Sunday 17 July – Since we arrived, Virginia has been taking care of Snowy, the cat belonging to the Kimbers, the former occupants of this house. They had made arrangements for Snowy to be transported to England where they now reside, so today he was picked up and joined two dogs from other places in Eswatini. Each animal had their own cage and were destined to fly out of Johannesburg after a six-day quarantine.

The church service today was similar to last week’s. Several minutes before his sermon, pastor was going to sing a duet with one of the church ladies. As they were getting ready to sing, the power went off. Since they had accompanying music that required electricity, the music leader just moved on to the next item in the service, which was a hymn. Thelma Pierce is still playing the accordian after 50 years and no one missed the electric keyboard and amplified worship team. In fact, it sounded quite nice! During the hymn, the power came back on and the duet took place. Pastor Deon preached on Matthew 6:32 and 34, a continuation of his sermon on not worrying. Not sure why he skipped verse 33. (I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep through it!) Maybe it’s next week’s sermon? Today was the church’s annual general meeting, so they had a break for refreshments outside, then returned to that meeting. We decided not to stay for that.

Rather than make another trip into town this week, we did some grocery shopping before heading home. Since we now knew our Visa card would work without a PIN, that was not a concern. We ended up spending about 1,300L (under $80) which included 4 fried chicken legs and a lot of chips (thick french fries) for less than $5 from the deli for our lunch. There were also chicken wings and necks available.

After lunch, we made a spontaneous trip to Swazi Candle. As we were leaving Swazi Candle, we chatted with the check-out clerk and told her we would be back later. This led to a conversation about how long we were staying and what we are doing. When she heard we were with Trans World Radio, her face lit up and she became quite excited. She listens regularly to the Voice of the Church, which was started by TWR.

In the evening, Virginia popped some popcorn (our regular Sunday evening fare) and we tried to work some on our blog. Virginia got a WhatsApp video call from Angelique, Samuel’s wife. In the middle of that call, I got a Whats App call from Michelle, Philip’s wife, on my phone and I told her how to turn on the video. We held our phones together so the two families from Michigan and Idaho could say ‘hi’ to one another and heard the exclamations of how much the children had grown – all via smart phones in Africa!

The call from Michelle was to announce the imminent arrival of their sixth child (our 18th grandchild) and to request prayer that the baby would turn, because of its breech position. Most of their children had been home births and, without insurance, the cost of a C-section and hospital stay would be a major burden. We contacted our children and other family members with this prayer request. About two hours later, Michelle called again and said the midwife had visited and the baby had turned into the right position. Praise the Lord for His answer to our prayers!!!

After this phone call, we made a last-second revision to our McGuiReport to include a sentence about the anticipated arrival of a new grandchild.

Monday18 July – First thing this morning our revised August McGuiReport was submitted to TWR for printing.

Since we are in Eswatini as visitors, our stay is limited to 30 days. To stay longer would require a work permit. With our relatively short stay, all the paperwork and cost involved to get a work permit, it is easier just to leave the country for a day or so and return for another 30 days. For our previous three trips, we went overnight to Kruger Game Park in South Africa. This time we decided to try to get reservations at Tendele Hutted Camp in Royal Natal National Park, a place where we took our boys almost every year during school breaks. Last week we made the reservations, but were having trouble making payment due to declined credit cards. Today, our reservations were finally confirmed for August 3 to 5. We decided to stay two nights because of the longer drive (about 280 miles) to get there. Would have actually liked to stay August 4 to 6 but everything was booked there, and in Kruger, for the night of August 5, due to a long holiday weekend in South Africa. This means we will have to leave on September 4 and stay a night at the TWR Africa Support Center before catching our September 5 evening flight back to the U.S.

Transmitter 1 had a couple of B+ filter arc faults last night that tripped the transmitter off for a couple of seconds each time. This has been a recurring issue for a while, but not every night. We decided to ‘hipot’ [meaning apply high potential voltage] to that section of the transmitter to see if the arcing could be duplicated. We tested that section up to 34,000 volts with no arcing. We suspect the problem may actually be in the sensing circuit rather than an actual arc. Further investigation is needed.

Since the antenna crew had removed the concrete casing of the anchor rod mention earlier, further inspection was done on how to proceed with repairs. Because the turnbuckle was slightly bent, it was decided to replace the turnbuckle and guy wrap dead-end. The latter was not damaged but must be removed to change the turnbuckle. Once removed, it is not reusable.

Tobi asked me about what the guy wire tensions should be on the two towers of the log periodic antenna that I designed and built in 1984. I easily located the drawing with those tensions that I made back then. Since that time, two similar antennas (directing signals in other directions) have been added on either side of the original one and these newer antennas have one tower in common with the original antenna. I will be doing some calculations, after getting all the needed details of the other two antennas, to determine any revised guy wire tensions. These calculation will be complicated by the fact that each antenna is at a different elevation on the towers, due to the ground slope.

When we got home this evening, we learned that Eswatini’s Prime Minister had announced that the mask mandate was being dropped effective today. The mask and vaccine mandates had been dropped for South Africa on June 22. In mid-June, the U.S. had dropped the negative COVID test required for returning U.S. citizens. We are so grateful that these changes came just in time to make our traveling less complicated.

Tuesday 19 July – No one was wearing face masks at devotions or work this morning! News sure gets around more quickly in Swaziland these days!!

We measured the guy wire to determine what size guy wrap dead-end to use. The guy wire was 3/8”, but the only dead-ends were 10mm. No one at the site knew whether these could be used on 3/8” guy wire, so I pulled up the Preformed Line Products South Africa website to find out this information. Unfortunately, the SA website did not give that information. I then pulled up the PLP U.S. website and found the range of guys sizes that a 3/8” dead-end could be used on. That range was from 10% smaller to 5% larger in diameter. The 3/8” guy diameter is 5% smaller than 10mm, therefore we concluded the 10mm dead-ends would work for the 3/8” guy wire

We went through a similar process with replacing the turnbuckle. The original was a 3/4” open body turnbuckle, which was replaced with a 20 mm closed body turnbuckle. 3/4” is approximately 19mm.

Virginia came to the site again this Tuesday with Steve and Lorraine. She brought with her a bag of macadamia nuts that Ruth Crowie gave us last Wednesday. We were told the best way to crack them was in a vise. Even then, it was took quite a bit of effort to get them to crack. We now know why they are so expensive. She spent around two hours cracking the nuts. I finally ended up helping to finish.

We have been attempting to use Skype to contact MasterCard to activate our card for overseas use. Skype not longer works on my outdated laptop, so I tried using my Kindle. When calling the number on the back of the credit card, a message asks us to enter the number of the card. Unfortunately, my Kindle does not create the tones needed. This afternoon, I decided to try the laptop that TWR lets me use at the site. This time the tones worked and after working through several menus, I finally got to speak to customer service. The representative found the notes of our travel plans that we had previously given before our departure, but said she could not activate our card based on those notes! We would have to provide a code that would be sent to the phone on record (our home phone). I said that would be impossible since I was already on Skype (the only means to check a code on our home phone, assuming they would even leave that code on an answering machine). She then transferred me to someone that was allowed to provide authentication via another method. I had to answer several multiple-choice questions similar to the ones used when requesting a credit report on-line. Found it interesting that at no time did anyone ask for our phone number on record, my birthday, our address or zipcode, or the last four digits of my SS number! Finally, after 25 minutes (fortunately there is no charge on Skype calls from overseas for toll-free numbers) our card is supposedly reactivated. We’ll see if it works when we grocery shop on Sunday after church.

We had to go through a similar process (using Skype on the site laptop) for our Visa card because our on-line access was blocked. Fortunately, this only took 12 minutes to resolve. Interestingly, on-line access to our MasterCard has not been an issue.

This evening we had Jacob Vogelpohl , a TWR intern serving for a couple months in South Africa at the TWR ASC, over for supper. He is serving in the technical department at ASC and came for the week to inventory the computer equipment used here to help plan and budget for future upgrades. Jacob is from Independence, Kentucky and studying computer science in university.

Wednesday 20 July – Tobi asked me about using the quarter-power filament feature on the HC100 (100,000-watt shortwave) transmitters. This feature is used to reduce the voltage of the filaments to conserve electricity and help extend the life of the power amplifier tube (cost around $20,000) during periods of up to 8 hours when a transmitters may be idling for the next broadcast. I let him know this feature would not be of benefit during TWR Eswatini’s current broadcast schedule. I recalled our discussion with Graham Kimber from 2016 about this topic and decided to consolidate all the information in those emails into one file for easier access should this topic come up again. Only one (the newest) of the three HC100s has that this feature installed. The older ones have the software for the feature, but not the hardware. In 2016, Graham and I found an anomaly in this feature that caused a spike in current during the transition from quarter to full power filaments that partially negated the benefits of that feature. As far as I know, that current spike has not been addressed.

While on the subject of the tube filament, there is another feature (also to prolong tube life) used in the transmitter that ramps the filament voltage up gradually at start up using an SCR controller. This SCR controller failed on the first two transmitters, so Hans Van Kampen made a step up circuit with two power resistor and two timer relays for shorting the resistors allowing the voltage to ramp up in three steps. Graham and I also studied these circuits in 2016 and discovered similar current spikes on both ramping methods. With the SCR controller, the spike was when a relay opened the SCR controller and another relay bypassed the SCR controller so that it did not have to operate continuously. With the stepped resistor method, there were current spikes each time another relay shorted one of the series resistors. We did not come to a conclusion as to what method was better or how improvements could be made. I consolidated all the information in those emails, too.

I also walked to the antenna field to try to get an idea how the guy wires were laid out for making the drawings to determine guy wire tensions. It became obvious it would take more time than was available today to gather the necessary information. I was able to approximate the direction (azimuth) to which each of the three antennas were ‘aimed’. I haven’t been able to find that information yet.

We have been trying to refill some of Virginia’s prescriptions on-line, but was unable to do so the on the laptop or Kindle Fire tablets we have with us. I had success using TWR laptop at work.

Thursday 21 July – Tobi had me check out the work he did on radio frequency filtering circuitry that he added to two printed circuit boards for controlling the switch bay, which controls switches to connect the correct antenna to the transmitter for a given broadcast. I only found one open circuit that Tobi quickly repaired.

One of the transmitter technicians found piles of white and gray plastic particles on the floor under the the PA tuning capacitor of Tx1. The only source we could find were the white plastic gears used for the potentiometer used for determining the correct tuning position of the capacitor. We found no evidence of wearing of the gears, nor where the gray particles could have originated. I asked the technician to clean up the particles and check in a day or so to see if more particles reappeared.

I spent a lot of time searching through the site technical files stored on the computer and found more helpful information, including the exact azimuth of each antenna. I also looked for a computer aided drafting (CAD) program to make some drawings of the antennas. Found TurboCAD and Design Cad, but they both required key passwords. Will check if anyone knows if they are useable next week.

Friday 22 July – Today is a holiday, the King’s Birthday (the old king Sobhuza II that is). He died in 1982 and was king most of the years we lived here. He had the longest verifiable reign of any monarch in recorded history.

Since it was a holiday, we got to sleep in past 5:30am and took it easy most of the day. I also continued working on making draft updates to our blog. After supper we were invited again to game night at the Stavropoulos home. This time we played Phase 10, but only got to about phase 4 before calling it a night around 9pm.

Saturday 23 July – Like yesterday, we slept in and took it easy most of the day with some more work on preparing drafts for our blog. Final posting will occur on the site laptop, because it is not possible to edit, add photos, nor post from my old laptop. In the evening, we built a cozy fire in the fireplace. There is plenty of wood piled in a fenced in area next to the yard where we are staying, so we may be making more use of the fireplace on these cool evenings.

Sunday 10 July – We attended Evangelical Bible Church in Manzini, the only church we have attended while in Swaziland since 1974. Their service starts with about 45 minutes of singing (mixture of old hymns and newer songs with lots of audience particpation) and testimonies. It is so good to hear the harmony when hymns are being sung. The sermon by Pastor Deon Phillips on Matthew 6:25-31 was about no need to worry. Some of the founding members are still around, and many of the children and grandchildren of those that have died still attend.

The Pieffers had invited us to join them at Mlilwane Game Sanctuary for a braai (cooking meat over a fire), but after church we found a note on our windshield letting us know that theIr son Lucas sick. They were inviting us instead to a braai outside at their home. We had a good time of visiting with them for the afternoon.

Monday 11 July – Forgot to take notes on my activity at the site, but do remember checking to verify the transmitters were still tuning for optimum efficiency.

Tuesday 12 July – Virginia joined Steve and Lorraine Stavropoulos to come to the transmitter site today. They organized a braai for lunch at the guest rooms across the river from the transmitter building. The braai consisted of steak and boerewors.

Wednesday 13 July – Decided to stay in town today to exchange some of our cash – we get about 17 lilangeni (Eswatini’s currency) for each dollar exchanged. We also needed to do some grocery shopping as the food that was stocked in the fridge and cupboards for our arrival was starting to run out. We found food prices at the supermarket to be fairly comparable to U.S. prices. Fresh fruits and vegetables that may be a little cheaper. Previously we’ve always used cash to buy groceries here, but our missionary colleagues advised using cards instead of carrying so much cash. We brought two credit cards, one Master Card and one Visa, and had called both before leaving the U.S. to let them know of our travel plans. We were told that for purchases of more than 500L (about $30) we would need to use our PIN. Since we have never had to use our PINs in the U.S., we do not remember them, so we made sure our first purchase was less than $30. The Master Card was declined, but the Visa was accepted. We then made a second purchase for a little more than $30, knowing that we had enough cash on hand. The check-out person was very surprised (and we were relieved) that the purchase went through without requiring a PIN.

On Sunday, Ruth Crowie, one of the founding members of Evangelical Bible Church, invited us to her home for a meal. Her son, Calvin, confided with us that his mom (85 years old in August) repeats herself and is forgetful, so we called her this morning and asked if we could bring something for lunch. She suggested fish and chips (french fries), so we stopped at The Fish and Chips Co in Riverstone Mall

[http://www.riverstonemall.co.sz/] and picked up their ‘kaasi’ special – 4 small hake fillets, 4 russians (sausages), 4 dinner rolls and ‘kaasi’ fries – for less than $12. Not sure what ‘kaasi’ means, but I think it must means ‘gigantic’. The small hake fillets were as long as a dinner plate is round. Wonder how big the large ones are? We ate until we were full and still brought well over half home! We got two more meals out of it.

Thursday 14 July – stayed home from work to gather items, photos and listener excerpts for our August 2002 McGuiReport that is due tomorrow.

Friday 15 July – finished up our McGuiReport and sent it to proof readers and family members for approval. The Stavropouloses invited us over after supper to play games. Played a new game (to us) called Ticket to Ride Europe.

Saturday16 July – worked on our McGuiReport making the changes suggested by family members and proofreaders, then cleaning up text around photos. Will probably wait until Monday to submit it for printing in case some more change requests come in. Also wrote the first two entries for this blog. My laptop (Windows Vista) is so outdated that our daughter-in-law had to actually do the final posting for us. [Thanks, Joyce]! Could probably do editing and posting from my Kindle Fire, but it would be more cumbersome.

Wednesday 6 July – My first meeting of the day was not until ll a.m so we were able to catch up on sleep deprivation and jet lag. The two-hour meeting was held at the TWR Eswatini office at Singing Pines – only a couple hundred feet from where we are staying. Stephen Murray met with Steve Stavropoulos (Station Director), Tobi Pfeiffer (Chief Engineer) and me about some long term goals and operation strategies.

Since our last visit in 2016, more of the administrative duties are being managed at the TWR Africa Support Center in South Africa. As a result of the reduction in Eswatini staff, TWR decided to remodel one of the smaller buildings at Singing Pines and rent out space in the larger 3-story building in downtown Manzini that TWR built in 1992. Part of the space in this larger building is used by Voice of the Church [https://vocfm.org] which broadcasts over a network of seven FM stations that TWR started 27 years ago. A couple years later the network was handed over to local Christian leaders to manage. It is now self-sustaining. Other Christian missions and ministries are also using the downtown building.

We had supper with Tobi and Britta Pfeiffer and their three sons, David, Lucas and Samuel.

Thursday 7 July – I left at 6:50am with the day shift and headed to the transmitter site, taking the parts that we had carried in our luggage. A short time of devotion and prayer is held each weekday at 7:30am before starting to work. I spent most of the day familiarizing myself with the changes since we were here 6 years ago.

Tobi asked for Larry’s advice about repairing a damaged guy anchor. An unattended tractor had rolled into it. Fortunately the guy anchor and guy wire (supporting a tower and antenna) held with the most damage to the hood of the tractor. The anchor consists of a large 4′ X 3′ X 2′ high block of concrete about six feet under ground level with a rod coming up through the ground. That rod is encased in about 8” diameter of concrete to keep it from rusting. That encasement concrete had broken and the rod was bent. Larry suggested removing all that concrete down to the anchor block to assess the damage and determine how to proceed.

The day shift ends at 4:30pm and we are back at our homes about 5:10pm. This trip is much faster than ever, since a four lane highway has been built from Manzini to the ‘new’ airport. Over half our week day drive is on this freeway with a speed limit of 120km/h (75mph). Most drivers, including us, keep it under 60mph. This improvement has all happened since we were here 6 years ago. Now there is a freeway all the way from the South Africa border post (Ngwane) to the airport, except for a short stretch being worked on through the town of Manzini.

Friday 8 July – I worked with one of the transmitter technicians to show him how to install one of three fiberglass insulators that we made in Elkhart in May.

Saturday 9 July – Steve and Lorraine Stavropoulos took us to Hlane Game Reserve for the day. We had a great time and saw hippo, impala, nyala, warthogs, about 10 rhino, a few giraffe and one elephant well hidden in the bush.

Stephen Murray and his wife Teresa picked us and all our baggage up about 11am for the five hour trip to eSwatini. We visited the bakery next to the TWR Africa Service Center to purchase savory pastries to eat during the trip. We stopped at Alzu rest stop, which is about midway, for some drinks. The view from the restroom windows looks out over a small game farm with rhinos, Cape buffalo, eland and other small game.

Next stop was at the border were we had to check out through the South Africa border post, then in through the Eswatini border post. That process was quick until we got to the eSwatini border gate where we were informed we needed to pay a car tax, because the car had South Africa license plates. Neither Stephen or Larry had thought of that, so back to the border post to take care of that. Back again at the border gate, we were again informed that we would have to pay tax on the case containing a transmitter part, so back to the border post again to get in line for customs.

Fortunately, there were only two truck drivers in front of us at customs, so about half an hour later (it was now past sundown) we proceeded through the border gate for the 45 minute trip to our final stop at the TWR houses on Singing Pines Farm just past Manzini. The house we are staying in is named “Kiegala Pinnata.” We know it as the Kimber house, because the Kimber family lived in it during our previous three trips. We have also stayed in it on at least one of our trips.

NOTE—in case you missed it, Eswatini was spelled two ways in this blog entry. Doing some research, we could find no ‘official’ right way for it to be spelled. When the King announced the name change in 2018, it appears he used “eSwatini”, yet in most places we see Eswatini being used. The country’s currency still has “Central Bank of Swaziland” on it.

On July 3, we got up at 2 am to finish getting ready for this trip. We left Elkhart, IN at 4:00am to drive to Joshua’s home. He then accompanied us to the South Bend airport to help with our six suitcases (some for TWR items) and drive our car back to his house. Our flight took off about 7:30am (only 15 minutes late). Our trip took us to the Minneapolis airport to catch our next flight to Atlanta. Fortunately, our daughter-in-law, Angelique, had made arrangements for a wheel chair or cart to meet us to transfer Virginia (her knees and hips were causing pain) between flights. We were very grateful for this assistance. Both transfers would have been very LONG walks, plus Larry also got to ride the electric carts!

On Monday July 4, we arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa, after a very long 15 1/2 hour flight at 4:55 p.m. We waited in a long line for an hour and half just to get to the immigration desks. Fortunately the time went quickly as we had a long interesting chat with a very nice, newly wed, couple in be their 40’s. Immigration processing was quick, but it took another 45 minutes to locate our suitcases that had already been removed from the carousel.

TWR Africa’s Director of Technical Services, Stephen Murray, met us at the airport. When he said that he would meet us wearing a blue baseball cap, Larry said he would wear his red bush hat. Stephen spotted us right away and took us to the lodge at the Africa Support Center (ASC) in Kempton Park, where we spent the night.