This morning started out cold (even colder (about 40F) in the valley where the transmitter site is located, but with the sun shining it warmed up quickly. After site devotions and taking care of the correspondence that came in over the long weekend, I headed out into the antenna field to get more accurate information on the guying of the log-periodic antennas. It was now warm enough that a jacket was not needed – my flannel shirt was adequate and by noon was almost too warm!

It is about a half mile walk out to those antennas and on the way I noticed a large tractor-trailer flatbed truck and a cattle truck. They were being loaded with hay bales. Also noted that the adjacent field’s hay had been cut and TWR tractors were windrowing and bailing more hay. Talked to the truck driver from Mafutseni Ranch while his crew directed the loading and tied down the bales. Watching all that was going on and taking photos, distracted me for a while, before getting back to the original purpose of my trek out there. In all, I was in the field for over three hours.

[Some history—Initally we just mowed down all the grass and left it under the antennas. The antenna field was much smaller then. Eventually, one of the nearby ranchers suggested cutting and baling the grass. He actually did it for us for a while, saving us the cost of mowing. Later still, Steve bought a baler and began selling the bales, which covered all the mowing and hay making costs with enough extra to replace tractors and equipment every few years.]

Back at the building and for the remaining hour of the workday, I started to turn my antenna guying notes into preliminary sketches. I asked Tobi about CAD (computer aided drawing) programs. Only TinyCAD is available for making electrical drawings – nothing for mechanical drawing. Tobi did find on the shelves an old copy of TurboCAD for Windows XP and Vista (compatible with my old laptop). I took it home to try.

Lorraine took Virginia to town today to see a dentist. Last week, a crown on one of her front teeth came loose. She wanted to get it fixed before it fell out. The dentist is from Uganda, but also preaches at International Family Church where the Stavropouloses attend. The crown came right off for the dentist, but he discovered that it was more than just loose. The post had broken, so he cemented it back in place for $47 and told Virginia she would need to have something done when we get back to the U.S. [Virginia texted this information to Samuel (our son) and he replied “I think you’re going to have to see me for an implant when you get back.” BTW, the root canal and crown was done about two years ago, but NOT by Samuel!]

I tried to load the TurboCAD CD onto my laptop and kept getting a ‘corrupted disk’ error. The CD did have some scuff marks on it, so thought that might be the problem. Then tried the tutorial CD, which had no marks, and got the same message. Wonder if it might be my laptop’s CD player?

I now tried to download FreeCad, but it will only work with Windows 7 or newer. Next, I was successful in downloading LibreCAD, another free CAD program. We’ll see how well it works or if something else will be better.