It was cold again this morning — 47F outside and 61F inside.  Selema picked Graham, Jonathan and I up to take us to work.  Selema had the heater going in the Toyota RAV4 and it was hot inside.  Comfortable for him, but almost stifling to me!

Steve, Klaus and I met this morning to discuss possible solutions for the arcing seen on Antenna 6 last week.  From our experiences with a similar antenna in the 1970s, I am convinced that this antenna is not rated to handle 100kw, despite what the manufacturer claims.  This antenna, and three more like it, were obtained from a station in South Africa that was being shut down.  TWR Swaziland has already modified it with larger corona rings and radiating elements with larger effective diameters and it still arcs some.  It was decided to add an additional corona ring in a strategic location to see if the problem can be resolved.

The rest of the morning was spent in fabricating two corona rings from some scrap copper tubing.  Just before lunch, the rigging equipment was collected in preparation for lowering the antenna,

After lunch, Graham, Selma, Jeremiah and I lowered one side of the antenna.  To our pleasant surprise, we discovered it was possible to install the new corona rings on both ends of the elements without having to lower the other side.  The process took about 30 minutes from the time the antenna was lowered until it was raised again.  It was done in record time — a record that will be hard to beat!  The antenna was tested on the problem frequency with no arcs for about an hour before the transmitter was needed for the evening broadcasts.

Virginia tutored Berniece again this afternoon.  When reviewing the alphabet, Virginia commented that Americans say ‘zee’ for the last letter of the alphabet, but most other English speaking countries say ‘zed’, which is what she should be learning.  Somewhat later in the lesson, Berniece was going through the alphabet and when she got to the last letter she got a twinkle in her eye and said “ZEE”!

Tonight we turned on an electric heater in our bedroom for a few minutes with the sheets opened on the bed.  That helped a lot to overcome the shock of crawling into cold sheets.