Ham Antenna – Aug. 14, 2012

Today was a busy day at the office with a lot of decisions being made about the website.  During the morning, I worked at filling in the remaining pages I was responsible for with content.  Quite often we have no existing content, so I am copying and pasting from the global website at twr.org.  For instance, our listener stories came from the international website.  We can update them with new listener stories from this region as they become available.

 Photos here

One of the things that I was wrestling with today is what content should be made public, and what content should remain private.  There are plans and other internal communications that would be inappropriate to post online.  I am discovering how important it is that we be very careful with what information is made public.  This prevents unnecessary political headaches for TWR down the road, and is an important aspect of any global ministry. Pray for me as I try to adjust my way of thinking to comply with these necessary policies.

We decided to pare down the number of pages that we make visible online, and leave only those which we currently have content for.  Later on, as new content is generated, those pages will become active, and will be visible to the general public.  So far, there are roughly 25 pages that will make up our website.

For lunch, I drove up just past the Sand Dollar condominium complex and had lunch at Eddy’s Bar and Grill.  It was a very tropical-looking restaurant, and the catch of the day, Wahoo, was very delicious.  There was even a swimming pool immediately adjacent to the restaurant where guests could go swimming.

Back at work, I began a few tentative inquiries about the cost for streaming audio, as I have begun researching what it would take to launch a “listen-live” feature.

The next item on the agenda is the catologing of archive photos.  This project will take some serious concentration and attention to detail.  Although we’ve looked into several different ways of handling this, it looks like it’s going to come down to some old-fashioned work!

I was given permission to leave an hour early in order to help Dave Pedersen raise his ham radio antenna at his home.  We got there just after 4:30, and I received the usual boisterous welcome from his two dogs and three children.

When I went outside, I discovered that Dave had done a great deal of planning to get the antenna ready to raise back up to the vertical.  He had guy wires tied in the appropriate places, as well as kitty litter buckets full of water tied to the other end to counterbalance it.  He had a steel beam attached horizontally to the side of the house on which we pivoted the tower until it stood vertical. Dave’s very energetic daughter took pictures of the process.

Once we had released the appropriate lines, Dave and I pulled on the bottom of the tower and swung it into the vertical position.  It worked flawlessly.  We then moved the bottom around until it was exactly perpendicular.  Once we had it exactly right, Dave and I pounded two three-foot long steel spikes into the ground to anchor it.  We then bolted it to the horizontal beam, and it was secured in place.

The next step was to string the feed-line cables, of which there were four, around to the back of the house and into his ham radio room.  This room is actually beside the old wash house.  Last year, TWR built an addition onto the side of the former Roswell house, and so there is an entire living room and kitchen where the driveway used to be in front of the wash house.

Just like Dad, Dave tied up all his cables with plastic cable ties.  We  had to add an extension to a couple of cables in order for them to reach his ham radio transmitter.

The kids then asked if I would stay for supper, and, of course, being a bachelor, I readily agreed.  We had rice and kidney beans, and some pasta, and watermelon for dessert.  It was all very good.

After supper, I imported the pictures to my iPad, and we reviewed them on the big screen, using the Air Display app.  This is the handy app that transmits the display to a big-screen TV with no wires.  It turned out that Dave’s daughter did fairly well with her photo shoot, and I encouraged her to possibly take up photography in the future.

We also watched my video of the sea turtle from Sunday, and Dave’s youngest daughter insisted she was going to go out right away and become a scuba diver.  When I explained that you don’t get a tank-fill if you’re not certified, she said she would just go without the tank!

After we watched a few more videos from the family, Dave pulled up a YouTube video of The Forgetful Waiter by Steve Martin.  It was hilarious.

On the way home, I stopped by the beach road near the airport, and sat on a bench, looking up at the stars. The wonderful thing is that there are probably double the amount of stars visible in the Caribbean than we see from Canada. I called Brad Swanson to see if he had gone out star-gazing, as he had planned to.  Apparently there were too many clouds tonight, so that trip was cancelled.

By the time I got home, the dogs were more than a little excited to see me.  After I fed them, they all stood around sniffing the scents of the Pedersens’ dogs on my pants.

And so ends another interesting day on Bonaire.

1 thought on “Ham Antenna – Aug. 14, 2012

  1. You need to watch where I assume you have a galvanized U- Bolt going into an aluminum beam…because the galvanized bolt will corrode the aluminum beam. Denny Hogan

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