2nd Job 2nd Week

Today we went up to the Boutillier tower site to begin work. It involved a trip to Eko Depot for more parts. That took about 4 hours or so. We spent a solid hour in traffic on the way there. The traffic to Petionville was also very heavy, but we were all entrenched in work up there by about noon. We installed the batteries that have been delivered so far, but not all have arrived and we are hopeful to see the rest tomorrow. We installed some panels on the wall, and since EDH (Electricite deHaiti the Haitian Utility) was off line all the time we were there we were able to tie in some of the leads while they were not turned on rather than the expected need to tie them in "hot". This was a blessing. We had to leave up there by about 3:30 PM to come down as it started to rain and several of us were going to be riding in the open back of the pickup truck in the rain. We are going to leave earlier tomorrow morning and are hopeful that the time spent there will be very fruitful. The only picture I took today was of a new Muslim mosque under construction, seemingly a very new thing in Haiti.

A New Week

Today we went to the House Church again for our church service. It was a blessing. After the service we ate lunch at a nearby restaurant that the team in January had stopped at. The food was very good but still reasonably priced. After lunch we drove through some of the city that is still showing signs of great destruction from the earthquake. Much of the city is getting very well cleaned up and the electrical service appears to be strong throughout the entire city. The streets leave a lot to be desired, but they are also being worked on all the time. There is great hope for this city.

One week down, One to go

One week ago today we arrived in Haiti. We did not know how things would go with the radio station project, but were confident we would be able to get it finished in a week. That worked out well and we had yesterday to begin work at Boutillier. That was helpful for us and we are anxious to get started again this week. The project looks like it mitght take two or three days to complete. We will leave early Monday mo0rning to go to Eko Depot to pick up the parts we now know we need to do the job right. Then we will split into pairs and Don & Art will start putting the jumpers onto the new batteries and Michael and I will work on the electrical system modifications. These will be significant and will require us to take the station off the air for some of them. We would appreciate your prayers for safety in the work as well as safety in the extensive travel to and from the site each day. As planned today we hired a driver to take us to Berci Cabaret to look at the progress of the new CPR-3 headquarters there. The first floor is devices, but previous tams did a fine job of roughing in the wiring. The roof is not on yet and CPR-3 is waiting on advice from us at I-TEC as to the angle and sizes of the roof areas. We will begin calculating the loads and will come up with a relatively good estimate for fundraising for CPR-3 by May 15 (that is our target for an estimate). As CPR-3 raises funding, it is likely that I-TEC will provide a team of volunteers to do the Solar Power Installation at some time in the future. We are not sure if this would be in 2012 or 2013, but it is very likely within those dates. The driver we hired is a very good Haitian cab driver. He had his mother in the passenger seat when we struck out and we deposited her at the airport for a trip to New York. Some of the area we traversed was through some very dangerous territory patrolled by police and the UN, but we never felt unsafe. It is definitely better to be inside a locked vehicle in these areas than to be outside. We got to see some very pretty countryside, as well as lots of temporary housing for people displaced by the earthquake. Tomorrow we will head across town to the House Church we visited last Sunday. We have no plans for anything after lunch, which will be in a nearby restaurant. I am expecting to get some good reading time in.

Tower Site

Today we reprogrammed the new inverters to be sure they will perform as expected and the system is working fine as far as we know. We are running current tests on the system to be sure of the needs and to see if we need to make any modifications. After this we loaded up equipment, tools and ourselves and traveled up to the Boutillier site. We spent the day there removing unused electrical equipment and planning how we will attack the facility to make the new inverter and battery installation perform as well as at the radio station. At this site the critical power load is higher than at the radio station, but we have only half the inverter power. So we are planning what materials we might need to make the system up there mirror the radio station for possibly doubling the inverter power sometime in the future. This is going to require us to take the station off the air several times and add circuit breaker panels to provide the proper circuit protection that is missing at present. This rewiring should take us about a day to complete, the new battery installation will take about a day. So we are thinking we will be completed up there on Wednesday. After that we will be working at the Stereo92 FM station in Petionville. Today was a good day and we are thankful for the safety on the roads. Tomorrow, Saturday, we are taking a side trip to Caberet (about 45 minutes on the far side of the airport) to meet with some representatives from CPR-3, another mission based in Lancaster County, PA that is doing work here in Haiti. This is a survey trip and Tom Garber and Dan O'Deans and I met together several months ago to discuss the possibility of I-TEC involvement in their project. It is not clear if this will turn into a project here or if we will just be acting as consultants. f time permits we may also visit a site of a third mission called Servants, based in Hellam, PA. This site is near CPR-3's site, but it is unclear at present if we will be able to get there or if it is necessary to visit the site since it is not very far along. We will need some wisdom on both of these especially since we will be venturing out on our own without any escort from Radio Lumiere. We trust the Lord for our safety and that we will not get lost. No pictures today, but we hope to post some tomorrow after the survey trip.

Rain

Today is Thursday and we pretty well completed our work at Cote Plage on the new Inverter system. After some testing we made a final wiring change and the battery bank should be up full by now. I am sure the power will go off during the night so it will get tested right away. We finished what we were doing and went for lunch around 1:30. After lunch we headed out to the Eko Depot which is a Haitian version of Home Depot. Traffic was exceptionally heavy because of some closed roads and it took us 1-1/2 hours to make the 9 mile trip. We thought we might not get there before they close at 4 PM, but we ended up getting there by about 3:40 PM and found out they are open until 4:30, so we had ample time. We were able to find all of the parts we wanted to begin working on the mountain at the Boutillier Repeater site, and we are expecting to go there starting tomorrow. It has rained almost every day since we are here and today's rain was exceptionally heavy. The trip back from Eko Depot took us 3 hours, and we spent the best part of 1 hour getting through a single intersection, one of at least 3 that were gridlocked. The rainwater was rushing down the streets so fast that we drove through several sections of deep water, probably over the floorboards in depth. Amazingly many Haitians are afraid to drive through some of these "lakes". We feel bad for the street vendors who are coping with such downpours and who are getting very wet and cold standing in water up over their ankles in many instances. Some of the streets looked like I should have jumped right in with my kayak, as they had some pretty good rollers (waves). I didn't see any boats though. One just never knows how deep the puddles are or if there are any deeper potholes covered by water or perhaps a manhole cover missing here or there. You could lose a wheel in something like that... Paul said it would not be right to not experience an adventure while here and this was certainly an adventure. It would be good to have something that has high ground clearance here, but most of the vehicles are small and my truck would be hard to maneuver in such conditions. Tomorrow we will begin our work at Boutillier. I am thinking we might have 3 or 4 days of work up there, but it could go well and be less time, as the travel to and from there will take a big chunk out of each day we are there. If we get finished there we will look at and possibly tackle some work at the Stereo92.9 FM station in Pitionville. We will let you know if tomorrow is another "adventure".

Success!

After checking our settings we were able to qualify the voltage on the Inverters and the system is presently up and running. PTL! It just took some prayer and some level-headedness. Today we will keep running tests and plan on running out to a store for crimp lugs for the Boutillier project. We are expecting that perhaps tomorrow we will head up there and begin. Travel around the city seems back to normal from a few days ago, so we are happy about that but will still be cautious. Programming a system in Haiti is like having someone breathing down you back all the time, but it is rewarding to see smiles on these men when a plan comes together.

Wednesday

Wednesday was a pretty good day. We finished installing all of the equipment on the walls by the new Inverters, created some CAD drawings of the new battery layout and the power flow for future reference. The Haitian men painted the plywood that the batteries would sit on and we ate lunch waiting for the paint to dry. The weather was rainy again. In the afternoon we positioned the batteries on the rack and began making the interconnections. This was completed by about 4:00 PM, after which we began to work at getting the Inverters working according to plan. For some reason the Master Inverter will not qualify the voltage and begin charging, so we shut the system down and decided to start fresh on that Thursday morning. We would appreciate your prayers about this because there is always a possibility we have faulty equipment. But we are hopeful that it is just a setting that needs attended to. Anyway, I am writing this post Thursday morning at the guest house while there is limited Internet. I will post later in the day to let you know how things turned out. We are anxious, but God has it all in His control and we need to rest in that.

Batteries

Some of the work we have done since yesterday morning was to: 1. Install an isolation transformer into the panel feed for the Inverter Room 2. Install the new Inverters onto the wall along with the peripherals 3. Install a power bypass so we could remove the old Inverters and batteries 4. The old batteries were removed 5. The concrete shelf that held one layer of batteries was removed 6. New Batteries finally showed up The old battery room looks like the result of a major earthquake and the wall where we installed the new Inverters needs patched as it was severely damaged...

The new batteries arriving on site is a good thing!

The isolation transformer is located by the Main Panels and Automatic Transfer Switches.

By end of today we hope to have the new battery rack in place and the batteries positioned on it. We will keep you posted.

Monday Monday

Today we traveled to Radio Lumiere as planned to begin work on the Battery and Inverter system. Traffic was light to non-existent, and we found out that the streets in the city were mostly blocked and that the police were on strike dues to their desire for justice for losing three of their colleagues in the last few weeks. This type of stoppage has crippled the city and schools were closed and there were no deliveries of any kind. We were expecting delivery of our new batteries for the radio station and that has not materialized. We are hopeful that Tuesday the unrest might be less and that we might receive the needed equipment. We did not feel threatened as we traveled to the station nor did we feel any danger upon returning to the guest house, so we are thankful to the Lord for this protection. We are hopeful for the same tomorrow. We did quite a bit of preliminary work today and should have the jumper cables for connecting the battery bank completed and ready to use by noon tomorrow. If batteries show up we will begin installation. The new shelving for the batteries is complete and painted and ready to be moved into the room when the old batteries are taken out. We will be taking the existing batteries and inverters out of service in the morning and so it would be nice to have the new ones as soon as possible. Art sliced his finger with his utility knife this morning and we are glad for the first aid kits we brought along. We were able to get him fixed up pretty well with what we had. Welcome to working with tools...

The kitchen crew at the radio station was very much afraid about the unrest in the city and treated us to a very early lunch, so that they could all go home. We will see if they come back tomorrow… I has rained most of the day and a steady rain like this is somewhat unusual as we hear that most rains are torrential downpours that come and go quickly. The city is getting a lot of its trash flushed down the drains…I hear that northern PA was under a snow watch for up to 24” of snow! Seems late in the year for that. Hope you are all doing OK. No pictures again but I will make a point of it tomorrow at the station. (if we get there). I am actually posting this Tuesday morning as Internet was so slow last night I could not get on it. As I sit here I can periodically hear a turkey gobbling among all of the roosters crowing closer by. /That plus the car horns make up the ambient .noise in this very large city

Sunday

Today we went with Paul to an English speaking church. It was a very enjoyable service with several very good choices of praise music and a good message on the 20 Commandments that gave us a very diferent perspective on this important document. After church we went to the Caribe Hotel for lunch. After that we drove up the mountain to about 3500; elevation to the repeater tower where we will be working week two. We looked at the existing installation and will be re-looking at the photos of it this week so that we can come up with the right amount of tools and supplies.

We drove through the city and were again given a sense of awe as to the destruction of buildings and life that were a result of the 2010 earthquake. Tomorrow we will begin our work at the radio station. The pictures here are just a sample of the city and an existing battery bank similar to what we will be doing at the station starting tomorrow.

Well, that picture took 20 minutes to upload, so I will try to do a better job once we get to the radio station

In the case of emergency we can be reached on my cell phone at 01150947686091. This might cost you a few dollars a minute to call here, but we can call the US much cheaper. FYI

Saturday night

We are now in Haiti and have finished our dinner at the OMS Vill Ormiso Guest ZHouse where we are all four sharing a single room. The weather is very nuch hotter than when we were here in January, and the humidity is pretty high. The flights were all good even though our flight from Atlanta to Haiti was delayed a bit due to strong weather in the South. The trip out over the ocean had some real turbulence, We will be eating or breakfast at 7 AM in the morning and then will go to an English speaking church. After that we are going up to the mountaintop tower site to look at what materials we will need during the second week. We noticed the cleanup of earthquake debris is moving along well and some of the tent cities are even being scaled back somewhat. We still traveled through a section of town that is very dirty and has a lot of garbage in the streets and sidewalks. Not a sanitary place at all and it must be awful for those who have to live and do business in it. Maybe we will get some pictures on the blog tomorrow. Internet is very slow here and I am writing this in a word processor hoping to post at another time.

On the way

We got up pretty early today and left the house around 4:40 AM. Got through security and only thought of one thing I forgot so far...Called Don when we landed here at Atlanta and he has what we need, PTL! This photo looks like a couple of guys who just got up... Next stop Port au Prince.

Going back!

When we left Port au Prince back in January, we felt pretty good about the amount of work that got finished and the team that traveled together back then had a wonderful experience. Near the end of the trip we had word that funding was coming in for Phase II of the project and the mission felt ready to move ahead with the next step. So, here we are heading back. This time there are only four of us going. Don and I were there in January and this time we have Michael and Art joining us. As I write this I am packing the suitcases with tools and supplies for the trip. We will be installing a brand new bank of batteries at Radio Lumiere, as well as two new Inverters. This vastly updated system should allow the radio station to remain on the air for many hours during the daily power outages. Unfortunately we will be knocking the radio station off the air while we are doing the upgrade from time to time, but hopefully the local Haitian Utility will be cooperative and remain on line while we have the old inverters and batteries out of service. That is our prayer anyway, but as it happened last time there will inevitably be times when the station is off air for awhile. If all goes well at the station we will spend the second week in Boutillier at the main repeater station, installing new batteries and reconfiguring existing inverters and possibly fixing up some of the wiring issues up there. The tower at Boutillier can be seen from the radio station in Carrefour, but it is a 3500' climb and about two hours driving time to get there. We are trusting the Lord for safety and for the work to go well. We are very hopeful that the work we did in January is still in good operating condition. Our flight out of Harrisburg is at 6:35 AM tomorrow, Saturday. If everything is on schedule we touch down in Port au Prince at 1:20 PM. We will keep you posted.