an antenna ground switch and stiffeners on the tops of the cabinets.

Installing Stiffeners on Cabinet Tops

Inside of antenna ground switch

At the end of the day, we began to start leveling the cabinets on their not perfectly level pad and managed to get two of the four cabinets bolted together. We will not be working at the site tomorrow (Saturday).

During the day, Virginia helped Vera clean the duplex and did some shopping.

For supper, we had rice with meat and peanut sauce left over from the meal that Reinstra’s prepared for us last night.

Tonight, the breeze was not as strong as last night so we set the ceiling fan to high speed and still did not need to use the air conditioner.