This week had typical fall May days.  The days were sunny with highs in the mid 70s and the lows in the low 50s at dawn.  The temperature inside the house is in the mid 60s.  The next two months should be cooler as Swaziland moves into winter.  We are hoping that it does not get too much cooler inside the house.  Right now the sunrises at 7am just as we leave for work and the sun sets at 5pm as we head home.

Sunday, May 19, we again attended the Evangelical Bible Church.  Pastor Dion Philips’ message this morning was on the white, red and black horsemen of Revelation 6.  There was a church picnic held ‘immediately’ after the morning service, which ended at

11am.  It was held at a farm way out of town in the bush about a mile north of Croydon, which is a tiny village about 30 miles northeast of Manzini.  We got directions from Reese, whose younger brother lives at the farm, and his phone number in case we got lost.  We then

went home, changed clothes and drove slowly there hoping that some of the church members could catch up and we could follow them on the back roads

to the farm.  Fortunately, the directions received were good and we drove to the farm and arrived about 30 minutes before any of the church

members.  By the time most everyone had arrived and the picnic (more like potluck) table was prepared, we began eating after 2pm.  Just like last week at the

Youngs, there was curry, just not as much variety, and,

as always, all the food was delicious!  They had organized a lot of games, but the only one played was volleyball.  Most of us had a great time just sitting around and visiting.  Late in the afternoon, they had a version of a hay ride, without the hay.  A

tractor with trailer was loaded up and driven down to the Mbuluzi River, which was about a mile away.  Virginia and I decided to leave about 4:30pm so we would not have to drive home in the dark.

In the evening, I again reviewed the control system section of the HC100 manual for teaching it on Monday morning.

On Monday, we spent almost all morning until 1pm, which is lunchtime in Swaziland, covering  only part of the section of the manual on the control system.    That evening we were invited to dinner at the Stavropoulos’ house.  We walk through a gate at the back of our yard, through the back part of the guest house yard, through another gate, then across the Stav’s yard.  It takes only a minute or two to get there.  The acting station director, Sharon, was also there from the Africa Regional Office (ARO).  She had a packet of Virginia’s anti-rejection medicine for her transplanted cornea, which we had ordered a week before.  It had arrived in Cary, NC, only three days before and we were expecting it to come to ARO with Gottfried with a second packet of medicine in a week or so.  Apparently, someone else was headed to ARO, who happened to be leaving on Saturday.  What a pleasant surprise!

We visited for a long time with Sharon and the Stavs finally leaving for home about 10pm, which is not early when the alarm clock is set for 5:30am.  Of course the outside motion sensors of the houses, which are automatically turned on shortly after sundown, announced our progress across the yards as we walked home with their short intermittent ‘squawks’.  We managed to get into our house without setting off the alarm.

Tuesday morning there was no internet.  Steve was in town for morning meetings, so we did not continue the training.

Sharon had brought a new control computer for the site, which controls about a dozen computers that are at the site to provide internet access and programming for all the transmitters, plus backup.  We took this computer to the site and Klaus installed it, but major setup challenges were encountered.  Klaus and Graham worked on making all the necessary adjustments with assistance via Skype from Waldo at ARO.  When Waldo left at 4:30pm, Klaus continued assistance came from another ARO person, Gottfried, who happened to be in Cary, NC, for a couple of weeks.  Klaus left the site at 5:30pm and turned control of the computers over to the people in Cary, who worked on it for the rest of our night — 6am here and midnight in Cary.  This capability totally amazes me!  Fortunately, the backups on the playout computers kept the transmitter programs flowing smoothly to the transmitters.  Oh — the internet was working again, but not much, if any, faster than it did previously.

While the ‘experts’ were working on the computers, I decided to take a walk around the antenna field and check out what changes had been made over the years.  Before doing so, for some reason, I felt it necessary to spray my shoes, socks and pant legs with tick repellant!  My little walk was over 3 miles and lasted almost an hour and a half.  The antenna field is huge and I did not walk to the its extremes.  Tick Bite Update — no more Benadryl for itching.  Klaus was right that it would take three weeks for the itching to go away, but, four weeks out, there is occasional mild itching of my ankles.

This evening, we had Bob and Barb, a couple on loan from the Far

Eastern Broadcast Company (FEBC) to TWR ARO, over for dinner.  They are here with Sharon to visit the TWR Swaziland staff.  Steve was here, too, as his wife was elsewhere for the evening.  We had a good visit with Bob and Barb learning about their 20+ years with FEBC in the Philipines and East Africa.

When Sharon came by to pick them up about 9:45, I pressed the remote to open the auto gate by the road to let the car in.  Shortly after they drove off, I noticed

the gate had not closed automatically, so I pressed the remote again.  The light bulbs on the gate posts, which stays on while the gate opens or closes, flashed only momentarily.  Now I had to figure out how to repair the gate motor or get it closed for the night.  Meanwhile our outside motion sensors announced my progress across the yard.  I went back to the house to find the keys to open the gate control box.  Meanwhile the alarm on the house had automatically activated at 10pm, like it always does.  Unaware of this, I opened the front door and the alarm went off.  I managed to quickly shut it off, but then had to let all the TWR staff here at Singing Pines know that it was a false alarm, then call the alarm company to report the false alarm.  Now Klaus, informed of what was happening, came to our rescue.  By the time he got her, I had the gate’s control box open, but had

no idea what to look at first.  Klaus, having worked on these many times before, quickly suspected a problem with the 12volt battery.  When we pulled it out, the plastic shell of the battery was very bloated.  Klaus took off somewhere on the TWR property and came back with a spare battery, which was quickly installed.  The gate then went through a calibration process, where it went back and forth in ever increasing cycles to locate the end of travel and reset its limit switches.  It was quite fascinating to watch, but I was glad that Klaus had come to help, as I would have had no idea how to do this without a manual.

By this time it was 11pm and the alarm clock goes still goes off at 5:30!

Wednesday morning is staff meeting, as usual.  Bob is quite a musician and for about 30 minutes led the staff in a wonderful time of worship with his signing and guitar.  Sharon gave staff an update of events in Africa and encouraging news of the possibility of increasing the outreach to Africa.

Graham, Salema and I went to the site after staff meeting.  Steve and Klaus were involved in meetings in town for the remainder of the day.  The computers at the site did not have internet access.  Graham discovered that only one of the wireless systems at the site was working and that the site computers were connected to the same network as the non-functioning  wireless system.  Since Graham and I are both new here, we did a lot of searching before finally finding out that the site computers just needed to be rebooted and they worked again.   Also that the non-working wireless has not been functioning for some time!

We also spent some time getting familiar with the audio system to isolate the low level noise on the Optimod for transmitter 3.  We learned enough to find out that the noise is not from the Optimod, but from the computer that sends the audio to the Optimod.  At least we are making progress, although the problem has not been solved yet.

 

This evening a braai (BBQ) was held for the whole staff.  As is typical

with Swazi braais, there was lots of meat.  Some of the Swazi staff brought a big pot of mealie pap (white corn meal) a Swazi staple food.  Virginia and the TWR ladies spent most of the day preparing for it.  The meat included chicken, steak and boerewors (spicy sausage).  When someone said that each person was allowed only one piece of meat, Virginia served

each person one piece.  She was quickly informed that the limit was one piece of each kind of meat.  I took a piece of sausage and the smallest (still good sized), thinnest steak and Virginia took a similar

steak.  We had more meat in one meal than we usually have in a week!  Everything was good.  Bob led us in a few favorite songs accompanying with his guitar.  The Swazis were beginning to really become actively involved with the music, but around 8pm, at the end of one of the more lively music pieces they kind of ‘danced’ right to the vehicles to take them home.  It was getting too late for them!  Even with cleaning up, we got home earlier than the previous nights.

Thursday morning Steve and Klaus had Field Council meetings, so Salem, Graham and I went to the site.  I noticed that one of the transmitters was not running as efficiently as it should.  Upon investigation, it was noticed that this was only on one of its many frequencies and antennas.  I tried to do some retuning, but was not able to increase the efficiency appreciably.  I did notice that the VSWR is about 1.6 which is higher than the other antennas.  This needs further investigation to determine whether the antenna mismatch might be causing something unusual.

Graham had expressed some interest in the extents of TWR’s transmitter site property, so I found some maps and reviewed them with him.  We got into quite an extensive conversation about the history of the site, the bush clearing and road-making that was required.  Using a map from Google, I also showed him the various routes that we had to use to get to the site when it was being developed, depending on where fording the river was possible.  It is amazing how many of those routes have been completely taken over by the bush and are now impassable.  Some of the land which is currently being used for the main entry road is being sold and it looks like a new route will have to be cleared along the north boundary of the Dindeor Ranch.  We looked at that route and noted that a lot of culverts and filling of gulleys will be required, unlike the current route along a ridge with no culverts.

I tried to do some more preparatory review of the control system for training, but my eyelids kept getting heavy.  Went for a 35 minute walk from the building to the cattle grid and back.  This made a big difference.  Klaus and Steve arrived at the site after 2pm, so late that we decided to wait until Friday for the training session.

Thursday we had our first evening at home this week.  I spent much of the evening finishing and posting the review for last week on our blog and then getting this week’s review up-to-date.  Hopefully it will get posted in a more timely fashion.

Friday morning, all the engineers and technician were at the transmitter site, so I

was able to complete the HC100 control system training.  In the afternoon, I finished a revision of our McGuiReport on my laptop at work, but spent over an hour unsuccessfully trying to email it to TWR Cary, using the site wireless connection.  I then found out that the site computer was working better because it is wired directly to the network.  By downloading the needed files to a flash drive and plugging them into

the site computer, the job was done in a few minutes!  Guess I will won’t be taking

my laptop to the site again.

Friday evening, Virginia and I decided to relax a bit, after a

rather hectic week.  We played several rounds of Rummikub.

Saturday, we slept in until 7:30, then puttered around most of the day.  We did pick some of the fruit — bananas, naartjies (mandarins), and grenadilla (passion fruit) — that

was ripening in the garden.  I also trimmed some dead branches from a second naartjie tree that had been damaged by grenadilla vines growing into it.

In the evening we played some more Rummikub.