Return to Andahuylas and Chincheros (Day 1)

Wednesday, 7 June 2017

Return to Andahuylas and Chincheros (Day 1)

09 March 2017

The Diospi Suyana transmission “site selection team” (Klaus, Udo, Doris and me) again drive back to Andahuylas (about 5 hours’ drive west of Curahuasi) and then onto Chincheros (a further 2 hours’ drive on from Andahuylas).

On this trip we firstly inspected the Andahuylas FM Tx site civil construction work by our subcontractor, as overseen by Udo Klemenz.

I am standing in front of the Andahuylas transmission site tower foundation excavations.

Udo reported the following regarding Andahuylas: “– we can definitely be pleased with the progress. The four tower pits dug in rocky subsoil, in which the foundations for the tower will be laid, have been excavated and are currently being reinforced.”

The steel tower foundation bolt template is in place awaiting the rebar steel mesh and then the concrete pour.

All excavations (some 2.5m deep) are in difficult rocky ground and are done by hand – unthinkable in developed countries.

And then we drove onto Chincheros to select a new transmission FM site as I realised from further study that the initial choice was inadequate in coverage to the city of Uripa – being one of two main population areas of Chincheros Province. It was blocked in that direction by a large hill and there was no practical solution to overcome this. This trip I had some good options that shows to be viable from my desktop studies. Lessons learnt - from this point forward I will ensure our homework is done before we head out into the field.

In my following post I continue with day 2 news from Chincheros Province.

As an adjunct to Udo’s weekly building report, we also report on a development with the Curahuasi broadcast site. The local electrical utility Electro Sur, are finally erecting the poles up to our broadcast site. Note the way the pole is being rigged into place (i.e. using the nearby tree!).