More and More

Sorry for the long gap in feeding the hungry blog. A lot of what I've been doing has been fairly complicated, but not very blogogenic. Here are some new developments, though. Late Thursday night, I decided that I had not accomplished enough so far in this visit, and also had not done enough outside of radio work, so I would delay my return and spend the next three days with my Lenca friends in a journey of recollection and commemoration. We traveled to Santa Marta, El Salvador, to celebrate the solidarity of the Lencas with the Salvadoran refugees who lived here in camps among the Lencas during the Salvadoran civil war which ended in 1992.

That was one amazing adventure, fording rivers on foot and in a bus, joining a hoard of others in a tug-of-war style mass pulling of several huge trucks up a soggy mud highway slope, passing through some beautiful scenery, while laughing to hours of Lenca humor and singing and cheering along with about 70 others. The event was beautiful, despite the sweltering Salvadoran sun. We bounced and swayed over the mountain into La Esperanza about 2 a.m. Sunday night full of dirt and memories.

Now my return to the U.S. is scheduled for Wed. the 28th. There's still a lot to do here, but things are getting done as well. Taking advantage of a day without electricity, I dug a 60 foot trench to the transmitter building from the Utopia building, and buried an audio feedline which will bring all the programming to the AM transmitter when the installation is complete. Last night we got the COPINH office computer system partly back in operation, after weeks of not being able to connect to the internet.

We're moving into the dry season here in La Esperanza. The clay streets are getting as hard as rock, though with a fine layer of dust on top. People are already cutting this down by throwing water on the streets.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Peace, Bill

Exito!!

No, that doesn't mean I'm leaving yet,"ëxito" is Spanish for "success". I've just gotten the FM signal to sound a lot better, and gotten the AM tuning spiffed up enough to tune up the transmitter into it's comfortable range for the first time. The weather here is cold for Honduras (mid 40's), with a lot of wind. Makes me thankful for the inefficiency of the transmitter, which causes it to put about 1 kilowatt of heat into the transmitter building where I have my workshop set up. (None of the buildings here have heat, and many have a lot of gaps for the cool air to whistle through.)

Peace, Bill

Back in La Esperanza

Sorry to be so long in writing stuff to the blog. I've been here in La Esperanza for about 1 week, but what with power outages, and rain blocking off the satellite internet reception, it's been hard to get a chance to upload stuff.

The weather here is cold [for here] -- 50 degree days, and nights probably into the lower 40's, but rainy and raw. It seems pretty cold, since none of the buildings have heat, and some are "well ventilated" to boot. The people are warm and it's really good to be back with these folks.

Right after I arrived, there was a "taller" or workshop, on organizational internal structuring and politics, part of a four session series, given by a group from Tegucigalpa and held at Utopia. Though I was doing other things, I got to enjoy great food and conversation during their breaks. [Ever tried tortillas broken up and soaked in coffee with milk and sugar? It's a strange combination, but it works! -- Kinda like rosquias, says the woman who demonstrated the delicacy. I guess I have to cultivate that taste.]

I've brought a lot of small parts and new test equipment this time which make it possible to upgrade parts of the transmitters and antenna system which need improvement. The AM station has been operating at somewhat lower power than it's licensed for, so I want to get that up to full power and make it reliable enough to run a good long time without problems.

I've rebuilt the antenna tuning unit, but it's either been really rainy or the power's been off, so I haven't been able to use the snazzy new antenna analyzer which Gray Haertig has loaned us, except to do initial checks on the tuning. Even so, that's helped a lot.

That's it till later. Peace, Bill