Monthly Archives: July 2015

2015/07/31 (F) A Blue Moon Family Gathering

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As soon as Linda got up this morning she busied herself making collard greens cole slaw while I made our morning coffee.  Once the cole slaw was assembled and in the refrigerator we had breakfast.  We were due at our daughter and son-in-law’s house later in the afternoon for a family gathering so we decided not to take on any overtly physical tasks today.  We both got cleaned up instead and settled in to more sedentary tasks.

Linda has been getting somewhat regular text messages from Mara apprising us of her travels and I have been getting text messages from Jarel with photographs of the progress on the construction of our custom walnut desk/workstation for the bus.  Linda worked at her desk and I worked in my office transferring the photos from my phone to my computer and working on the design/drawings for the built-in sofa.

Linda restarted her Samsung laptop computer (for some reason that I do not recall) and was presented with a choice of four user profiles for logging in.  One was hers, one was named ‘Diane,’ and two of them where random letters.  Until that moment we were unaware that these other accounts existed on her machine.  She selected her usual account and logged in.  I checked my ASUS laptop computer and discovered that I also had a user profile named ‘John’ of which I was unaware.  We noted that we have, coincidentally, been good friends with a couple named John and Diane for 36 years.

I e-mailed Mike (W8XH) to ask him about this situation.  He is a friend from our local SLAARC ham radio club who works part time as an independent computer service provider and has become our ‘go to’ guy for computer issues that do not involve the bakery software or VPN.  Because he is often working during the day I do not always hear back from him immediately, but we knew we would see him at breakfast tomorrow and decided not to do anything until we had talked to him.

We plinked away at our tasks until it was time to get ready to go to the family gathering.  Brendan and Shawna were headed ‘up north’ and needed to borrow a few things.  We had previously gathered up our portable induction cooker and battery powered camp lantern and loaded these in the Element along with the Thule car top carrier.  We loaded the cole slaw, a bottle of wine for dinner, and a bag with a couple of gift bottles of wine and cards for Brendan and Shawna’s upcoming birthdays, and headed for Dexter.

Meghan and Chris are very interested in professional sports and today at 4 PM EDT was the trading deadline for 2015 Major League Baseball season.  That’s a big deal if you are really into professional baseball.  They had the radio on when we arrived and were following the trading action closely.

Meghan had obviously been hard at work on dinner preparations long before we arrived.  She and Chris had acquired a Sous Vide, a countertop appliance for cooking foods in sealed bags immersed in hot water, and she was cooking country style pork ribs with two different sauces. The bags had been in the Sous Vide for over 24 hours and from comments during dinner the meat was obviously very moist, tender, and tasty.  Meghan had also prepared tempeh for us.  She had soaked it and then pan grilled it with the same two sauces; a classic bar-b-que and a mustard.  Except for the meat everything else was vegan; collard greens cole slaw, corn-on-the-cob, potato salad.  Meghan had a pudding bar for dessert that included vegan tapioca and chocolate puddings in addition to regular chocolate pudding, and lots of toppings.

Before dinner Brendan and I tried to figure out a way to mount the Thule car top carrier on their Subaru Outback but it became clear fairly quickly that we did not have the correct adapters and could not engineer a way around that.  There was no possibility of buying them at this point so we put it back in our car to take home.

Grand-daughter Katie and boyfriend Josh arrived late having run into traffic on their drive back from Iowa.   Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline were still there but getting ready to leave.  After introductions Katie and Josh had dinner.  Meghan then got out the “Ticket To Ride” board game.  We played one complete game with me and Linda working as a team.  This is Katie’s favorite game and she came in first.  Katie is very bright but is also, apparently, very competitive.  This was a side of her we had not seen previously.

By the time we were done it was dark so we all gathered up our things and bid each other fair well.  It was a clear night and the full moon had just risen and now shone brightly over the land.  It was a Blue Moon, the second full moon of the month, and the kind of evening that you could see well enough to go for a midnight hike in the woods.  The next Blue Moon will be in January 2018, so that are not common events.

 

20150730GP H3-40 Custom Desk Build

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Here are a few photos of the new desk for our bus in the process of being built.  All photos are courtesy of Jarel Beatty, Jarel Beatty Cabinetry, Logansport, Indiana.

2015/07/30 (R) Number Theory

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We awoke to a decidedly different air mass than we have been experiencing the last week or so; cool with noticeably lower humidity.  Linda turned off the air-conditioning and we opened up the house for the first time in a week.  We had a light breakfast of grapefruit and cinnamon raisin toast and then spent an hour enjoying our coffee.  I finished the little treatise on cryptology yesterday at Panera and started reading Oystein Ore’s “Invitation to Number Theory.”

Linda needed to make a quick grocery run for miso so I worked for a while on the sofa design, laying out the pieces that will be cut from a 48″ x 96″ sheet of 3/4″ plywood.  When she returned from her errand she went for her daily walk while it was still cool.  After her walk she made a cold black bean salad and then made roll up sandwiches using multigrain pita bread.  It was delicious and healthy; the bread alone had nine grams of protein.  After lunch Linda attended to some nutritional calculations related to the dinner she planned to fix and I gathered up the tools I thought we would need to take care of some things in the bus.  That included some small zip lock bags for small parts.

My first task was to remove the screws that secure the shorter head end of the bed platform to the foundation.  The platform is in two pieces joined by a piano (continuous) hinge.  After doing this I lifted the other end and was reminded that I had already disconnected the two gas springs that normally hold it open.  I also realized that the wires which supply 12VDC power to the two compartment lights on the underside of the platform were routed under a fixed cross member and cable-clamped to the other piece of the platform.  I already knew, or assumed, that they were hard-wired and had spade lug crimp connectors ready to go.

\With Linda’s help I was able to detach the wire loom at several points to create some slack.  The +12VDC wire was connected to a microswitch with a spade lug so it was easy to unplug.  I clipped the neutral wire, stripped both free ends, and attached an insulated male spade connector to one and an insulated female spade connector to the other.  With that the entire platform could now be removed from the bus to get it out of the way while we install the new floor tiles.

In the kitchen area of the bus we unscrewed and removed the walnut trim around the fixed window on the passenger side.  I reinstalled all of the screws so we would not misplace them while Linda took the trim to the garage to store it.  I removed the screws that held each of the three reading lights to underside of the upper cabinet in front of the fixed window.  They were wired with very clever little insulated terminal strips which made them easy to disconnect and will make them equally easy to reconnect.  Linda bagged each fixture and its parts separately in one gallon zip lock bags.

The AC light fixture was trickier to remove.  First I turned off the circuit breaker on the inverter sub-panel and verified that the light no longer came on.  By lifting the false bottom of the cabinet I could see that the fixture was installed onto a ceiling junction box.  That meant there was probably a post threaded into a cross bracket with the post protruding down through the center/mounting hole in the fixture and held in place by the decorative nut.

I was not able to turn the decorative nut by hand so I got the faucet wrench.    I have had this unique and specialized tool for a very long time.  It is designed to reach up behind a sink and grab the retaining nut on the underside of a faucet 12 inches away.  The head is spring loaded and flips over to allow the wrench to be used to tighten or loosen the nut.  Occasionally, like today, it finds an alternate use.  I like it when that happens.

\With the fixture loose I was able to color code the neutral wires with white tape, untwist the wire nuts, and then put the wire nuts back on the two supply wires.  Linda took the fixture to the garage and figured out way to store it safely using an unused waste basket.  We talked about the built-in sofa and some HVAC details for the passenger side of the cockpit before wrapping up our bus work for today.

While I put the tools away Linda started working on dinner.  Tonight’s special creation was vegan Pad Thai.  Regular Pad Thai was a favorite of ours for many years even after we switched to a vegetarian diet as we were still eating eggs.  The dish has a lot of ingredients, so it is a lot of work, and a good vegan version is a real challenge, but Linda executed the dish quite well.  We finished up the watermelon for dessert, which was sweet but light and refreshing.

I try to write every day while the sequence and details of the day’s events are still clear and my thoughts and feelings about them are somewhat “in the moment.”  But I don’t usually finish a post and upload it the same day.  I often finish it the next morning which means I have a chance to sleep on in it.  We have been so busy with the bus remodeling project that I have barely had time to write the drafts of my posts and I have not had the time to transfer them, edit them, select photos and post-process them, and upload everything to the blog.  I don’t like getting so far behind, but there are only so many hours in a day and I do need at least seven hours sleep a night.

After dinner I e-mailed Josh to see when we might get the extra fabric we ordered to make seat and back cushions for the sofa I am designing for the bus.  I then settled in to read about number theory before drifting off to sleep.

 

2015/07/29 (W) Drive Shaft

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I had had a 9:30 AM appointment at Brighton Honda to have a drive shaft replaced and suggested that we just continue on to the Brighton Panera a half mile down the road for bagels and coffee.  Linda never refuses to go to Panera so that is what we did.  The Wi-Fi was out of service but we both bought things to read so we did not care.  We sat in the two comfy armchairs by the fireplace, which was turned on, because the temperature inside was very cool, a frequent problem with this particular Panera store.  We each had a bagel and many refills of our coffee cups and stayed long enough that Brighton Honda called to let me know my car was ready to be picked up.  We left at 12:30 PM and Linda dropped me off to retrieve the ca.

Back home we had the leftover couscous with caramelized onions and the rest of the kiwis for lunch.  Linda finalized her grocery list and headed off in search of food.  I spent the rest of the day and most of the evening working on the design/drawings for the built-in sofa.

Through the course of the day I had QSOs with Jim (N8KUE) on the Novi 440 repeater and with Chris (K8VJ), Steve (N8AR), and Mike (W8XH) on the South Lyon 2m repeater. I also installed an updated driver for the NVIDIA GPU in my ASUS laptop, installed updates on the older Sony VAIO workstation (which still has Windows XP Pro), installed updates on the Linux box, and took time out for dinner (a delicious red lentil potato curry) and dessert (very sweet watermelon).

I went back to work in my office and sent an e-mail to Mike (W8XH) concerning Windows 10.  He replied via the South Lyon 2m repeater.  We had a long chat from 10:10 PM to just after 11 PM that was joined briefly by Steve (N8AR).  There was also a group QSO taking place on the Novi 440 repeater that I listened to in the background.  After I turned the radio off and came upstairs Linda said it appeared that my ham radio transmissions were interfering with our OTA TV signals.  The antennas are on the same tower but the OTA TV antenna is mounted below the Diamond X-50N 2m/70cm vertical ham antenna so I was a little surprised that it would be causing interference.  The vertical antenna has an omnidirectional radiation pattern which resembles a donut sitting on a horizontal surface, so the location directly under the base of the antenna should be a region with very little signal.  Apparently that is not the case and I will eventually have to do something to remedy the situation.  For now, however, the solution will be to not use the radio when someone s watching television.

 

2015/07/28 (T) Mighty Dremel

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I got up at 8 AM.  I must have been sleeping soundly as I was unaware until then that had already gotten up.  She had gone for a walk and left me a note.  The high temperature today is forecast to hit 90 degrees F and she wanted to get her walk in early.  I fed the cats and checked the mouse trap in the pantry.  We caught another one overnight so I carried the trap back to the northeast corner of the yard and released it.

I made our morning coffee and had just settled in to work on my iPad while it brewed when Linda returned from her walk at 8:35 AM.  We enjoyed our first cup of coffee and then had breakfast.  She made a batch of her fabulous granola yesterday but we have to finish the previous batch first.

Today was the day to get back to work on the bus.  First I spray lubed the two overhead garage doors, both rollers and section hinges, and ran them up and down and back up.  I needed to open them anyway to get out the ladder and tools and sometimes it’s better to spend an extra minute while you are thinking about something and just take care of it.  Besides, I had no way of knowing if I would accomplish anything else today so at least the doors worked more smoothly.

This is where the "stop block" was located. The left screw came out but the right one did not. I had to grind it off.

This is where the “stop block” was located. The left screw came out but the right one did not. I had to grind it off.

In a very real sense our entire bus remodeling project hinges on getting the old refrigerator out and the new refrigerator in.  The refrigerator swap, in turn, hinges on being able to open the fixed window panel on the passenger side of the bus.  That panel is hinged at the top by a pair of rolled channels, one on the top back edge of the window frame and the other on the lower back side of a rail that runs almost the entire length of the bus.  Most of the upper body side panels are hung from these rails and secured at the bottom with latches or other fixed hardware.

The window frame in question has two latches that can be released allowing the frame to swing open and provide an emergency exit, except for the two “stop blocks” in the upper outside corners which are attached to the frame (with two screws) just below the rail.  As the name suggests, these blocks appear to stop the frame from opening more than about 10 inches. That would make emergency escape difficult but it makes it impossible to remove a refrigerator.  We know these frames will open farther as someone posted a photo of an H3 on one of the Prevost bus websites with this same frame open almost 90 degrees (horizontal).

As I have described here before I successfully removed the left block and the left screw from the right block a couple of weeks ago but have been unable to remove the right screw from the right block.  Early in my attempt to remove it I stripped the Philips head and things just got worse from there.  I borrowed an impact screwdriver from Chuck, which successfully extracted the left screw but the right screw would not budge.  I eventually bought and used three different screw extractor sets and broke two drill bits using one of them.

The Dremel with a cutoff wheel installed. The stop block was unusable by the time I got it of.

The Dremel with a cutoff wheel installed. The stop block was unusable by the time I got it of.

I borrowed a soldering gun and Dremel Kit from Chuck on Saturday and finally got around to using them today.  The idea of the soldering gun was to heat the screw causing it to expand and then contract when it cooled.  This will sometimes cause screw threads to separate from tapped holes.  In this case the block was already turning relative to the shaft of the screw but the screw was not turning so I hoped the heat might free it from the threaded hole in the frame.  To find out, however, I needed to create a slot in the shaft that would accept a flat blade screwdriver, in particular the large bit that is part of Chuck’s impact screwdriver kit.  Enter the Dremel.

In order to create a wide enough slot I put two cutoff wheels on the arbor.  The block is at the top of the window frame so standing at the highest safe step of our 8-foot step ladder I was at a comfortable height for holding the Dremel vertically and cutting a horizontal slot.  The cutoff wheels are about the size of a quarter so the slot extended well beyond the screw head, or what was left of it, into the block.  Using the Dremel was a last resort and I knew that once I made that decision the block was going to get destroyed.

The Dremel cutoff wheels cut through the block, which is aluminum, very easily and did not have any trouble with screw or the broken drill bits.  The drill bits eventually loosened to where I was able to extract them with pliers.  I tried several different screwdrivers in my newly created slot but to no avail.  I sprayed WD-40 around the block and screw using paper towels to catch the overspray and clean up any runs.  I kept cutting the block until I was able to pry it off of what remained of the screw.  With less than a quarter inch of the shaft left I cut a slot in the end and tried to unscrew it but the tangs just broke off.  I tried unscrewing it with pliers but it would not budge.  The protruding stub would interfere with opening the frame 90 degrees so I used the Dremel with a cutoff wheel to grind the shaft down flush with the frame.

All the "stuff" I used to attack 25 cents worth of aluminum because of corrosion.

Some of the “stuff” I used to attack 25 cents worth of aluminum because of corrosion.

Linda came out to help at this point.  I repositioned the ladder and then we unlatched the frame on the inside.  Linda pushed it out while I supported it from outside.  It opened farther than it had before but we did not try to raise it to a horizontal position.  The frame/glass is very heavy and we did not want to risk having it come loose at the hinge. We closed the frame and latched it.  I took a few pictures and then put all of the tools away.  The weather was very warm and humid and that was enough outside work for today.

We had hummus, pita chips, and black grapes for lunch.  After lunch I spent a few minutes in my office checking e-mail and then typed up the minutes from our July SLAARC meeting.  I then started working on the design/drawings for the built-in sofa.

I have a very long list of things to do but the furniture design remains a priority as I need to make sure Jarel has all the information he needs to keep moving forward on the custom cabinetry.  Although I will be assembling the sofa Jarel will be cutting all of the pieces.  I will be using a long rip of a full sheet of plywood and a long piece of 3/4 x 3/4 walnut hardwood as an edge band for the horizontal platform.  In order to give Jarel a cut sheet I needed to design the unit.  I also needed to design it so I knew it would fit when assembled.

I took an occasional break to chat with friends on the two local ham radio repeaters that we tend to use but otherwise stayed on task until late afternoon.  I had pulled a book on cryptology from our personal library and started reading it.  I took a nap before dinner and continued reading afterwards.  Fascinating stuff, cryptology.

 

2015/07/27 (M) Finish Drawings

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I got up at 7:25 AM and fed the cats.  There was a very large tom turkey feeding in the back yard by the basement walkout and just far enough out from the house that I could see him from the dining room doorwall where we keep the cats’ food dishes.  He walked up the west slope and then cautiously headed for our lower deck.  I kept an unseen eye on him from the kitchen corner window as he headed east towards the main deck.  I thought he might have spotted Linda’s tomato and herb planters but he kept on going.  Perhaps he caught sight of Jasper, or me, or his own reflection but something spooked him and he trotted to the east end of the deck.  He had Jasper’s full, undivided attention by this point and just walked around until he decided to walk down the stairs into the east yard and around the east end of the house.  I lost sight of him after that but we have seen turkeys feeding on that end of the house before and they have ready access to dense, protective cover from there.  I suspect this is the same lone tom that we have seen feeding in Cory’s yard across the street.

I sat and played games for a while and then started working on this post at 8:15 AM.  At 8:30 I caught a glimpse of a deer crossing the road into our yard by the main driveway but could not get up to get a better view as Juniper had settled in in my lap.  Linda got up around that same time having finally gotten a good night’s sleep.  I got dressed and made coffee.  We finally had breakfast at 10 AM.

My initial focus for today was to finish the drawings for the pull-out pantry, design/draw the cover for the front half of the passenger side HVAC duct and wiring chase, and design/draw the small cover that will connect the chase cover to the left side of the left desk pedestal base and hide the heater hoses.  I took occasional breaks to chat with friends on the South Lyon 2m repeater and finished my drawings at 4:30 PM.

Linda located a FedEx Office location in Brighton so I drove there instead of to the one in Novi to make copies and buy a mailing tube.  The copies did not come out as well as at the other office so I rolled up the originals and put them in the tube.  I checked to see what it would cost to have FedEx deliver the tube.  Their cheapest method was going to cost $28 and take three days to get there so I went across the street to the post office and mailed them to Jarel in Logansport, Indiana it for $2.94.  It will be there by Thursday and may get there by Wednesday.

When I got home I e-mailed Jarel to let him know the drawings were on the way.  Linda then reheated various leftovers for dinner.  I had started the day with an ambitious list of things I wanted to accomplish but by the time we were done with dinner I decided I had accomplished enough for the day and took an uncharacteristic nap.  I had just woken up when Butch called and we chatted about buses for a bit.  We turned in earlier than usual and watched Antiques Roadshow and the concluding episode of Ken Burn’s “The Dust Bowl” on the Detroit PBS station.

 

2015/07/26 (N) Rearranging

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I was up at 8 AM but did not make coffee as Linda was still asleep and the grinder is fairly noisy.  I put the last load of laundry in the washing machine, cleaned the litter tray (which we keep in the downstairs shower), and then worked in my office.  Jasper (the cat) came down to assist me but mostly ended up supervising.

All three monitors mounted in the ham shack using the ZioTek wall-mounted track system. The Dell is in the middle. There is a mount and room for one more monitor at the right end.

All three monitors mounted in the ham shack using the ZioTek wall-mounted track system. The Dell is in the middle. There is a mount and room for one more monitor at the right end.

I mounted the fourth (last) arm on the wall-mounted rail in our ham shack.  I swung it back against the wall to get it out of the way as I do not have a monitor that I want to install at that position at the moment.  I cleaned up the tools and staged them by the stairs and then moved the coiled coax out of the way and cleared a few things off of the desks so I could move the desks back into position.  I left them farther out from the wall than before so they were appropriately placed relative to the three wall-mounted monitors.  I then put various pieces of ham radio equipment back on the desks.

Monitors obviously need computers.  I removed the Dell Precision laptop from my computer desks, removed the computer from the combination docking station and monitor stand, cleaned all of the pieces, and reassembled it.  I set it at the left edge of the ham desks, slid it under the left monitor, and placed our old Icom IC-706 HF transceiver on the monitor platform, just for appearance sake.  We are not using thus radio at the moment but it fit nicely in that spot.

I placed the GoBox with the Icom IC-7000 HF/VHF/UHF transceiver and 12VDC power supply at the right edge of the desks, put the MFJ-998 Intelli-Tuner to its left (under the right monitor), and put the larger variable voltage DC power supply on top of it.  The time we spent yesterday determining where to mount the rail on the wall was time well spent.  The monitors are at a comfortable height for viewing when seated at the desk, tilted down slightly to avoid glare from the overhead down lights, and the bottom edges are high enough above the desk to permit sizeable equipment to slide under them.  The desks are also far enough out from the wall to make it easy to attach and manage cables.

I rearranged my primary ASUS laptop on my computer desks and checked my e-mail accounts.  I have had a discussion going on this past week with Gary at Bus Conversion Magazine about hats with the BCM logo and responded to a couple more of those communiques.  Around 10:15 AM I heard footsteps and knew that Linda was finally up so I wrapped up the work in my office, transferred the laundry to the dryer, and went upstairs.

Linda was working at her desk and was not hungry but wanted coffee.  She did not sleep well last night so I made a pot of Sumatra Manhelding which is NOT one of our half decaffeinated blends.  I got myself a bowl of granola and had a large glass of orange juice.  We spent the rest of the morning in the living room reading, writing, and menu planning.

The dinette area of our bus with the two fan-coil heat exchangers on the floor. They will go in the bases of the desk when it is installed in this corner.

The dinette area of our bus with the two fan-coil heat exchangers on the floor. They will go in the bases of the desk when it is installed in this corner.

I like to hear the grandfather clock strike 12.   Besides the charming Westminster chimes, it serves to announce that the part of the day has arrived where I am supposed to get some of the physical work on my to-do list accomplished.  Today, however, my #1 priority was to redesign the pull-out pantry so I limited my physical work to gathering up my tools from the basement and moving them to the garage, moving the bus back to its normal parking spot, and taking photos of cabinet details in the bus for Jarel.  I mixed in a little e-mail, a few computer updates, some ham radio, and time for meals, but basically I worked at my drafting board most of the day and evening.

For dinner Linda made a very tasty dish that we had not had before.  The base ingredient was rice and she used basmati even though the recipe called for brown.  I prefer basmati rice to brown rice so it was a good substitution as far as I was concerned.  The other ingredients were garlic, power greens, mushrooms, and blanched fresh green beans.  She sliced and caramelized a large onion and used it as a topping.  This was essentially a “1-pot” dish in that all of the ingredients ended up combined prior to serving.  Linda makes a lot of dishes like this and we both like them. This particular dish had the crunch of the green beans, the chewiness of the rice, and the soft earthy character of the mushrooms held together by the garlic and olive oil and topped with sweet earthiness of the caramelized onions.

At 8 PM local (EDT) I participated in the weekly SLAARC Info Net for the first time in a couple of years and did so from the comfort of our ham shack.  It was a pleasure using our new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE dual band transceiver with our Diamond X-50N 2m/70cm antenna at a height of 40 feet and connected by good coaxial cables all the way through.  Club president Harvey (AC8NO) served as net control operator and did a nice job.

After the net wrapped up at 8:45 PM Steve (N8AR), Andy (N8DEV), and I chatted for another 20 minutes trying to find some rhyme or reason why our Yaesu FTM-400’s are experiencing random audio dropouts.  We did not get it figured out and wrapped up our QSO so Steve and I could check into the LARK (Livingston Amateur Radio Klub) net that started at 9 PM (EDT).  This was the first time I had checked in to this particular net even though LARK is based in Howell and the repeater is closer to us than the ones in South Lyon or Novi.

The LARK Net was much briefer than the SLAARC net and concluded at 9:16 EDT.  Steve and I went back to the South Lyon repeater where Paul (N8BHT) heard us and joined the conversation.  When we finally wrapped up our testing QSO I went back to work on my pull-out pantry drawings.  I was about to shut everything down at 10:45 PM EDT when Mike (W8XH) announced his presence on the South Lyon repeater.  He was mobile but full-quieting and I did not experience any dropouts during our 25 minute QSO.  I took a few minutes to e-mail Jarel and then called it a night.  I had a few almonds as a snack, got ready for bed, and worked on this bog post for a while.

 

2015/07/25 (S) Monitoring

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We started our day with our weekly ham radio breakfast in South Lyon.  As we were leaving breakfast I called Chuck to see if he was at his shop.  He wasn’t but said he could be there between 11 and 11:30 AM.  We drove home, loaded up my car with the accumulated recyclables, headed over to Recycle Livingston, and then headed to Chuck’s shop in Novi.  We arrived before he did and let ourselves in.  I got his Dremel tool kit and pistol style soldering gun and we chatted for a while.  He had a noon appointment with someone at a commercial building he owns in Livonia, and we had a long list of project tasks to take care of, so it was a shorter chat than usual.  We stopped at the Lowe’s in New Hudson and bought a can of garage door spray lube and then headed home, stopping for fuel at the Brighton Shell station on Grand River Avenue at I-96.

At our ham radio breakfast Linda had rye toast and I had an English muffin for breakfast (our usual meals) so we were hungry by the time we got home.  We had roll up sandwiches of hummus, Vidalia onions, and greens with a drizzle of olive in a whole wheat pita.  Very tasty.  We then got to work installing the wall-mounted track for the ZioTek monitor mounting system I bought from CyberGuys.

The north wall of the ham shack. Critical points for the mounting of the ZioTek track system are marked with green tape.

The north wall of the ham shack. Critical points for the mounting of the ZioTek track system are marked with green tape.

Conceptually the installation was simple but it took all afternoon.  There is a kind of alcove at the north end of my office that serves as our amateur radio (ham) shack.  The purpose of the ZioTek system is to support up to four monitors on the north wall above the two desks located there so that they are not attached to the desks or using up any of the desktop real estate.  The walls in the office are 7/16ths inch thick T-111 exterior plywood with 1/2″ grooves on 4″ centers running the length of the plywood sheets.  The sheets are installed vertically so the groves run vertically giving the appearance of vertically installed 4″ wide rough sawn boards.  We finished the photo studio/office at the old house with this material so we knew we liked the way it looks.  Being plywood it has once major advantage and one major disadvantage compared to drywall; you can screw relatively heavy things to it, but holes are essentially impossible to repair.  What that meant for us was that we only had one chance to get the track in the correct location.

In this case “correct” meant:  at the right height and horizontal location to be able to position the monitors exactly where we wanted them while making sure the track was level.  To accomplish this I bought a 1″x6″-8′ poplar board to use as a mounting plate for the two track sections.  (All of the trim in the ham shack/office is poplar.)  We used pieces of tape to mark the locations of the corners of the three monitors on the wall and marked the centers of the VESA 100×100 mounting plates.  When we knew where the horizontal centerline of the tracks needed to be we determined the horizontal location of the tracks relative to the right end of the poplar board, which would be installed flush to the vertical trim in the northeast corner of the alcove.

The ZioTek tracks will mount to the horizontal poplar board which will be mounted to the wall at the studs.

The ZioTek tracks will mount to the horizontal poplar board which will be mounted to the wall at the studs.

We set the poplar board in the utility hallway and positioned the two tracks on it.  I butted the tracks together and slid one of the mounting plates so it saddled both tracks and kept them aligned.  The tracks are 4.5″ wide and the board was 5.5″ wide so I very carefully positioned the tracks for a 1/2″ reveal along both edges.  I then marked the eight mounting holes (four in each track) and removed the tracks.  Using a brad point wood bit that was slightly smaller than the central shaft of a #14 wood screw I drilled holes that were as carefully centered as I could make them.

We held the board in position against the wall and used a 1.5″ #6 finishing nail through the right mounting hole to hold that end of the board.  We then used a 4-foot level on the top edge of the board and secured the left end with a second nail through one of the mounting holes.  We positioned the chair where it will be when in use and made sure we liked the height of the board.  It looked and felt right so we proceeded to secure it to the wall.

The ZioTek tracks mounted to the poplar board mounted to the wall. Linda is vacuuming up sawdust from drilling.

The ZioTek tracks mounted to the poplar board mounted to the wall. Linda is vacuuming up sawdust from drilling.

Using a small carpenter’s square I marked locations for mounting screws one inch in from each edge of the board in vertical alignment with the small heads of the nails that secure the T-111 to the studs.  The 8-foot long board spanned six studs so I had 12 holes to drill.  I used a standard drill bit that was slightly smaller than the shaft of a #14 wood screw and drilled through the poplar board, through the T-111, and into the studs.   I used a countersink bit to create recessed pockets for the flathead wood screws.  We then secured the board using 3″ long #14 flathead wood screws.  We applied a little soap to the screw threads to help them go in.

I pulled the two small nails out of the track mounting holes.  Using the same drill bit I finished drilling out the mounting holes all the way through the T-111.  We positioned and partially installed one track using 2″ long #14 flathead wood screws in the two end mounting holes.  We then did the same thing with the other track.  I slid one of the mounts so that half of it was in each track and partially installed the remaining four screws.  I gently snugged up all eight screws, checking the track alignment as I went, and then torqued them down.  The heads stick up above the inside surface of the track but the shuttle mounts are raised on the underside so they slide right over the screw heads without interference.

The first of three monitors to get mounted. This one is on the left end of the tracks.

The first of three monitors to get mounted. This one is on the left end of the tracks.

With the track mounted to the wall we turned our attention to installing the monitor mounting arms and monitors.  We used one of the long arms on the left, the short arm in the center, and the medium arm on the right.  The other long arm will eventually end up on the far right or get swapped for the medium arm, but for now I only wanted to mount three monitors.  We installed the nice Dell monitor that goes with my older Dell Precision laptop in the center and installed the two ASUS monitors to either side of it.

By the time we got the third monitor mounted the office was in more disarray than usual and we did not have time to clean up tools and put things back in order.  Linda did manage, however, to run the vacuum cleaner and get most of the sawdust and wood chips sucked up.  Our son had called during the afternoon with a last minute request for babysitting services from Linda and I decided to go too.

A view of the mounts for the left and center monitors. This is a substantial system.

A view of the mounts for the left and center monitors. This is a substantial system.

We left at 6 PM for Ann Arbor and stopped at the Whole Foods Market to pick up a few things for dinner.  We got two different vegan sushi rolls, a cold couscous salad, and some organic black grapes.  When we arrived at Brendan and Shawna’s house a little before 7 PM Madeline was surprised and excited to see us.  Brendan and Shawna left around 7:15 PM for an engagement party and Madeline was fine with the whole thing.  She was still eating her blueberries and strawberries and then wanted Linda to read several books to her.  We went upstairs to see how her crib had been converted to a toddler bed, allowing her to get up during the night to use the bathroom.  Such a big girl.  But not too big for pajamas that featured fairies.

After another couple of stories Madeline went to bed without a fuss.  We then had dinner.  The California rolls were OK but the couscous salad was outstanding and the grapes were very good.  We sat on the couch using our iPads but I could not stay awake so I laid down and drifted off to sleep.  I was awakened about 90 minutes later by the return of Madeline’s parents.  Linda gathered up our leftover food and the roses the kids had gotten her as a “thank you” for babysitting on such short notice which gave me time to fully wake up.  We were on our way by 10:30 PM and back home shortly after 11.

 

2015/07/24 (F) Open and Shut

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I was up at 7:30 AM and made coffee but I did not see Mara or Linda until after 9 AM.  Around 9 AM I heard a knock at the front library doorwalls and heard someone saying “hello?,  hello?, David?”  I went out the front door and saw the front end of a red Ford Focus parked in front of our bus.  I had never met this guy but he was not unexpected and I knew he was looking for David LaVoisne, who lived here with his wife, Maria, until we bought the house from them in February 2013.  I knew this guy might stop by as he had once before when we were away and chatted briefly with our lawn care guy, Keith.  I also knew that he had worked with David at the Ford Wixom plant before they retired.

We introduced ourselves and had a nice chat.  I explained that David and Maria had sold the house and their Airstream motorhome, bought a newer motorhome, and were now full-time RVers.  (As I recall they bought a used Foretravel.)  Apparently they did not let all of their friends or former colleagues know what they were doing.  I also mentioned that they had moved the few possessions they did not get rid of to their son’s house somewhere in the region and that they probably visited there occasionally.

Mara emerged about the time our visitor left.  Unfortunately I do not recall his name.  We all had breakfast together after which Mara went about her final departure preparations.  She gave Linda a small fir tree and two small herbs.  Linda transferred the herbs to her herb pots and gave Mara’s small pots back.  She needed to top off her fresh water tank so I helped with that.  The lock on the water fill door stuck in the open position so Mara got her can of dry lube and I sprayed a little in the lock by holding the protective cover open with the tip of the key.  That did the trick, another quick fix to a small but potentially annoying problem.

When her rig was basically ready to go Mara made one last use of the shower, got dressed to travel, unplugged the power cord and stowed it away, and pulled in the slides.  After hugs all around she climbed into the pilot’s seat and fired up the engine and Sabra (one of her two cats) climbed up on the dash just in front of the steering wheel.  I guided her as she backed out onto our road.  She drove down to the court, did a three point turn, and a few minutes later drove past our house in the opposite direction, back on the road again after almost two weeks at our place.  It was noon, but she was only going as far as London, Ontario today.  Linda got a text message later letting us know that she had arrived at the Moose Lodge and the border crossing on the Blue Water Bridge from Port Huron, Michigan to Sarnia, Ontario had only taken 30 minutes.

After Mara was out of sight I gathered up the laundry, sorted it, and started a load of warm whites.  I wrote out a list of parts I needed to finish the garage door opener installation and the monitor mounting system in the ham shack and then drove to Lowe’s in Howell.

I was back home by 1:30 PM and we had hummus and chips along with black grapes for lunch.  We started working on the garage door opener installation when my phone signaled that I had a voice message.  It turned out that I had one on the house phone too.  Both messages were from Jarel.  He had a few questions about dimensions on one of desk drawings so I called him back and we sorted that out.  He retrieved the half sheet of walnut veneer plywood from Butch last night and bought 16 board feet of walnut.

In spite of the 85 degree temperature and what felt like high humidity, even though it was only 41%, we worked for about three hours and finished installing the opener on the small garage door.  It was quite an involved process but it worked when we were done.  The new opener has automatic reverse if it encounters an obstruction and an infrared sensor beam about 6″ off the floor.

At 5:30 PM we loaded the old garage door opener into the dump trailer.  We then loaded the old OTA TV antenna pieces.  Brad is picking up the trailer in the morning so we will not fill it but it we put the junk in it that we needed to get out of the garage and a few other things as well.

We took a break around 6 PM to have some water and get off our feet for a while.  At 6:45 PM Linda made salads and cooked up some vegan Italian sausages.  After dinner we planned to work for a while in the ham shack on the installation of the wall-mounted track system but we were too tired to start a project that was going to require decisions and careful attention to detail.  We sat in the living room instead and used our iPads for the usual things.  It was great having Mara here and we look forward to her return someday.  But for now she is off on the next leg of her open-ended adventure and we have a lot of work yet to do to get our bus ready for the 2015-16 winter season.

 

2015/07/23 (R) Wrapping Up Mara

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Mara’s plan was to make this the last full day of her visit.  Our day started without her as we had cinnamon raisin toast, juice, and coffee for breakfast.  I got a call from Jarel with clarifying questions and ideas about the desk and the pull-out pantry.  After a thorough discussion we had better ways to approach a few things.  He also had a better feeling for the estimated cost of the project and I agreed to send him 50% as a deposit.

I typed up a short letter and printed off the graph that Steve made of the return loss for the M-302N V/U lightning arrestor.  I packed the unit for shipping to Morgan Manufacturing and included the letter and graph.  Linda wrote out the check for Jarel and got it in an envelope to mail.  She then went to the library, Post Office, and Humane Society where she donated cat and dog paraphernalia that we had accumulated over the years.

While Linda was gone I worked in the bus for a while and Mara worked on travel preparations.  I started by removing the old 3/4″ plywood floor from the refrigerator alcove.  The original plywood bus floor appeared to mostly be in good condition but I will put a new secondary floor in the alcove to keep the refrigerator legs above the level of the new tile floor.  There are a LOT of wires running along the floor of the alcove at the back wall and I may fashion a cover for them and seal up the holes at either end.

I removed the AC dimmer for the living room lights and the DPDT momentary contact DC switch from the floor-mounted walnut box where they were installed.  The DC switch controlled the passenger side sofa footrest.  I had to remove the wires from both switches to get them out.  The AC dimmer was easy but the DC switch had four different color wires with spade connectors.  I made careful note of which terminal each color went to and then pulled the spade connectors off.  With the switches out I was able to remove the box and its mounting cleats from the floor and wall.  This area will be tiled and the box will not be reused.

Out of curiosity I tested the switch with an Ohm meter to see how the terminals were connected internally.  I also checked the wires with a DC volt meter to see how they were being used.  Two of the wires were +12VDC and DC ground and the other two went to a connector that was originally plugged into the footrest.  The switch applied 12VDC to the two load wires in one position and reversed the polarity in the other position, making the footrest go out or in respectively.

Last year I had removed two blank outlet covers on the walnut panel next to the co-pilot seat so I knew that these two switches were originally installed there and subsequently moved to the floor-mounted box.  I unscrewed the 1/4″ walnut veneered plywood panel from the wall to see what was behind it.  What I found was a LOT of wires and it was not a pretty sight.  I re-installed the two switches in their original locations and re-routed some other wires so they went up over the HVAC chase.

There was still a large bundle of wires running along the floor at the base of the HVAC chase that I needed to re-route but I decided not to mess with those today.  They are connected to four different switches and a doorbell and disconnecting everything was going to require careful attention to detail.  I pondered the refrigerator some more and decided there wasn’t anything else I could do with it for now and that I was done working in the bus for today.

There is too much to do at the moment to just sit around so I decided to install the new garage door opener for the small garage door.  New is relative; it has been sitting in the garage in its original packaging since we moved into the house, supplied by the previous owners.  The old one has not worked correctly since we moved in and the previous owners bought the new one but ran out of time to install it.  It turned out to be rather more complicated than I expected, with very comprehensive assembly and installation instructions.  It also turned out to be a two-person project so Linda worked on it with me.

We were working and Mara had started prepping dinner when a UPS truck showed up with four boxes.  The delivery included:  Mara’s refrigerator vent cover; the Cutco knives and scissors, and; the ZioTek track system for wall-mounting the monitors in the ham shack (2 boxes).  The vent cover was due for delivery today but the knives were not due until tomorrow, so we were really glad to see them as two of them were for Mara.  The monitor mounting system was also due for delivery today but I had temporarily forgotten about it.

The north wall of the ham shack/office. This is where the ZioTek wall-mounted monitor mounting system will go.

The north wall of the ham shack/office. This is where the ZioTek wall-mounted monitor mounting system will go.

Mara was understandably anxious to see if the vent cover fit her base properly.  It was a VentMate and appeared to be identical to the old one.  She climbed up the ladder on the back of her motorhome and I handed parts and tools up to her.  I then climbed up was well.  She removed the old cover and we set the new one in place.  It was a perfect fit!  We put a small amount of putty under each screw head and then ran them down snug and congratulated ourselves on another job completed and well done.

With Linda’s help we put Mara’s kayak back in its custom carrier which fits in the receiver on the back of her motorhome (she does not tow a car).  The carrier was built by a welding shop in Mesa, Arizona to Mara’s specifications and is made from 2″ square tubular steel and powder-coated black.  The carrier holds the kayak diagonally across the back of the motorhome from lower left (driver’s side) to upper right.  The nose of the kayak sits in a pocket near the driver side rear corner of the motorhome and the midpoint is nestled in a much larger cradle.  A strap runs from the nose pocket up to the midpoint on one side and across the kayak to the other side where it is attached to a ratchet and has a hook on the end.  With the hook engaged in a ring the strap is ratcheted tight and the kayak is secure for travel.  Mara runs an anti-theft cable through an eyelet near the nose and attaches a lock for safe keeping.  The tail sticks up higher than the top of the roof-mounted air-conditioner covers but does not extend beyond the passenger side wall.  The tip of the kayak is 13′ 2″ from the ground.

We made good progress on the garage door opener but had to stop at the point where we needed to attach the motor housing to the ceiling as I needed to get some parts (angle iron and lag screws) that did not come with the unit.  The front of the track was attached to the header above the door opening and we left the motor assembly resting on top of a 6 foot stepladder.

The pieces of the ZioTek monitor mounting system laid out on the floor of the ham shack/office.

The pieces of the ZioTek monitor mounting system laid out on the floor of the ham shack/office.

While Mara and Linda prepared dinner I unboxed all of the monitor mounting components.  I was curious to see the parts and wanted to make sure everything was there and undamaged, which was the case.

Dinner was Thai vegan spring rolls in rice flour wrappers.  The prep work was in the cutting of lots of veggies (carrots, zucchini, onions, red and yellow peppers, Chinese cabbage, and mushrooms).  Mara made two dipping sauces, one with ginger, hot peppers, and other things and one based on fish sauce (so we passed on that).  Linda selected our bottle of Malvasia Bianco wine from the Heart of the Desert winery in Alamogordo, NM.  It was white, which we thought would go well with the delicate spring rolls, but very sweet with a slightly thick mouthfeel, like a late harvest Riesling or a Sauternes.  Perhaps not the best choice, but we finished the whole bottle anyway.

We chatted for a while after dinner but like most of our evening meals dinner was a drawn out affair with lots of conversation.  Everyone was tired and the women turned in for the night.  I went to my office and answered e-mails from Gary at BCM that I had seen earlier in the day.  I then went to bed and tried to catch up on blog posts for the last few days but could not stay awake long enough to finish them.

 

2015/07/22 (W) Chucking Junk

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After our usual breakfast and coffee we sat for a while in the living room.  This is part of our morning routine and I often use the time to finish up my blog post from the previous day but the last couple of weeks we have been busy and I have not always had time.  We enjoyed the time until about 9 AM and then got serious about loading our “junk” into the Chuck It Junk Removal dump trailer.

Our bus refrigerator with the doors off in preparation for removing it from the coach.

Our bus refrigerator with the doors off in preparation for removing it from the coach.

Mara checked with Cummins Bridgeway and they told her to bring her motorhome in at 11 AM so she broke camp at 10 AM and backed out of the driveway at 10:15 AM.  Cummins Bridgeway put several technicians and mechanics to work on her rig to re-install the genset, install new shock absorbers, and service the transmission (filter and fluid).  She was out in a few hours and stopped at General RV to return the Camco refrigerator vent cover which did not fit her base on the roof.

The Chuck It Junk Removal dumpster trailer with some of our stuff in it.

The Chuck It Junk Removal dumpster trailer with some of our stuff in it.

We took a break from chucking junk and extracted the old refrigerator from its alcove in the bus, which was a 2-person job.  I got some scraps of 1/2″ plywood to set in front of the elevated alcove base as I did not want to walk or slide the unit across the bus sub-floor, especially with the residual thinset mortar.  First we had to walk it out a few inches which was hard because it only had 3/8″ clearance on each side.  Once it was out far enough we were able to open the doors enough to remove all of the shelves and bins, which Linda took into the house and garage.  I then disconnected the water and electric that ran up into the left (freezer) door at the bottom hinge corner for the ice/water dispenser and light.  With those disconnected and pulled out of the bottom of the case we unscrewed the bottom and top hinges and removed the two doors.  Linda collected all of the small loose parts as we went and put them in a plastic container as we knew we would have to reassemble the unit at some point.

The doors had 1/4″ walnut veneer plywood face panels and we wanted to salvage those to use with the new pull-out pantry.  Normally you just remove the handle trim from the edge of the door and slide the panel out.  The fridge door panel would not budge so we removed the trim from all four edges of the door.  The panel had been stuck in place with strips of double-sided tape so we carefully peeled it loose.  The freezer door had two smaller panels, above and below the ice/water dispenser, and they slide out easily after removing the handle trim.  We carried the doors, trim, and panels to the garage and then walked the case completely out of the alcove.

The shelf I built for one of the storage bays on Mara's Fleetwood Bounder.

The shelf I built for one of the storage bays on Mara’s Fleetwood Bounder.

I spent some time pondering what would be required to disassemble the refrigerator enough to get it out through the door of the bus but decided not to do anything until I had talked to Butch.  Just before dinner I had a long chat with Chuck about the refrigerator swap and he reminded me that DTE Energy (the electric power utility for this region) will pick up old refrigerators and freezers and pay you $50 for them.  Linda checked this out online and learned that they have to be plugged in and operating or they won’t take them, so we have a double incentive for getting it out in one, operating piece.

Our revised plan is still to get the case out in one functioning piece through the side window frame but it won’t be this weekend.  The guy with the sunroom business in the building in front of Chuck’s shop is still in the process of moving to his new place and has trucks, cars, people, and junk all over the place making ingress/egress to Chuck’s shop difficult to impossible.  The business is supposed to be gone by the end of the month so we will wait another week and plan for Saturday August 1st assuming I can get the window frame open.  In the meantime I need to get back to work on the bus floor, so I will have to spend part of next week sanding and start installing the 1/4″ underlayment for the new vinyl tile.

Mara in our home kitchen with her wonderful pizza. This thing was truly good eats.

Mara in our home kitchen with her wonderful pizza. This thing was truly good eats.

Mara and Linda made another pizza for dinner and it was every bit as good as the first one.  Mara has been a wonderful house guest.  We have left the house open to her and she has made herself comfortable in the kitchen and using the hall bathroom and laundry.  It helps that Linda is not possessive about the kitchen.  Whenever we have visitors who want to help in the kitchen Linda welcomes their participation.  It’s been fun for both of them and they have each learned a few knew things and deepened their friendship.

 

 

2015/07/21 (T) A Long Day

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I was awake at 6 AM, and up shortly thereafter, even though I did not set an alarm.  I packed a change of clothes and a few toiletries and then gathered up my cell phone and iPad chargers, my iPad, and my checkbook.  I loaded the desk/pantry drawings and travel bag into my car and then did a temporary installation of the weBoost cellular booster.  I put the outside magnetic base antenna in the center of the roof and experimented with the placement of the inside antenna, eventually setting it above the passenger side sun visor facing down.  I backed out of the driveway at 7:05 AM and headed for Indiana.

I took Hacker to Golf Club to Latson with some thought of stopping at Teeko’s for coffee but decided to get some miles behind me first and proceeded to I-96 westbound towards Lansing.  I should have looked up the frequency for the Lansing area repeater, where Don runs a net Monday through Friday from 7 AM until at least 11 AM, but I didn’t think of that ahead of time.  I would also have had to figure out how to switch Mike’s Icom IC-2820H radio from memory mode to VFO mode.  Eventually I will, but not today.  Today was not about ham radio, it was about bus projects.

I took the Lansing Road cutoff to I-69 south and about 20 miles later took the Lansing Road exit at Charlotte.  I stopped at the Biggby’s Coffee not far from the highway and resumed my trip around 8:30 AM.  When Linda and I drove to Edwardsburg, Michigan to visit Coach Supply Direct on July 1st we discovered that M-60 was closed at Minden (between I-69 and US-131) and had to take a long detour.  Rather than risk having that happen again I headed west on I-94.  I had been playing with the cell phone booster but unplugged it and plugged in the Garmin 465T GPS instead.  I eventually saw that M-40 came all the way north to I-94 and decided to take it instead of US-131.

I had never been on this stretch of M-40.  The road was a good 2-lane at 55 MPH except going through small towns.  I drove through miles and miles of vineyards and eventually got to the charming (looking) little town of Marcellus where I discovered a large Welch’s plant.  I knew that a lot of the grapes grown in southwest Michigan ended up as Welch’s grape juice but I did not know where their processing plants were located.  Now I know where they have at least one.

When I reached the intersection with M-60 in Jones I stopped at the Shell station for fuel.  Regular unleaded was $2.52 per gallon which was better than I had seen so far during the trip.  Instead of continuing down M-40 to US-12 I put the address for Coach Supply Direct into my GPS and headed west on M-60 towards Cassopolis.  The GPS had me bypass Cassopolis by heading south on Calvin Center Road to Brownsville Road and then west to M-62 where I headed south towards Edwardsburg.

When I arrived at Coach Supply Direct it was locked up with no sign of Josh.  I called his 800 number and he answered, which I appreciated.  He was in western Pennsylvania heading home from a customer service call and said he could meet me at the shop after 4 PM.  We agreed that I would call him when I had a clearer picture of what time I could get back to his shop.

I left Edwardsburg and drove back on US-12 to Cassopolis Road which merges briefly with Old-102 and then becomes IN-19 (SR-19) in Indiana.  I stopped at Factory RV Surplus in Elkhart, which is on SR-19, to buy a special two-piece bracket for mounting the edge of a table to a wall.  I saw it on their website and luckily they had it in the store as well.

I proceeded south on SR-19 to US-20, went west to US-31, and took that south to the SR-25 exit at Rochester.  From there it was 22 miles to Logansport and a few more blocks to Jarel Beatty Cabinetry.  Jarel is a cabinet maker and a mutual friend of Butch Williams.  I have been talking to Jarel about the custom desk we wanted for the bus for several years and, more recently, about the pull-out pantry and HVAC duct and wiring chase cover.  The purpose of my visit was to deliver the design drawings for the desk and pantry and go over them with Jarel.  I got there around 1:20 PM and left around 5:50 PM.  After discussing the projects at length we agreed that I would change the design of the pantry so I did not leave those drawings with Jarel.  The Fulterer pantry slide had been delivered to Jarel so I took that with me as it turned out to be too wide for this project.

I set my GPS destination for Edwardsburg and it indicated I would arrive around 7:45 PM.  I called Josh to see if that would work for him and he said it would.  I headed north on SR-25 and then called Butch to let him know that I would not be able to stop and visit or spend the night.  That was probably just as well as he was in the emergency room when I called.  He had nicked his thumb in his table saw and was having it tended to.  I stopped at the Kroger in Rochester to buy some snacks for dinner and got a return call from Butch.

The drive to Edwardsburg was pleasant and took me on some more roads I had not driven before.  US-31 north to US-20 east was familiar territory but I exited at Elm Street (US-331 north) which bypassed the west side of Mishawaka and eventually took me up through Granger and onto M-62 in Michigan.  A few miles later I was at Coach Supply Direct in Edwardsburg where Josh was waiting for me.

I returned the Lambright Comfort Chair fabric samples and the MCD shade material samples (the reason for my visit) and we chatted for about 45 minutes.  Our new MCD shades had already arrived but I asked Josh to hang on to them.  We tentatively agreed that we would bring the coach to his shop on Monday September 14 to have the new chairs and shades installed.  The GLCC Surplus and Salvage Rally starts on Wednesday the 16th in Elkhart and Josh offered to let us park at his shop the evenings of the 14th and 15th with 30A electric.

I left around 8:30 PM and started for home.  Again, the initial route was familiar as I took US-12 east to M-40 north, to M-60 and stopped at the Shell station in Jones for the second time today.  I then travelled east on M-60 to Three Rivers where I picked up US-131 northbound.  Rather than continue east on M-60, which I presumed was still closed at Minden, I stayed on US-131 all the way to I-94 between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek.  On I-94 east I encountered a major traffic jam due to construction.  The highway was down to one lane and traffic was barely moving as people merged down and then gawked as they went past the very busy construction site.

The rest of the drive was uneventful and familiar as I left I-94 for I-69 north, stopped at the McDonald’s in Charlotte for coffee, and got back on I-69.  I took the Lansing Road cutoff to I-96 and rolled along eastbound to the M-59 exit on the far west edge of Howell.  Eleven miles on M-59 put me at Hacker Road and a few miles later I pulled into the driveway.  It was just after midnight when I arrived, about 17 hours from when I left, and I had put over 550 miles on the car.  I unloaded a few things from the car and then went straight to bed.

 

2015/07/20 (M) Chuck It

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Our morning got busy right away.  We had breakfast and I made coffee while Linda entertained Madeline.  Brad, from Chuck It Junk Removal, dropped off the dumpster trailer at 9 AM.  Keith, from Kish Lawn Care, showed up at 9:30 to cut the grass.  Linda took Madeline to the Mill Pond to use the playscape and Mara started scrapping old caulk and putty from around the base of her refrigerator roof vent.  I tried using another set of tools for removing the stripped screw in the stop block on the bus to no avail.  I even managed to break off two drill bits in the hole I was drilling in the screw.  The more I work on this the worse it gets.

When Linda and Madeline got back Madeline had lunch and then laid down for her nap.  The three adults then had vegan hotdogs for lunch after which I put the finishing touches on my design drawings for the pull-out pantry.  Mara and I then went on an errand run.

Our first stop was the FedEx store in Novi where I made copies of all of the drawings for the desk and the pullout pantry.  We then stopped at General RV to return the refrigerator vent cover as it did not fit the base section on Mara’s roof.  They had a Camco cover that claimed it would work, and looked like it might fit, so she exchanged them and got a small credit.  When we got back at 3:15 PM Brendan and Shawna were already there.  They got Madeline up at 3:20 PM and stayed until about 4 PM.  After they left I got up on Mara’s roof to help with tasks there.

First we checked the refrigerator vent cover.  The mounting holes lined up but the flanges (shields) on the long sides were not wide enough to fit outside the base flanges.  The proper fit requires the upper flanges to be outside the lower flanges by at least 1/4″ so heat can escape and extend below the lower flanges to keep rain from getting into the refrigerator cavity.  I was going to install the 24″ x 24″ piece of thin sheet steel for the magnetic cell phone booster antenna when I discovered that the antenna would stick to the old satellite dish.  We experimented some more with the location of the inside antenna but could not improve on yesterday’s placement.  The performance was as good as with the metal sheet so I decided not to install the metal sheet.  Mara then caulked around the refrigerator vent base and touched up a few other spots around tank vent caps.

Linda grilled a variety of veggies for dinner.  I opened a bottle of Pinot Noir wine and we ate outside.  It was cloudy and 76 degrees F with light winds; very pleasant and bug free.  We had fresh strawberries with the meal and dark chocolate for dessert.  We eventually moved inside to chat but did not stay up late as I needed to be up early in the morning and on my way to Indiana.

 

2015/07/19 (N) Another Buddy Visit

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Linda was up at 6:30 AM to get showered before Madeline woke up at 7 AM.  Once Madeline was up they got busy right away making vegan blueberry pancakes.  I was up at 7:20 AM, got a quick shower, and was dressed and seated at the table just in time for breakfast.  The pancakes cooked especially well this morning although I would like to try them sometime without the blueberries cooked in.  After we were done eating I made coffee while Linda and Madeline prepared vegan sloppy Joe’s in the crock pot for lunch.

Mara has been getting up when she feels like it and eating breakfast by herself.  By 9 AM she was outside emptying the passenger side storage bays on her motorhome.  She spent the rest of the morning going through the stuff she had removed, deciding what to keep, organizing it, and putting it back.  I gathered up our laundry, sorted it, and started a load.

Aunt Meghan (our daughter) and Uncle Chris (her husband) arrived at 10 AM and I brewed another pot of coffee.  This was the second buddy visit of Madeline’s stay (the first was Cousin Katie on Friday).  Meghan provided a lot of child care during Madeline’s first 18 months and Madeline adores her “buddy.”  She took Meghan on a tour of the house showing her where various things, like snacks and kitty cats, were to be found.  It was a sure sign that Madeline is finally feeling very comfortable at our house.

Having other adults around gave Linda a break and some time to finish preparing lunch, although once Madeline realized Grandma Linda was at work in the kitchen she had to help.  I went out around 11:45 AM to fetch Mara.  We all sat down at noon and enjoyed a simple but delicious meal of vegan sloppy Joe’s (based on textured vegetable protein aka TVP), corn on the cob, raw baby carrots, and black grapes.

Madeline had very busy days yesterday and the day before and got up a little tired this morning so by 1 PM she was more than ready for her nap.  Meghan and Chris had things to do and took their leave.  Mara went back to work on her rig and Linda laid down for a nap.  I tended to the laundry and then went out to work on our bus and Mara’s motorhome.

I used the Speedout set to try and remove the screw with the stripped head from the stop block on the passenger side fixed glass frame.  I was not successful with this tool so I switched gears and worked on Mara’s cell phone booster system.  I climbed on the roof and she handed me the 12″ x 18″ thin galvanized sheet steel plate.  I took it to the front of the roof, set it down on the fore-aft centerline, and positioned the 4″ magnetic mount antenna in the center.  I dropped the coax over the edge by the driver’s side window and climbed back down from the roof.

Mara opened the sliding side window and screen by the driver’s seat and I passed the coax in to her.  Inside the rig we positioned the amplifier on the driver’s seat and started experimenting with various positions for the inside antenna.  We found one that worked well and left it for her to try.  I checked the laundry and then laid down for a nap.

I skipped dinner as I had a SLAARC meeting at 6:30 and had to leave before 6 PM which is when Madeline was having her evening meal.  Our ham radio club meetings start with social time from 6:30 to 7:00 PM.  The meeting was called to order at 7 PM by president Harvey (AC8NO) and I agreed to act as recording secretary.  Linda was not able to attend because she was taking care of Madeline so I gave the treasurer’s report in her absence.  The meeting adjourned at 7:10 PM.  We reconfigured the room for the program which was a presentation and debrief of our recent field day activity.  Larry (K8UT) reported on the N1MM Logger Plus networked computer logging software.  Steve (N8AR) reported on the radios and antennas and conducted the debriefing.

I got back home before 9 PM.  Madeline was asleep and the ladies were each enjoying a glass of Pinot Grigio on the back deck.  I poured one for myself and joined them.  The mosquitoes eventually appeared and we retreated indoors.  I reheated the bowtie pasta from the other night and finished it for dinner.  We said “good night” at 10 PM after which I checked e-mail and websites and then headed to bed.  I wrote for a while before turning out the lights.

 

2015/07/18 (S) RV Shopping

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Madeline was awake at 7 AM and Linda got her up shortly after that.  I slept in until 8 AM.  They had already eaten breakfast by then so I made coffee and had cinnamon raisin toast.  Metropolitan Baking Company makes a very tasty cinnamon raisin bread.  We all sat in the living room while Madeline played with various toys and I worked on finishing yesterday’s blog post.

Linda and Madeline left at 10 AM for the Howell Library.  The plan was to let Madeline play in the children’s area, which has a lot interesting things to do for children her age.  After selecting some books and DVDs to bring home they were headed to Meijer’s to do some grocery shopping.

I continued working on my iPad until Mara came in the house.  We had a chat about blogging and I showed her the Feedly app on my iPad.  She has attended workshops put on by The Geeks On Tour and has their training materials.  I think Blogger is probably the right tool for her and Picasa is probably the right way to manage her photos.  They are both Google products so they work well together and they are free to use.  There are downsides to that, especially for professionals, but for most people it’s a great solution.

Mara and I left around 11:45 AM and drove to General RV in Wixom.  This was my first visit to their new facility and it is nice.  The parts department is larger and better stocked than the old one and is bright with natural light from large south and west facing windows.  We were asked several times if we needed assistance but we were never pestered.  They did not have any of the white Dicor self-leveling caulk we were looking for but one of the employees checked their stock and brought out six tubes.  Mara bought four of them along with a new Norcold refrigerator roof vent cover, a small roll of Eternabond tape, and some concentrated RV wash/wax.  I picked up eight brown circular adjustable air vents for the bus.  The ones in there now are black but I think the brown will look better with the new floor tile.  We won’t really know, however, until we install them.

We drove to Lowe’s in Howell where I bought two pieces of 12″ x 18″ thin galvanized steel plate and three rolls of 3M double-sided tape suitable for outdoor use.  The plan is to put one of these on the roof of Mara’s motorhome and possibly put the other on the roof of our bus to allow the use of the magnetic base cell phone antennas that came as part of the weBoost Drive 4G-X cellular booster systems.  Once the steel sheets are affixed to the roof I will caulk around them.  First, however, I will just set the sheets up there and see what sort of difference the system makes.

We stopped at O’Reilly’s auto parts store and Mara bought some 10, 15, and 20 Amp mini fuses.  These fuses have a small LED that glows if the fuse opens.  They were more expensive than the regular ones, but that is a very handy feature and I may stock up on these the next time I need to buy fuses.

Back at the house Linda informed me that when the storm blew in it pulled the sun umbrella out of the table on the deck.  We put the glass top back in the table and re-installed the umbrella.  This has happened a couple of times and we have been lucky that the glass top has not broken.  Mara returned to her rig.  She had left her patio awning out but it was not damaged.

Linda got Madeline up from her nap at 3 PM and read her a story about flying in an airplane.  Madeline then played with her toys for a while.  Around 4 PM Madeline wanted to bake a cake.  Linda was planning on this anyway but it was nice that it was Madeline’s idea.  They got busy in the kitchen and I sneaked off to my office for a while.

Madeline had dinner at 6 PM so I came up from my office while she ate.  Meals are a social time and I was ready for a break anyway.  After dinner Linda helped Madeline get cleaned up.  I slipped back down to my office while they watched an Elmo DVD, but by 7 PM I was done working on the pantry design for the evening and went back upstairs.  Linda was reading the airplane ride book (again), after which Madeline played (with) the organ after which they drew for a while and then played with the Play-Doh.  Madeline is a busy girl.

I was just getting ready to go ask Mara what temperature to preheat the oven when she came to the house with an armful of ingredients for the pizza.  She has a recipe for a wheat-free (gluten-free) pizza dough that she wanted us to try.  It calls for cheese and eggs so to make it vegan Linda had her buy Daiya mozzarella shreds and gave her egg replacer to use.  The other ingredients include almond meal, chickpea flour, golden flaxseed, onion powder, garlic powder, sea salt, olive oil (EVVO), and water.

It took another 25 minutes to get Madeline to bed but once Linda had her tucked in I opened a bottle of Nebiola wine from the St. Clair Winery in Deming, New Mexico.  I often write that I am not a fan of red wines and continue to not like dry wines with lots of tannins.  The Nebbiolo, however, is one of the nicest wines I think I have ever tried.  That probably means it is too sweet for most red wine drinkers, but I did not find it to be sweet; I found it to be smooth and complex.

We ordered a couple of things from Amazon on Wednesday and they showed up yesterday.  When I unboxed the Notier capacitive touch screen precision stylus I was surprised by what I found.  It’s a 2-part housing that unscrews and the cover screws onto the other end of the bottom part, which is needed for comfort and balance.  The stylus tip is small but has a 1/4 in clear plastic disc on the end.  It was on sale for $11 and I decided right away I would not return it.  Besides, I had not actually tried it yet.  So I finally tried it while the pizza was cooking.  It is an amazing little device!  It is, indeed, very precise and works with a delicate touch so I will have to re-calibrate my “typing” style, but it just goes to show that you never know until you try.

I lost track of time but it was somewhere between 9:30 and 10 PM when the pizza was ready to eat.  It was, however, worth the wait and might be the best vegan pizza I have ever had.  The recipe is definitely a keeper.  We each had a chocolate cupcake (with sprinkles) while we finished our wine.  We then adjourned to the living room and talked until almost 11 PM.  It was a very full day for all four of us and everyone was tired but satisfied.  It’s nice having family and friends here.

 

2015/07/17 (F) A High Pressure Situation

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We closed up the house yesterday and turned on the air-conditioning as the forecast for today was upper 80’s with humidity to match and the forecast for tomorrow is a high of 90 with very high humidity.  Linda did not sleep well again last night but that had nothing to do with the air-conditioning.  The sites where the dermatologist had removed things itched, which did not help.  Nonetheless, we were both up by 8 AM and, as usual, I made coffee and we had granola.  I prepared a travel mug of coffee and left at 9 AM for Chuck’s bus garage in Novi.  Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline were due to arrive at 10 AM and I wanted to be back as close to that time as possible.

As I was working on the design for the pull-out pantry yesterday it became very clear that I needed more accurate measurements of various details of the new refrigerator in order to make sure the doors could open and the pantry could slide in and out.  It was a good thing that I checked as the measurements were not exactly as published and the specifications did not show exactly where the doors were hinged or how much clearance they needed to swing on the hinges.  Now I know, and it is a bit more than I originally allowed for, so it was a good thing that I checked.

I got home at 10:15 AM and the trio was already there.  Mara emerged from her rig a few minutes later and joined us.  Brendan and Shawna stuck around for a while but not long enough to get Madeline down for her 1 PM nap.  They had been talking to her all week about staying with Grandma Linda and Grandpa Bruce and she was prepared.  She was busy playing with Linda and did not seem concerned when her parents left for a music festival in Chicago.  They will retrieve her on Monday.

Our older grand-daughter (and Madeline’s cousin), Katie, arrived around noon so Madeline had one of her buddies here.  Madeline enjoyed her lunch and voluntarily laid down for her nap.  Katie signed up to sell Cutco cutlery and accessory products and asked if she could come practice her sales pitch on us.  We had agreed to let her do this, of course, and Mara joined us by her own choice.  The selling involved a lot of demonstration and use of a few of the knives in side-by-comparison with our existing knives, some of which were already Cutco brand.  Linda ordered a pair of kitchen shears and a santoku trimmer knife.  Mara also ordered a pair of shears and Katie was able to throw in a birdsbeak paring knife which Mara will get as Linda has one.  They agreed to just split the cost of the total order in half.

Mara was anxious to work on the roof of her Bounder and it needed to be cleaned before it was caulked.  It was a hot, humid afternoon and pressure washing the roof seemed like the perfect use of such an otherwise miserable day.  I got out the pressure washer and hose and got it hooked up.  Mara put on her bathing suit and we both climbed up on the roof of her motorhome.  I adjusted the spray nozzle to a fan pattern that would clean from 12″ away without damaging anything, showed her how I would approach the job, and left her to do the work.  Actually I sat in the shade on the porch, offered helpful advice, and occasionally moved the pressure washer.

Madeline finished her nap while we were working and came outside several times with Linda to see what we were doing.  She and Linda walked around the back yard and saw geese and a snake.  They also saw a young deer from our bedroom doorwall.  Our home in the country is a different and exciting place for her as it is for us.

When Mara was done spraying off the roof I sprayed off the sides of the rig to rinse off the dirty water that had run down the sides.  Mara then put out the patio awning and I sprayed off both sides of it as well.  When we were done we got the hose off of the grass and put the pressure washer back in the garage.  Mara was very pleased with what she accomplished.  Not only did she get something done that needed to be done but it was another thing she took care of herself instead of paying someone else to do it.  I get that.

I worked some more in my office and then came upstairs for dinner.  Mike (W8XH) had called and confirmed that Steve (N8AR) was expecting us at 8 PM.  I left at 7:30 PM and drove to Steve’s place southwest of Howell.  Mike and I arrived within a couple minutes of one another and were there for a little over an hour.

Steve is a PhD electrical engineer who worked for Bendix and was involved in communications projects for space programs.  He has a lot of test equipment that you will not find in most ham shacks and he knows how to use it.  In this particular case he used his Hewlett-Packard Network Analyzer to do two-port radio frequency through-measurements of my two Morgan Manufacturing lightning arrestors.

The first thing Steve noticed was that the center contact on one of the N-female connectors was spread open a bit.  Unfortunately any spread is “a bit” too much.  At radio frequencies these contacts need to be tight.  We crimped the contacts back together as best we could so we could proceed with the testing, but Steve strongly suggested that I replace them with high quality parts.  As expected, based on my operating experience, the M-302N V/U arrestor did not look good when tested.  Steve captured the resulting return loss graph and put it on a thumb drive for me.  I will e-mail it to Morgan with a cc: to KF7P Metalwerks and request a new one.  If the new one isn’t any better I will request a refund.  I should not have to rebuild stuff like this and the poor performance may be a design flaw rather than a manufacturing defect.

When I got home around 9:30 PM Linda and Mara were still up and chatting away in the living room.  I joined the conversation until they both decided to retire for the evening.  I spent a few minutes in my office after that taking care of e-mails and then went to bed.  I wrote for a while but was too tired to concentrate and went to sleep.

 

2015/07/16 (R) RV Work

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We were up at 6 AM and by 6:25 Mara had started the engine of her motorhome to pull in the slides.  She disconnected the electrical cord and we helped her back out of the driveway at 6:40.  She was pointed west so she had to drive to the end of our street and use the circle to turn around.  Her destination was Cummins Bridgeway in New Hudson.  When she made the appointment they said the closer to 7 AM she could arrive the better.  They estimated she would be there 3 to 4 hours.

Mara's Fleetwood Bounder parked in our pull-thru driveway.

Mara’s Fleetwood Bounder parked in our pull-thru driveway.  Linda in green jacket, Mara in red.

Linda did not sleep well last night, a common side effect of eating too much too late in the evening, and went back to bed once Mara was safely on her way.  I decided to stay up and clean the coffee maker before making coffee.

I wiped out the upper housing and cleaned the nooks and crannies with Q-tips.  The upper housing is undoubtedly designed the way it is to make it structurally adequate with a minimum of plastic but it was equally obviously not designed with any consideration for being able to clean it.  Like many things, it leaves me wondering if the designers ever use the products they design or what sort of functional specifications they work from and who develops those.  I think the Bauhaus had it right when they declared “form follows function.”  My guess is that commercial equipment, while less “stylish” than consumer goods, has cleanability and serviceability as primary design considerations.

I remembered that we had a one gallon jug of distilled white vinegar in the bus so I got that and ran eight cups of it through the coffee maker.  I added four cups of water to the used vinegar and ran it through again.  I then ran 12 cups of RO water through the coffee maker.  By the time I was done it was approaching 8 AM so I ground up some of the Sumatra Mandheling beans (not decaffeinated) and made seven cups of coffee.  I normally make 8 – 9 cups but this was full-strength stuff.  I’ve been making 11 cups while Mara is here but it turns out that she does not drink much coffee so I will be back to my usual 8 – 9 half-caff servings going forward.

I enjoyed my first cup of coffee while finishing yesterday’s blog post and starting this one.  I enjoyed my second cup while researching hardware for mounting a small table to a wall so that it is essentially cantilevered, which is the table arrangement we need for the bus.  I found a 2-piece aluminum extrusion that might be the solution for attaching the table to the wall.  It is 30″ long and can be cut to length but I do not think it will not be strong enough by itself to support the table.  I found an angle bracket on Rockler that might be the additional piece I need.  It is 12″ x 18″ with a notched corner, made of 1/8″ steel, and powder-coated black.  A pair of them will support 1,000 pounds so one in the center would be more than sufficient.  An alternative would be a wood strut angling back to the wall but we are not willing to have a vertical table leg.  I have not decided whether the table should be removable but I am leaning towards a more permanent installation.

Linda eventually got up but neither of us were hungry so we did not have breakfast.  I went to my office and ordered the ZioTek monitor mounting system from CyberGuys.  I then e-mailed Ewa at AFC Industries and thanked her for the second quote but let her know that the price was way out of my budget.  I finally settled in to work on the custom desk design for the bus and eventually finished it (I think).  Linda left around 12:30 PM for her dermatology appointment.

Now that we have base station antennas cabled to the ham shack I tend to have the new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE dual band (VHF/UHF) radio on whenever I am working in my office.  It provides a pleasant diversion from my other tasks and is actually useful.  Somewhere mixed in with everything else were a couple of QSOs with ham buddies and an attempt to coordinate with Steve (N8AR) and Mike (W8XH) about testing my two Morgan lightning arrestors at Steve’s QTH.

This toad was sitting on a rock by our front porch.

This toad was sitting on a rock by our front porch.

Our bus had settled in the rear and was clearly out of level.  The reason it had settled was that I forgot to switch the suspension system to Level Low and shut off the air to the engine accessories.  It was of no consequence but it bugged me so I started it, let it air up, re-leveled it, shut it down, and switched off the batteries and engine air accessories.

Mara returned from Cummins Bridgeway around 1 PM and I guided her back into her parking spot.  They did the routine service on her motorhome engine and generator but found several things on the genset that needed to be repaired.  She agreed to have the work done so they removed the genset from her rig and will reinstall it next Wednesday.  They also inspected the motorhome and gave her a list of other things that needed to be fixed, some right away and some eventually.  She did not have them do any of that work as she wanted me to look at the list first.  The added service work means Mara will be visiting with us for at least another week, which pleased us greatly.

I went over the list with her and we discussed the relative importance and urgency of each repair.  One of the items involved the caulking on the roof so we both climbed up there to have a look.  I also wanted to scope out how we might install her weBoost Drive 4G-X cellular booster system.  While we were on the roof I was able to rock the rig side-to-side quite a bit just by shifting my weight.  One of the other items on the diagnostic list was shock absorbers and I indicated that I thought that sounded appropriate, especially given that the back ones reportedly had cracked/broken mounts.  They also noted that the transmission fluid was low and that the filter and fluid should be replaced.  I encouraged her to have these taken care before she left as Cummins Bridgeway is a very good service facility.

The other items were things that could wait but the caulking of the roof was something Mara could do herself.  She likes to take care of as much of her rig as possible and she will be here through at least Wednesday, so she has time.

Linda got back from her out-patient surgical appointment with bandages in seven different places.  We visited for a while and then I left the ladies and returned to my office.  I started on the design of the pull-out pantry for the bus and quickly realized that the very expensive Fulterer heavy-duty pull-out pantry slide I ordered from Rockler was too wide for the space we have available.  I came upstairs and groused about it for a while until Linda and Mara urged me to try canceling the order.  I called Rockler and spoke to someone in customer service.  I won’t know until tomorrow at the earliest, and probably not until Monday, if I was successful in intercepting the order before it shipped.  If not I will have to pay to ship it back and may have to pay a restocking fee.  Although I do not have anywhere else I can use it at the moment, between the restocking charge and the cost of shipping I may just keep it and find a use for it.

Linda made a large salad for dinner and we chatted during and after the meal.  It had been an early, long, hard day for all of us.  Mara returned to her rig before it was dark and Linda headed off to bed shortly thereafter with me not far behind.

 

2015/07/15 (W) Prime Wednesday

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It was brisk when we got up this morning, with the temperature in the upper 40’s (F), light breezes, lower humidity, and clear, blue skies.  When the weather in Michigan is at its best it is near perfect.

After our usual coffee and granola we spent a little time browsing Amazon.com looking at their “Prime Wednesday” sale.  Neither of us are compulsive shoppers or impulse buyers and scrolling through thousands of items on a slow Internet connection looking for something we can’t live without at a price we can’t pass up is not our idea of fun.  I have things I need to order, like the multiple monitor mounting system for the ham shack, but it quickly became obvious that I was not going to find those items for sale as part of Amazon’s special July 15 Prime Sale.

Mara was up and took her garbage to our trash to can and returned to her rig.  Linda then took our garbage out and moved the can to the street.  By 10:30 AM Mara had not yet emerged from her rig, so I went to my basement office and resumed work on the custom desk design for our bus.  I still need to design the pull-out pantry but I finally ordered the Fulterer top/bottom slide mount from Rockler and had it shipped directly to Jarel in Logansport, Indiana.  It is a serious piece of hardware that will support 450 pounds, so it should be more than adequate for the task.

Mara eventually emerged from her rig and the ladies left for 12 Oaks Mall and Mara’s first ever appointment with Renee in the J. C. Penney’s Salon.  They were gone quite a while, tacking on several stops at pet and food stores before returning home.

I received a second quote for a wall-mounted monitor mounting system from AFC Industries.  It included itemized pricing and an offer of a 15% discount but was still way too expensive.  Though more expensive than a desk-mounted pole system I decided I to order the ZioTek wall-mounted monitor mounting system from CyberGuys.  Being wall-mounted it will get my monitors completely off the desks, leaving room for ham radio equipment to slide underneath and all the way to the back edge of the desk (and beyond).  It will also isolate the monitors from the desk so they won’t move if the desks are bumped.  Another bonus is that I can move the desks to get to the cables at the back of the radios without having to move the monitors.

The monitor mounting system is a significant purchase so I wanted to make sure the components would work the way I need them to.  I measured the three monitors that will initially be mounted using the system and then made a scale drawing to see how they would fit.  I added all of the items to the shopping cart and was getting ready to complete the purchase when I noticed that a 5% discount was available if I joined their e-mail club.  I signed up, received an e-mail, and confirmed my intention to join but the 5% discount did not show up in my shopping cart.  I called the 800 number and was told it would take 24 hours for the discount to be available so I cleared all of the items out of the cart and will re-enter them tomorrow.

I finally settled in to my design work but took several breaks to talk to friends on the Novi and South Lyon repeaters.  The Morgan Manufacturing VHF/UHF lightning arrestor was once again degrading my signal to an unusable level/quality so I once again disconnected the antenna and radio coax and joined them together with an N-female to N-female barrel adapter.  Once I did that I was able to transmit and receive to/from both repeaters full-quieting.

I exchanged a couple of e-mail updates with Jarel Beatty, the cabinet maker in Logansport, and finally quit working around 5 PM.  I came upstairs and found that the weBoost cellular booster systems had arrived from Amazon so I unpacked the shipping box and opened them.  I had not realized when we ordered them that they were designed for use in a car with an inside antenna that requires the phone or other cellular device to be 18 – 36 inches away.  That is not very far and it is a fairly small range.  As the name implies, however, it is designed for use while in motion which is what both we and Mara need/want.  I decided to temporarily install one of them in Linda’s car to test it.

Sitting in the driveway in a relatively bad location my phone was in 3G mode with a weak, but usable, signal that hovered around -115 to -118 dBm.  With the booster turned on my phone switched to 4G-LTE and the signal strength improved to anywhere between -103 to -94 dBm.  (The less negative the signal strength in dBm the stronger the signal.)  That may not appear impressive on the surface, and it was certainly not the 50 dBm gain that is claimed for this device, but it was actually a significant improvement.

“dB” is the abbreviation for “decibels” which is a logarithmic scale.  Logarithmic scales are useful for representing quantities that vary over a large range, like cellular signal strengths.  A change of 3 dB represents a factor of two, i.e., a doubling or halving of the quantity.  Thus a change from -118 dBm to -115 dBm (decibels to a millivolt) represents a doubling of the received power.  It is still a weak signal, but it is twice as strong.  Going from -118 to -103 is a change of +15 dBm and is five doublings (-118 to -115 to -112 to -109 to -106 to -103) which is an increase of 2x2x2x2x2 = 32 times.  Continuing from -103 to -94 is another +9 dB change representing three more doublings (-103 to -100 to -97 to -94) for a total gain of 32x2x2x2 = 32×8 = 256 times.  Starting from a signal in the -118 to -127 dBm range that is potentially the difference between useable and not useable.  (BTW:  a change of 10 dB is a factor of 10, so going from -115 dBm to -105 dBm and then to -95 dBm represents an increase of 100 times.)

We had decided at dinner last night that we wanted to go to The Blue Nile restaurant while Mara was here.  The best time to go turned out to be this evening, so Linda made an online reservation for 7:30 PM at the Ann Arbor location (there is also one in Ferndale).  We tested the weBoost Drive 4G-X cellular booster on the drive to/from Ann Arbor and it definitely made a difference in the signal strength we saw on our phones.

It wasn’t until we got part way down Main Street that we realized that today was the opening day of the Ann Arbor Art Fair.  The last place I wanted to be driving, parking, or walking was at the Ann Arbor Art Fair, not because I dislike art (we love art), and not because I dislike art fairs, but because I dislike congested traffic and crowds, which the AAAF has in abundance.  Surprisingly, we were able to park in one of the parking structures a couple of blocks from the restaurant.  After fighting our way through the pedestrian traffic I was even more surprised to find the restaurant essentially empty.  The Blue Nile is slightly outside the portion of Main Street where the AAAF takes place and streets to either side that are closed off to vehicles during the AAAF.  All of the restaurants and the beer/burger joints in and around the AAAF venue were doing a brisk business, especially if they had outside seating (it was a very pleasant evening), but the restaurant was open and the host was very gracious.

The Blue Nile serves Ethiopian cuisine.  Some of the tables are upside down rope baskets with four chairs and two side tables.  We always ask to be seated at one of these because we always order the Vegetarian Feast which is, in fact, vegan.  The Feast comes on a large round tray covered with a layer of Ethiopian sponge bread (made from teff flour) with small piles of the seven different vegetable-based dishes on the menu surrounding a pile of (optional) salad in the center.  Beverages and platters of rolled up sponge bread are placed on the two side tables (we had water and Ethiopian spiced tea).  The meal is eaten by tearing off suitable sized pieces of sponge bread and picking up the eight different selections from the tray.  Before the food was brought to the table we were given hot, moist towels to wash our hands.  Nice touch.

The food was amazing and the experience somewhat more communal than sitting at a standard American table and eating with utensils.  The waitstaff was gracious and attentive and it was a wonderful experience for all three of us.  Mara asked one of the waitstaff to take a picture of the three of us, which they gladly did.  She then uploaded it to her Facebook page along with a brief description of her visit and meal.  One the drive home she already had 12 “likes.”  This is the side of Facebook, and other social media, that is fun.

It was getting dark by the time we got back to the house but we took the time to unload Mara’s kayak from its special mount on the rear of her motorhome that is installed in the tow receiver.  The kayak mounts diagonally from the lower driver side up past the roof on the passenger side and the tip is about 13′ 2″ above the ground.  She was leaving at 6:30 AM the next morning to drive to Cummins Bridgeway to have her main engine and genset serviced and would be traveling south on Hacker Road to Grand River Avenue.  The last time we did this we clipped a branch in the southbound lane on Hacker just north of Bendix Drive not far from Grand River Avenue.  I was concerned that she would catch the same branch and damage her kayak which is why we took it off the rig.

Once the kayak was off the back of her rig and sitting in our yard we said a quick “good night” and all trundled off to bed as 6 AM would come all too soon.  I wrote for a while in bed but was too tired, and full of food, to stay awake.

 

2015/07/14 (T) Red Chili Wine

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Storms moved through the area overnight with more lightning and thunder than rain, or at so it seemed.  The storms were triggered by a cold front, behind which we had a cloudy day with periods of rain.  Linda was up at 7 AM and read quietly until I got up at 8.  I made a full pot of coffee (Cafe Europe half-caff blend from Teeko’s) and then joined her in the living room.

Linda was checking Dr. Michael Gregor’s speaking schedule and saw that he will be at Wayne State University in December and will be one of the keynote speakers for the 2016 Holistic Holiday at Sea vegan cruise.  We have not heard him speak in person, and will not be here in December, so that would be another reason to go on the cruise again.  By 9:45 AM Mara had not emerged from her rig so we went ahead and had breakfast.  Linda then went for a walk and I went to my office and worked on the design of the custom desk for the bus.

Mara finally emerged at 10:30 AM and we chatted for a while until Linda got back.  Our chat was briefly interrupted by a call from Mike (W8XH) on the Novi repeater so Mara got to see ham radio in operation.  My reception was weak and noisy and according to Mike my transmitted signal wasn’t any better.  The only thing that has changed since we tested this late last week is that I got the repaired M-302N VHF/UHF lightning arrestor back from Morgan Manufacturing yesterday and re-installed it.  Mike is going to help me do some more testing, but I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that these units are defective by design and I will have to replace them with something else.  I am disappointed to say the least.

It was another cool, cloudy, rainy day, just the kind of day for staying inside and getting stuff done.  Linda and Mara both had things to do and settled in at the dining room table to work.  Mara has been focused on planning her upcoming travels and spent much of the day making reservations.  Linda worked on the bookkeeping for our GLCC chapter and SLAARC ham radio club (she is treasurer of both).  She also renewed our Coach-Net emergency road service and our Harvest Host membership, which had expired, and probably took care of a lot of other things that I don’t even know about.  Except for an occasional break I worked on the custom desk design until 6:30 PM.  On one of those breaks I needed to measure something in the bus so we gave Mara the inside tour.

When I came upstairs Mara was taking advantage of the unlimited hot water available in our guest bathroom to have a nice long shower.  We know from personal experience what a luxury it is to take such a shower when living in an RV.  Linda had started preparing our dinner so I opened the bottle of Hatch Red Chili wine.  This wine, from St. Claire Winery in Deming, New Mexico is one of the more unusual wines we have ever had but we really like it.  It is a slightly sweet red wine with no tannin, a hint of chili flavor, and heat in the back of the throat on the finish.  We had vegan mock Italian sausages with sautéed onions and red peppers and the wine went well with it.  I had mine on a hotdog bun with mustard.  Mara had another serving of her beef stew, which she is trying to use up, and Linda put out a plate of whole, fresh strawberries.

One of the nice things about having visitors is that meals take longer to eat as we linger at the table in conversation.  Mara returned to her rig around 9 PM to have some quiet time with her cats before going to bed.  Linda decided to watch a couple of TV programs and I went back to work on the desk design.  I called it quits around 10:45 PM and went to bed to work on this post.  The overnight low is forecast to drop into the upper 40’s which should make for excellent sleeping.

 

2015/07/13 (M) weBoost

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Linda got up before I did and went for a long walk.  I was up by the time she got back and made a full pot of the Sumatra Mandheling coffee I just got from Teeko’s.  Mara eventually joined us for coffee and then breakfast.

Mara wanted to get the engine and generator serviced in her Fleetwood Bounder motorhome and asked for recommendations in the area.  There were three relatively convenient options but we had her contact Cummins Bridgeway in New Hudson, in part because she has an Onan (Cummins) generator and in part because we took our Itasca Sunrise motorhome there and were always pleased with the quality of the service.  They said they could take her on Thursday and she set up the appointment.  They estimated three to four hours so she plans to wait for it.

Mara was also interested in a mobile cellular booster for her motorhome, and I have been planning to get one for several years, so we researched the current offerings online.  At one time Wilson Electronics practically owned the mobile booster market.  They have more competition now and their consumer systems have been rebranded “weBoost.”

After scanning what was available we focused in on the weBoost Drive 4G-M and Drive 4G-X.  I downloaded the PDF manuals for each of them and studied the specifications. I don’t care about the marketing hype.  As they used to say on Dragnet “the facts mam, just the facts.”  Both units are 5-band, multi-mode units designed for in-motion use and the specs were very similar, but not identical.  The MSRP on the X model was almost $100 more than the M model so I called Cellular Solutions and talked to Judy.  In practical terms, she said the X model would work with weaker signals.

I was prepared to order two of them but they did not have them in stock at their Sanford, Michigan location.  She thought she could have them to us by Friday but that was not soon enough and we did not want to pay $30 for 2-day shipping on top paying almost $30 in sales tax (for each unit).  So we did what we always do, we checked Amazon.  Amazon had four of the weBoost Drive 4G-X systems so I ordered two of them with Prime 2nd day shipping of $4.99 each and no sales tax.  They are scheduled to arrive on Wednesday July 15 which will give us enough time to get them installed.

The installation on both rigs will require me to attach a steel plate to the roof to act as a base for the small 4″ tall magnetic mount outside antenna.  On our rig I will probably put the antenna up front and screw the plate to the existing aluminum plate, using putty under all the edges and the screw holes, and then caulk around the edge and the heads of the screws.  The cable will come in through the front weatherhead.  On Mara’s rig I will see if I can route the cable through the refrigerator roof vent or the roof-mounted air-conditioner cover.  The route will determine the placement of the steel base plate.

Linda made an appointment for Mara with our hairdresser, Renee, at the J. C. Penney’s salon at 12 Oaks Mall for Wednesday at 1:30 PM.  By the time we had accomplished all of this it was early afternoon and time for a light lunch.  After lunch Linda and Mara went for a long, vigorous walk and I retreated to my office and worked on the custom desk design.  I e-mailed Jarel to see if he would be available on Thursday.  He e-mailed back that any day but Thursday would be OK, so I may go Friday but more likely it will be next Monday.   I thought I could have the design done by Wednesday bedtime, but it would have been a push and I did not want to rush the process and risk making a mistake.  As much as I hate to delay this until next week I may have to.  Mara may leave on Friday, or delay until Saturday or Sunday, and I want to be hear when she leaves.  Meanwhile, Madeline is coming to stay with us on Friday and will be here until Monday.  These are indeed busy times.

I came back upstairs just before 5 PM and found the ladies sitting in the shade at the east end of the deck.  Mara was busy using MapMyPlaces to plan the next leg of her travels from our house to Quebec City, a trip of just under 1,000 miles.  I got a couple of ice cold beers (Linda did not want any) and we sat and talked until Mara returned to her rig at 6:30 PM to tend to her cats and have an hour of quiet time before dinner.

We got back together at 7:30 PM for dinner, which consisted of leftovers plus a simple salad for us.  Dinner led into a long discussion about health and nutrition.  We talked about the Holistic Holiday at Sea vegan cruise, which usually takes place the first week in March, and the vegan summer fest that takes place each July in Pennsylvania.  Mara seemed interested in both and thought she might be able to get her friend, Michael, to go on the cruise with her.

The more we talked the more we thought we might like to go again.  The last time we went, in 2013, we researched places where we could board the cats.  The only place we found that looked any good was in Punta Gorda.  Punta Gorda is quite a drive from Ft. Lauderdale, but it is not that far from Arcadia where we will be parked for January and February.  It would be easy to take the cats there and then drive to the Port of Miami to catch the ship.  However, if Mara goes on the cruise we might have another option.  When she has to leave her rig for a while, such as her recent trip to Belgium, she flies her sister in from California to house and cat sit.  She assured us that “sis” would be happy to take care of our cars as well.  All that would be required would be for us to have our motorhomes at the same RV park.  That could be Big Tree in Arcadia (since we would already be there) or someplace near Miami (if we could both get in).  Adjacent sites would be nice, but not necessary.  I have no idea if we will do this, but it was fun to consider the possibility.

 

2015/07/12 (N) Mara Comes To Visit

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When I shut down the bus yesterday I forgot to shut off the air supply to the engine accessories and turn off the chassis batteries, so I did that as soon as I got up this morning.  I then made coffee and we had our usual juice and homemade granola.  After breakfast Linda went shopping and I went to Lowe’s.  She picked up a lot of fresh vegetables at the Howell Farmers Market and finished up at Meijer’s.  I bought a 4-piece screw extractor set and then stopped at O’Reilly’s and bought two gallons of 50/50 pre-mixed universal antifreeze to top up the Aqua-Hot in our bus.  I stopped at Teeko’s Coffee and Tea and had them roast a pound of Sumatra Mandheling beans.  We have not tried these before but Mary thought we would like them.  They are not decaffeinated, but we try to keep a regular coffee bean on hand for company, after dinner, or when we want (need) the high octane in the morning.

Linda had been in contact with our friend Mara for the last few weeks so we knew that she might stop here on her way to the Canadian Maritime Provinces.  Late last week she confirmed that she would be here on Sunday so after our morning errands we turned our attention to getting ready for her arrival.  She lives/travels in a Fleetwood Bounder (Class A motorhome).  We saw it in Quartzsite, so we knew it was somewhere between 35 and 40 feet in length and that she does not tow a car behind it.  Yesterday we moved our bus so she could park on the level pad with easy access to our 50 Amp electrical hookup.  I cleaned up the coaxial cables that I had spread out all over the rec room floor and Linda vacuumed the carpets and wood floors and cleaned the bathrooms.  We keep a clean house but it is not always tidy as we are involved in a lot of projects at the moment.  But when company is coming we like things to a least start out tidy.

Mara was coming from Michigan City, Indiana so she only had 200 miles to travel.  Most of it would have been on Interstate highways but she decided to detour over to Three Rivers, Michigan to visit a Latvian community located nearby.  She finally arrived at our house around 2:30 PM.  We met her in the street and I directed her into her parking spot.

It’s always exciting, and a bit intense, to meet up with an RV friend and that was certainly the case here.  Mara had enjoyed her stop at the Latvian community even though she found them in church.  We had last seen her in Quartzsite, Arizona in February.  We had all had a lot of RV travel adventures since then, and it was also her first visit to our house, so we had lots to talk about.

Linda made bow-tie pasta with mushrooms, onions, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, and basil pesto using basil that she grew on our back deck.  We had a simple green salad and Italian bread with the meal and enjoyed 1-1/2 bottles of the 2013 Egri Merlot between the three of us.  We sat on the deck enjoying the last of the wine until it cooled off and we went inside.  By 9 PM we were all tired but we insisted that Mara stay for fresh sweet cherries.  Rejuvenated by the cherries we all got our second wind and had a long conversation about RVs, cellular and Wi-Fi communications while traveling, and a cool routing app that Mara uses (MapMyPlaces).  By 11 PM we were all tired for real and Mara returned to her rig for the night.  It had been a long, but very satisfying, day for all of us.

 

2015/07/11 (S) Impactful Tools

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We had a small crowd for our SLAARC breakfast this morning but good conversation.  After breakfast we drove to Chuck’s house and picked up the manual impact screwdriver.  Barb was up in the thumb visiting her brother-in-law who recently lost his wife (Barb’s sister).  We lingered for a while and then left for home, stopping for gas on the way.

Back at the house I started a load of laundry and then went to work on the stop block screws.  Linda helped steady the ladder and pass tools and parts back and forth.  I got three of the four screws out of the two stop blocks but the head stripped on the forth one so I was only able to remove the aft stop block.  I tried different bits and even tried drilling a small hole in the center of the head to allow the bits to go in farther but it did not work.  The next approach will be a screw extractor, but first I have to go buy one.

We had soy yogurt for lunch with red grapes and I had a few pretzels with roasted red pepper hummus.  I kept trying to get to the basement to work on the desk design but kept getting detoured.  Once I finally reached my office I found that the mouse trap that I had placed under one of my desks was out in front of it.  The food was gone but there was no mouse, only mouse poop.  I realized that the trap was upside down which allowed the door to swing open.  Our best guess is that a mouse was trapped and the cats pulled the trap out from under the desk and accidentally turned it over while pawing at it trying to get the mouse.  Since there was no sign of a mouse having been caught by one of the cats my best guess is that it escaped, for now.

I checked e-mails and found the one with the credentials and instructions for the QTH.com web-hosting of SLAARC.com so I shared those with the other members of the SLAARC website team and then logged in to check out the log file I had created the other day as a test.

I decided to reconnect the Yaesu FTM-400 radio to the Diamond X-50 antenna on the tower so I could monitor the Novi and South Lyon repeaters while I worked in my office.  I had quite a mess on the ham shack desks and decided the best way to deal with it was to install Mike’s Icom IC-2820H in my car in place of our Icom V-8000 2m rig.  At least that would get the 2820 off the desk.  I checked that the mounting brackets and they were identical so I removed the V-8000 but left the mounting bracket installed in the car.

Mike had modified the power cord on his radio by cutting off the T-connector and replacing it with Andersen PowerPoles so I had to modify the power cable in my car to match as I could not modify Mike’s radio.  I removed the fuse from the positive (+12VDC) lead and then cut off the T-connector, leaving about 6″ of wire so I can add PowerPoles and make it into an adapter cable.  I brought my Hakko soldering station up from the basement, set it up on the floor behind the center console, ran an extension cord from the garage, and used it to solder PowerPole contacts to the two wires.  I then inserted them into the black/red housing pair and snapped them in place.

I mounted the IC-2820H, connected the power cable and connected the coax from the antenna.  I reinstalled the fuse in the positive lead, started the engine, and turned the radio on.  A couple of hams were chatting on the Novi repeater, one of whom I knew (Jim, KB8TAV).  When they finished I gave Jim a call and he came back to me, the first time I have been able to use the Novi 440 repeater from my car.  Jim signed off and I switched to the South Lyon 2m repeater and gave a general call.  Steve (N8AR) came back to me and we had a short QSO that verified the radio/antenna was also working on 2m.  As we were wrapping up Linda started fixing dinner.

Linda fixed a simple salad and Dr. Praeger’s vegan hamburgers with Daiya non-dairy cheese.  These patties were also squishy rather than firm and, like the ones at Zingerman’s Roadhouse the other night, where not very satisfying.  They tasted OK, and we ate them because we are not inclined to waste food, but there is a lot more to what makes food satisfying than just taste.  Sight, smell, and texture (mouth feel) are also important.

Linda had several TXT messages from Mara letting us know that she would be arriving tomorrow sometime before 2 PM as she wanted to watch the Wimbledon finals at that time.  Linda and I considered how best to accommodate Mara’s motorhome and finally decided to just pull our bus straight forward until the nose was at the edge of the concrete driveway.  That created more than enough space on the level part of the pull-through driveway for her to park and plug in to our 50 amp service.  The only loads we have in the bus at the moment are battery chargers so we used our 15 amp cord to plug it into a garage outlet.  Since I had to start it to move I switched it to high idle once I had it positioned, leveled it, turned on the OTR air-conditioning to put a load on the engine, and let it run for 30 minutes.

I returned to my office after dinner and work on the desk design for a while but by this point I was tired and not really in the mood.  The last time I updated the BCM page on our website was after the February 2015 issue came out.  I have had articles in the March, April, and May issues and will have articles in the June and July issues.  I captured the covers from March, April, and May and updated the page.

I exchanged e-mails with several people and spent some time looking at dual and triple monitor stands on EBay.  We rarely use EBay and the site made me change our password before it would let me log in.  There was a large selection of products but none of them were exactly what I am looking for.  There wasn’t any rush so I decided to revisit this tomorrow.

 

2015/07/10 (F) Eye of the Beholder

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I was up at 7 AM and made coffee.  This usually wakes Linda up, but not this morning.  After waiting a reasonable amount of time I went ahead and started drinking.  If someone tells you that 7:30 is too early in the morning to be drinking don’t believe it, and if someone tells you that you should never drink alone don’t believe that either.

Linda eventually got up but looked really tired.  Unbeknownst to me she had awoken in the middle of the night and not been able to get back to sleep.  Neither of us were hungry after the large meals we had last night for dinner so we just had a little juice to wash down our little pills (vitamins and an allergy pill for me).

I’ve been looking for a system to wall-mount multiple flat-panel LCD monitors above/behind the desks in the ham radio shack portion of the downstairs office.  Linda was helping search for products and found AFC Industries in New York.  Their website had a large variety of very serious looking products.  The ones that caught my eye were a 72″ wall mount track with four articulated monitor mounts and a 48″ track with three mounts.  They had an 800 number and the website said to call for pricing.  That’s usually a bad sign but they appeared to have exactly what I needed so I decided to call them later.

I had planned to work on the custom desk design all day but Linda had other ideas.  She had become frustrated with the clutter in the library and the inability to really clean that room and decided that today was the day to do something about it.  Point acknowledged.  Some of the clutter (but not all) is artwork and she thought the place for us to start was to get some of it hung on the walls.  Again, point well taken and agreed.  Doing this correctly is a slow process, however, so I knew my plans for the whole day had just changed.  Sometimes you have go along to get along.

We have artwork that is not currently displayed which ranges in size from 8″ x 10″ to 2′ x 5′.  Some of it is framed and ready for hanging and some of it is not.  It is mostly paintings but there is some photography, a few poster prints, and some textile pieces.  We went through every piece looking primarily for oil paintings that we liked and that would fit the spaces we had available to hang them.  Before we were finished with this project for the day we had hung eight paintings.  We also found four paintings that we liked but lacked frames, or ways to hang them, and set them aside for now.  Most of the paintings were done by Ann Metzger, my late great Aunt, but one was done by my late mother.  We had also moved a few items out of the library into the driveway to be donated to the Salvation Army.  I tend to use drywall screws with large fender washers as hangers as they are strong and very secure.  We ran out of stainless steel fender washers so that created a natural stopping point for our task.

For a change of pace I decided to climb the tower to measure the center sleeve inside diameter so I could determine what outside diameter mast to get.  I got out Mike’s climbing harness, set up the step ladder, put on the harness, climbed up onto the roof, connected the waist strap around the tower, and started climbing.  I alternately attached and detached the two safety cables and made good progress until I got to the DB8e OTA TV antenna.  To go higher I would have to move from the west face to the northeast face and then undo the waist strap and reconnect it above the mounting point for the OTA TV antenna.  I did not feel like doing that today.  I was, however, able to reach the bottom of the sleeve by extending my tape measure.  The tip of the tape fit inside the bottom of the sleeve with what appeared to be about a quarter inch to spare.  I then climbed down and got off the roof, got out of the climbing harness, and put it away.

Back in the house the tip of the tape measured approximately 1-1/8″ across thus it appears that the sleeve is sized for a 1-3/8″ outside diameter mast.  I checked Universal Towers website, since they are located in S. E. Michigan, but their selection of aluminum masts did not include this O.D.  OnlineMetals.com has 1-3/8″ O.D. 6061-T6 aluminum tube in five different wall thicknesses and a large variety of lengths so that may be the easiest way to get one.  But first I will check the usual ham radio places.

Next I called AFC Industries and was routed to Ewa who was very curious what I was going to use the multiple monitors for since I was not a company.  I tried to explain why I would need at least three monitors in an amateur (ham) radio shack but she had never heard of ham radio and I don’t think I did a very good job of explaining it.  She was paying attention to what I was describing, however, about where I wanted to position the monitors.  She could not give me pricing on the phone so I gave her my e-mail address to send a quote.  Ewa was prompt in the sending the quote but I did not see it until later as we had the leftover seitan stroganoff for lunch and then left to run errands.

Linda had loaded our donation items in the back of my car while I was on the phone.  I brought seven paintings to the car and we left.  Our first stop was the Salvation Army donation center between Brighton and Howell.  We then went to the Howell Art and Framing Center, a frame shop on the east end of downtown Howell.  The proprietor, Rick, worked with us quite a while as we selected frames for four of the seven pieces and played with his Jack Russell terrier, Rudy.  These four pieces will go in the library when they are done in about three weeks.  Our final stop was Meijer’s where we picked up fender washers, salad greens, and coffee filters.

Back at the house I went to my office to check e-mail and work on the desk design.  The quote was there from Ewa and she had already made a follow up phone call so I opened the e-mail and looked at the quote.  It was almost double what I expected which was already double what I wanted to spend.  I e-mailed her back and asked for a simpler configuration but politely explained that her numbers were way out of my price range.  The interesting thing about such experiences is that the Ziotek products I’ve been looking at on the CyberGuys website suddenly do not seem so expensive.  It’s funny how that works.

While I was working I got a TXT message from Chuck following up on the refrigerator installation.  I texted back that I had not yet checked whether we can open the fixed glass window frame but would do so immediately and call him back.  I moved the 7′ step ladder next to the bus and climbed up to inspect the stop blocks as Linda pushed the window open.  The two stop blocks on that frame were definitely contacting the drip rail immediately above them preventing the frame from opening more than about 8 to 10 inches at the bottom.  The good news was that the Zip Dee patio awning would not interfere with the opening of the window.  The bad news is that I was not able to remove the two Philips head screws that secured each block to the frame.

I called Butch to find out what the tool was that I used at his shop to work on my brakes.  He said it was a manual impact tool.  This nifty little device is a screwdriver that turns through a small angle when you strike the end of it with a hammer.  This has the unique benefit of driving the screwdriver bit into the screw head while turning.  Butch thought that any auto store would have these so I called the local O’Reilly’s but they did not have any in stock in the store.

While I was talking to Butch Linda was researching other places to buy such a tool.  It turned out that Sears would be a good choice but the closest one was at Twelve Oaks Mall over 20 miles away.  I was getting ready to drive there but called Chuck first.  It turned out that he has two of them so I will borrow one tomorrow after our ham radio club breakfast.  I spent the last couple hours of the evening working on the desk design.  I then went to bed and worked on this post.

 

2015/07/09 (R) Graduation Celebration

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My main focus this morning was my dentist appointment at 10:30 AM.  I wanted to leave the house at 9 AM so I had plenty of time to get there and actually left at 9:15.  Once I was on I-96 eastbound and clear of the construction at US-23 I called the South Lyon 2m repeater and Steve (N8AR) came back to my call.  I-96 was very slow as I approached Wixom Road so I exited at Beck Road and dropped down onto Grand River Avenue (GRA).  I got off GRA at M-5 in Farmington Hills and took that to where it ended and rejoined GRA.  I continued to Telegraph Road and headed south.  My QSO with Steve lasted until there by which point there was too much noise and not enough signal for a pleasant conversation.  In spite of the change from my intended route I was still at the dentist’s office by 10:10 AM and they were able to take me in early.

On the way home I called the South Lyon 2m repeater and Mike (W8XH) responded to the call.  As a result of differing weekend plans I decided to head to his QTH and pick up his climbing harness.  While I was there I took a few minutes to look at his reconfigured ham shack and his Canon EOS D7 Mark II DSLR.  To say that I am unhappy about Sony’s failure to release the alpha 99 II FF DSLT would be a gross understatement and I am not alone in the sentiment.

Back at the house we had a light lunch of sourdough pretzel nibblers and roasted red pepper hummus.  I then went to my office to continue working on the custom desk design for our bus.  But first I was taking care of e-mails when Williston Crossings RV Resort called back and said they had a spot for us for December.  We had not heard back from Suncoast Designers regarding an appointment to have a fogged window repaired so I called them.  They said they had replied to my e-mail letting us know that we were scheduled for December 7 but the e-mail had not come through, so I need to check the spam filter.

Linda called back and accepted the spot at Williston starting December 1st.  We will have to leave for one to three days to have the window taken care of and we will depart on the 26th for the Arcadia Bus Rally but the monthly rate will still be cheaper than paying for three weeks at the weekly rate.  Besides, they did not have a two or three week opening.

I did get a couple of hours of work done on the desk design and then had to quit.  A month ago our elder grand-daughter, Katie, missed her high school graduation due to a sudden illness.  Meghan and Chris (Katie’s dad) made reservations at Zingerman’s Roadhouse for 5:45 PM today and we gathered to celebrate this milestone in Katie’s life.  Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline also joined us and we all enjoyed quizzing (and teasing) Katie about her upcoming college experience at Northern Michigan University where she plans to major in Wildlife and Fisheries within the larger biology program.

Linda and I had the black bean burger with fresh, hand-cut fries.  Although it was tasty, and vegan, it did not have any binders and completely fell apart when I tried to assemble it as a sandwich.  We ordered them on sourdough bread as the buns had an egg wash.  Zingerman’s has excellent bread, but it is the rustic style with crusts that are so tough you cannot cut them with a knife (or a chainsaw).  Thus the “burger” was difficult to eat even as an open faced sandwich and was basically a messy pile of “stuff” on my plate.  Linda seemed to enjoy hers but I regretted ordering it even though I ate the whole thing.  I did, however, have a glass of Schramm’s Raspberry Mead made by my friend, and former colleague, Ken Schramm.  It was excellent.  The hand-cut fries were also good and the waitress was delightful, which is always a plus.

Back home I worked for a couple more hours in my office and then worked on this post.  I put my new N.T.I. dental appliance on my lower front teeth just before going to bed.  It obviously felt a little strange but did not keep me from falling asleep.

 

2015/07/08 (W) Custom Desk Design

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Linda continued to research Florida RV parks this morning over coffee.  Riverside RV Resort which was fully booked but she found Big Tree RV Resort in Arcadia, Florida.  It is located in a similar part of the state and Arcadia is where the annual Arcadia Bus Rally is held between Christmas and New Year’s.  Big Tree is a Carefree Resort, which means they had a nice, professionally done video on their website.  We checked it out on Google Earth and it looked OK.  Hey, the entrance is right across the street from a Walmart, so the shopping is convenient.

Linda called Big Tree and talked to Pat.  They only had five openings for the 2015/16 winter season so we reserved a spot for January and February 2016 with the understanding that we can probably extend through March if needed.  First, however, we want to see if we can find someplace else to stay in another part of Florida for March and perhaps some of April.  We would like to spend some time in northeast Florida.  Our friends, Pat and Vicki, spend late February and early March at Jetty Park near Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral.  Besides their presence there is a lot to see and do in that area, so that is appealing to us.  However, the spring FMCA national rally will be in Perry, Georgia the third week of March, so we are being pulled in several directions.  Such is the RV life; so many places, so little time.

Breakfast was cinnamon raisin toast and fresh melon.  After breakfast I called Chuck It Junk Removal and left a message that we would like to rent their dumpster trailer for starting on Monday 20 July with pickup on Friday 24 July.  Brad called back and said those dates would work for him.

Linda continued to research RV parks in Florida for December and March.  She called Williston Crossings to ask about space for December but the lady on the phone said someone else would have to call us back.  As much as we liked Williston Crossings the winter before last we wanted to spend the heart of the winter farther south in the state.  A more southerly location would afford us a warmer climate and position us to explore a part of the state we did not see last time.  It would also put us closer to many of our friends who winter in southwest Florida.  We really enjoyed the southwest Arizona climate this past winter and have talked about trying a winter in southern Texas and/or southern New Mexico.  I have no doubt we will visit those areas in future years but this year we wanted to return to Florida.

I typed up a short letter to go with the defective Morgan M-302N coaxial cable lightning arrestor and boxed it up for shipping back to Morgan Manufacturing in Martinsville, Indiana.  Linda got a new 90-day prescription for me when she saw the dermatologist yesterday so we also got that ready to mail.  She then left for the library, post office, and grocery store.

My focus for the rest of the morning was on uploading posts to our personal blog but before I even got started I discovered a mouse at the entrance to the utility area in the basement.  It had not survived its encounter with one of our cats, probably Juniper, so I put it in a small zip lock bag and put it in the trash.  I know that food and shelter are powerful attractions for mice but I am surprised that the presence of two cats in the house is apparently not a deterrent for them.  Other than the one mouse we live trapped in the bathroom the mice are not taking the bait so far.  Indeed, it may be that we are luring them out of hiding and Juniper has figured out where to lie in waiting to ambush them.  From what we have seen she is a very skilled, and determined, mouser.

Linda went for a walk as soon as she got back from running her errands.  By the time she returned and prepared tofu hotdogs for lunch I had uploaded eight blog posts covering June 8 through 15.  After lunch I sent an e-mail to a dozen or so folks letting them know where we would be this winter.  I then got to work on the design for the custom desk.  Except for a dinner break I worked on it until 9 PM when I quit for the day and went upstairs to watch the final episode of The First Peoples on PBS.

Butch and Fonda are at the Crosley Automobile Club national gathering in Wauseon, Ohio this week and will be back home on Sunday.  I would like to have the design for the desk and other custom woodwork done by this Sunday so I can drive it down on Monday or Tuesday next week, give it to Jarel Beatty (the cabinet maker), and visit with Butch and Fonda before heading home.  The desk will take some time to build and I would like to take the bus to Butch and Fonda’s in August before they leave for Arizona so Jarel can bring it to their place and help me install it, assuming, of course, that I have the new floor installed by then.

The desk is proving to be quite challenging to design but after thinking about it for the last couple of weeks I had several “breakthrough” ideas today.  One was to turn the printer 90 degrees so it faces fore and aft rather than side-to-side.  Another was to leave the front of the printer box open and cover it with a swing up work surface.  But the basic difficulty I am having is figuring out how to draw it.  I finally decided to draw a plan view of the base which really helped me see where the Aqua-Hot fan-coil heat exchangers will go and how the coolant lines will run.  I still have a lot of work to do, and I really wish I had AutoCAD (and knew how to use it), but I went to bed feeling like Sunday was a realistic target date for this piece of the project.

 

2015/07/07 (T) Field Day Photos

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We did not sleep well last night, were slow to get up this morning, and slower to get going.  A cold front was pushing in from the northwest with the promise of cooler temperatures and sunny, blue skies, but first we were in for a day of overcast conditions and rain, which started around 8:30 AM.  It was a perfect morning to sit quietly in the living room, reading, writing, and drinking our coffee but too warm to turn on the gas fireplace logs.

Yesterday Linda started researching RV parks in southern Florida for this coming winter and we spent some time this morning looking at them online.  There was one in particular, Riverside RV Resort and Campground, which caught our attention.  Located on the Peace River near Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda, it is a short distance southwest of Arcadia where the annual Buss’in rally is held.  We went to the rally two years ago and had a great time so we will go again this year if we decide to winter in Florida, which is our current inclination.

One of the reasons for us to winter in Florida, at least occasionally, is our many contacts there.  Our friends, Steve and Karen, bought a mobile home near Venice; our friends, Chuck and Barbara, bought a lot at Pelican Lake in Naples; our ham radio friends, Bruce and Linda, bought a house on 25 acres near Brooksville; our GLCC fiends, Ed and Janet, bought a place that I think is near Sarasota; our FMCA Freethinker friends, John and Marian, bought a place in Dunnellon; and our other FMCA Freethinker friends, Ed and Betty, bought a place in Bradenton.  In addition to all of those folks quite a few of our RV friends, like Pat and Vicki, spend the winter in Florida, and the state has a lot of things to see and do, including one of the best state park systems in the nation.

Linda left for her appointment with the dermatologist and I got to work at my desk.  I continued to deal with e-mails related to the SLAARC domain transfer and an ongoing conversation with BCM publisher Gary Hatt.  I got a Dropbox link to some Field Day photos from Steve (N8AR) a few days ago and downloaded them.  Last night I got a similar e-mail from Mike (KE8AGY) with a Google Drive link and today I got one from Jim (N8HAM) so I downloaded all of those photos.  I spent most of the rest of the day selecting and processing the photos I took and then processed all of the ones I got from other people.

I took a break to chat with Linda when she got back from her appointment.  I then removed the defective Morgan M-302N VHF/UHF Lightning Arrestor from the cable entry box and boxed it up to ship back to Morgan.  I took another short break for dinner, which was an excellent Farro and kale dish, and then worked until 8:30 PM when we had agreed to watch a movie.  This evening’s choice was The Imitation Game, a film about Alan Touring and the concepts he invented that allowed the British to build a machine that broke the coded messages generated by the German Enigma machine during WWII.  I spent another hour at my desk after the movie before going to bed and finishing this post.  Tomorrow morning I plan to finally upload some blog posts and then get back to work on the design of the custom desk for the bus.

 

2015/07/06 (M) Arrested

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Our morning started with coffee, once we got up, and then granola for breakfast.  We are both in better health, generally, than we were in our 30s, 40s, and early 50s, but having Madeline here requires a different kind of constant energy and attention and we are somewhat tired by the time her parents take her home.  It’s a good tired, of course, but we were still tired this morning and slept in for a while.

I had hoped to get back to work on the bus today but the afternoon highs were forecast for the mid-80’s which would make for less than comfortable working conditions.  The forecast for the rest of the week was for highs in the 70’s so I decided to wait another day.  I really needed to get back to work on the bus but I also had other things to take care of that seemed at least as pressing.

At the top of my list was the SLAARC website.  Scott Neader had successfully copied the SLAARC WordPress website from GoDaddy.com to QTH.com and changed the domain pointers to point to the QTH servers.  He needed me to check that everything was working correctly.  He was also preparing to transfer the domain name registration and needed my involvement for that process.

Part of our home ham radio shack with the new Yaesu FTM-400 2m/70cm mobile radio shown lower left.

Part of our home ham radio shack with the new Yaesu FTM-400 2m/70cm mobile radio shown lower left.

Continuing with the ham radio theme, I needed to resolve how I was going to mount the new Diamond X-300NA 2m/70cm antenna and possibly remount the outside omnidirectional antenna for the cellular booster system.  That meant doing some minor engineering and possibly ordering parts.  I was also preoccupied with the fact that I was unable to participate in the SLAARC info net last night, apparently due to some malfunction in our ham radio system, and it was going to bug me until I figured it out.

Last, but not least, was the fact that I was now one month behind on uploading posts to our blog.  The farther behind I get the more of a chore it is to get caught up.  Like cleaning up my e-mail inboxes, which I also need to do, it finally becomes “the” thing I “have” to take care of before I can concentrate on any other work.  I hate it when that happens, but it is a recurring problem and I have no one to blame except myself.

I often seem to spend the first part of each morning finishing up my blog post (draft) for the previous day and outlining the one for the current day or making notes for future days.  It’s my way of reflecting on what I have done and thinking ahead to what I need/want to do next.  By the time I actually got to work this morning it was after 10 AM and Keith showed up to cut the grass.  It did not rain this past week and he was finally able to cut the grass at the west end of the property, which is low and often wet.

Before going to my office I checked the rebate paperwork which Linda had assembled for the new Yaesu ham radio and got it ready to mail.  I also started filling out the prescription form to send in to Catamaran Home Delivery when I realized the doctor had written the Rx for 30 days instead of 90.  I called the clinic and they said it would (probably) be OK to have Linda bring it to her appointment tomorrow and have the doctor rewrite it.

Our coaxial cable adapter kit.

Our coaxial cable adapter kit.

When I finally got to my office I looked at the SLAARC WordPress website on my computer to make sure everything was working.  The only thing that was not working was an online tool for logging check-ins for the Sunday evening info net.  I e-mailed Scott about that and then logged in as an administrator and updated several plugins.  I logged in to the FMCA-GLCC website and updated it and then did the same for our personal website.  I then created a support ticket at iPower.com regarding the broken FMCA Freethinkers website.  I dealt with SLAARC related e-mails throughout the day.

I spent the rest of the morning editing blog posts for the second half of June and early July and then started selecting and processing photos to use with blog posts, and processed those further.  By the time I quit working I had photos ready for everything except the three days of the ARRL Field Day event.

It was a nice day, if a bit warm, and we had the house opened up including the basement doorwall.  Other than a short break for lunch by 2 PM I had sat long enough and decided to setup the new Diamond X-300 2m/70cm antenna on a temporary pole.  I rummaged around the garage and found the four section pole I had used at the old house.  The pieces were buried under a pile of GLCC related PVC flag pole sections but I was able to slide them out.  I cleaned up the swaged connections and used a light coating of anti-seize compound before assembling them.  I stood it upright on the ground at the NE corner of the deck and zip tied it to the corner post at three points.  I then set up the 7-foot step ladder on the deck and removed the upper two sections.

The new Diamond X-300NA VHF/UHF ham radio antenna is visible atop the pole at the corner of the deck.

The new Diamond X-300NA VHF/UHF ham radio antenna is visible atop the pole at the corner of the deck.

I unbolted the X-300 antenna from its storage place on the side of the 40-foot tower and set the base on the east deck railing.  I then got one of the 35-foot heliac coax cables from the basement and attached it to the feed point of the antenna.  With Linda’s assistance I mounted the antenna to the top of the topmost mast section and zip tied the coax to the mast.  Back up on the ladder I was able to slip the upper mast sections into the lower mast sections and add a couple more zip ties to secure the coax.

I routed the coax over to the cable entry box (CEB) so that it was not visible.  The antenna is shielded from view by our Norway Crimson King Maple tree and the mast is very inconspicuous; not bad for a temporary installation.  I disconnected the X-50 antenna coax from the Morgan UHF/VHF Lightning Arrestor in the CEB and attached the coax from the X-300 in its place.  I went back to the ham shack, turned on the Yaesu radio, and listened.  Nothing.  I tried calling the South Lyon 2m repeater but nothing came back.  I tied the Novi 440 MHz repeater…nothing.  I turned the radio off and moved the coax to our Icom IC-7000 radio and repeated the tests.  Same results.  Something was clearly wrong so I called Mike (W8XH) to see if he could help me figure it out.

Mike was out but on his way back home and called me when he was back at his base station.  We verified the transmit and receive squelch settings on my radios and then tested both antennas on both radios.  Using our cell phones we confirmed that he was not hearing my transmissions and I was not hearing his, either direct (simplex) or through the repeaters.  It was now clear that RF signals were not making it into or out of my system and there was one component that was common to all configurations; the Morgan M-302N VHF/UHF Lightning Arrestor.

I have a coaxial cable adapter kit that allows me to temporarily interconnect most of the connectors used in amateur radio coaxial cables.  At Mike’s suggestion I used the kit to assemble an adapter (barrel connector) with N-female connections on both ends.  I then disconnected the antenna and radio coaxial cables from the lightning arrestor and connected the radio coax directly to the X-300 antenna coax.  Back in the ham shack I tested this configuration with both radios on both repeaters.  I was receiving both repeaters with S7 to S9 signal strength, which is good, and very little noise, which is also good.  Mike reported that my signal was very strong into both repeaters and that he was receiving me full-quieting.  I shut the radios off and then switched the connection in the cable entry box to the X-50 antenna.  We repeated the tests with the same results, confirming that the problem as the lightning arrestor and only the lightning arrestor.

The current status of the cable entry box.

The current status of the cable entry box.

Although I was disappointed that the M-302N was defective I was overjoyed, or at least relieved, that everything else was working perfectly.  Although the new X-300 antenna turned out not to be “necessary” having it on a mast above the tower will give us an even better transmit and receive capability than the current X-50 installation.  I even have some hope of being able to reach repeaters farther away in the Detroit metro area as well as in the Lansing, Flint, Ann Arbor, and Ypsilanti areas, and perhaps much farther beyond.  Windsor (Canada) and Kalamazoo are possible when atmospheric conditions are right for longer range propagation, and the Saginaw, Mt. Pleasant, Fort Wayne (Indiana), and even Cleveland (Ohio) areas are not out of the question.  Once, at the old house, I was on the Spirit of 76 repeater atop the Renaissance Center in Detroit when it picked up a 2m station from Iowa.

Relieved of my concerns, especially about the operation of our new radio, I returned to my computer-based tasks.  The first thing I did was e-mail Chris Perri at KF7P Metalwerks regarding the lightning arrestor, which I purchased from him as part of the cable entry box.  He apparently forwarded my e-mail to Morgan Manufacturing Inc., or at least e-mailed them, as I got an e-mail from Bob at Morgan with instructions on where to return the unit.  It has a lifetime warranty and he indicated they would repair or replace it as needed.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening, except for dinner, working on photos.  Dinner was chickpea salad on a bed of greens with steamed baby bok choy dressed in rice vinegar.  It was a perfect meal for a warm summer evening.

The humidity had been up all day and rose as the temperatures dropped at sunset, although they did not drop much.  Linda was watching an episode of Scorpion when I finally came upstairs.  We watched an episode of NCIS Los Angeles after that and then an episode of Two and a Half Men, which I have always enjoyed.  We turned on a small fan but it was a warm, uncomfortable evening for sleeping.  For whatever reason we did not turn on the air-conditioner although in hindsight we should have.

 

2015/07/05 (N) Return to HFM

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Madeline helps Grandma Linda mix the batter for vegan blueberry pancakes.

Madeline helps Grandma Linda mix the batter for vegan blueberry pancakes.

The day started with Grandma Linda’s fabulous, made from scratch, blueberry vegan pancakes for breakfast, which Madeline helped make!  After breakfast we took Madeline to the Howell Farmers Market (HFM).  She had been to this market with us once before and it was a beautiful Michigan summer morning for a return visit.  On the drive over we discussed why it is that you cannot buy a farmer at a farmers market and you cannot buy a garage at a garage sale.  English can be a funny/strange language.

We walked the entire market, which is not really that big, and Linda bought some fresh strawberries.  A couple of the regular vendors were missing.  In particular we wanted to buy some more soap from Marjorie but she was not there.  Madeline enjoyed checking out the child and doll sized wooden furniture that one vendor had for sale.  We kept an eye out for someone selling jelly beans but did not see any so we stopped at the CVS on the way home and got a small bag of them.

We had just gotten home and I was unlocking the front door when Brendan and Shawna arrived.  We had a nice visit and they stayed for a light lunch.  By the end of lunch Madeline was showing signs of being ready for her nap so Brendan transferred the car seat and stroller from Linda’s car to their car, gathered up all of Madeline’s things, and loaded their car.  Madeline left with her parents at 12:30 PM and Linda laid down for a nap shortly thereafter.

I looked at the SLAARC WordPress website on my iPad to make sure it was working.  I checked most of the pages except for the Member Only Area, which requires a login, and they appeared to be OK.  I then went to my office to deal with things that needed to be dealt with from there.

Madeline tries on a child sized rocking chair at the Howell Farmers Market.

Madeline tries on a child sized rocking chair at the Howell Farmers Market.

My first task was to update the roster and financial records for our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter.  I sent e-mails to new members, uploaded the updated roster to our Dropbox, and e-mailed everyone that they were available.  I had received the draft copy of the June 2015 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine on Friday.  I proofread part 3 of my 4-part article on the exterior renovation of our motorcoach and sent corrections to the editor.  I then settled in to edit blog posts.

I took a break for dinner.  Linda cooked Brussels sprouts and heated some vegan riblets.  The barbecue sauce on these riblets is very tasty.  We had vegan chocolate cupcakes for dessert and they were very tasty too.  I then went back to my office and continued editing blog posts.

I took a break just before 8 PM to join the South Lyon 2m Information Net using our new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE RADIO but I did not hear anything except noise.  I left the radio on for a while and then turned it off.  I switched the coax to the Icom IC-7000 and turned it on but did not hear anything there either.  I turned the IC-7000 off, switched the coax back to the FTM-400, turned it back on, and went back to work at my desk.  Around 8:30 PM the squelch started opening and I heard very faint voices way down in the noise.  After listening carefully I was able to determine that it was Steve (N8AR) running the net but I could not understand most of what was being said.

It was the first time in a long time that I had tried to participate in the net and I was disappointed that the new installation of the antenna on the tower and coax cables to the radios in the basement was not working adequately.  They were working OK when I tested them with Mike (W8XH) so it could have been an unusual band condition but Steve was obviously getting in from farther to the west than our QTH.  I enjoy operating and am looking forward to finally having our larger tower up and some HF antennas in operation but for now I need to concentrate on getting the VHF/UHF stuff working reliably (correctly and consistently).

I exchanged some e-mails with Gary at BCM regarding the magazine and then continued editing blog posts.  I got through the end of June by 11 PM and quit for the night.

2015/07/04 (S) Another Fourth

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Linda was up at 7 AM and grabbed a shower as Madeline is usually awake by 7:15 and up between 7:30 and 7:45.  Madeline tends to wake up hungry so Linda likes to have breakfast ready to go.  I was up by 7:20 and also grabbed a quick shower.  When Madeline was finally ready to get up she let Grandma Linda carry her into the living room and hold her in her arms for a while.  When she was ready to sit up Linda brushed her hair and then Madeline returned the brush to the master bathroom.  Linda got her changed into her day clothes and then we all had breakfast.  Linda and I had our usual coffee, orange juice, and granola with fresh berries plus some vegan sausage links.  Madeline also had the sausage links and berries but her main course was toaster waffles with a little bit of real maple syrup.  Yum.

One of the swans at the Brighton Mill Pond.

One of the swans at the Brighton Mill Pond.

After breakfast Madeline wanted to go look for chickens so she and Grandma Linda went for a walk.  When they got back I learned that they saw three chickens, a duck, some bunnies, and a chipmunk (ground squirrel).  We then read a couple of stories and built a fort in the living room.  We talked about going to the Mill Pond in Brighton to see/feed the ducks but there was some sort of running event this morning, a parade at 10 AM, and then a rubber ducky race at the Mill Pond following the parade.  It is the 4th of July, after all, and most communities have celebratory events going on all day and into the evening, ending with fireworks displays.  That sounded like a crowd to me, with the attendant parking hassle, but we figured the crowd might have thinned sufficiently by 10:30 AM to make the experience a good one and decided to chance a visit.  Linda made PB&J sandwiches and packed some grapes and cookies.

Madeline sitting at a picnic table at the Brighton Mill Pond playscape.

Madeline sitting at a picnic table at the Brighton Mill Pond playscape.

We parked in the lot behind the La Marsa restaurant, which is far away from the Main Street part of the Mill Pond, and walked down the boardwalk to the playscape.  There were a lot of people gathered around the Pond for the rubber ducky race and quite a few children at the playscape with their adult chaperones.  Madeline explored the entire playscape with great enthusiasm.  By the time she was done it was 11:30 AM and she was hungry so we had lunch at one of the picnic tables under the shade of a big tree.

After lunch Grandma Linda stood in line with Madeline to use the bathroom.  We then walked around the Mill Pond and paused to cover our ears while the emergency sirens were tested, this bring the first Saturday of the month.  We had a leisurely stroll back to the car and I had a nice chat with a fellow photographer along the way.  He is a local artist/writer with a deep interest in the Mill Pond and the wildlife that calls it home.  He wrote down his website URL for me: http://Words4It.com.  I checked it out when we got home and it is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the flora and fauna of the Brighton Mill Pond.

The various shades of green with a few orange flowers caught my eye while strolling the boardwalk at the Brighton Mill Pond.

The various shades of green with a few orange flowers caught my eye while strolling the boardwalk at the Brighton Mill Pond.

Back at the house Madeline had some soy yogurt and fresh berries before taking her nap.  I don’t know if she fell asleep and woke up or never completely fell asleep but around 2 PM I heard her fussing.  When I checked on her she said she needed to go to the bathroom.  Linda had fallen asleep but that is a duty she takes care of so I woke her up.  Madeline took care of her business, laid back down, and fell asleep.  Linda stayed awake.

With Madeline asleep I took the opportunity to go to my office and check e-mail.  There was one from Scott at QTH.com indicating that the SLAARC website had been copied to the QTH web servers and was ready for testing.  I think that meant the GoDaddy DNS had been changed to point to the QTH installation but I don’t think the domain name registration had been moved yet.  I will need to clarify that with Scott on Monday.  I also had an e-mail from Gary at Bus Conversion Magazine with the draft of the June 2015 issue attached.  This issue has part 3 of my 4-part article on the 2011-12 exterior renovation of our Prevost H3-40 motorcoach.  I replied that I would proofread it and submit corrections before I go to bed tomorrow night.

Madeline takes the high road and Linda takes the low road on the Brighton Mill Pond boardwalk.

Madeline takes the high road and Linda takes the low road on the Brighton Mill Pond boardwalk.

Although Linda is much more physically active with Madeline than I am I was feeling the need for a nap and laid down at 3 PM.  I heard Madeline get up around 4 PM and I finally got up at 4:15.  Linda enlisted Madeline’s help preparing dinner while I took pictures.  The first task was shucking the whole ears of corn.  Next, Linda let her put them in a large pot of water, add a little bit of sugar, and stir.  While the pot started to heat up on the stove Madeline helped prepare the strawberries by washing them.  Linda then got the vegan burgers ready to grill (inside on our stove top griddle) and prepared the garnishes.  Madeline does not get to help with things that are sharp or hot.  Soon enough it was time for dinner and we all enjoyed our corn-on-the-cob and vegan cheeseburgers. For dessert we had some more of the chocolate cake that we made yesterday with fresh strawberries.

We spotted this young bunny along the boardwalk at the Brighton Mill Pond.

We spotted this young bunny along the boardwalk at the Brighton Mill Pond.

After dinner I cleaned up the dishes and we went out on the deck to sit in the chairs and enjoy a near perfect Michigan summer evening while we watched the bunnies eating grass.  Around 7:15 PM we watched another Sesame Workshop DVD.  This one was on Shapes and Colors.  It was over by 8 PM and Madeline started getting ready for bed which was a very jovial affair.  First the potty, then jammies, then tooth brushing followed by finding blankies, “bebes” (pacifiers), and stuffed animals, all the while laughing and giggling.  Linda finally got her to sit quietly and read her a story which calmed her down enough to go to bed.  If her thoughts drift to her mommy and daddy she will get weepy—it’s part of being two and a half—but we have been successful on this visit keeping her engaged enough to avoid anything more than some occasional brief tears.

Madeline washes the strawberries.

Madeline washes the strawberries.

We split the remainder of a bottle of Leelanau Cellars Winter White wine we had opened some time ago but had vacuum sealed and it was still fine.  Linda finished the dishes and loaded the dishwasher while I filled in the day’s details on this blog post.  Both cats came out of hiding and sought our attention.

We have been hearing fireworks, and/or gunfire, for many weeks now and today was no exception.  Two nights ago someone in the neighborhood was firing off, or shooting, something until well after midnight.  There were more fireworks tonight, as expected, and the activity intensified after 9 PM as dusk gave way to night.  The cats were not completely relaxed about the noise but seemed to tolerate it.  As far as we know Madeline slept through all of it as she is a very sound sleeper.

 

2015/07/03 (F) 4th Anniversary

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Several SLAARC members were gathering at 10:30 AM this morning to unload the Field Day equipment from Steve’s trailer and store it in the South Lyon water tower.  I was going to join them but decided last night to stay home and work on the design for the desk and HVAC chase covers for our motorcoach.  Having played ham radio for much of the last week and a half I needed to refocus my time and attention on the interior remodeling of our bus.  Besides, Brendan was bringing Madeline to our house sometime mid-to-late morning and I wanted to be home when they arrived.  Today was Brendan and Shawna’s 4th wedding anniversary and they asked Linda if we would take care of Madeline for a couple of nights so they could have some time together without the constant demands of child care.  Of course Linda said ‘yes.’

I had a call last night from XPO Delivery Services letting me know the new refrigerator for the bus would be delivered to Chuck Spera’s shop in Novi today between 6 and 8 PM.  That meant I would have to be at the shop by 5 PM just in case they arrived early and could be there past 8 PM if they arrived late.  At 7:45 AM this morning I got a call from the Lowe’s in Howell asking if XPO could deliver the refrigerator in about an hour.  Sure, why not; I was still in bed but about to get up anyway and having the refrigerator delivered early would actually open up my entire day.  I hurried the process along, had Linda get the receipt, grabbed my iPad, and headed for Chuck’s shop in Novi.  Linda was getting ready to go for a walk as I left.

One never knows what the traffic will be like on I-96 headed into the Detroit metro area from the northwest but on this Friday, at the start of a major holiday weekend, the traffic was very light and I was able to get to Novi in the minimum legal time.  Traffic headed westbound actually appeared to be heavier than the inbound traffic.  I stopped at the Tim Horton’s on Beck Road just north of Grand River Avenue and got coffee which I had not taken the time to make at home before I left.

I texted Chuck to let him know that the refrigerator was being delivered this morning.  He called me back to clarify where to have them set it.  This would be a great weekend to do the swap as all of the other businesses around his shop building will be closed for the holiday, making it easy to get our bus in and out.  But his daughter arrived last night from New York and will be visiting for a week so the refrigerator replacement will have to wait, probably until at least next weekend.

By 9:30 AM XPO had not arrived so I called Lowe’s in Howell and talked to Erica in scheduling.  She said she would call the driver and see what was going on.  I texted a status update to Linda and continued to wait.  By 10 AM there was still no truck and no call back from Erica.  At 10:20 I was dialing Lowe’s again when an Enterprise rental truck drove past the building headed east and a few minutes later went by headed west and pulled into a parking lot.  Moments later my phone rang.  It was the XPO truck driver.  I explained where the driveway was and flagged them in.  When I ordered the fridge I gave detailed special instructions on how to find the building but the driver did not bother reading them and did not bother calling me until he had failed to find the delivery location for the second time.

They backed the truck into the area in front of Chuck’s garage door, lowered the refrigerator down on their lift gate, slid a pair of lift straps under it, picked it up, and carried it into the shop.  I looked it over as best I could and then signed for it.  Only later did I notice a small dent towards the bottom of the door.  I had an automated call later asking if I was satisfied with the delivery and indicated ‘no’, noting the arrival delay and the small ding.  The message said I would hear back from someone within an hour but no one ever called.  We do not plan to make an issue of the ding as we will be lucky to get it into the bus and into its alcove with no further damage.  Still, it should have arrived in perfect condition and did not.

I called Linda to let her know the refrigerator had arrived and that I was getting ready to head home.  She said Brendan had just arrived with Madeline.  As I started to back out of my parking spot Chuck arrived so I spent about 30 minutes talking with him about the timing and approach of the refrigerator swap.  I will almost certainly take our bus to his garage on a weekend.  Only later did I find out that Brendan will not be available to help for the next two or three weekends.  Ugh.  Chuck called a friend (golf buddy) who has narrow pallets (24″) to see if he could get a 5’ long section.  With the long forks set close together on his forklift we can slide the pallet over the forks and have a much more secure platform form for raising and lowering refrigerators, probably laying on their backs.

Linda called back and asked me to stop on the way home for some toddler toothpaste and a toddler toothbrush.  I did not know they made such things but I found them at the CVS in Brighton.  Not long after I got home Linda had lunch on the table.  She heated some veggie nuggets and set them out along with baby carrots, grapes, pretzels, hummus, vegan deli slices, bread, lettuce, and onion.  We all had a good lunch with lots of variety.  Brendan got Madeline down for her nap at 1 PM and hung around long enough to make sure she was asleep.  I took a few minutes to show him the new Yaesu radio before he headed back to Ann Arbor.

I was very tired and took a nap on the living room sofa which is especially comfortable for this purpose, better actually than for sitting on.  Madeline slept until almost 4 PM.  When she woke up she wanted her mommy and daddy and was a little weepy but Grandma Linda got her quickly engaged in doing things.  Linda took her for a walk to see the chickens while I went downstairs to check e-mails.  I responded to ones having to do with the transfer of the SLAARC website and domain name registration from GoDaddy.com to QTH.com and made mental note of others.  When they got back from their walk Linda brought Madeline downstairs to see Grandpa Bruce at work in his office and ham radio shack.  We told her we would help her become an amateur radio operator when she was older.

Linda decided that baking a vegan chocolate cake would be an excellent activity to do with Madeline and give us a nice treat for later.  Madeline helped pour and stir ingredients.  She ended up with chocolate cake batter on her face and clothes but it was worth it as she got to lick one of the spoons.  (Without any animal products, especially raw eggs, vegan cake batter is perfectly safe to eat.)  Linda had previously found a small baking set for Madeline that included a small bunt cake pan.  Some of the batter went in there to make a little cake just for Madeline and the rest was used to make 11 cupcakes.

After the cupcakes were cooked and taken out of the oven to cool Linda made dinner.  We had mock chicken strips (vegan), fresh sautéed green beans, vegan refried beans, and fresh berries leftover from earlier.  When the cakes were cool enough Linda got out the powdered sugar and sifter and we dusted them.  Madeline enjoyed the decorating but somehow ended up with powdered sugar in her hair, on her dress, and all over her face.  I took pictures and then Linda cleaned her up while I cleaned the floor.

After dinner and dessert we played and read a bit.  Linda had gotten three Sesame Street Workshop DVDs from the Howell Public Library so we all climbed up into the bed in our bedroom and watched one of them.  We played along with the various activities and games and encouraged Madeline to do the same.  The program ended at 8 PM which is Madeline’s bedtime.  Linda helped her in the bathroom, got her into her pajamas, and helped her brush her teeth.  She laid down without a fuss and drifted off to sleep. We stayed up until the last chime of the grandfather clock at 9:45 PM and then turned in for the night.  We are always satisfyingly tired after a full day of Madeline.

 

2015/07/02 (R) 100,000 Radios

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We were tired and did not get up until almost 8 AM.  Linda prepared a tofu scramble for breakfast, as we were almost out of her homemade granola, and served it with some cinnamon raisin toast and fresh grapefruit.  It’s the closest thing we eat to scrambled eggs and she serves it as an occasional change of pace from our standard granola breakfast.

I had my annual appointment with my dermatologist this morning at 11 AM.  I needed to pick up a cable from Scott (AC8IL) at Adams Electronics, which was on my way to the Henry Ford Health System (HFHS) clinic, so I left the house a little after 9:30 AM.  The drive was fine initially and I had a nice QSO (chat) with Steve (N8AR) on the South Lyon 2m repeater.  As I was approaching Wixom Road, however, all lanes of eastbound I-96 were stopped.  I was able to exit at Wixom Road and headed north a short distance to West Road which I took east over to Beck Road where Scotty’s business is located a little north of West Road.  I had a brief chat with Scott about the antennas on my tower before I left.

Two miles north of Scott’s shop I turned east on Maple Road (15 Mile Road).  The HFHS has many clinics around the greater Metro Detroit area and my dermatologist is located at the intersection of Maple and Farmington Roads in West Bloomfield.  That should have been an easy trip but there was construction on Maple Road that had the road down to one lane with flaggers.  There were signs advising motorists to seek other routes but I did not heed the warning.  I patiently worked my way through and arrived for my appointment about seven minutes ahead of time.  Good thing I left as early as I did.

My exam was fairly routine and Dr. Nydorf wrote out a prescription for Doxycycline.  I will try taking it (again) three times a week and see if it helps.  I headed straight for home after my appointment but took a different route.  Once I was back at the house Linda went for a walk.  While she was walking I removed the license plate from her car, took the protective (anti-theft) cover off, and cleaned everything.  When it was dry I put the new registration sticker in the corner, reassembled the cover, and installed the plate back onto the car.  I then started working with the various pieces of the new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE mobile radio.  When she got back from her walk she heated up a couple of tofu hotdogs for lunch.  These are such simple fare but so tasty (with mustard, onions, and relish) and so appropriate for a summertime lunch.  They are also a really easy lunch to get on the table.

After lunch Linda took her car to the Howell library to get some books and children’s DVDs and then stop at the Meijer’s supermarket to pick up a few grocery items for Madeline’s visit this weekend.  While she was running errands I assembled our new Diamond X-300NA antenna.  Once it was assembled it was over 10 feet long so I stored it by mounting it to the side of the tower.  I put it up as high as I could reach from the ground to get the three counterpoise (elevated ground plane) rods above eye level.  Moving it to the top of the tower as a replacement for the Diamond X-50NA will have to wait until next week or later.  The exact timing will depend on the weather, Mike’s (W8XH) availability, and whether I have acquired appropriate standoffs by then for the X-300 antenna and/or the cellular booster omnidirectional antenna.

With the antenna taken care of (for now) I disconnected the coaxial cable for the X-50 from the radio side of the lightning arrestor and positioned it so I could pull it back into the sump pump room.  From there I fed it into the ham shack, disconnected it from the radio, and coiled it up.  I uncoiled the new 20′ LMR-400 cable with the N-male connector end positioned so I could feed it through the corner of the ceiling in the ham shack (by the ground wire) and into the sump pump room.  From there I fed it through one of the 2″ conduits into the cable entry box.  Back outside I shaped the cable (LMR-400 cable is double shielded and stiff) and connected it to the radio side of the Morgan VHF/UHF lightning arrestor and closed the lid on the box.

Back in the ham shack I attached the PL-259 connector to the SO-239 socket on the back of the Icom IC-7000 GoBox.  I could have gotten away with a 16′ cable but the 20′ length gives me more flexibility with respect to equipment placement.  I turned on the IC-7000 but did not hear anyone on either the South Lyon 2m or the Novi 70cm repeaters so I turned it off.

I disconnected Mike’s Icom IC-2820H and set it aside to make space for the new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE dual band mobile transceiver.  I moved the new coax to the new radio, powered it up, spent a few minutes configuring some basic things, and then listened to the South Lyon and Novi repeaters.  I tried calling them but was not triggering them so I knew the PL Tone was not set correctly.  I called Mike for assistance and left him a voice message.

Linda was back by this time so she came down to see the new radio.  We then went out to the bus to make our final decisions about upholstery fabric and window shade materials.  In the end we chose the Lambright Notion Linen fabric for all four chairs and the MCD B50 material for the dark out shades.  We brought all the samples back in the house and I e-mailed our choices to Josh at Coach Supply Direct.

I had an e-mail from Scott Neader (KA9FOX) at QTH.com requesting an admin login for the SLAARC WordPress website so I set that up and e-mailed him back.  I had the new radio on and was listening to a conversation on the Novi repeater.  It had just concluded when Mike returned my call.  He walked me through how to set up the PL Tone and Squelch Tone for both of the repeaters on the FTM-400.  We were then able to verify that the radio was working on both bands.

For dinner Linda made a salad and pan-grilled tofu with caramelized onions and barbecue sauce which she served open-faced on hamburger buns.  We had watermelon for dessert, which we have been doing a lot this summer.  I did not care for watermelon as a child but it has become a favorite summertime treat.  I had dropped a small lock washer while mounting the new antenna to the tower earlier so I went to Lowe’s to get a replacement and some spares.  On the drive there I got a call from XPO Delivery Service letting me know that the new refrigerator for the bus would be delivered to Chuck’s shop in Novi tomorrow between 6 and 8 PM.

At Lowe’s I picked up some 6mm x 1.0 Nylok nuts in addition to the lock washers.  I also got some grass seed patching mix, a few more bags of decorative broken brick pieces, and a hummingbird feeder with a red reservoir so Linda can use sugar water without red food coloring.  When I got home the odometer on my car read 100000 so I took a picture of it with my phone.  I then spread the patching mix over the bare dirt I had used to fill a hole and troughs left by the installation of the natural gas line to our house last September.  The rest of the evening Linda read and I worked on completing drafts of blog posts.