Work Day 5

Fri Feb 26

This may not look like much, but it took us all week to complete. Behind the two yellow pipes shown is a piece of 7mm checker plate. To weld the cracked chassis and the checker plate in place, we needed to remove the tank in front of it and a myriad of covers, hoses and pipes. Chris did most of the work. I was his spanner weilding, brute force applying apprentice for most of the job.

We also welded a plate in here, and on the bucket where it had punched through the arm. Normal wear and tear on a high use machine.

This baby is now ready for digging holes for the antenna stays.

If the weather is still wet next week, we will continue to work in the shed - constructing the base sections of two towers. If it clears up, we will continue our previous work in the top paddock dismantling the fallen antenna and salvaging what we can.

These are the high voltage lines going out to the three existing antennas. An interesting phenomenon happened yesterday... all of a sudden, voices were booming across the paddock. This lasted for almost a minute and then silence.

We asked the techs about it and it turns out that sometimes the antennas, or the power poles act like the drivers in speakers. This is not good for the transmitter because they arc when they do this. Apparently you can sometimes see a large ball of green light around the arc point.

Peter said sometimes his bed lamp begins conducting and gives an eery voice. Scary!!!

These last 3 photos are from inside the transmitter building. Photo 1 - Transmitter 2 (TX2)

Photo 2 - computer and monitor racks for the transmitters. Photo 3 - Chris Webb writing down a fault on the TX2 screen so the techs can look at it later.

In this room, dust, ants, grasshoppers, gheckos and spiders all take their turns in trying to make a home.