Lazy Day/St. Lawrence Feast Day
2006-08-10 @ 10:01 p.m.

We haven't been able to get the radio link up, despite trying continuously since this morning. This integrated summary exercise is turning out to be a real disaster! Now the people at Ama Keng are coming back to camp, so hopefully we'll be able to get the link up. The distance will be dramatically shortened, so if the link still fails to materialise, I have no idea what I'm going to do. What a stressful experience this is turning out to be! I don't think we've been doing anything wrong; everyone who's tried to help me has more experience in this area, but everything they've tried so far has failed. It's just one of those bad days, lots of interference. My friend was joking that it's because of the lunar seventh month. I'm more inclined to the opinion that all the equipment is screwed up anyway, so not getting the link up is hardly surprising. Can you believe we're actually still using radios from the 1970s? Not that all of our radios are that ancient, but you get the point, no? Sometimes I think we have unrealistic expecatations regarding the shelf life of equipment.