We're Not There, But We're Here

Hi All,

We're here at the border, in beautiful (and warm), Pharr/McAllen, TX, waiting to cross into Mexico. (It's really complex with a big bus.) We're hoping for tomorrow. If not, then we'll probably have to wait till Thursday.

In Austin, we picked up one vajero, JJ Tiziou, a wonderful photographer from Philly, who loves to document wild and far-flung expeditions. His photos will be appearing here soon, but you can check out some of the other stuff he's done by following the link to his website. He's coming down to photograph the journey and, with luck, the birth of La Voz Lenca.






Unfortunately, Ben Galewsky had to get back to C-U before even getting into Mexico. We're very thankful to him for the huge amount of work he did in preparing for this trip, as well as doing a lot of the driving on the way down.

Peace, Bill, with Jane, Adrienne and JJ

From the road

We drove off from the farm at 1 am Thursday morning. Adrienne, Jane (the bus driving Zen master) and I took turns keeping the bus in continuous motion. We managed to create some comfortable, if unique sleeping quarters for everyone so off duty drivers could sleep while we carry on.

The front tire started to show some alarming wear and we needed to get them replaced outside of Little Rock. We told the manager of the tire shop our story and he managed to find some high quality used ones and we were back on the road.

We picked up our photographer at the Austin airport at 4 am Friday morning and parked the bus in the parking lot of a very fancy grocery store. We awoke this morning to hear Adrienne speaking with one of the Mexican gardners tending the landscaping.

We washed up in the bookstore bathroom and are now ready to head on to San Antonio to deliver some medicines that we are carrying and then heading on to McAllen.

The bus is working out very well and we are now completly accustomed to the reasurring drone of its engine and big wheels that keep carrying us forward.

More Photos from La Esperanza

The transmitters, tower sections, and boxes of equipment were all loaded onto the bus this weekend by a hardy crew. We are finalizing some paperwork here and ready to depart on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, these inspiring photos from the transmitter site just came in from Honduras.

That Final Push

Well, we decided that we can make it to the border easily in 2 1/2 days of driving, and we all have a lot of things to do here, so we're going to leave the morning of Wed., the 25th, instead of the day before. We're still sticking to our plans to begin the border crossing negotiations on Friday afternoon -- the 27th -- which is the earliest opportunity.

SO -- This weekend, we'll finish preparing the bus and Sunday, late morning, begin loading in the big equipment. For that, we need lots of help, so if you've been hoping for an opportunity to get involved, now is it!! Call me at 217-762-9561, or email btaylor@prairienet.org, or just click on that link on the right side of this blog, if you can come, so we'll know when we have a quorum. (It will take a number of people to do this smoothly.)

We can use help doing some last-minute packing of little stuff, printing out things, etc., so it's not all heavy lifting -- In fact, with enough people, no one should have to strain. If you can't come Sunday, there's going to be preparation going on nearly constantly until we leave, so just get ahold of us via the avenues above, and there will be something you can do for sure!

Peace, Bill

The Countdown Is Holding

Well, we're on a bit of a hold, waiting mostly in the line for our customs negotiator to do the work for our crossing into Mexico. Things are shaping up well in Honduras. I hope to be able to post some new pictures of that soon. Mil gracias to the wonderful folks of COMPPA and COPINH who are doing a huge amount of work getting the infrastructure ready, gathering all the complex documents necessary get this stuff out of the U.S., through Mexico and Guatemala, and into Honduras.

Many great volunteers have done great work here as well. It's impossible to mention everyone, but here's a few -- Ben, Maya, Dave, Gabe, Danny, Lori, Noel, Bill, Adrienne and Jane. In addition, lots of people have helped over the years that it has taken to get this project together, giving money, attending concerts, doing publicity, giving moral support and working with equipment. You're wonderful. We wish you could all come and visit the construction and sign-on of La Voz Lenca, but meanwhile you can still get involved.

Our departure date is set (yes, set) on July 24th. We will arrive in Phar, TX, south of McAllen on July 27th, stay overnight at the border, and take off from Reynosa on the 28th. With good luck, we'll roar into La Esperanza about Aug. 6th. Keep watching this blog, especially after the 24th, to enjoy the adventure, at least vicariously.

Peace, Bill

Visible Progress in La Esperanza

Alas, we are still in Illinois getting equipment ready, waiting on customs clearance and taking the road test for the commercial driving license. Our partner on this project, COMPPA, has been in La Esperanza for several weeks and has been invaluable for co-ordinating things on the ground there.

The local group submitted our customs information to the Honduran government and they expect a favorable response by Tuesday. They have also been getting the site ready to install the transmitter and tower. The local group have been building the shack that will hold the transmitter and have been digging foundations for the antenna pad, as well as anchors to hold the guy wires.

They report:

The anchors are in a about square meter of concrete and tied off to a 4 foot rebar structure, the anchors themselves are equivalent to the rohn gac575501 although the bases are much heavier duty then what rohn calls for.

They did a serious foundation for the tx shack so that thing is not going to go anywhere and it should have a great base for being dry inside at least from ground level. 50cm stone foundation all the way around leaving a 3x4meter inside dimension for the whole place so that should be plenty of space. It will be a nice tx shack if it continues on the current path.

Kingpins, Frozen Nuts, and Other Diversions

When we drove the bus to Urbana from the lot in Kankakee we found that it was pulling to the right rather fiercely. We did some homework to see if we could find a simple explanation for it, but everything pointed to a more major problem that could result in a disastrous tire blowout on the highway.

With the clock ticking on our temporary license plate we drove the bus over to have the front end examined. They called us back to say that the kingpins were worn out and needed replacing. They gave us a good deal on the replacements. On Thursday I used my new learners permit to drive the bus out to the Kalyx center. It's much better behaved now.

It's now parked out at there and we are prepping it for accepting the transmitters and radio tower sections.

Of course the bolts that hold the seats down are heavily corroded from salt carried in on little pupil boots. The seats were apparently bolted into the body before it was attached to the chassis, so some of the nuts are very hard to reach behind the exhaust system and the brake lines. This is now turning into a serious obstacle to getting packed.

We are also having little luck getting the copper wire that we need to build the ground plane for the antenna. We need about 2.5 miles of the stuff. The best price we can find is $3,000 for the necessary length. If you know anyone who you think would be interested in supporting this project then please show them our donate money page.

Bill did pull off a spectacular summer solstice bon fire last week. The event was well attended, everyone brought great food to share and the fire was only rivaled by the full moon in lighting up the sky.

Bus Update

We've all had a go at driving and parking the new bus. It's big, but it's not too hard to drive. We've done a great deal of homework on the rules of the road and finally received confirmation from the DMV that we can call this a charitable vehicle (not a bus!) and can get away with Class B licenses instead of full commercial licenses. That simplifies things somewhat.

We are working on customs now to make sure we can get across the borders without any problems. The local group in Honduras are working with Honduran customs to get the bus and itemized radio equipment approved. We have to present this approval to Mexican customs to show that it will be going through Mexico. Apparently due to problems in Oaxaca no radio transmitters may be imported into Mexico.

Maya is very anxious to decorate the bus. She is soliciting ideas for messages to be painted on the bus. Any suggestions?

Hi Folks,

Sorry for the long delay on updates; It's been a full week.

WE GOT A BUS!! (You can see it at the north end of the Urbana High School parking lot over the weekend.) It's big -- 71 passenger capacity. It runs really smoothly, just needs a little work because it pulls to the right a bit. Adrienne, Maya, Jane and Ben are excitedly plotting ways to transform the interior for the trip down. We're really excited about the prospect of driving it to Honduras.

We've been getting nice donations of stuff we need. Royden Freeland of International Crystal Manufacturing in Oklahoma gave us the crystals we need to retune the transmitters to their new frequency. Many thanks Mr Freeland and to Dan Druszkowski of Andrew Corp. in Joliet who facilitated the donation of the high quality Andrew coaxial cable to connect the transmitter to the tower, another essential part of the system.

We had a bit of a scare when initial measurements of the Utopia site in La Esperanza indicated that there wasn't room for the tower for which we have a license. After some scrambling via email, our cooperante in La Esperanza, Timo of COMPPA (Comunicadores Populares Para la Autonomia), remeasured the space, and we found that we could squeeeeeze the tower in with some fudging, and it should work fine. So, now we're back on track looking for sources of miles of copper wire (literally), and sorting out who will take responsibility for what in the tower erection. Wow, email has made it so much easier to plan these projects!

Yesterday, Maya Bauer came out to the Kalyx Center to test equipment and clean it and Robin Shealy did great work streamlining the software for scanning manuals, converting the images to text and translating that to Spanish. This greatly speeds up the process of providing Spanish documentation for the transmitters and other essential equipment. THANK YOU!!

Due to complications getting the bus, the confusion about the tower site, and the quite complicated process of getting the CDL driver's licenses necessary to drive the bus to the border, we're reluctantly pushing the departure date back a bit, so there will be a Summer Solstice celebration at the Kalyx Center on Thursday night, June 21. (Yeah, I know it's crazy to add that on to all of this.)

AND, we have some more opportunities for people with any skill level to help out. We'll be working at the Kalyx Center on Tuesday this week, and on Thursday up until the Solstice Celebration. Then, the big push to pack up everything and load it into the bus on Saturday and Sunday, June 23 and 24. We'll need lots of help with that, so if you've got some time, we'd love to have you! Call me at 762-9561 or 649-9085 for directions, to get info about carpooling, and to let us know how many we can count on. THANK YOU!!

Thanks for all of the wonderful solidarity in this. We appreciate your participation in this effort!!

Peace, Bill

Workday at the Kalyx Center

A workday was held yesterday at the Kalyx center in Montecello. We spent some time discussing the logistics of the trip and working out some time lines to get everything in place.

Bill found a very good bus for us to take down to Honduras. It has a 71 seat capacity which is great for hauling down the two refrigerator-sized AM transmitters and the 10' sections of radio tower, but might be too unwieldy and costly for the Lenca group to operate after it is donated to them. We are looking for the local group to approve the bus before we go ahead.

I got a chance to see the transmitters for the first time. They were manufactured by Harris in the 70s and were the first solid state (no tubes!) transmitters made. One of the units was actually one of the first of the line. These are venerable devices to be sure. Bill is in the process of retuning them to operate in the frequency allocated by the Honduran government to La Voz Lenca. This is not as simple as turning a dial. Some components have to be replaced and coils carefully retapped.

Meanwhile, I was trying to salvage a working PC or ten out of the big pile of donated technology that Bill has acquired for the project. Some of them are modern PCs that just need some parts swapped or software installed. Others are a real trip down memory lane for an old geek such as myself.

I keep trying to remind myself that these computers are just as useful today as they were ten years ago when they were the height of high tech.

I didn't make too much progress, but Bill was very positive and pointed out how useful it is to at least know what doesn't work.

Hi Folks,

We have a new listserve, so you can get project updates sent right to your very own computer. You can sign up by following the link below right.

A bit of an update: I've been analyzing the parts of a shortwave antenna, that's been around the farm for awhile, to decide what other parts we need to reconfigure it to make the bottom of the new tower we're building in La Esperanza. If anyone wants to help out with spreading out wires, measuring, and cleaning give me a call. 762-9561 or cell 649-9085.

We're going to be doing some workdays to give anyone who wants to help out with physical stuff an opportunity. --- This week, it's all day Saturday, June 9, next week, we'll be here all day Monday, June 11. --- There's work for every skill level - scanning manuals into the computer. cleaning and painting, rebuilding equipment, analyzing computers, doing research, asking businesses for donations, etc. Call or email, or comment to this posting for directions, carpooling and to RSVP, so I know how many to expect. There's also some stuff that can be done in the comfort of your own home, online or on the phone.

The last components for retuning the transmitters just came in, so we'll start testing those shortly. Anyone wanting {increasingly rare] experience with AM transmitters is welcome to join in.

Peace, Bill

Hi Folks,

Watch for some changes in this site as we get the nuts ands bolts of it sorted out.

Right now, though, here's some nuts and bolts of our own:

A huge, urgent need: We got a very generous donation to buy a schoolbus to get all of the stuff for this project to Honduras, where the bus will left for the use of the Lencas, but we need someone with a commercial driver's license (CDL) to drive it. First, it needs to be driven from Kankakee to Monticello so it can be loaded for the trip, and then on about June 22, we go to Honduras, and need a driver at least as far as Mexico, and maybe the length of Mexico as well. Any CDLees out there?

We're also looking for a whole big gob of wire to make the ground plane of the vertical tower antenna we're building. We need bare wire, not necessarily new, and we need about 2 1/2 miles of it. So far, we've gotten a donation of 900 feet, so we only need 12,600 feet more. This stuff is HEAVY - about 300 lbs. if we get all 12 gauge wire, almost 700 lbs. at 8 gauge, so the extra weight on the bus is an important consideration. Nevertheless, this stuff is really expensive if bought at currently inflated, war caused scarcity prices. (315 feet just sold on eBay for over $100 with shipping.) Anybody have copper wire connections?

Peace, Bill

Hi Folks,

Gee, a real way to get stuff communicated, after so many years of being the Primary Communications Project. But, as Ben said up there, things are moving fast in preparing for the Lenca Radio Project. Stay tuned for ways you can be part of the excitement.

Peace, Bill

Welcome to the Primary Communications Project Blog
We have created this blog to keep project members, donors, and other interested parties up to date on the status of PCP's active projects.

We are currently preparing to drive equipment down to La Esperanza, Honduras to build La Voz Lenca (The Lenca Voice).