Damn! Foiled again.
What could I use? I was not going to give up, not when a means of communication with the outside world was so close within my grasp. I looked around the building, even inside the generator housing. It yielded a small spade, the purpose of which I didn’t give a second thought, but which was also useless. I jammed as far in the gap between the door and its frame as it would go, which was about half an inch, and attempted to crowbar the door open. The end of the spade simply went ‘nice try, mate’ and snapped off.
Despondent, I had a swing of rum. I’d left the crowbar I’d found in the janitor’s closet back at the Sun Royal. Not it seemed my only option was to head back to one of the villages and seek out another one to jimmy this bastard open. I got about fifty metres back down the hill before something occurred to me. Surely not, I laughed to myself, but headed back up to the station and tried the door handle. With a loud creak the door opened.
The inside of the station was so dark and cool I could have been a mile underground. The tiny room smelled of oil and was clearly not meant for human habitation. There was a bank of two high frequency equipment racks as tall as a man with more buttons and knobs than a commercial cockpit. There were three white boxes on the wall which I presumed was the switchover unit from mains power to the generator or solar bank. There was a small chair in the corner and a desk at which sat a PC monitor which would contain the software for the automatic control communications when the system was online. Beside that, PAY DIRT! A CB radio… My instincts were right.
I examined the equipment racks first of all. At the rear was a pretty mighty looking selection of wires that ultimately culminated in a power distribution unit. This itself fed into a grounding bus bar and from there into a power socket on the wall. I flicked the ‘on’ switch round the front but of course nothing happened. It was still connected to the mains.
I went outside and hoisted myself up onto the roof to check out the solar panels and see if they were at least connected. There was a small yellow box sheltering underneath them, the inverter unit, and they looked in pretty good shape. A wire fed directly through the roof roughly above where the switchover unit was. This was a good sign. The only problem was that the array was pretty small, it couldn’t be giving off more than a kilowatt of power which would be good enough to run a kettle or a TV but I reckoned would struggle with the high powered equipment inside.
I re-entered the station, breathed deeply and flicked the power switch on the solar unit. For a split second nothing happened. Then the strip light above me blinked into life, blinked off again, then came on permanently.
I hooted with joy.
I leapt in the air and almost cracked my head on the ceiling.
It worked!
I was sore amazed, as the bible quoth. Quickly I hit the light switch to turn off the strip as I could see fine with the daylight coming through the fully open door and didn’t want to run down the supply.
I turned my attention to the CB radio. CBs are used mainly for short-distance communications between individuals rather than commercial use. They’re like powerful walkie-talkies that anyone can use as they don’t require a license. They usually have a selection of 40 channels but because they run on a two-way system only one station can transmit at a time. The other stations must listen and wait for the shared channel to be available. They’re used all over the world by truckers, delivery men, and anyone who needs to regularly communicate job site and main office. The working range can be anywhere between one to 20 miles depending on terrain. I was confident that with the line of sight location of the transmitter station this CB would transmit the maximum range.
I ripped the PC monitor plug out of the socket and plugged in the CB. Thankfully it was a fairly modern one with a digital display and automatic scanning feature. It blinked into life over an agonising ten seconds. If I kept everything else turned off in the station I saw no reason why the solar panels couldn’t infinitely sustain the CB during daylight hours.
I had a plan. It was the longest of long shots and counted on there being somebody else within a range of 20 to 25 miles on the island. Somebody who had access to and knew how to use a CB radio.
Looking at the map there were a number of built up, sizeable towns within that range; the resorts of Puerto Del Carmen, Costa Teguise and, perhaps most importantly, the capital city Arrecife. I reckoned the odds were about one in 14 billion, but I wanted to give it a try anyway.
The big downside was that I didn’t have any recording equipment. In a perfect world I would have a tape recorder into which to speak a message and then broadcast on loop from dawn until dusk in the hope somebody picked it up.
I was going to have to broadcast my own voice indefinitely, and that meant a lot of speaking. First things first though, I tried a spurt message.
I tuned the CB to channel 19. Out of the standard 40 channels this was the middle band and therefore had the best antenna efficiency. It was able to transmit the furthest.
I spoke loudly and clearly.
“Mayday. Mayday. This is an emergency broadcast to anyone picking up. If anyone is listening please respond. Current location two miles south of Uga in elevated transmitting station. Will stay here until further notice. Please respond on channel 19. Out.”
I repeated myself a few times. It was impossible to tell but it seemed like the CB was working. Sitting idle there was a slight hiss, which disappeared when I pressed transmit and spoke. This indicated that it was transmitting and potentially able to receive an incoming broadcast.
I waited for half an hour while sipping a little brandy. It felt nice to be in the cool shack out of the heat. The sun looked to be at its highest point so I assumed it was around 1pm. Lunchtime. I realised I was famished and wolfed down three bread rolls and some cheese while scrolling through the other channels. My heart leapt up my gullet on Channel 13 when it sounded like I heard something other than static. It could have been my ears playing tricks but it sounded like a car starting, or perhaps a large crowd all talking at once. It was there for a fleeting millisecond and then disappeared. I kept tuned to 13 for the next twenty minutes but the sound did not reappear.
I spurted the message again a couple of times on 19 to no avail. After a couple more sips of brandy I started to drift off with the low static hum in the background, but luckily just as I was about to slip into sleep I slipped off the chair and woke myself up.
I wondered if my percentage would decrease if I had a little siesta. I decided it was worth writing off a couple of percent to find out, as if I could have daily lunchtime nap it would make my life much more pleasant. The real reason was I wouldn’t then have to worry about having a couple of glasses of wine at lunch. I decided to put off the experiment for now.
I sat, scanning the channels for what seemed like a couple of hours. I re-broadcast my mayday message every half an hour or so, then when I started to get really bored I did it every five minutes on each channel. By around four o’clock I’d probably spoken the damn message a hundred times, and realised it wasn’t doing any good. I needed that looped recording device.
It had been a pretty productive day in all. I checked the map and saw I was equidistant between Playa Blanca and Puerto Del Carmen, and played with the idea of heading to a new town for the night. In the end I decided to stick with what I knew. I would head back to the Sun Royal, have a slap up meal and a few beers, and then in the morning would hunt for a digital Walkman or something that I could use to record my broadcast and play it back on loop. I had a half hour walk back to my bike and with the downhill run I reckoned about another half hour max to cycle back to Playa Blanca.