Three new FM sites reaching Cusco and surrounds and our next steps

 Sunday 12 Jun 2022

This update is well overdue since my last post.  This has been a busy period for our family, moving city again to now settle in Western Australia.  We feel incredibly blessed to finally own a house again, giving needed stability for our kids (especially our teens and early twenties) and a base from which we can continue mission work in future with short term trips.  After Christmas holidays with Sandi’s family (who all live in WA) we moved in early January and since then I have been busy most weekends with a list of things to fix or change to suit our needs.  Including fixing a broken air conditioner and garden bore pump during a WA record heatwave J.

We have really enjoyed being close to Sandi’s family in WA and enjoying the benefits of some house permanency.  Being able to unpack all our boxes for the first time in 6 years is a luxury!

I last reported Sicuani FM 104.1 MHz in Peru went to air from 30 October 2021 albeit initially only with a temporary generator.  It now operates on mains power as the power lines with 13 poles and transformer were finished and finally connected to the state grid on 31 December, some 2 months later.  In the interim, one of the Centro de Medios staff, Isaac Panez, travelled the 5km from the city of Sicuani up the mountain road to the tower early morning every day to start the generator and sit with it until evening. 

Our Sicuani FM site pictured in early evening overlooking the city. Building works can be seen on the security guard hut at the front of the main compound

Some of the many avid Quechua Indian listeners of Diospi Suyana FM – these ladies of Sicuani called in this week (9 June) to say they are greatly encouraged and listen intently sometimes as late as 2am. Diospi receives 1000s of such support messages every month.

Then in March this year, much to our disappointment, the Intelsat satellite signal dropout problems that I referred to in my last post, returned again.  Recalling these issues plagued us from October through November 2021 and I had spent countless hours remotely supporting Diospi but the problem eluded us before it suddenly stopped.

I set to work again in March and expended a significant amount of time over the subsequent months (my evenings and weekends) trying to fix this with only remote network access and technical staff on the ground in Peru tying various solutions.  This included working with the Intelsat Network Operations Centre (NOC) in Miami.  Our work was hampered by a failure of the spectrum analyser test instrument that I supplied to Diospi Suyana back in 2016.  The faulty part was found to be a dead display power module in the analyser.  This was identified by the German hospital medical department technician, and was ordered from the factory of Rhode & Schwarz in Germany.  However it would take months to arrive due to supply delays.  The part arrived and it was fixed a few weeks ago on 19 May.

In the meantime back in March, we had to hire in another spectrum analyser and the services of its engineer owner, Mr Luis Condori, from Lima.  I enjoy working with Luis as he is a good radio engineer and speaks English well J.  We still could not identify the original problem as it was clear we needed a C-Band satellite test loop translator – a very specialised test instrument but such equipment is not in Peru (we looked far and wide in Lima to hire one, but no luck).  I hunted global markets online and found the right product for the right performance and price in the UK, which Diospi Suyana agreed to purchase.  I also found the needed transmission waveguide coupler components online and Diospi purchased that also. 

The Peak Communications C-Band test loop translator and waveguide coupler (above) will enable us to identify the source of the dropout problems in our iBUC equipment or on the Intelsat satellite.

This type of equipment is invariably built to order specification and given COVID supply delays, it will take 3 months to arrive.  So we wait patiently on that front.  In the meantime Luis and I found a work-around to somewhat reduce the occurrence of the satellite dropouts to tide us over.

So what’s next you ask?  Diospi Suyana moves ahead at pace with 3 new FM licenses have been purchased by Dr Klaus John from the government telecommunications regulator, MTC Peru.  These sites are Cusco 102.0 MHz, Urcos 100.9 MHz and Anta 90.9 MHz. 

Dr Klaus and Doris Manco set to work in the Diospi Hilux 4WD to locate suitable transmission sites for these which they provided to me by GPS coordinates so I could do preliminary checks with Google Earth 3D.  Once settled on and an agreement in principle was struck with the land owner to purchase the lot, I engaged SonSet Solutions in the US as previously, to do the computer FM coverage modelling and confirm the population reach.  Here is a summary table of the 3 new Diospi FM sites: 

Actual Site Name	Diospi Site ID	Altitude (metres)	Tower Height (metres)	FM Frequency (MHz)	Licensed FM Tx Power (W)	Population Calculated
Cusco	CUSC	3,956	36	102.0	500	463,362
Urcos	URCO	3,521	40	100.9	500	286,467
Anta	ANTA	3,872	36	90.9	500	395,970

The Urcos site was purchased early in the piece and has since been constructed to my site plan AutoCAD.  Now finished, it is void of equipment – see my comments below.  Regarding the Cusco site, there have been delays purchasing the identified lot of land from local owners.  And the Anta site awaits settlement. 

An example of our computer FM coverage prediction for Urcos (green = strong signal, yellow = weak but OK) provided by SonSet Solutions

Having completed preliminary design work to determine what we need, I set to work specifying all the detailed equipment lists with our suppliers in a bunch of countries;

1.  Italy for our FM transmitters, pre-installed equipment racks, antennas, RF feeder cable and connections (DB Broadcast)
2. USA for our satellite antennas, LNBs, cables and connectors (Viking Satcom)
3. Canada for our satellite audio receivers (IDC)
4. Germany for our satellite telemetry equipment (ND Satcom)
5. Australia for our RF lightning suppression (Novaris)
6. UK for our satellite test loop translator (Peak Communications)
7. USA for waveguide coupler (Sat BBC)

All of the equipment ordered by Diospi Suyana.  As for the previous two sites (Abancay and Sicuani), the DB Broadcast order includes my custom cabled and fully pre-installed equipment racks to enable a plug and play install on site in Peru.  All in all, I believe I have spent 100s of hours supporting Diospi Suyana since my last post.

Next steps… I am planning to return to Peru for a 3 week period this year to complete as much of the specialised satellite work that I can.  The schedule is still fluid due to slipping delivery schedules for the equipment (attributed to COVID and now the war in Ukraine causing various component supply delays) but now looking like November.  And if so, I could take Isaac (18) back with me as he would dearly like to go to assist me as he loves engineering stuff.  Our agenda would be to;

• fix the satellite dropout issues (using the new test loop translator instrument)
• commission into operation the 4 satellite telemetry equipment awaiting my return (Puno, Abancay, Sicuani and Urcos)
• general transmission maintenance where possible

The other thing we need to complete is the collection of remaining personal belongings from our Peru household which we left behind in April 2019 thinking we would soon be back (but COVID changed those plans).  Since then our good German mission friends, Jens and Damaris Hassfeld, have kept our many belongings in their house.  However their long term mission is ending this month and they will return to Germany to live with their four kids, and they must vacate their house in Curahuasi.  Damaris and Sandi have together spent many, many hours going through box after box and identifying what to sell, give or keep for me to collect later this year. 

We are always thankful for your prayers and are trusting that God is unfolding a way forward for our work to continue.  And so excited to be planning short term work trips to compliment Chris’ remote support from Australia.

Chris