First thing this morning, Virginia informed me that the key to the back veranda door was not working.  This is the veranda where the braai (BBQ) was scheduled for noon.  I discovered that one of the ‘fingers’ on the skeleton key had broken off.  While I was contemplating what tools would be need to be borrowed to take the door off its hinges, Virginia brought out her set of house keys that included a spare veranda key.  That key turned the lock, but did not fully retract the latch.  I suspected the broken ‘finger’ was jamming it, so used my pocket knife to assist the latch and it finally opened.  After that the good key and lock continued to work.

Since I needed to go pick up a couple cans of beans for Virginia for her baked bean dish for the braai, I also decided to go all the way into town get a spare key to replace the broken one.  Before leaving, Virginia added a couple more items to her grocery list to eliminate a shopping trip tomorrow.  Figuring the place to get a key would be the building supply, I stopped at Cash Build across the street from Pick-n-Pay.  Cash Build said they did not have keys, but to go around the corner to the most obvious place, the glass and window shop! 

On the way home, I decided, on a whim, to stop by the ‘chemist’ next to the Moneni Spar on this side of Manzini to see if they had the strong antibiotic for my sinus infection.  This pharmacy sold me several packets and didn’t ask for a prescription. 

While preparations were under way for the braai, we got a Facebook message from Hans VanKampen, a former TWR engineer from Holland who had retired 12 years ago and still lives here.  Hans has been available to help TWR in emergency situations.  He informed us that all five of his daughters were now in Holland and that they were packing and selling their belongings to move back to Holland by the end of the year.  He and Corrie, his wife, wanted us to meet with them before we left.  We invited them to come to the braai, but Corrie had an appointment with a client.  Hans was able to come and all of us ‘old-timer’ TWR engineers had a good visit.

Later in the evening, Corrie contacted Virginia to invite us to meet for dinner on next Saturday.

Today started off cloudy and cool with possible rain in the forecast.

Tobi needed to go to the electrical supply shop to pick up electrical cables for installing the remaining two air-conditioning units, so I went along.  It was interesting to see what was on display.  There was an ample supply of swimming pool equipment and a lot of high-intensity LED security lights rated up to 500 watts.  There was one solar powered kit with a 200 watts rating for up to 12 hours service and a remote control unit. After looking at the included battery rating of 18 amp hour at 3.6 volts, we quickly came to the conclusion that the 200 watt rating was actually an equivalent light output compared to a 200 watt incandescent bulb.  Also that the 12 hours was for a reduced lighting setting of 25% (out of a selection of 25%, 50%, 75% or 100%).  The price of $70 for the complete kit seemed to be quite reasonable.

Finally emailed the MW feedline parts drawings to Mike Sabin and other TWR engineers and started updating the hand-made feedline frame drawing made in 1980.

Tobi mentioned that the regulator for HC100-7 sometimes ‘hunts’ (oscillates) between two settings, which is a sign that the sensitivity may be set too high.  I found a manual for it online, and stored a copy of it with the HC100 documents.  We removed the cover of the regulator and adjusted the sensitivity CCW by ¼ turn per the instruction manual.  Hopefully that will take care of the ‘hunting’ issues.

When we left the transmitter site this afternoon rain was pouring down and it was noticeably cooler.  The Toyota Rav 4 indicated an outside temperature of 9C (48).  Though there was water in places on the dirt road, there were no muddy sections.  The gravel seems to be holding up well.

Virginia had a nice fire going in the fireplace when I arrived home.  After supper, there was a really nice sunset and we invited the Stavs to bring a game to our warmer house.  They brought their domino set for Mexican Train and we had a cozy game night by the fire.

Here are a few photos from the Evagelical Bible Church Ladies’ Meeting and High Tea on Saturday–most from the EBC Facebook page:

I am combining four days into one blog as the bulk of my time was working on the drawings for the medium-wave AM transmission line (feedline, for short). I am FINALLY discovering more of the shortcuts in LibreCAD! More than a dozen program crashes have occurred, which seem to be caused by an overflow of the registries (the program saves all commands and other entries so one can ‘undo’ or ‘redo’ steps and when there are too many saved it appears that a crash occurs). Frequent saving of one’s work and rebooting saves a lot of headache. Also found when the program refuses to execute a command, your work can be saved, the program rebooted and the command usually works then. I suspect this problem is also related to overfull registries.

I tried to make PDFs of these drawings to email to other TWR engineers, but kept coming up with blank PDFs. A quick internet search revealed several solutions. One issue is that LibreCAD’s default for line width is ‘zero’. The lines show up on the computer as they are drawn, but not in the PDF or printout, so a greater line width has to be assigned. Now we know!

Monday 15 August 2022

In addition to LibreCAD crashes, a few times, when I wanted to do an internet search, a ‘pop-up’ screen in all German covered the whole screen wanting me to press one of two buttons in German. Finally figured out closing the tab each time it appears takes care of the problem for a while. All other web pages and ‘pop-ups’ are always in English.

This evening has turned cool, so we used the fireplace for the first time in a couple of weeks.

Tuesday 16 August 2022

This morning it was very cool and even cooler at the site – 42F.

After devotions. Salema pointed to a line item on their inventory list that had come in the HC100 parts shipment and wanted me to identify what it was. From the description, I had no clue, so asked Selma to physically show me the part. When he did, I immediately knew where it belonged in the transmitter, but could not recall the HC100 part number nor its exact description. I spent the next hour or so combing through drawings, bill-of-materials lists to locate the exact description and HC100 part number. TWR Eswatini consecutively assigns their own inventory number to each part that comes in. In this case, there was a mix-up with the description. It would be helpful, if the HC100 part number was also included somewhere in the description. [The HC100 part number was attached to each item we sent in the HC100 parts shipment]

Today Virginia saw in the sunshine reflecting on the floor a shadow of a tail (hoping it was not a snake!). When she looked to see what it was she decided to take a picture of the animal.

Wednesday 17 August 2022

Tobi stayed in town today, so I worked on drawings at ‘home’.

We were informed of a bring-your-own-meat braai (southern Africa BBQ) for this Saturday, so Virginia needed to go pick up some food items. We went to the new SuperSpar (my first time there). It is a huge supermarket and very busy, even during the off-hours that we were there. The parking was full and the street that it is on has lots of traffic. On the way home, we stopped by Sunnyside Butchery to pick up some meat. It reminds me of the butcheries from 60 years ago.

Thursday 18 August
This morning it was the warmest yet – 70F when I went out the door. It was a bit cooler at the site – 61F.

Tobi wanted me to look at some guy wires on Ant 3 that occasionally touch together in strong winds. He wanted to know why they were so close together, so I showed him my original drawing of Ant 11 from 1984. [Ant 3 was built in the mid-1990s based on Ant 11plans] The problem guys were not attached at the top of the tower according to the plans. Also noted that the guy wire diameters were not the same. I suggested a possible change at the anchor point for a temporary solution until the top attachments can be revised at a time when other work was needed at the top of the tower.

Today all the feedline parts drawings were cleaned up, title boxes added and PDFs created for sending to TWR engineers in South Africa, Asia and the U.S.

The speaker at the Evangelical Bible Church this morning was Pastor Paluka Bushu. His message was “If you love and obey God, He will manifest Himself to us” and the text was John 14:15-21 (especially v 21). Originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo and due to his unfamiliar accent, we had to really concentrate to follow his message. He, his wife, and three sons had already been in Swaziland for some time last time we were here–six years ago. At that time Paluka and his wife were preparing to move to live with their daughter in the U.S. The sons remained here–one plays the keyboard for services, another son Daniel and his wife run the Bush Pizzeria mentioned in our last Friday blog. Paluka and his wife arrived back for a short visit just this week.

In the afternoon, we were invited for Sunday dinner by Thelma Pierce, so we ended up eating with the Pierce/Young clan at the Bradley Young home. Bradley and his family are now living on the Young farm, where he grew up. His father Chester passed away six years ago, just after our last visit. He was in the hospital then and suffering from cancer.

The Pierce/Young dinners are well know for lots of good food and we’ve partaken of many. The yummy curry dishes are the highlight for us and the other dishes are always delicious. I always try to take a little bit of everything, which means my plate is overflowing. After a couple hours of visiting, the dessert and tea course began. This time there was cake and fresh donuts. We watched the donuts being prepared by two of the Young daughters.

After dessert, photos were taken before heading home, just before dark. It would have been more difficult after dark to avoid scraping the bottom of the car on the long road from the farm.

After the later than usual night before, we made sure the alarm clocks were off. I managed to sleep nine hours, but Virginia’s arthritis did not let her sleep that long.

Virginia joined Lorraine for a walk around the TWR property this morning. She took a photo of the security fence around the property to post. This is in addition to bars on all the windows and exterior doors of the buildings.

The Evangelical Bible Church had a ‘high tea’ for their women’s meeting this month, so Virginia invited Lorraine to go along. The meeting was started at 2pm.

Steve checked the electric meter for us this morning. It is inside the locked generator building under the water tanks. I had checked it when we first came and again in early August when the building was opened for other purposes. Residential meters in Swaziland work on a prepay basis and the meter for our house has just over a week of electricity left on it, as I had previously estimated. Using the meter number, more kilowatt-hours can be bought at several locations, including most supermarkets. The code on the receipt is then entered at the meter to add on the hours purchased. If you forget, the power shuts off after all your kilowatt-hours run out.

Steve suggested that I buy kilowatt-hours at the closest Spar supermarket, because they accept credit cards. This way you don’t have to get cash from the bank and carry it for making the purchase. While Virginia was away at the meeting, I went to Spar. Unfortunately, it appears that the Eswatini Electric Company’s computer was down, so the transaction failed.

Virginia got home from the ladies’ meeting just before dark. The main meeting was over but the ‘high tea’ was just starting when they left. Lorraine does not drive after dark, so the ladies insisted that they fill a couple of plates of food to take with them. So that’s how I got to enjoy the ladies’ ‘high tea’, too!!