When we arrived at the transmitter site, the temperature was 44F.  No problem keeping the transmitters cool this morning!

I led devotions again and Sibonginkosi translated again.  My next week to lead the devotions will be the last full week that we are here.

After devotions, I checked my email and found that our reservation request at Kruger had been declined, so I quickly checked the on-line reservations and discovered another opening (apparently there had been a cancellation).  Amazingly, this time the reservation was accepted, so now we have a bungalow reserved for July 6.

As soon as the morning broadcasts were over, an attempt was  made to align the Driver Grid inductor of TX3 so that it could tune the 16m (17MHz) band and still retain the capability to tune the important 90m (3MHz) band.  By adjusting this inductor one turn toward the higher frequencies, it was now possible to tune not only the 16m band, but also the 13m (21 MHz) band, and still tune 90m.  We considered trying for the 11m (25MHZ) but decided against it, because we did not want to jeopardize the much more important use of the 90m band.  Also, the transmitter, as configured, can not tune the final stages at 25 MHz anyway.

After this adjustment, it was now necessary to retune the transmitter on all 27 different bands to program the revised tuning numbers into the transmitter’s on-board computer.  This took just over two hours to accomplish.  The transmitter was then quickly tested at high power on all its currently used frequencies to verify there should be no problems tonight and in the morning.  The next step was to download all these new preset numbers into a backup file so they can be retrieved in case of loss of the transmitter memory.

Last night we noticed an anomaly  on TX2 and decided to check it out this afternoon.  The RF exciter Q3&4 (output transistors) current readings on the transmitter monitor kept drifting up and down from 0.06 amp to 0.55 amp.  The trip point is 0.60 amp, so this is disconcerting.  We measured the actual current readings, which were steady with no drifting.  This indicated that there is something wrong in the metering system, but we did not have time to further investigate as the transmitter was about to come up for the afternoon transmissions.  We left the site about 30 minutes late as a result of checking out and reviewing this problem.

This evening there was a carry-in dinner at Klaus’ home as a thank you, and send off, for Gottfried.  He returns to South Africa tomorrow after looking over the various computer networks and internet services utilized here at TWR Swaziland.  We have seen a great improvement and trust that it will continue this way.  Klaus built a fire in their fireplace, which felt nice on this cool evening.

It’s been a busy, tiring week, so I turned off out alarm clock so we can sleep in tomorrow.