Jim unloads one of five boxes of solar panels.

The boxes of solar panels are stored temporarily in the ‘barn’.

The two sets of lines in the foreground were done today. By the end of the day, the temporary wood stands were replaced with aluminum posts that were being made at the time this photo was taken.

Paul is cutting one of the aluminum posts to support the crossover.

Jim welds an aluminum base on one of several posts.

Joel cut caps for Jim to weld onto the top of the posts.

Joel taps a mounting hole in each posts’ cap. Meanwhile, I am making the standoff insulator assemblies that are attached using the tapped holes.

Using the posts with insulators, the crossover is in its final position and Jim is silver soldering all the joints.

In a mens’ room hidden behind one of the transmitters resides this unique TP holder. Only a creative engineer would come up with something like this!!

This butterfly briefly landed near where we were working. I took this photo especially for our 11 year old granddaughter, Audrey, who raises butterflies and gives talks to the Nature Sleuths groups at Oxbow Park. It looks like it might be some kind of swallowtail — maybe Audrey knows?  The plant that it has landed on is a pesky weed we called ‘black-jack’ in Swaziland.  The flowers are pretty and belong to the aster family, but the seeds cling to your clothing and are tedious to remove — see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidens_pilosa

Someone had already begun to chip away at the potting material around what looked like the sensing circuitry, but I figured the most likely failure might be in the higher current circuits, probably on the right side of the voltage regulator.  After removing the first layer, an extra heat sink began to appear.

After shifting into ‘archeological dig’ mode, the first power device was finally exposed.

Eventually, three power devices were ‘unearthed’ that were all attached to the extra heat sink. The two on the left tested OK, but the rectifier bridge on the right had a dead short on one of its four diodes.

The faulty bridge was successfully removed and replaced with four discrete diodes.

Harvest Baptist Church had a patriotic service this morning, since Independence Day is coming up on Friday. We estimate that the auditorium and balcony can hold about 500 people. Jack Marlowe is the tall man on the left side of the aisle. Virginia is to the right in the photo.

The senior pastor at Harvest Baptist is Marty Herron. The orchestra consists mostly of young people with violins, a cello and flute accompanied by a piano.

We can use our side street as a rain gauge. If it is completely covered, like this, we know there has been more than 1/2 inch of rain.

About a mile further south, we stopped at Nimitz Beach Park. TWR plans to have its 4th of July picnic at one of the pavilions.

Looking north from Nimitz Beach Park at the Agat Marina. The shower on the beach (at right) has been effected by erosion.

More signs of erosion at Nimitz Beach Park. Which side of this picnic table would you want to sit on?

Talaifak Bridge is about 1/10 mile south of Nimitz Beach Park. This waterway’s outlet into the Philippine Sea is less than 100 yards on the other side of the bridge.

The downstream side of Talaifak Bridge.

The parking area at Talaifak Bridge was unique The open pattern in the concrete surface allows most of the rain water to seep into the soil thus lessening drainage problems.

Our next stop, Sella Bay Trailhead, is about 5 miles south of our apartment. The condition of the sign should have been a forewarning of what was ahead!

Most of the trail was a very old 4-wheel drive track. Since it had just rained a couple hours earlier, the tracks were slippery mud and the grass was too high to walk in. Steep slopes like this one were especially tricky to transverse.

We saw thousands of these wildflowers on this hike and the one this morning. Are they wild orchids? We’ve heard them called this, but cannot find a scientific source to verify it.

Across the valley north of this trail is the SDA shortwave transmitting site.

After about 45 minutes of hiking we could see Sella Bay in the distance, just above the wild orchid in the photo. It was at this point that we decided to turn back as there would be no way to make it down and back before sundown.

At the Sella Bay Trailhead, there were some steps up to an overlook. We had not gone to the overlook earlier because a wedding party was there. The ‘tree’ with the unusual roots is a pandanus palm.

From the overlook it is possible to see the highest peak in Guam — Mount Lamlam at 1,332 feet. It is the peak on the right. Between the twin peaks on the left is a rock face which which turns into a waterfall after heavy rains. So far, we haven’t seen the waterfall.

The view of Cetti Bay is definitely better than the entrance!

Our last stop was at the ‘MacDonalds in a container’ at Agat that we mentioned in a previous blog. We ordered from their three item $1 menu, not their special Guam high calorie Spam breakfast menu!