Last night, Virginia made a pan of brownies to take to the transmitter site as treats for those that worked there today.  The brownies were all gone by the time to go home!

The front and back emergency stop boxes with LED indicator lights installed yesterday

Work today was a little more relaxed for me than normal because Jonas spent nearly the whole day programming and rewiring the automation system so that the new transmitter will be able to take over the broadcasts of the older, less powerful transmitter.

This is the device that I made yesterday to allow reliable charging of our camera battery. Note the two screws that are spaced to align with the battery contacts and the tie wrap to hold the battery against the screws. A rubber band would have worked instead of the tie wrap.

On Tuesday, it was mentioned that our camera battery was close to ‘dead’ and that we forgot to pack its charger.  Yesterday, Kevin brought in about 5 different camera battery chargers.  None of them came close to being usable for our battery!  Therefore, I made a slot in a small block of wood for the contact side of the battery to fit into.  Then two holes were aligned, drilled and tapped so that the ends of two small brass screws would make contact with the + and – battery terminals.  A tie wrap (a rubber band would have worked too) was used to insure that the screws securely contacted the battery terminals.  An adjustable bench power supply was used to charge the battery.  The voltage was adjusted until the  charge rate was 0.1 amp, then the current limit was adjusted to prevent the current from going any higher.  The battery charged for four hours this afternoon and was put it back in the camera to take home for the evening.  The camera indicated it was about 2/3 charged.  This morning, the battery was again charged but was obviously nearing full charge as the charge rate kept dropping.  This afternoon, the battery had reached full charge.  I need to remember to take a photo of my ‘wooden block’ charger!

This morning, the investigation of the low voltage to the air handler contactor coil at startup continued.  The control contacts of the automation were measured with no indication of any voltage drop there at startup.  The voltage output of the 24vac transformer was then measured and found to drop to 16 volts at startup–way too low and obviously the source of our problem.    This transformer, that was mounted in the automation rack, looked way too small for supplying the control voltage for such a large air handler and this transformer is wired to supply two such air handlers.  The search began for a larger 24vac transformer, but none were found.  Then a transformer wired for stepping 127vac down to 105vac was found.  By wiring its two 12vac windings in series and its two 120vac windings in parallel we now had a 250va transformer for 24vac.  It was too big to mount where the smaller (~30va) transformer had been, so it was set on the floor of the automation cabinet. It was wired into circuit and the contactors now pulled in with a sharp ‘clunk’, like they’re supposed to.

The large gray transformer next to the smaller transformer that was removed.

At noon, an email request was sent to Ralph VanderWerf to see if he could bring two (one for a spare) larger transformers on Sunday.  Within minutes his son, Jim, supplied two 75va transformers to Ralph and they were already packed at 5pm!

In the afternoon, I helped with some rerouting of wires in the automation rack and rearranging equipment in their racks.

By the time broadcasts were to begin, the new transmitter was ready to begin broadcast under automation control.  Just seconds before the start of the 5:30pm broadcast, the automation turned on the air conditioners for cooling and then turned on the transmitter.  The new transmitter was now broadcasting TWR programming for the first time!  Praise the Lord with us!!   www.facebook.com/twr.bonaire/videos/1844991108845988/

The new transmitter has purposely been  limited to operating at 225kw maximum for tonight’s broadcasts.  That’s still more than double the power of the old transmitter!  Pray with us that any ‘bugs’ in the automation program, transmitter, or antenna system will be found quickly as we progress to a full 440,000 watts for Tuesday’s dedication.