After staff meeting this morning, we celebrated Jonathan’s 23rd birthday with cake and tea.<\/p>\n
Today was a work Wednesday, but, since everyone else had to shop for various supplies to take to the site, I went home to wait for someone to pick me up to go to the site.\u00a0 While waiting, I did some cleaning and waxing on the car that we have so graciously been allowed to use by a missionary couple on deputation.\u00a0 We are also staying in their house.<\/p>\n
My work today did not involve directly working on the transmitters, but mostly on correspondence.\u00a0 TWR’s Africa Regional Office received a DX (long distance listener) report from Pennsylvania claiming to have heard a test transmission on 10 June 2013.\u00a0 I was asked to verify the validity of this report.\u00a0 After looking through the logs and reviewing what had been done, this person had heard part of an hour long transmission that we had done on 15,475 kHz while testing TX3 after getting it to tune on higher frequencies.\u00a0 His report was exact including the exact times of a break in the transmission and of its ending.\u00a0 This is quite amazing considering this listener was over 8,000 miles away and to the side of the main beam of the antenna, where the power radiated is less than 3% of what it is on the main beam!<\/p>\n
Occasionally, we receive a questionnaire from a supporting church that we need to complete.\u00a0 Often these ask for things like ‘what were your past personal and ministry goals?’, ‘were they reached?’, ‘what are your future goals?’ and other similar questions that can not be completed in a couple of minutes with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses.\u00a0 Today, I completed such a questionnaire.<\/p>\n
On the way to and from work, several of us engineers have been having an interesting discussion on sunrise and sunsets around the time of the solstices — the longest and shortest days of the year.\u00a0 Did you know that the latest sunrise, nor the earliest sunset, occurs exactly on the winter solstice?\u00a0 We notice this because we are driving to and from work at these times.\u00a0 The winter solstice (in the southern hemisphere) was on June 21, but the earliest sunset actually took place about June 9, while the latest sunrise is not expected until about July 2.\u00a0 We have learned that the same is true for the summer solstice, but not as pronounced.\u00a0 This phenomena is also more pronounced at the equator than higher latitudes.\u00a0 To check out this for where you are (or anyplace) check out http:\/\/www.gaisma.com<\/a> [this site also has an interesting ‘Sun path diagram’] or http:\/\/www.timeanddate.com\/worldclock\/sunrise.html<\/a><\/p>\n Having noticed this, the discussion has turned to why this is so, which is not so simple to explain.\u00a0 Did you know that a solar day is not always the same length\u00a0 as a clock day?\u00a0 At the solstices, the solar day is about 20 seconds longer than 24 clock hours, and at the equinoxes, the solar day is slightly shorter than 24 clock hours?\u00a0 One of the more understandable scientific explanations that we found was at — http:\/\/www.larry.denenberg.com\/earliest-sunset.html <\/a>and one of the more simplified explanations was at —http:\/\/earthsky.org\/tonight\/earliest-sunset-today-but-not-shortest-day<\/a>.\u00a0 Here are two more interesting explanations talking about the analemma —\u00a0 http:\/\/www.sciquill.com\/analemma\/page2.html<\/a> — and — http:\/\/www.analemma.com<\/a><\/p>\n This evening the Bible study at EBC was on Revelation 11.\u00a0 This is the chapter about the two witnesses who were killed and returned to life.<\/p>\n I remembered a humorous thing (to us) that happened on Sunday.\u00a0 There is an intern pastor who leads the opening of the service.\u00a0 At some point he referred a young fellow as a ‘guy’.\u00a0 Later in the service, he apologized for using the word.\u00a0 In this culture, it must be an unapproved slang expression.\u00a0 We did notice that when he apologized there was a suppressed congregational chuckle, which seemed to indicate that it is probably more accepted now than in the past.<\/p>\n On Monday night, when our guests left our house after supper, we noticed that the alarm did not give the usual ‘squawk’ as they walked across the yard.\u00a0 Tuesday evening, I checked the motion sensors and noted that they were working.\u00a0 Tonight, Steve brought some fruit over that his wife bought and was splitting a box with us.\u00a0 I asked Steve to help figure out what was happening.\u00a0 We found out that there was a blown fuse in the Auto Bleep — that part of the system that automatically sets the various levels of alarms and calls cell phones, if there is a problem.\u00a0 The basic alarm system was still working, if set manually, which we do every evening, or when away from the house.\u00a0 The fuse was replaced, but Klaus had to come with his laptop, plug into the Auto Bleep and set it to the correct time.\u00a0 Now everything is working normally again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After staff meeting this morning, we celebrated Jonathan’s 23rd birthday with cake and tea. 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