Antenna Repair

 As you all know, the transmitter site was hit by Typhoon Dolphin back in mid-May.  It is definitely past time to inform you all about how the repairs are going!  The week after the typhoon hit, we immediately went into recovery mode.  We contacted local churches to assemble crews of volunteers to come out and help with the repairs.  We also had our friend, Sterling, come out from the States to help with the antenna rigging.  It was encouraging and exciting to see so many people sacrifice time and energy to help with the difficult task of getting the antenna back up and running!

The first major task was to lower the broken antenna.  Sterling and Andrew climbed the antenna towers to attach clamps to the top support cable of the antenna.  They disconnected the broken antenna and reflector screen from the towers, and the team used a system of cables and pulleys to slowly lower the antenna safely to the ground.


Once the antenna reached the ground, our hearty crew of volunteers worked to separate the screen from the antenna (above).  The act of lowering everything down at once, while the safer option, caused the screen and the antenna to get tangled up.  It took a few hours of careful puzzle-solving to separate the two.

After we separated the antenna and the reflector screen, our crew went to work scouring the antenna dipoles and replacing any broken pieces (left).  Next, we patched the antenna dipoles back together and slowly raised the antenna back up, row by row (below).

A week after Typhoon Dolphin damaged our antenna, we were back up and running!  We are grateful for all the volunteers' help, thankful for no major injuries, and we praise God that the switch matrix allowed us to shift programming around in order to minimize the loss of air time!

Finished!