{"id":2688,"date":"2018-01-24T20:17:53","date_gmt":"2018-01-25T01:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mcguirereport.mcguireclan.org\/?p=2688"},"modified":"2018-01-24T20:17:53","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T01:17:53","slug":"twr-bonaire-2018-january-24-wednesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcguirereport.mcguireclan.org\/?p=2688","title":{"rendered":"TWR Bonaire \u2014 2018 January 24 Wednesday"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Feet–Sand–Waves<\/p><\/div>\n

This morning, Virginia and Mariette, the station director’s wife, went to Sorobon (at Lac Bay on the east side of Bonaire) to relax and swim.\u00a0 They had a good, and much needed, time together.\u00a0 This afternoon, Virginia did some shopping in town.\u00a0 There were two ships docked again today–one was the Carnival Sunshine, so there were a lot of American tourists everywhere.<\/p>\n

Immediately after devotions, WEB arrived to increase the voltage going to the new transmitter.\u00a0 In preparation, we had increased the voltage by one tap on the transmitter transformer.\u00a0 Apparently the voltage from the WEB transformer increases about 5% per tap and the transmitter transformer by about 12% per tap.\u00a0 WEB went up by two taps and the voltage from the output of transmitter transformer went down by 2%, which was too low.\u00a0 The main breaker tripped for some unknown reason.\u00a0 We decided to go back the original taps on the transmitter transformer and go up only one tap from WEB.\u00a0 Everything seems to work well with this 5% increase in voltage.<\/p>\n

While WEB was present, we decided to run a test to find out what percentage of tone modulation at 440kw it would take to reach the 955 amp limit of WEB’s transformer.\u00a0 We gradually increased the tone modulation until at 75% the current was 950 amps.\u00a0 Our circuit breaker is set at 960 amps, so we did not go any higher.\u00a0 Checking my calculations from yesterday, I found that my notes indicated the limit would be at 75% tone modulation.<\/p>\n

Dave and I took a field strength meter to the airport to record the field strength level there.\u00a0 At 300kw carrier, the Caribbean pattern gave a reading of 1.2 volts per meter, while the north and south patterns were under 0.8 volts per meter.\u00a0 These levels should be within the maximum allowed at the airport.<\/p>\n

Back at the site, I installed the 220 volt LED indicator lights in the emergency stop button enclosures.\u00a0 Now there is a visual indication that this circuit is functional.<\/p>\n

The air handler that was repaired yesterday seems to be functioning well.\u00a0 The second air handler has been having problems starting.\u00a0 The motor starter box would ‘hum’ without starting the blower, but when I gently bumped the box, the contactor would then pull in and the blower would start right up.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is a switch on the motor starter box that selects between ‘Manual’ and ‘Auto’.\u00a0 This switch is normally set to ‘Auto’ to allow for automated control of the blower.\u00a0 When I switched to ‘Manual’, the blower would start immediately every time.\u00a0 When switched to ‘Auto’, the contactor would hum and sometimes eventually pull in after a few seconds.\u00a0 The starter box was next opened to measure the voltage on the contactor coil.\u00a0 In the ‘Manual’ position, the coil voltage was immediately 23 volts.\u00a0 In the ‘Auto’ position, the coil voltage was only 15 volts.\u00a0 The wiring is the same length for both positions and, as far as I know, the only difference is the contact in the automation system.\u00a0 Hopefully, we will get a chance tomorrow to measure the voltage drop across that contact to see if it is the source of the problem.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of the day, Jonas was busy programming the automation system for the 400,000-watt AM transmitter to take over broadcasts from the old 100,000-watt transmitter.\u00a0 There was too much programming still to be done to allow the change to take place this evening.\u00a0 Hopefully, it can happen tomorrow.\u00a0 The initial transmitter power used will likely be 200,000 watts with the increase to full power at the dedication on Tuesday 30 January.\u00a0 More testing at 440,000 watt during non-broadcast hours will be taking place in the remaining days.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning, Virginia and Mariette, the station director’s wife, went to Sorobon (at Lac Bay on the east side of Bonaire) to relax and swim.\u00a0 They had a good, and much needed, time together.\u00a0 This afternoon, Virginia did some shopping in town.\u00a0 There were two ships docked again today–one was the Carnival Sunshine, so there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bonaire-2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcguirereport.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcguirereport.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcguirereport.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcguirereport.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcguirereport.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2688"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mcguirereport.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2691,"href":"https:\/\/mcguirereport.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2688\/revisions\/2691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcguirereport.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcguirereport.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcguirereport.mcguireclan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}