It was cold this morning — 47F outside and 64F inside.  Today was the first time that have worn my jacket since we have been here.  The Swazis were all bundled up and thought they were ‘freezing’!

I wrote up an initial report about attempts to tune up TX3 on higher frequencies.  After the morning broadcasts ended, this tuning was continued.  At some point while tuning on 15475 kHz, it was discovered that the auto tuning was not tuning the PA plate current into the dip, but off to one side.  This caused a decrease in PA plate efficiency of about 10%, which is enough to cause the cooling water to boil excessively when operating at 100kw.

When we set this transmitter up in Elkhart, we adjusted the lengths of coax cables that provide signals to the phase error detector so that tuning into the dip takes place automatically.  I am puzzled as to what has changed to cause these different results.  There had been a 4″ length of coax added to the PA plate signal, so I removed this and saw a slight improvement in tuning.  It appears the PA plate signal coax needs to be shorter, but it looks like it will not reach, if it is shortened any more.  Alternatively, it should be possible to lengthen the other two signal inputs instead, but we need to find a method of doing this without trial-and-error use of expensive connectors and cutting up expensive cable.  Also, there may be something else in this circuit that may have changed, which we should be looking at first.

We added two 18″ cables to the other two inputs, since this is all we had on hand, but the transmitter decided it would not come up at all.   High voltage did not even come on!  We were within minutes of needing this transmitter on the air, so aborted the test, took out the two 18″ cables, and retuned to the needed evening frequency.  Thankfully the transmitter came up on this lower frequency, leaving us to sort out the other problem on another day.

Virginia has been asked to help tutor Graham’s daughter Berniece to get her make an easier transition from the Swaziland to British school system.  This afternoon was her first session.

Was it ever cold getting into bed this evening!  An electric blanket would sure come in handy.