In Nicaragua on the new day job.

February 27, 2006:  This posting is from the Holiday Inn Select in Managua, Nicaragua.  There ain't no free lunch, just the continental breakfast.  What that means is the high-speed internet service is about fifteen dollars a day for web access.  Oh, well -- what can I say?  Three days here will cost the same as a whole month of web access back home.  I guess I better get my money's worth out of this first day!

The ride from Atlanta to San Salvador was no big deal.  I did see some familiar territory south of Atlanta as I looked out to the west at the Columbus, Georgia area.  I could even see the grass strip that belongs to Larry Westbrook near the small town of Lumpkin, Georgia.  After we passed Tallahassee, Florida, the Gulf of Mexico was all there was to see until we crossed part of Mexico.  The mountains to the south were a bit more rugged and not much flat land to see.  The layover was about five hours until the TACA flight to Managua, Nicaragua.

March 5, 2006: This past week was spent on a business trip in Managua, Nicaragua.  The Miss Nicaragua beauty pageant had a number of beautiful young ladies staying at my hotel beginning on Wednesday during the week.   Miss Universe (Canada) was in town for the festivities.  The press was all over her with photographers and video when she would arrive and depart the hotel.   The one time I was waiting with my camera, she was late coming down before we had to leave the hotel.

My day job was introducing the largest cable television company in the country to our fiber optic node and transmitter package.  This photo shows the node installed on the same concrete pole with a standby power supply, the large gray box on the other side of the pole.  I took this picture on Thursday, March 2nd.  The usual delays in customs delayed the delivery of the equipment until around noon time on Wednesday.   The headend unit was connected for status monitoring on Wednesday afternoon, but was not connected via optical fiber until just before we went out to the field on the site shown in the pictures below.

Before going up the ladder, the technicians have a short discussion, in Spanish of course.

The node location is adjacent to a gated residential community seen to the right.  The road is paved with interlocking concrete stones.

The technician is wearing a safefy harness as he stands near the top of the ladder.  He is checking the received laser power level (light intensity) with an optical power meter.  Another technician back at the headend is attenuating the brightness of the light coming from the laser transmitter to account for the short length of the fiber optic cable from the headend to this location.

After the setup of the node is complete and the RF output signals are set, the tech who spoke English the best, is briefed and translated the results for me about this location.  The end result for this installation had the output levels within 1 dB of normal output.  The resolution of the test equipment is 1 dB, therefore, it is correct for all practical purposes.

After a Friday morning meeting at their headend for some final evaluation and training, I headed back to the airport to catch my flight to Atlanta on Delta Airlines.   The new passenger terminal is still being finished and will be quite modern when completed.  Most of the departure level is completed and is as good as any terminal in the world.  The picture below is taken as the Boeing 737-800 taxied toward the runway.  This ramp area shown is for the commuter airlines that fly into the smaller back-country strips.  There are a couple of Shorts twin turboprops, and a Cessna Caravan shown in the photo.  The modern terminal building is just out of the picture to the right.

This abandoned classic old passenger air terminal and control tower sits in front of the air freight terminal buildings at the left of this photo.

This older Russian-built cargo plane was sitting on the ramp near the entry way to the military ramp on the airport.