Today was a rather lazy day trying to recoup from the first full day of work yesterday,

This morning was spent adding photos to and updating our previous blog entries.  As usual, our computer did not want cooperate and, at one point, it was necessary to uninstall our photo editing program and reinstall it before it was possible to get it working again,

At noon we were invited to Mike and Eli Sabin’s home for lunch.  Eli had made a taco casserole with large pasta shells.  It was very good.  We had a wonderful time of fellowship for almost four hours.  The Sabin home is in the ‘mountains’ above Santa Rita in a somewhat rural setting,  Free range chickens lay eggs in the carport.  Wild pigs and monitor lizards are common visitors.  Two streams met in their back yard where a large forest of bamboo plants about 60 feet tall are located,

We had a light supper of salad with the Gregowskes this evening.  Also, are planning our trip to a church on the north end of Guam in the morning.  Hopefully, we will meet a friend there who supported us for many years.

Paul  decided that we should take the Highlander to work to get it repaired.  I verified that the problem was not the transmission, but the linkage.  With assistance from Paul on the brakes, it was possible to manually shift it into ‘drive’ from inside the engine compartment to allow us to drive it to the transmitting site.  Since it was not possible to downshift going down the hills, we drove slowly for the 15 mile trip and had no problems.

While I evaluated some transmitter ‘challenges’, Joel Harp took apart the gear lever linkage, discovered and repaired a plastic bushing that was cracked.  The repair was done in about an hour.

The HC100 has been tripping off very briefly several times during the past few evenings due to an optical arc detection.  I saw that the boiler feed pipe had a lot of ‘dirt’ particles in it.  Since there are peaks of 30,000 volts across this pipe, this could be the source of the problem.

Phil and I removed the pipe and cleaned it.  It was decided to flush the boiler for the tube as this is the primary source of the ‘dirt’ particles.  Having done the flush and reconnecting the pipe, Phil began to refill the system with clean water.  Fortunately, I was watching closely and noticed ‘dirt’ particles being carried into the feed pipe from the opposite end of the pipe from the boiler.  As a result, we determined it best to remove the feed pipe again, clean it again, and flush the system from the other side.  Hopefully, this will take care of those pesky trip offs,

I was also asked to look at the HC100 tunable harmonic filter and discovered that the active turns of the two coils are not the same — they should be the same!  It will be necessary to obtain some more information from the technology center in Elkhart to make the proper alignments.

Tonight we had supper — meat, mashed potatoes, gravy and corn — with the Gregowske’s, where we are temporarily staying.  We had been invited to see a movie at church, but decided to pass,  I was too tired and we had already seen this particular movie.

We slept fairly well considering the second night is supposed to be the worst for jet lag.  After going to bed about 10pm and a very short wake-up at 4:30am we slept until about 7am.

Today, Paul and Kathy took us to the main city areas on Guam which are north of Santa Rita.  Paul had some to pick up some paint for the site.

On the way we drove up Nimitz hill and saw the AM transmitting site — http://www.ktwg.com/ — that TWR turned over to local ownership several years ago.  We also saw the site of the major airplane crash — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801 — that took place several years ago on the airport side of the hill.  TWR personnel helped support the rescue workers.

Apra Harbor from the Nimitz Hill Overlook

We visited another Spanish fort, Fort Santa Agueda, overlooking Agana.

We stopped at a park where we learned about some of the history of the latte stones of which replicas are seen almost everywhere on Guam — http://www.guamportal.com/attraction /senator_angel_leon_guerrero_santos_latte_stone_park.html

Larry and Virginia standing by latte stones

Ypoa Beach — the main tourist beach on Guam

At another park beside Ypao beach, we learned about some of the boats that the natives built and used (see — http://theguamguide.com/ypao-beach-2/).   A talkative native, who was also a Vietnam vet, shared a lot of historical background.

A model (about half size) of the outrigger canoes that the Guam natives used to build

We did some shopping at Kmart — there are no Walmarts on Guam — and were shown various places to shop to get the best deals on various items.  Virtually all products that are sold in Guam have been imported, so the prices are quite high.  It looks like all of the familiar restaurants and fast food places from the U.S. have branches here — mostly in the Agana area which is about 15 miles from where we will be staying.

Stopped at a Wendy’s for a late lunch before heading back to Santa Rita.

A Toyota Highlander was dropped up for us to use, so we drove it to Phil and April Leppke’s house on the other side of Guam for supper at their place.  The road over the ‘mountains’ has lots of curves.  Fortunately, it was daylight on the trip over.

We returned home after dark. While parallel parking in front of the Gregowske’s house, the car shifted into reverse and would not come out of reverse, even though the gear shift lever could be moved to all the gear positions.

We were so grateful that this did not happen while we were traveling or at the Leppke’s home!

Into bed about 10pm and set the alarm for 6am.  Larry plans to go to the transmitter site tomorrow.

We fell into bed just after midnight and got up this morning at about 9am.  With only a brief wake-up (from jet lag?) about 3:30am.

We had a picnic lunch with Kathy, who took us on a tour of the southern part of the island of Guam between Santa Rita, where she lives, to the TWR transmitting site at Merizo.

One of the more obvious Japanese pillboxes on Agat Beach

We saw Agat landing beach where American troops fought Japanese who were dug into caves along the coast.

Well hidden Japanese caves on Agat Beach

Japanese heavy weapons that the American forces faced as they landed on Agate Beach

We passed the SDA transmitting site with its array of several shortwave towers.

Looking down from Fort Soledad at the village of Umatac and the bay in which Magellan harbored

We also visited a bay in which Magellan harbored at Umatac village, then the Spanish Fort Nuestra Senora de la Soledad.

The ruins of Fort Neustra Senora de la Soledad

Cannons at Fort Soledad

Our last stop to the south was TWR’s transmitting site with its five shortwave transmitters — two Harris 100,000-watt transmitters built and installed in the 1970s, one HC100 100,000-watt transmitter that we built in Elkhart in the 1990s, and two recently installed Thomson 250,000-watt transmitters.

We got home just in time for the Gregsons to take us out to dinner at the Lemon Grass Thai restaurant in Santa Rita.

Left our home in Elkhart this morning by 7am to catch a 9:21am flight to Chicago. We supposedly could of caught a later flight, but decided a 50 minute layover in Chicago was just not long enough!

Our next flight to Tokyo flew over Alaska, where we saw many beautiful snow covered mountainranges with glaciers. We arrived in Tokyo slightly ahead of schedule, so the 50 minute layover there was more than adequate to to make the Guam flight.

Our time in Japan was limited to a 50 minute layover at the Narita Airport

As we landed at Tokyo, we noticed hundreds of rice paddies and solar panels. This photo was taken of rice paddies as we took off just before sunset, so is not as clear as we would have liked,

Our Guam flight pulled away from the gate on schedule, then we waited in a long line of planes for about 20 minutes for take off. All of a sudden our plane turned out of line onto a parallel taxiway headed the opposite direction and stopped. My initial thoughts were, “Must be a mechanical problem”, but, after about 5 minutes, the pilot announced that we were being directed to another runway and had to wait for the right ‘paperwork’. 45 minutes after leaving the gate, we were finally airborne.

About an hour into the flight to Guam, we finally saw the sunset. The sunrise of our day had been about 24 hours earlier in Elkhart and we had flown in daylight the whole time. We arrived safely on Guam only about 20 minutes late. Many of the TWR Guam missionaries we there to met us.

We arrived very tired after almost 30 hours with little sleep. Guam is definitely warm and humid and the temperature was about 86F at 10pm.

We are staying with Paul and Kathy Gregowske for a few days until a small apartment becomes available for us. Fortunately there are small air conditioners in the bedrooms. The rest of the house has ceiling fans.

Guam time is 14 hours ahead of EDT so when it is noon in Elkhart (10am MDT), it is 2am the next day in Guam. It might be difficult to find a time to communicate via Skype at a convenient hour at both ends, but we will try to work something out!