Author Archives: BRF

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 4^th 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

2015/07/01 (W) Coach Supply Direct

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We were up at 7 AM and left at 7:45 to drive to Coach Supply Direct in Edwardsburg, Michigan. On the out of town we stopped at Teeko’s Coffee and Tea for coffee and bagels to go. The coffee was single origin Kenya and was very good. We drink half-caff at home so I will check with Jeff to see if this also comes in a decaffeinated bean.

We took I-96 west towards Lansing and then took the Lansing Road cutoff to I-69 south. We exited at M-60 and headed west towards Three Rivers. Our plan was to drop down M-40 to US-12 for the final run into Edwardsburg but M-60 was closed in Minden and the detour took us south on M-66 towards Sturgis. We were about half way to Sturgis when the detour turned west back towards Three Rivers so we continued on to Sturgis where we picked up US-12 and continued our westward journey. We stopped at the McDonald’s in White Pigeon for a second cup of coffee and then finished our trip to Edwardsburg.

Coach Supply Direct is located on Elkhart Road just south of US-12. It was easy to find and Josh greeted us as we pulled in. We looked at his Lambright fabric samples again and were just not finding exactly what we wanted so Josh suggested we check out the selection at Pro-Forma (?) on the southeast side of Elkhart. They are a major supplier of surplus yard goods in the area and he often gets fabric from them for projects. He offered to go over with us but we did not want to pull him away from his work more than we already had. He called to let them know we were coming without him.

We took US-12 back east to M-217 and dropped into Indiana where the road becomes County 17. Just before US-20 we turned west and about 1.5 miles later we turned south onto Hall Road and pulled into Pro-Forma’s parking lot. Bob (the owner) was out but we found Mike back in the warehouse. He took us to the room with the sample books and we looked at a sample of every fabric they had but did find anything even close to what we were looking for. Bob returned from his errand run and we commented that apparently plain off-white upholstery cloth was out of style. Quite to the contrary, he said it is very much in use and as a result there is very little, if any, surplus coming out of the Elkhart-based RV manufacturers.

I took a different route back to Edwardsburg, driving through Elkhart on some streets I had not driven before. After talking with Josh some more we had him do a final estimate (quote), sans fabric selections, as follows:

Two (2) Flexsteel 529 Class C captain’s chairs with skirts, adjustable arm rests, 8.5″ swivel pedestal with 20″ seatbelt bar, tan seatbelt, and slide tracks.
One Flexsteel 591 Class A driver’s captain’s chair with skirt, adjustable arm rests, and power lumbar option.
One Flexsteel 591 Class A co-pilot captain’s chair with footrest, skirt, adjustable arm rests, and power lumbar option.
15 yards of additional fabric TBD.
Seven (7) MCD Duo Shades with dark out fabric TBD.
An estimate of a 2 to 6 hours labor to install everything.

Josh converted the estimate (quote) into an invoice and Linda wrote him a check for the requested 50% deposit. He then let us select Lambright fabric samples to take with us. We removed six from the binder rings and also took one of his sets of MCD dark out material samples. I had planned to stop and visit with Michele Henry at Phoenix Paint but had not told her that we were coming so she was not expecting us. By the time we left for home it was 3 PM so we waved as we drove past her shop.

Linda had packed food for the trip so she ate her vegan yogurt and got out the grapes for both of us to munch on. Instead of retracing our route from the morning I stayed on US-12 all the way to Coldwater. By the time we reached I-69 I was hungry so I pulled into the Walmart. I ate my yogurt in the car and then we went in to buy Snyder’s sourdough pretzel nibblers, Blue Diamond Wasabi Soy almonds, and some mini-strudels (apple and cherry) that did not contain any animal products (according to the label). We got on I-69 going north and I exited at M-60 for fuel.

We got home around 6:45 PM. UPS had delivered the order I placed yesterday with Amateur Electronics Supply so I brought that in from the porch and set it aside for tomorrow. I opened one of the boxes of Armstrong floor tiles, removed a tile, took it to the bus, and set it on the floor in the kitchen. We took the Lambright fabric and MCD dark shade samples to the bus and had an initial look at all of them together with the walnut woodwork, floor tile, and existing wallpaper (which is going to get replaced with something). We left them to look at again tomorrow in better/different light and went in to have dinner.

Linda reheated the potato-kale curry leftovers and served some fresh watermelon. I checked e-mail and responded to some that related to the SLAARC website. We relaxed by watching two episodes of “First Peoples” on PBS and then went to sleep. It was a long, tiring day with somewhere between 350 and 400 miles of driving and 7 to 8 hours of sitting in the car. We were glad to have the chairs and shades ordered, and to have decided (for now) to go with the custom made sofa cushions, but we were frustrated by still having the fabric and shade materials undecided. We told Josh we would have a decision by Friday so tomorrow will be final decision day.

SLAARC Field Day 2015

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Here are 45 photos from the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club’s participation in the 2015 American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Field Day 24-hour operating event.

: Steve (N8AR) arrives on Friday morning with club’s Field Day equipment in his trailer.

: Larry (K8UT) and Bill (W8NN) start setting up Larry’s 40m elevated vertical antenna.

: One of the wire antennas, probably the 40m inverted V (crossed dipoles).

: The base for the small tower. The boards are bolted together and staked into the ground. The three metal yokes in the center hold the three legs.

: The feed point balun and elevated wire counterpoise attachment point for K8UT’s 40m vertical antenna.

: Unloading tower sections from the equipment trailer.

: Mike (W8XH) poses for the camera before unloading more equipment.

: Bill, Larry, and Tom (AB8XU) start assembling the 20m beam antenna.

: Larry and Tom carry the 20m beam antenna over to where the tower will be erected.

: Jim (N8HAM) and Steve (N8AR) get the legs of the large tower attached to the base (black metal).

: Assembling and erecting the big tower took quite a few hams. The top end is resting on a step ladder so the beam antennas can be attached before standing it up.

: Steve (N8AR) turns the rotor to the correct position for attaching the beam antennas to the large tower.

: A team gets ready to hand the 20m beam antenna up to Steve.

: Larry waits with the 6m beam antenna while the 20m beam antenna gets attached to the mast atop the large tower.

: SLAARC Field Day chairman Paul (KD8SNZ) attaches the 6m beam antenna above the 20m beam antenna.

: Steve (N8AR) checks the cable for the hand winch that will be used to raise the large tower.

: It takes many hands to raise the large tower. Mike, Steve, and John walk the tower up as Paul moves the step ladder closer to the base. We had to get the tower up part way before we could use the winch.

: The other end of the winch cable was attached to the tow receiver on Pauls F-150. Here the tower is not quite half way up.

: The large tower is up. The guy ropes were attached and staked before it was raised, used to control it as it went up, and then tightened.

: The weather has turned gloomy on us.

: Putting up the mast by the old ball diamond backstop. The mast will support the far end of the 80m off-center-fed dipole. The other end is attached to the large tower with the feed point balun near the 80m operating tent.

: Putting up one of the two Costco shelter. One served as the food tent and the other as the GOTA and VHF tent.

: Setup continues on Saturday morning. There were lots of these ARO vanity plates to be seen. This one is mine.

: The main portion of the SLAARC Field Day site. The 40m vertical is off-camera to the left and the crossed dipole is behind me. Everything must be contained within a 1,000 foot diameter circle.

: The weather has really deteriorated very strong wind driven rain.

: Inside one of the operating tents (probably 40m). Every operating position had a computer (left) and radio (right). Computers were used to log contacts and were Wi-Fi networked. Operators at every station could see all of the contacts that were being logged.

: Larry (K8UT) gets N1MM Logger+ up and running. Larry is a member of the N1MM Logger development team.

: Headphones, CW keys, and filters are just some of the additional equipment needed at each operating station.

: SLAARC operated in category 2A (two alpha). The two meant we had two HF radios on the air at the same time. The alpha meant we operated only from portable/emergency power. Harvey (AC8NO) provided the generator that ran everything.

: The weather just got worse the latter it got in the day on Saturday.

: Jim (KC8WMW) mans the GOTA (Get On The Air) station. Newly licensed hams and unlicensed guests are allowed to operate this station under the supervision of an experienced amateur radio operator.

: Eric (W8ERS, seated) and Mike (W8XH, standing) working on the VHF (6m) station.

: Staying out of the weather and having a face-to-face chat at the GOTA station.

: We lost the 80m tent (red), the hospitality screen room (left) and the VHF/GOTA Costco shelter to the windy weather.

: We did not, however, lose the food shelter! Marianne provided lots of things to eat and there was always a crowd staying out of the weather.

: Sunday lunch. Hot dogs are easy and always a favorite.

: Steve (N8AR) had a 6m capable radio in his car, so after we lost the 6m (VHF) / GOTA tent he pulled his car up and connected the 6m beam to his radio. Why? There was a strong 6m opening early Sunday east of the Mississippi River and down into the Caribbean.

: The weather finally cleared on Sunday and folks enjoyed eating outside.

: Jo (Mrs. Field Day Chairman) with their pet parrot Darwin (female).

: Eric (K8ERS) made the most contacts for the club at this year’s Field Day event.

: SONY DSC

: Signals are often weak with a lot of noise. Headphones keep distractions from ambient background soiunds to a minimum.

: Amateur radio is regulated under Part 97 of the FCC Rules. SLAARC traditionally flies the U. S. Flag from our large tower.

: Eric (K8ERS) was making contacts right up to the 2 P (EDT) end of the event.

: Eric captured this image early Sunday morning. The red lines represent contacts being made on the 6m (50 MHz) VHF band. It was quite an opening.

2015/06/30 (T) Three Score and Five

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Today was a milestone birthday for Linda. We had our usual leisurely early morning with coffee, fresh fruit, and cinnamon raisin toast (from Metropolitan Baking) for breakfast. We talked some more about our long-term ham radio plans and decided we would order one (1) of the new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE dual band mobile radios and a slightly more powerful VHF/UHF base station antenna. Our daughter called around 9 AM to wish her many happy returns of the day. My Michigan Public School Employee Retirement System (MPSERS) health insurance shifted her to secondary, with Medicare as primary on June 1^st, the first day of the month in which she turned 65.

The temperature was in the low 60’s when we got up at 6:30 AM. The weather forecast for the afternoon had an increasing chance of rain and the possibility of isolated thunderstorms so Linda went for a mid-morning walk. I headed to my office to order the radio and a Diamond X-300NA 2m/70cm antenna. All of the online distributors are selling the radio for the same price. I decided to buy both products plus the RTSystems programming software, from Amateur Electronic Supply (AES). Their UPS Ground shipping is “free” and since they are based in Ohio the shipment will be here in 1-2 days rather than 4-5 days.

I took a break and spread three more bags of brick pieces around the base of the tower and in front of the cable entry box. Back in my office I dealt with some personal e-mail. I sent an e-mail to Scott (KE9FOX) at QTH.com with additional information he needed to transfer the SLAARC website and domain name registration from GoDaddy to QTH.com. I then gathered up a load of laundry and put it in the washer.

By the time that was all done it was getting close to lunch time. Lunch was a big spinach and lettuce salad, baby carrots, a few sourdough pretzel nibblers with roasted red pepper hummus, fresh sweet cherries, and the blueberries/strawberries/raspberries that were left from breakfast.

After lunch I transferred the laundry to the clothes dryer and then got cleaned up. We left around 3 PM for the U.S. Bar and Grill in Wayne and stopped on the way to get a card. Today was John Smallwood’s last day at Wayne RESA and there was a gathering from 3-to-6 PM to see him off. John was the VP of the Wayne County Salaried Staff Federation (WCSSF) and succeeded me as President of the local when I retired. Now it was John’s turn to enjoy a well-earned and well-deserved retirement. This was the second gathering for a colleague in the span of just over a month. Besides wishing John well it was an opportunity to reconnect with other former colleagues.

After a suitable amount of time visiting at John’s party Linda and I drove to the Mongolian Barbecue in Novi for a celebratory birthday dinner. It is a very noisy restaurant but was not as bad on a Tuesday evening as it was the last time we were here on a Saturday. I would have preferred a quieter and more relaxing atmosphere, but the Mongolian Barbecues have a lot of ingredients that we can eat and we find the method of preparation very much to our liking. By the time we had a small bowl of soup, a moderate sized salad, and a good size bowl of ingredients we were full.

I had a brief QSO with Chris (K8VJ) on the drive home. I stopped at the Shell station and topped off the gas tank in my car so we would be ready to go in the morning. We finally got home at 8:30 PM. Linda made some hot tea and we each had a piece of Prickly Pear Cactus Jellied Candy. I restarted the dryer on Touch Up and checked my e-mail. We were tucked in by 10 PM as we needed to be on the road by 7:30 AM tomorrow.

2015/06/29 (M) Website On The Air

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Linda was up at 5:55 AM this morning and left for the bakery at 6:15. Experience has shown that this is usually early enough to get ahead of the morning rush hour traffic inbound to the Detroit metro area from the northwest.

I got up about an hour later, had granola for breakfast, and enjoyed my morning coffee (Sweet Seattle Dreams half-caff blend from Teeko’s) and then made a run to Lowe’s to purchase a couple of copper ground lugs and 5 feet of #10 green ground wire. Back home I tried to use one of the ground lugs to terminate the ground wire from the cable entry box (CEB) to the 36″ ground bar on the wall behind the ham radio desks but it’s shape prevented the wing nut from going onto the stud.

I planned to use the other lug to attach one end of the #10 wire to the ground bar and put a male spade lug on the other end to mate with the connector on the Go Box ground pigtail, but that clearly was not going to work. I dressed the ground wire and (temporary) coax in the ham shack and put the ceiling tile back in place. I then started cleaning up the living room and small bedroom per Linda’s request before she left this morning. Some of our (my) projects have a way of expanding throughout the whole house. I had hoped to also pick up the coax cables spread out in the recreation room, and at least start to straighten up the ham shack/office, putting materials away and moving tools to the garage.

At 10 AM I made a few phone calls. The first was to Rick Short at ISRI USA regarding the 6860 bus driver’s seat and a possible visit tomorrow morning. I got his voice mail (again) and never got a return call (again) so I gave up on getting any assistance from him or from ISRI USA. I called Linda to make sure she did not have any commitments on Wednesday and then called Josh at Coach Supply Direct to set up a visit to his shop for Wednesday late morning. Linda and I plan to finalize our Flexsteel furniture order and give Josh the deposit during that visit. Next I called Scott Adams, AC8IL, at Adams Electronics and ordered a 20 foot length of LMR-400 with an N-male connector on one end and a PL-259 connector on the other end. Scotty and I also chatted briefly about tower bases.

I e-mailed Scott Neader at QST.com regarding the transfer of the SLAARC domain name and website from GoDaddy to QST.com and got a reply back right away with an outline of the steps I needed to follow. First on the list was creating an account for our ham radio club through his billing system. I took care of that and e-mailed him back.

Keith Kish, from Kish Lawn, care showed up around 11 AM to cut the grass. When he was done I headed back to Lowe’s to look for an alternate ground clamp and pulley support for the tower but did not find anything suitable. So as not to have it be a wasted trip I bought three more bags of broken brick pieces to use around the tower base and cable entry box.

I spent some time looking at the Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE on several different ham radio equipment vendor websites. Yaesu is offering a $100 rebate on this 2m/440 mobile radio through tomorrow. All of the distributors are selling it for the same price, $599.95 and the rebate brings it down to $499.95, so if I buy one it will come down to who has them in stock and is offering free shipping.

Linda got home from the bakery around 3 PM, earlier than I expected and nice for her. She went for a walk while I continued to fuss with ham radio and website stuff.

For dinner Linda made a white beans and mustard greens dish. We eat a lot of lettuce, kale, and spinach, both raw and cooked into dishes, but only occasionally have collard greens or mustard greens. Mustard greens have a very strong, bitter flavor and I liked them more than Linda did. I think they are an acquired taste and may be more suitable as an accent ingredient rather than a main one.

After dinner I checked my e-mail and had a reply from Scott at QTH.com. The QTH SLAARC account invoice was ready so I paid it using a personal credit card. I then moved the coax from our Icom IC-7000 to Mike’s Icom IC-2820H and turned it on. Mike was on the South Lyon repeater discussing the Field Day event with Steve (N8AR) and Bruce (W8RA). Paul (N8BHT) was able to join the conversation but I was not successful breaking in so I just listened. It was an indication that my power into the repeater was probably still marginal but a good reminder that ham radio conversations are very public.

When they were done I called for Mike and he came back. We had a good QSO (chat) about the Yaesu FTM-400. Jim (N8KUE) joined in for a while. After Jim dropped off we tested my ability to transmit to, and receive from, both the South Lyon 2m and Novi 70cm repeaters. The added power of the IC-2820H over my IC-7000 (50W vs 35W in the 70cm band) combined with the lower signal loss of the better coax made just enough difference that I could hold the Novi repeater when transmitting although my signal was still on top of a lot of noise coming back out of the repeater.

Linda wanted to watch an episode of Scorpion, followed by NCIS Los Angeles, after which I caught an episode of Two and a Half Men and then turned off the TV. I will have to make a decision about the Yaesu FTM-400 in the morning.

2015/06/28 (N) Field Day Teardown

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I was up at 7:15 AM and showered. The rain finally cleared out leaving blue skies but with scattered white clouds still blowing across the region on brisk winds out of the NNE. Linda was up by 8 and got the fresh fruit ready for our breakfast cereal while I made the coffee, which we enjoyed in the living room to warmth of the natural gas fireplace. I did not expect to be using the fireplace this time of year but we have the furnace turned off, and are still getting overnight lows in the 50’s, so the fireplace is an effective and charming way to alleviate the slight morning chill in the front of the house.

In spite of the weather the food tent stayed up and open for business.

I finished up the draft of my blog post for yesterday and started on this one while I drank my coffee. By 9:45 AM I was ready to install the #6 green coated ground wire I bought last night. I also decided to switch out the coax from the cable entry box (CEB) to the ham shack. Linda had made a grocery list and left to do the shopping.

Outside I opened the CEB and disconnected the current VHF/UHF coax and let it slide back into the sump pump room (SPR). Inside I removed the suspended ceiling tile in the northeast corner of the ham shack and routed the ground wire over the wall into the SPR. I fed it through an existing cable tie on the bottom of one of the floor joists and through the outer wall into the CEB. I had an unused copper ground lug and used it to connect the ground wire to the lower right mounting stud for the CEB copper backplane.

Back inside I uncoiled a length of 50 ohm coax that I borrowed from Mike (W8XH) and followed the same path as the ground wire. Outside at the CEB I installed an N-male/SO-239(F) adapter onto the PL-259 connector on the end of the coax and attached it to the N-female socket on the lightning arrestor. I was finished working in the CEB, closed the cover, and went back to the basement.

I decided to install the 36″ copper ground bar on the wall behind the ham shack desks just below the 120 VAC outlet strip, which required me to move the desks away from the wall. I attached the end of the ground wire to one of the studs by spreading the strands and placing them under a washer and wing nut. I need to get another copper lug to do this right.

Steve (N8AR) operating the 6m opening from the radio in his car.

I had a five foot length of braided tinned copper strap and used it to connect the ground terminal on the Go Box to the ground bar. I spread the braid apart to make a small hole near each end, slipped the holes over the studs, and clamped them under washers. This was a temporary arrangement for testing purposes. I need to configure a length of #10 copper wire with a ring terminal on one end and a make spade connector on the other but did want to take the time to do that today.

With everything hooked up I called Mike (W8XH) to see if he was available for a quick radio test. He was still at home and about to leave for the SLAARC Field Day site but gladly delayed his departure long enough to help me test the new configuration. The result was a better send and receive signal on 2m, both direct and through the South Lyon K8VJ repeater, with an S3 received signal strength with the pre-amplifier turned on. The direct signal was also a little better on the 440 MHz band but my received signal from the Novi repeater was still weak and noisy and my transmit signal was still not strong enough carry the repeater.

I had planned to leave around 11AM for the SLAARC Field Day site but wanted some lunch before I left. I had just made a sandwich and was gathering up my equipment when Linda got back from her grocery shopping. By the time I left it was past noon.

I was interested in our ham radio club’s participation in this year’s ARRL Field Day event but neither Linda nor I had had any need or desire to operate radios. I worked all day Friday on the setup of the towers and antennas and helped a bit last night with the emergency teardown of the VHF/GOTA canopy. The 24-hour Field Day operating window closed at 2 PM today but some of the teardown began before that time and I wanted to be there to help.

SLAARC members enjoying lunch outdoors at the Field Day site.

Some teardown was already underway when I arrived at the SLAARC Field Day site and lunch was also just being served, so everyone took a break to get something to eat except Steve (N8AR). He was sitting in his car making contracts on the six meter (6m) band using the mobile radio in his car. He had connected it to the 6m beam antenna on top of the big tower. The 6m band is known as “the magic band” because it will suddenly “open” and allow very clear communication over great distances and then just as suddenly close. It had apparently opened up this morning from the Mississippi River to the East Coast and south into the Caribbean. One of our members made a contact with someone in the Dominican Republic. While I was watching and listening I heard calls coming in from South Dakota and New Mexico.

This is the fourth year that Marianne Roney, the wife of one of club member Ed Roney (KD8OSM), has taken care of the Field Day meals, which include lunch and dinner on Saturday and breakfast and lunch on Sunday. The meals are $5 per person per meal, which is a bargain for the variety and quantity of things she prepares and provides, except that there is typically very little we can eat. She would make special provisions for us if we asked (she did the first year) but it is extra work for her and we are still left with not being able to eat most of what is available, so we do not purchase meals.

Operating stations are often staffed by two people, one operating the radio (left) and the other logging the contacts (right).

As the operating event was drawing to a close the computer in the 40m tent shut down. The computers are not used to operate the radios, but are connected to them and are used to log the contacts using the N1MM Logger+ program. The program reads key information about frequency and mode from the radio so all the logger has to capture are call sign, operating category, and section. (Club member Larry, K8UT, is a member of the N1MM Logger development team.) Every radio was paired with a laptop computer running this program, and the computers were all linked together via Wi-Fi. As a result, the operators/loggers at each station could see all of the contacts that were being made regardless of which station made the contact and each computer contained a complete list of contacts. The program also flags “dupes” (duplicate contacts). In a contest situation this allows the operator to see that they have already worked that station on a particular band and mode and not spend time working it again on the same band and mode as duplicate contacts do not contribute to the contest score.

Just as it had started 24 hours earlier, at 2 PM it was all over without any fanfare. The radios and computers were shut down and then the AC power generator was shut down. Cords were unplugged, coiled, and staged near the vehicles they would eventually be loaded into. Radios and computers were carefully disconnected, boxed (in some cases) and carried to the vehicles of their respective owners. Tarps were pulled from the tents and folded and then the tents were collapsed and folded. Four of use took down the 40m crossed dipole (inverted V) antenna and then took down the small support tower and disassembled it. A larger crew eventually lowered the bigger tower, which required a winch, until it was resting in a step ladder. This was necessary because of the two beam antennas at the top of the tower. They removed the 6m and then the 20m beam antennas and then lowered the tower to the ground. Part of the crew disassembled and packed the two beam antennas while the rest of them took the tower apart

A path map from Eric’s (K8ERS) cell phone of the early morning 6m band opening.

We were essentially done with the teardown by 4 PM. The teardown is always much faster than the setup and yet it was very relaxed and went very smoothly. In spite of weather challenges all day Saturday and overnight into Sunday, and the disappointment of not having all of our stations on the air due to losing tents to the wind, we had a beautiful last day for the event and teardown. Blue skies, white puffy clouds, cool temperatures, lighter breezes, and low humidity combined with a sufficient number of competent, helping hands, made for easier work for everyone. The group stood around reflecting on the event and everyone was in a good mode, a sure sign that the 2015 ARRL Field Day had been a success for the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club.

I was the last one to pull out, right behind Steve who was towing a fully loaded enclosed trailer with a lot of the club’s equipment in it and on it. We chatted via the South Lyon repeater on the drive home, our last radio work for the day. I was home by 5 PM and just relaxed until dinnertime, tired from the sun, fresh air, and work. For dinner Linda made a potato and spinach curry dish that she found in her Indian cookbook. She also steamed some asparagus that she bought at the Howell Farmers Market this morning. We had a quiet evening of reading, writing, and games before turning in at 10 PM.

2015/06/27 (S) ARRL Field Day

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At 5 AM I was vaguely aware of the sound of rain. The cats were chasing each other through the house so I got up to make sure nothing was amiss, such as another mouse. They were just having a bout of morning friskiness. I added a little food up to their bowls, which drew their attention, and went back to bed.

My Amateur Radio vanity license plate. There were a LOT of these in the parking lot at the SLAARC Field Day site.

I finally woke up and got up about 8:15 AM and got dressed in a suitable manner for today’s American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Field Day event. The temperature was in the mid-50s, overcast and raining with blustery winds; not exactly the nice summer day we were all hoping for. Some of the members of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) were gathering for breakfast at the usual place (Senate Coney Island) at the usual time (8 AM) but we obviously did not join them today.

I went to my office to retrieve my Sony DSLR and decided to turn on our Icom IC-7000 ham radio. I had it tuned to the SLAARC (K8VJ) repeater in South Lyon when Keith, KD8YYJ, announced his presence. He was driving from the west side of Howell to Wixom and seeing what repeaters he could hit. We chatted for 10 to 15 minutes and I invited him to stop by the SLAARC Field Day site at the South Lyon Township James F. Atchison Memorial Park.

I worked all day yesterday as part of the SLAARC Field Day setup crew. There was more setup to do starting at 9 AM this morning but the setup mostly involved radios, computers, Wi-Fi networking, and power. I was not in any humor to rush off into the clammy weather conditions, and Linda was up by this point, so we had breakfast. She found some Silk brand ‘yogurt’ at Meijer’s last week so we had that. It was OK. It is a creamy style yogurt, which is not my preference, but it was tasty enough. Bananas, cinnamon raisin bread, and juice rounded out the meal. Linda even made the coffee. I turned on the natural gas fireplace to ward off the chill in the living room where we lingered and enjoyed our morning brew.

The SLAARC Field Day operating stations use wirelessly networked computers (left) running N1MM Logger+ to record the contacts that are made. HF transceiver to the right.

I finally left for the Field Day site around 11 AM. The operating event started at 2 PM but the first of four meals was lunch today at noon and I wanted to capture photos of the rest of the setup and the lunch event. It was raining lightly when I arrived and continued to rain until I left at 2:15 PM. In between arrival and departure I took some photos and helped out a little bit, but there were plenty of people there taking care of what needed to be done.

Mike (W8XH) brought his Icom IC-2820H dual band mobile radio and several lengths of 50 ohm coax and we transferred those to my car. He then walked me through the various menus and functions his new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE radio, a dual band (VHF/UHF) 50 Watt rig with digital voice capability and a color touch screen display. A group of SLAARC members recently purchased a Yaesu DR-1X repeater that works with the new Yaesu digital voice and data modes in addition to the traditional FM mode and are testing it as a replacement for the current, and very old, K8VJ repeater.

Mike’s IC-2820H is available for $350 but the FTM-400DR has a $100 rebate through the end of June, bringing the price down to $500. As much as I would like to have a VHF/UHF radio in my car I am looking at one of these radios to install in the cockpit of the bus so we can use it going down the road. The long-term plan is to put the Icom IC-7000 HF/VHF/UHF radio in our towed vehicle and get the Hi-Q 80-6 antenna mounted and operational in addition to the Diamond SG-7900 VHF/UHF antenna that is already on the Honda Element.

For base station use I would like to get an Elecraft K3s or Flex SDR rig. The K3s has become the rig of choice among the members of the SLAARC who are serious about working HF and contesting. Either of those are radios that could be fairly easily moved from the house to the bus when we travel. Antenna options in the bus could include running coax to the Hi-Q on the toad and/or a “flagpole” HF vertical that is mounted using the towbar receiver or a base stand that goes under one of the tires. An antenna switch would allow the use of the VHF/UHF antenna that was already installed for the cockpit radio. All of these “base station” options would obviously be for stationary use only.

[Photo 3 – HC]

The ARRL FIeld Day event showcases the ability of amateur radio operators to set up equipment in the field on short notice and keep it on the air for 24 hours, no matter what. The weather turned bad for the event. The portable generator is under the tent in the right foreground.

I uncoiled the coax cables that Mike lent me to see how long they were. There was a 5 foot piece that was too short for what I needed, and a piece that was approximately 40 feet, which was longer than I needed. The third piece was at least as long as the 40 footer. I “tagged” his coax with small white cable ties so I could identify them later and return them to him.

I did not want to mess around switching coax cables in the rain so I unboxed Mike’s Icom 2820 and got it set up to use with my existing antenna and transmission lines. I spent a little time with the manual and then powered it up. It was already configured from when Mike used it in his ham shack so I did not need to do any setup to use it. I monitored both the South Lyon 2m and Novi 440 MHz repeaters and was able to “hear” both of them, although the South Lyon signal was much better (stronger, quieter, clearer) than the Novi. A couple of SLAARC members were on the South Lyon repeater taking care of Field Day business. I waited a suitable amount of time after they were done and called for Mike (W8XH) and he came back right away.

We repeated the testing we had done last night. The performance with the 2m South Lyon repeater seemed to be much better but the performance on the 70cm Novi repeater was the same or worse with a fading component to the noise. I think we were on the air 15 to 20 minutes. Based on the test results from last night and this afternoon I think I have two separate issues that are probably interacting; the IC-7000 needs to be grounded and the 25 feet of coax from the cable entry box (CEB) to the radio (Go Box) needs to be shorter and much higher quality. I need to install the ground bar on the wall behind the ham radio desks and then purchase a suitable length of ground wire and run it from the CEB to the copper ground bar. I will also need to get a 15 foot length of 50 ohm LMR-400 coax from Scott (AC8IL) with an N-male connector on one end and a PL-259 connector on the other end.

Linda prepared our dinner at 5 PM. She made corn-on-the-cob and “cowgirl steaks,” a new (to us) vegetable protein product she found at Meijer’s. After dinner we drove back to the SLAARC Field Day site to socialize with club members at dinnertime. The weather at our house was still rainy with light-to-moderate winds and occasional stronger gusts. We arrived at the Field Day site to find a flurry of activity and strong, steady winds out of the north with continued sporadic rain.

Jim (KC8WMW) stays dry as he works the GOTA (Get On The Air) station in one of the tents.

The small red tent that was originally supposed to be the VHF tent was nowhere to be seen and at least eight people were engaged in trying to control and fold up the large canopy that the club purchased yesterday at Costco to serve as the combined VHF and GOTA tent. We quickly learned that the small tent, which was not being used, had collapsed and the large tent, which was unoccupied but full of radios and computers, had come unstaked and blown over in the wind. Those who were not helping with the equipment canopy were gathered in the food canopy. I pitched in on the equipment canopy rescue and Linda took the camera and joined the folks in the food tent.

After gathering up all of the pieces of the canopy and getting them back in the trailer some of the team added extra ropes and stakes to the windward end of the food canopy and both the 20m and 40m tents. Another part of the team, including me, got Marty’s (KB8JIU) satellite tracking equipment out of the screen room, which had been draped with solid plastic tarps to keep the rain out, and then took the room down, disassembled the legs, folded it up, and stuffed it in the trailer. The red tent was stuffed under a picnic table that was in the screen room so I grabbed that and put it in the trailer. The support pole for one end of our off-center-fed dipoles was bending over to the south more than we liked. Steve, N8AR, tied a rope around the existing rope, which was inline with the antenna and being used to keep it taught. He slid the second rope up the first one as far as he could get it to go and then pulled it out to the northwest (the antenna was oriented east-west with the tension rope running east off of the east end). He pulled it out until the support pole was reasonably vertical and I staked it down.

The winds really howled out of the north driving the rain before them. This shelter (from Costco) did not survive along with another tent and a screen room.

So the bad news was that some of our Field Day setup had not survived the weather which had not even reached severe conditions. The good news was that our generator was still producing power, all of our towers and antennas were intact and functional, we had our two key stations on the air, and our food canopy was full of people and hot food. Not the Field Day everyone had hoped for, but a great opportunity for teamwork and camaraderie and a learning experience to be sure, even if it was not the kind of lesson we wanted to learn.

We left around 7:30 PM and went to the New Hudson Lowe’s, which was very close to our Field Day site, where I bought 18 feet of AWG 6 stranded copper wire with a green sheath. As soon as the weather improves I plan to run this from the CEB to the ham shack and use it to connect the ground bar in the shack to the copper backplane (ground plane) in the CEB. I will then connect the ground on our Go Box (Icom IC-7000) to the ground bar and see if it helps with my noise issue.

Back at the house Linda wanted to watch an episode of NCIS Los Angeles, which we can now do thanks to our new OTA TV antenna. We then watched an episode of Christina Cooks, Christina Perillo’s vegan cooking show from a decade ago. These are still relevant and useful episodes and we especially enjoy them having seen and met her and her husband Robert on our two Taste of Health Holistic Holiday at Sea vegan cruises. Linda read and I wrote for a while before lights out and off to sleep.

2015/06/26 (F) Field Day Setup

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I was up at 7 AM and ready to leave for breakfast with the other SLAARC members who would be setting up our temporary field site for the ARRL Field Day event. I called the SLAARC repeater and Steve (N8AR) came back and wanted to know if I had the site use permit from the township? No, I did not. Paul, N8BHT, got on the air and said he gave it to Linda so I went back home. Linda was up but had no recollection of receiving it. We looked through the materials she got from Paul but could not find it. I left again for breakfast but after more radio QSO went back a second time to retrieve all of the records and bring them with me to the field day site. (Our best guess is that he gave the permits to the other Linda (NF8C) who is the club secretary.

SLAARC’s Field Day setup begins in earnest when Steve’s equipment trailer arrives.

By this time it was too late to make it to breakfast so I stopped for coffee and fueled my car. Mike (W8XH) also did not go to breakfast with the group in South Lyon so we were the first to arrive at the site. Another 10 guys showed up shortly thereafter. John’s Sanitation then arrived and dropped off our rented porta-potty.

We had 12 people for most of the day and 14 total who were there for at least part of the day. It was a good group and just the right size for the task. We worked steadily from 9 AM until almost 5 PM except for an early afternoon lunch break. By the end of the day we had erected two towers and set up six antennas (20m beam and 6m beam co-located on the taller tower, two off-center fed dipoles from the taller tower, a 40m crossed dipole from the shorter tower, and a 40m 1/4 wave vertical with four elevated counterpoise wires). We also put up three radio tents, a screen room, and the big food tent.

Larry (K8UT) holds the 6m beam while Steve (N8AR) and others attach the 20m beam to the mast of the taller tower.

The weather was cloudy and dull and not the best for taking photographs but I took pictures anyway. I had to be deliberate in my shot selections, however, as both of my memory cards were almost full. All of the work that needed to be done today was finished by 4:30 PM and most of us took off. Our Field Day chairman, Paul (KD8SNZ), and a new member, Ron, setup their tents as they would be spending the night and keeping an eye on the site. Steve (N8AR) and Eric (K8ERS) stayed a bit longer to test the antennas using the mobile radio in Steve’s SUV.

Back home I took a nap for an hour before dinner. Linda grilled Portobello mushrooms and corn on the cob and cut up some fresh strawberries and cantaloupe. After dinner I went to my office and transferred all of our recent photographs from the Sony alpha 100 DSLR to my computer and then to our older NAS device which we had with us this past winter. I then started backing up all of the photographs we had taken since December 2014 from the old NAS unit to the new one. This involved a significant number of images, a lot of gigabytes of data, and took a bit of time.

Rather than sit around waiting for file transfers to finish I decided to turn on the Icom IC-7000 ham radio and see if I could figure out why I could not hear the Novi 440 repeater on Wednesday when we tested the antenna and coax installation. I checked the Nifty guide for the Icom IC-7000 and, as Mike had suspected, I did not have the Tone Squelch frequency set correctly for the Novi repeater. I changed the mode on the 440 MHz band from ‘Tone’ to ‘TSQL’ and then caIled Mike (W8XH) on the phone to see if he could help me do a radio check. We spent about an hour going back and forth between the Novi and South Lyon repeaters.

With the correct settings I was able to work both repeaters although I had a lot of background noise (static). I played with the noise reduction (NR) and pre-amplifier functions and both seemed to help. Mike tried various combinations of power and simplex operation and we determined that the basic problem seemed to be a weak signal in both directions. I am still suspicious of the fact that I do not have the Go Box grounded as I vaguely recall from three years ago having noise problems with this setup until I grounded the box, which is tied to the radio ground.

Field Day is an “all hands on deck (antenna)” event for our SLAARC group.

Mike was suspicious of the coax I used to go from the lightning arrestor to the radio but looked up the specifications on my Diamond X-50N antenna and suggested that an antenna with more gain might be in order. We also discussed the location where I placed the antenna on the tower. Although most of the antenna is above the tower it is on the northwest leg. The two repeaters lie to the southeast so the tower may be ‘blocking’ some of the signal although that does not seem likely to me. Of more concern to me is that I mounted the base of the antenna so that two of the three counterpoise (ground plane) rods are even with, and parallel to, two of the three topmost crossbars. If anything is being blocked it is likely those as the crossbars are between the rods and the repeater locations.

Ed (KD8OSM) jumped in briefly to let us know that I also had a ‘hum’ that sounded like the 60 Hz power line frequency only higher pitched. I have a small fan installed in the back of the Go Box so I hummed the same pitch as it was producing into the microphone and both Ed and Mike confirmed that this was the tone they were hearing. The fan is audible, but not that loud, and was two feet behind the microphone so I would be surprised if it was picking up the fan noise. It is possible that the fan is inducing the hum electrically, but I believe it is a DC fan, so that seems unlikely. I do not have an AC line filter installed on the fan, or anywhere in the box, so that may be a next step.

The larger of the two towers is up and secured. It has a 6m beam antenna on top of 20m beam antenna on a common mast with a rotator. We also attached one end of an off-center-fed dipole to this tower.

At the SLAARC Field Day site atop the Lyon Township Atchison Memorial Park the larger of the two towers is up and secured. It has a 6m beam antenna on top of 20m beam antenna on a common mast with a rotator. We also attached one end of an off-center-fed dipole to this tower. Tents are being erected to house the various operating stations. The weather was overcast and forecast to get much worse before Field Day as over on Sunday.

Mike and I wrapped up our QSO and I shut the radio off. I checked my e-mail and saw that the May 2015 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine was available. I logged in to the website and downloaded both the standard and high definition versions of the April and May digital editions. By the time I got to bed it was well after 11PM. I finished up yesterday’s blog post draft and outlined as much of today’s post as I could before I lost the sequence and details of the day’s events.

2015/06/25 (R) The Mouse

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Brighton Honda called yesterday in the afternoon to get permission to do additional work on my car. Since we plan to keep the car for a while, and then perhaps give it to our son, it was the kind of work that needed to be done regardless of the costs. They called back later to indicate that they would not have it aligned before closing time. That was fine with us as it would have been inconvenient to impossible for us to get there by 6 PM to pick it up. Linda told them to call in the morning when it was ready.

The top of the 40-foot tower from the WNW showing all of the antennas and the pulley with the haul rope. The weather had definitely deteriorated from the day before.

It is amazing how attuned we become to routine sounds and how sensitive we are to non-routine ones, even (especially?) while sleeping. So it was last night that I was suddenly aware that one of our cats was making a repetitive sound that was unusual. I turned on my flashlight, hoping to not disturb Linda, and got out of bed. Both cats were hunched down on the floor on Linda’s side of the bed with Jasper in front. He was the one responsible for the sound and the reason was next to his head and about 3 inches away; a little dark gray mouse.

My first thought when I see one or both of the cats with a mouse next to them rather than in their mouth is that it is dead but that was not the case. This mouse was alive and apparently not injured. I have seen this behavior before in which the mouse basically “plays dead” and the cats leave it alone but watch it carefully. Mice seem to know that cats are triggered by movement and that if they sit very still the cats just sit there and guard them. It was 4:30 AM and I was not fully awake so I do not recall the exact sequence of events, but the mouse somehow ended up in our master bathroom. I do not recall what I did with the cats but I think I went and got a box with high sides and tried to get the mouse to go in it and it made a run for it towards the bathroom. Linda was awake by this point so she got a towel for me. I went in the bathroom and used the towel to block the gap under the door and prevent the little critter from getting back into the bedroom while I tried to get it into the box. I was unsuccessful and it managed to find a place to hide in the hot water baseboard radiator.

Linda got one of the live traps we recently purchased and baited it with the recommended saltine and peanut butter. We set the trap near the radiator, turned out the bathroom light, shut the door, and tried to plug the gap with the towel from the outside, figuring we would deal with the mouse in the morning. Juniper kept pawing at the towel and pulling it back from the door so we put both cats out of the bedroom and shut the door. They found that confusing as they sleep with us and generally have the run of the house. One or both of them pawed at the door meowing to get back in for quite a while. It wasn’t the best night’s sleep we have had and the timing was unfortunate given the hard day of tower work.

Brighton Honda called at 8:01 AM to let us know the car was ready. Hello, I’m awake now! I checked on the mouse and it was now safely tucked away on top of the radiator fins inside the housing where neither the cats nor I could get to it. We decided to leave the live trap in place, sealed the gap under the door, and kept the bedroom door shut to keep the cats out.

I had planned to drive to Isringhausen’s U.S. headquarters in Galesburg, Michigan today but first we had to get my car. As long as we were headed that way we decided to go to the Brighton Panera for coffee, but had toast and juice for breakfast at home before we left.

The 100,000 mile service is extensive and includes changing the spark plugs. Beyond the routine service items the Element needed a new ball joint and tie rod and had a stuck brake caliper pin that had to be repaired. Given the front end work I also had them align it. Butch and I rebuilt the front brakes last year so I was surprised that there was an issue with them, but the car has been towed and driven in some harsh environments since then so that may have been a factor.

The Panera at Grand River Avenue and I-96 is not one of our favorites. More often than not we end up with coffee grounds in our cups and the bathrooms are not maintained as they should be. Today was not the first time we have been to this location that the men’s restroom was out of toilet paper. It is also often freezing cold inside the restaurant and today was no exception. The weather was overcast and a bit gloomy but the outside temperature, while not warm, was much more comfortable than inside. We were also unable to connect to their Wi-Fi signal, which is generally useable. That’s pretty basic stuff to not be able to get right and falls squarely on local management in my opinion.

While we drank our coffee I called Rick Short at ISRI to make sure he would be in but I got his voice mail again. I asked for a call back but never got one so I did not make the trip to Galesburg. Apparently they have better things to do than be of assistance to me. I only want to buy one chair, not a fleet of chairs, so I understand my relative unimportance, but I don’t like it just the same. We decided to spend the day at home completing the work from yesterday, which had made a mess throughout the house.

One of the things we needed to do was register our cellular booster system. Given that it is a five band device I was not clear on whether we had to register it only with Verizon or with all of the carriers. I called the company we bought it from, Cellular Solutions, and talked to Judy who said we only had to register it with the carriers we personally use. For us that is Verizon Wireless. Registration was via the Verizon Website and was simple enough. It did, however, require me to log in to our My Verizon account and navigate through a couple of screens to a page where we could enter the information from the label on the box. The serial number was on two peel off tags, so one of those went on the booster and the other one went in the manual.

With the unit registered I turned the power switch on and watched the ‘Alert’ lights all go solid yellow. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post solid yellow lights are not described anywhere in the manual. I called Cellular Solutions back and said I had a technical support question. The woman on the phone took my name and number and said someone would call me back.

Since I was apparently taking care of phone chores I decided to call Universal Towers and inquire about their B-30 base. The woman who answered the phone never gave her name but was able to answer some questions. She indicated that their base might or might not be compatible with older Heights Tower products, depending on exactly which product I had, and that I would have to talk to the owner, Bill, who wasn’t there at the moment. She did know that the outside-to-outside measurement of the legs on a B-30 base was 30 inches and the base cost $290. She also told me that the larger bases, like the B-30, consisted only of the three rods with the mounting yokes on top; the three rods were not otherwise connected together in any way. She also confirmed that the ‘U’ shaped yokes at the top of the base rods were welded on and not adjustable. The normal installation procedure involved connecting them to the bottom of the legs of the first section of the tower, setting them in the hole as the concrete is poured, and adjusting them by moving them around until the legs of the tower were plumb. That sounded to me like a process where a lot could go wrong and not be repairable.

I pulled a 75 ohm coax out of the ceiling of the basement yesterday. We laid it out in the basement to see how long it was and it looked to be at least 60 feet. Linda suggested we test it before running it through the basement ceiling which was a very sensible idea. I unplugged the power adapter for the TV amplifier power inserter, detached the coax that feeds the TV in the bedroom, attached the downstairs cable, and connected the other end to the basement TV set. Linda set up the TV for Antenna input, did an All Channels scan, and got the same stations we got yesterday, minus a couple.

In spite of what appeared to be acceptable performance I decided I wanted a new coax cable and Linda wanted to return three of the ropes I bought at Lowe’s but never used. She found the receipt and we went to Lowe’s. They had a good quality RG-6 quad-shield coax (75 ohm) in various lengths including 50 feet, which is what I needed. At the register I decided to buy two more 40 pound bags of solar salt. I am not an impulse shopper as a rule but their supply of Morton Solar Salt was very low and stocking up seemed like a good idea.

We stopped at Teeko’s to order coffee. Mary took our order and rang it up; one pound each of the three different half-caff blends that have become our standard. We took note of the fact that the Bennigan’s restaurant building on the northwest corner of Grand River Avenue and Latson Road was gone and a sign said a Panera would be coming soon to that location. We didn’t say anything to Mary, but that cannot be good news for Teeko’s. We will continue to buy our custom roasted beans at Teeko’s as long as they are open but it is going to be difficult for them to compete with a $2.25 cup of bottomless coffee, free Wi-Fi, a restaurant, a bakery, drive through service, and ample parking with great access to I-96.

When we got home I checked the live trap in our master bathroom and we had captured the mouse. We took the trap to the northeast corner of the property, towards our neighbor’s pond, and set it free. It did not want to leave the trap and I had to encourage it to go. Once it hit the ground, however, it scampered away looking for a place to hide.

We then worked on running the new coax from the basement TV to the sump pump room above the suspended ceiling. I disconnected the power inserter for the amplifier and disconnected the old coax we had tested earlier. I notched a ceiling panel at the corner of a boxed support column behind the basement TV to allow the ceiling tile to go back into place around the coax. We then installed one of the wire channels to contain and hide the coax from the ceiling down to the TV set and connected it to the back of the set.

In the sump pump room I attached the coax from the cable entry box (CEB) to the input of the new 1-to-2 signal splitter. I attached the coax for the bedroom TV to one output from the splitter and the coax we just ran to the other output. I mounted the splitter on the wall of the sump pump room and secured the cable coming from the CEB to the ceiling. I then plugged the power supply for the power inserter back in to an AC outlet. Linda scanned for channels and verified that everything was working correctly. We then installed the other wire channel alongside the trim on the bedroom doorwall to route and hide the cable coming up from the basement.

I continued to fuss with the cell phone booster gain settings. We had not gotten the promised return phone call from Cellular Solutions Technical Support so I called them. I got Judy again and explained what I was seeing with the solid yellow lights. She checked with her tech support people and they said the manufacturer (SureCall) told them the solid yellow was the same as the blinking yellow; that the booster was adjusting the gain and it was “normal.” The manual says that normal is when the light is off, so I’m not sure I buy this explanation, but based on that I left the booster turned on.

With all of that done we started cleaning up the tools and materials we had scattered over two floors of the house. I decided that was also a good time to start a load of laundry, although it was actually rather late in day for that. I did three loads by the time I was done and it was sometime after 10:30 PM before the last load was dry. I needed to be up at 7 AM to be at breakfast in South Lyon at 8 AM as our SLAARC group would start setting up for the ARRL Field Day event at 9 AM.

2015/06/24 (W) Up The Tower

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Today was the day to finally climb the tower to remove an old TV antenna, reposition an amateur radio antenna, and install two new antennas, one for OTA TV and the other for a cellular booster system. But there were other things to do before I was ready to climb.

I was up at 7 AM and on my way to Lowe’s in Howell by 7:20 AM in search of a solution to the problem of how to mount the outdoor cellular booster antenna. I ended up buying two 2-1/2 inch U-bolts. Although the tower legs are 1-5/8″ in diameter the angle bracket attached to the bottom of the antenna is 2-1/4 inches wide. Thus I needed the 2-1/2 inch spacing for the threaded ends of the U-bolt to clear the bracket.

Back at the house Linda was up and had the coffee made. We had a quick breakfast of homemade granola. I removed the tire pressure sensors and GPS from my car and headed to Brighton Honda to drop it off for its 100,000 mile service appointment. Linda arrived at the dealership about 10 minutes later. We then headed to Adams Electronics in Wixom. While Adams Electronics primarily serves the public and business communications markets owner Scott Adams, AC8IL, is a long-time ham and a member of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club and Novi Amateur Radio Club. Well known in the local amateur radio community, Scotty is the local go-to guy for certain kinds of equipment. I ordered two coaxial cables from him the other day and we were here to pick them up.

We left to return home at 10 AM so I called Mike (W8XH) to let him know we were running a little behind. So was he, but thought he could be at our house by 11 AM. That gave me time to drill a hole in each of the two U-bolt retaining plates and cut a short piece of 1″ square aluminum tube to use as a spacer. That was the last fabricating I needed to do and we got busy staging all of the materials we were going to need to get the tower work done efficiently.

Mike (W8XH) setting up the tools and parts outside the “drop zone” of the 40-foot tower on the east end of the house. (Photo by Linda)

Linda set out a sheet near the tower but not in the “drop zone.” We spread out materials and tools on the sheet and used it to make sure we could find things quickly and keep them from getting lost in the grass. I also brought all of my tool boxes to the tower area. With everything assembled it was time to climb. I set up our 7 foot step ladder on the east end of our rear deck to provide access to the roof near the tower. Mike helped me into his climbing harness and got it adjusted. Once on the roof I took the harness off temporarily as my first task was to remove the 2m/70cm base station antenna. After clipping the plastic cable ties I lowered it down to Mike while Linda took photographs. (She helped with many aspects of the work today but was the only photographer.)

Starting up the tower from the roof of the house. (Photo by Linda)

I put the harness back on and Mike tossed me one of the 100 foot ropes which would eventually be used to haul materials and tools up and down the tower. I secured the haul rope to one of the unused seat clip rings and Mike instructed me on how to secure the harness while climbing. I put the waist strap around the tower and clipped it in. I then put one of the two fall cables, attached to the ring at my upper back, around one of the legs above one of the cross bars above my head and clipped it into the ring at my chest. The tower is adjacent to the east end of the house and is attached to it by two pipe assemblies just below the soffit (the house has hip roofs) so it was easy to step onto it. After that things got tougher.

The horizontal trussing on the tower is two feet apart vertically. That spacing was right at the limit of how high I could lift my right foot and required me to pull myself up part way until I could push with my right leg. Once up on the next rung I attached the other fall cable, moved the first one higher, and slide the waist strap up to position myself for the next step. I repeated this pattern with the two fall cables and the waist strap as I worked my way slowly up the tower, clipping old plastic cable (zip) ties as I went. The tower definitely had some give but I was quickly acclimated to the amount of sway and found it to be acceptable so we decided not to guy the tower with the other three ropes, which would have slowed my ascent even more.

When I finally reached the top of the tower I untied the haul rope, looped it over one of the southeast facing horizontal bars and hauled it up allowing the free end to lower down to the ground. Mike then tied the rope to the standoff pulley I had fabricated and hauled it up to me. I already had cable ties, a diagonal cutter, and a pair of slip pliers with me. I set the threaded rod on the northeast and southeast cross bars, inside and against the two legs that were parallel to the side of the house, and secured it with cable ties. This was a three-handed job that I had to do with two hands but I got it done while only dropping one cable tie. With the pulley rod secured I undid the rope and then undid the knot tying the two loose ends together. I fed one end through the pulley and retied it to the other end. We now had a way to haul materials and tools (in a bucket) up to me at any needed height while keeping it 18 inches away from the tower.

Three-quarters of the way up ad working with the haul rope. (Photo by Linda)

The next task at the top of the tower was to remove the old TV antenna, mast, and rotor. When I finally had a close up view of these old components it became apparent that my best course of action was to try and unclamp the base of the mast from the rotator, lift it off of the rotator, and toss it to the ground.

The mast clamp parts were all very rusty so Linda got the WD-40 and Mike sent it up in the bucket. I sprayed the nuts on the mast mounts and also the rotator leg clamps. I tried undoing the mast clamps with a slip pliers but it was no good, so Mike sent up three open/closed end wrenches. One of them was the right size and to my surprise the rusted nuts broke loose and started backing off. One of them did not want to come off but unscrewed the entire bolt instead. Fine. The bolt had a screwdriver slot in the top and was threaded into the rotor housing and I did not care how it came out as long as it did. I got the mast clamps loose enough that I could work the bottom of the mast free from the top of the rotor. There was a lot of rust there too. After clipping some coax cables, rotor control wires, and plastic cable clamps I repositioned myself up one rung on the tower so I could get enough leverage to the lift the mast clear of the rotator collar and control it well enough to make sure the antenna fell to the ENE away from the house and my helpers down below. And that is exactly what happened.

The first antenna to get mounted was the outdoor antenna for the cellular booster system. Mike sent the antenna up in the bucket along with the various pieces I needed to secure it to the short top/center mast support tube so the entire antenna, which is omnidirectional, was above all parts of the tower. What would have been an awkward assembly on the ground took on added difficulty 40 feet in the air but I got it secured with good access to the N-female connector on the bottom.

At the top with the pulley in place and using it to haul up a bucket with tools and parts. Mike is controlling the haul rope on the ground. (Photo by Linda)

We decided to run the coax on the outside of one of the tower legs rather than down the inside of the tower. Mike tied the LMR-400 coax to the rope and hauled it up to me. In addition to the haul rope Mike tied a second control line to the bucket to keep it from swinging all over the place. I connected the coax to the antenna feed point and then wrapped the connection with coax seal tape. I then routed the coax down the east leg of the tower and zip tied it to take the weight off of the antenna connection.

Next up was the 2m/70cm amateur radio base station antenna, often referred to as a 2m/440 dual band antenna. (In this nomenclature the “2m” refers to a range of wavelengths for one of the VHF ham bands and the “440” refers to a range of frequencies for one of the UHF ham radio bands, so it is a mixed units designation.). The antenna is about five feet long with three short counterpoise (ground plane) rods near the base. It had an LMR-400 style cable connected to it but with PL-259 male connectors on each end. The antenna feed point is an N-female connector so I had an adapter installed to make everything compatible. Mike removed the coax and the adapter, zip tied the antenna to the haul cable at three points, put the 10mm wrench in the bucket, and hauled it up to me.

The ham radio antenna was also tricky to get mounted. I installed it at the top of the northwest leg so that most of the antenna was above the tower and two of the three short counterpoise were parallel to the west (N-S) and northeast (NW-SE) crossbars. The antenna by itself is light in weight but it is five feet long and mounts at the bottom nine inches, so most if it was above me with a tendency to wave around in mid-air. With the coax connected, however, it weighed quite a bit more. I temporarily zip tied the coax to take the weight. I then had to hold the antenna with its base against the northwest post at my head level, push a U-bolt through the mounting bracket and past the tower leg, slip the mating clamp over the two ends of the U-bolt, and then get a small lock washer and nut on each threaded bolt end. I then had to repeat this for the second U-bolt. Again, a three-handed job that I had to do with only two hands.

The old OTA TV antenna and mast on the ground. It came down by the gravity method. (Photo by Linda)

The bonus to this work at the top of the tower was a commanding view of the surrounding countryside, which was mostly trees in every direction. I even saw two towers far to the north and was kept company by a soaring vulture just to the NNE. I was also able to determine that the tops of the large white pine trees behind the east end of our house are about 10 feet higher than the top of our tower, putting their overall height at about 55 feet as their bases are lower than the base of the tower. We plan to put the 70 foot tower at a spot that is surrounded by these trees on three sides (W, S, and E) so the top of the tower, and any antennas mounted there, will be well above the tree tops. That is especially important as we plan to eventually put an HF beam antenna up there on a mast attached to a rotator and it will need to be able to rotate freely for 360 degrees.

The final antenna was the hardest. The Antennas Direct DB8e OTA UHF/digital TV antenna was very large and heavy by comparison to the other two. In this case ‘heavy’ meant a few pounds. It is actually two UHF antennas mounted at the end of a dual support arm structure. The support arm mounts to a vertical pole, such as a tower leg, at its midpoint and there is a combiner box located there as part of the mount. A short length of RG-59 (75 ohm) coax connects each antenna to the combiner box and the main coax connects there as well.

How tall the tower appears (and feels) depends on where you are standing. (Photo by Linda)

How tall the tower appears (and feels) depends on where you are standing. Pulley and haul rope in the upper right. Lots of coaxial cables to be dressed (secured) on the way down. (Photo by Linda)

RG-59 is a different kind of coaxial cable from the LMR-400 used for the first two antennas. LMR-400 has a 50 ohm characteristic impedance and is used for receiving and transmitting RF energy with considerable power if needed. RG-59 is much smaller in diameter, more flexible, has a 75 ohm characteristic impedance, and uses F-connectors that are the standard for OTA TV, video, and satellite cables. But I have gotten ahead of myself. I had to come down a few feet on the tower to install the TV antenna but before doing that I had to start securing the transmission lines to the tower legs with cable ties.

Mike rigged up the haul rope in a ‘Y’ to lift the antenna from its center of gravity while actually attaching the rope to its ends. That allowed the haul rope to both support the weight of the antenna and keep it oriented correctly while I positioned and clamped it to the southwest tower leg with the dual support arms pointing in an east-west direction. Because of where I had the pulley mounted, and the length of the ‘Y’ in the support rope, I had to mount the antenna a few feet lower on the tower. Fortunately the slightly lower height was not going to affect its performance.

Like the ham radio antenna, the OTA TV antenna mounted to the tower leg at two points. The upper assembly was a U-bolt with a retaining bracket on the back side. The lower assembly was a pair of straight bolts that went through the combiner box past the tower leg and had a retaining bracket on the back side. The antenna came with wing nuts instead of washers and regular nuts, which helped a little, but I really needed three hands to get the antenna into position and tighten the mounting brackets.

Mike ties off the DB8e OTA TV antenna with an inverted “Y” so it will haul up in the proper orientation. (Photo by Linda)

Once I had the antenna sufficiently attached to the tower I was able to position the support arm close to the southeast facing side of the tower. I then pointed the antenna on the east end of the arm ESE towards the Detroit area TV towers and tightened the two nuts on the mounting studs. (The horizontal dual support arms are about 3 feet long so I was able to reach through the tower to get to the mounting studs and nuts.) I left the antenna on the west end of the support beam loose and turned it out of my way so I could complete other tasks.

Mike attached the end of the main RG-59 coax to the haul rope, put the amplifier and a 2-foot length of RG-59 coax in the bucket along with lots of zip ties, and pulled them up to me. The amplifier is about 3″ wide by 2″ high and 1.5″ thick including the concave plastic backplate. The backplate accepts two zip ties for mounting to a pole. I positioned the amplifier about 8 inches below the antenna combiner box and cinched up the two zip ties. I then connected the short coax to the combiner box output and put the combiner back it its protective, weather-gasketed plastic box. I connected the other end of the short coax to the amplifier input and wrapped the connection with coax seal weatherproofing tape.

Installing the DB8e OTA TV antenna required three hands. Note that I am installing it at the highest point possible when suspended from the pulley with the haul rope in an inverted "Y" attachment. (Photo by Linda)

Installing the DB8e OTA TV antenna required three hands. Note that I am installing it at the highest point possible when it is suspended from the pulley with the haul rope in an inverted “Y” attachment. The yellow waist strap allowed me to lean back and work while the two red security straps would catch me if something broke. (Photo by Linda)

I attached the main RG-59 coax to the output of the amplifier, which is also the DC power input, and wrapped the connection in coax weather seal tape. I then dressed the cable and secured it to the tower leg. I aimed the antenna on the west end of the support arm WNW towards the East Lansing TV towers and tightened the nuts to lock it in position.

At this point I was finally done working on the antennas but had three coaxial transmission line running down the outside of the tower, one by each leg. As I descended the tower, reversing the protocol I used going up, I secured all three cables every few feet. I finally had my feet back on the roof at 2:20 PM, almost exactly 2 hours and 30 minutes from when I started climbing. Projects usually take me twice as long as I think they will but this was about half as long as I thought it would take, so we were all pleased that the work had gone smoothly and relatively quickly. My main objective was to get the old TV antenna down and the three antennas up but my secondary objective was to only climb and descend the tower once. Mission accomplished, at least for now.

By now we were all hungry and thirsty so Linda made chickpea salad sandwiches and set out fresh sweet peppers, sliced apples, baby carrots, and cold water. After a suitable lunch break we returned to the next phase of the work which was routing the coax cables into the cable entry box (CEB) and making the connections.

We started with the RG-59 coax from the OTA TV antenna. I coiled the extra cable and hung it on the tower (with zip ties, of course), routed it into the CEB and connected it to the power inserter / lightning arrestor. We purchased this cable from a Radio Shack store in Florida two winters ago to hook up our bus to the RV resort cable TV system. Besides the coax it had a separate ground wire. The amplifier and the power inserter both had connections for a separate ground wire so I connected it on both ends.

Routing coaxial cable into the cable entry box from the tower and the basement and making the connections. (Photo by Linda)

We had already routed a 75 ohm video cable from our bedroom TV to the sump pump room in the basement. I selected a suitable length of this same type of cable from our existing inventory, connected it to the other side of the power inserter, and routed it through the back of the CEB into the sump pump room where Linda guided it. Conveniently, I had a double-ended F-female barrel connector designed to connect together two cables with F-male connectors. I plugged in the AC power adapter for the power inserter, which was already in the sump pump room, and we went upstairs to see if we were receiving any TV stations.

We set the ‘Source’ on the TV to ‘Antenna’ and did an ‘Auto Scan’ for digital channels only. There are very few analog TV signals still in use and the ones that are reside in the old VHF TV spectrum which our new antenna cannot even receive. The scan found 58 signals, which obviously included the sub-channels. Besides the main Detroit stations and the East Lansing PBS station we got other Lansing area stations and even a station from Flint. The nice thing about digital TV is that if you get a picture at all it is very good.

There is a large TV tower at I-96 and US-127 on the southeast corner of Lansing so we were probably picking it up. There are several TV towers SSW of Lansing about 35 miles that serve Battle Creek and may serve Lansing and Kalamazoo. They are 50+ miles from us and I did not have the west antenna pointed in exactly that direction but it may have been close enough to pick them up. Flint is at least 35 miles away straight north off the sides of both antennas so theoretically we should not have received any stations from that direction. We will have to check the AntennaPoint.com website and confirm by station identifier what stations we are actually receiving.

Feeling good about our success so far we routed the coax for the cellular booster across one of the support arms that brace the tower to the house just under the east soffit. We dropped it down next to the wall and brought it into the bottom of the CEB, replacing the hole plug with a rubber grommet. Routing it this way kept it out of the way of future foot traffic, or lawn and garden work, in the space around/between the tower and the CEB. I connected the cable to the lightning arrestor and coaxed it unto position inside the CEB. LMR-400 is stiff and bending it sharply will damage it.

I connected one end of the 15-foot LMR-400 cable to the other side of the antenna arrestor and routed it into the sump pump room where Linda guided it into position. I secured it to the ceiling, brought it down the opposite wall, put a large 180 degree bend in it, and attached it to the connector on the bottom of the cellular booster. I turned it on and watched the lights blink for a while. All three of us then started checking signal strength throughout both floors of the house. All five of the ‘Alert’ lights went from blinking yellow, which means the unit is adjusting the gain on that band, to solid yellow, which is not described in the manual. Since we had not yet registered the device with Verizon Wireless I turned off the booster.

Back out at the CEB I removed one of the hole plugs directly below the input of the Morgan VHF lightning arrestor. We routed the coax for the 2m/440 ham antenna across the tower brace, down the wall, and around through the bottom of the box where I attached it to the lightning arrestor input. I had an old piece of 50 ohm coax with an N-male connector on one end and a PL-259 (male) connector on the other end. I attached the N-connector to the output of the VHF lightning arrestor and fed the other end through one of the 2″ conduits into the sump pump room where Linda routed it out into the ham shack.

We set our “Go Box” on the desk, plugged the PL-259 into the SO-239 socket on the back of the case, plugged it in to AC power, turned on the power supply, and turned on the radio. The radio, an Icom IC-7000, came up tuned to the South Lyon (K8VJ) repeater. I transmitted and successfully triggered the repeater, which is currently at a secondary site about 20 miles from our tower. Mike went out to his car and used his mobile radio to verify that we could transmit to and receive from the repeater. I had a lot of background static (white noise) so Mike switched modes and transmitted directly to our antenna. The signal was full scale and full quieting. I have a ground lug in the Go Box but did not have it connected. I vaguely recalled that I had to ground the box at the previous house to eliminate a noise issue. (The radio and power supply are grounded to the box.)

I switched the radio to UHF and it was set for the Novi repeater. I listened but did not hear anyone transmitting so I transmitted, giving my call sign and a brief message, and then listened. I did not get a reply even though Mike was also monitoring the Novi repeater so I switched back to the South Lyon repeater. Mike indicated that I had, indeed, triggered the repeater and that a couple of other hams acknowledged hearing me in addition to him. It thus appeared that I did not have something set up correctly on the receive side of the radio for the Novi repeater but the system (radio, cables, arrestor, antenna) was clearly working.

That was enough work for one day so we gathered up all of the tools and unused materials and put them away. We offered to take Mike to dinner as a ‘Thank You’ for his assistance. It was more than helpful to have someone on the ground who was familiar with tower operations. We considered several dining options but opted for Olga’s in Brighton. Linda and I had small salads, sans the Feta cheese, veggie Olga’s that were excellent, and curly fries without Tabasco sauce for the ketchup. Warning: As inconceivable as it may sound, Olga’s does not have any kind of hot sauce in its restaurants. Mike had a dish with chicken in that he said was very good.

Mike headed home from the restaurant as did we. We were tired but very pleased with what we had accomplished in the course of the day. We celebrated our accomplishments by watching several programs on Detroit PBS, something we have not been able to do for more than two years.

2015/06/23 (T) Grounded

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As I wrote in yesterday’s post we did not turn off the lights last night until almost 1 AM because we were keeping a close eye on the weather moving across the lower portion of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Although strong to severe storms were still forecast from 1 AM to 5 AM they either did materialize at our exact location or we slept through them. We had the house closed up and the air-conditioning on, so that cut down the sound level of outside noises.

A cold front had pushed through by sun up and we woke to a cool morning with blue skies and noticeably lower humidity. We did not have any trees, or even big limbs, come down and there was no damage to our brand new roof. The forecast yesterday was threatening enough, however, that in the morning we took the potted plants, and as much of our outside lawn furniture as we could find room for, inside including our sun umbrella and trash cans. I planned to be gone most of the day, and Linda was leaving mid-afternoon to go to dinner and a movie with Diane Rauch, so our first chore was to put all the lawn furniture, plants, and other outdoor stuff back outdoors.

This week is mostly being devoted to ham radio with the ARRL Field Day as the crowning event this weekend. My specific focus for most of the week, however, has been the “communications tower” adjacent to the east wall of our house. As described in previous posts we installed a cable entry box (CEB), mounted the cellular booster in the basement, mounted the inside cellular antenna, and ran coax cables. The antennas will (hopefully) be mounted on the existing 40 foot tower tomorrow, cabled into the CEB, and cables run from there to devices inside the house. With any luck by the end of the day tomorrow we will have decent cellular service inside the whole house, the ability to watch OTA TV programs on two different TV sets, and finally be able to connect one of our radios in the ham shack to an antenna. Today, however, was planned to mostly address other things.

I had an appointment with our dentist at 10:20 this morning and left at 9 AM. I planned to stop at Chuck’s bus garage and check that the key he lent me worked, but I needed gas for my car. I did not have time for both and did not really have a choice; I would have to check the key some other time. I ordered two cables yesterday from Scott (AC8IL) at Adams Electronics. Later in the evening I was unsure if I had specified the connectors correctly so I called and left a message. I called again this morning to make sure the message got through. It did, and my original connector specifications were correct.

I arrived at the dentist’s office about 10 minutes before my appointment time. I called Rick Short at Isringhausen USA to make sure he was going to be in before I drove two hours to Galesburg, Michigan after my dentist appointment. I got his voice mail a left a message. “ISRI” makes very high tech air suspension driver’s seats that are used as original equipment in motorcoaches, semi-tractors, heavy equipment, and locomotives. I would really like one for our bus, but it is not proving easy to get.

Dr. Steve and his assistant, Leslie, made molds of my upper and lower teeth and a bite impression. The molds will be used to make a mouth guard that I can wear while I sleep. Dr. Steve has a strong suspicion that I am clenching my teeth and the mouth guard will reduce or eliminate the irritation it causes. I will have to ask if I can wear it during the day too as I am occasionally aware of clenching my teeth while I awake.

I had not heard back from Rick by the end of my appointment so I called the main number at ISRI and talked to the receptionist. It turned out that Rick was not in today and she transferred me to Jeff Woodworth. Jeff was willing to meet with me but thought it would be a better use of my time to wait until Rick was available. My next opportunity to drive to Galesburg will be Thursday and I will likely go as the ISRI seat is holding up our ordering of Flexsteel seats through Coach Supply Direct.

I stopped for coffee and then re-routed for Chuck’s bus garage in Novi. The key to the garage worked perfectly. I called Linda to let her know about the change in plans and headed for home. There is too much to do at the moment to waste much time so I installed the #4 AWG bare copper ground wire I bought yesterday at Lowe’s. I mounted an offset copper wire lug using the center support stud for the copper back plane in the CEB. I replaced one of the plastic hole plugs with a rubber plug with a small hole in the center. The hole I chose in the bottom of the CEB allowed the ground wire to come straight up into the lug.

Another view of the cable entry box on the east end of the house by the 40-foot tower showing the bare copper ground wire that runs to the ground rod and then to one of the tower legs.

Outside the CEB I routed the ground wire around to the existing ground rod and secured it using the new clamp I bought yesterday. There was an old ground wire connected from a clamp on the tower to the ground rod. I removed that wire along with some coax and control wires that I had clipped when we removed the old satellite dish. I then attached the new ground wire to the clamp on the tower. While we were at it Linda trimmed back a small bush that was growing between the tower legs and I pulled leaves, grass and other stuff out from around the Day Lilies that we transplanted last year around the tower base.

With the CEB grounded we looked at how we might get a video cable up to the TV/monitor in our bedroom. The wall where the TV is mounted has a hot water baseboard radiator that comes almost to the trim on the door wall. That end of the radiator has a copper pipe that goes through the floor into the basement and it was easy to locate the pipe in the basement. I determined that there was enough space behind the pipe to safely drill a hole but I had to drill it from the top side at an angle. A 5/8″ wood boring drill bit created a hole just big enough for the molded F-connector on the end of the cable to pass through.

We fed the video coax cable above the suspended ceiling in the ham shack area to the location of the hole. I then fed the cable up from the basement as Linda pulled it up into the bedroom. We adjusted the amount of cable in the bedroom to allow the wall mounted TV set to move through its entire range of motion. The other end of the cable was then routed into the sump pump room.

By the time we finished pulling this cable it was 3:30 PM and time for Linda to leave to pick up Diane. They were headed to Royal Oak for dinner and a movie as the movie they wanted to see was only showing at the Royal Oak Main Theater.

While I was out during the morning Lynch Carpet had called to let us know our Armstrong vinyl tile was available for pickup so after Linda left I closed up the house and went to get it. The 12 boxes of tiles, container of vinyl adhesive, and container of vinyl grout were all neatly arranged on a small pallet and tightly wrapped in shipping plastic. Rather than break this down and load each thing individually they used a fork lift to set the pallet in the back of my Honda Element. The rear suspension settled at least two inches when they transferred the full weight of the pallet to the floor of my car.

When I got back to the house I backed the car up to the garage. I cut the shipping plastic loose and unloaded the tubs and boxes of tiles. I put the pallet on the garage floor and then neatly stacked the boxes of tiles on it to keep them off the floor. Each box contained 14 tiles measuring 16″ by 16″ for a total area of 24.89 square feet. The Armstrong Alterna tiles are a “luxury vinyl” product, and are about 1/8″ thick. Even so, the boxes were heavier than I expected so I decided to weigh one. It tipped the scale at just under 42 pounds. That meant the entire pallet weighed close to 500 pounds, and, ignoring the weight of the cardboard box, that is about 3 pounds per tile.

When I drew out the design I determined that I would need 158 tiles, some of which would be partial. Figuring conservatively at 150 full tiles equivalent, and ignoring the weight of the underlayment, adhesive, and grout, the floor tiles will weigh about 450 pounds. I have no idea what the carpet and ceramic tile that I have removed weighed but the tiles were heavy. I also have no idea what the furniture weighed that we have removed but also have no idea what the new furniture will weigh. The intent was that the new floor and furniture would weigh less than old stuff but we will see.

I traded phone calls with my dad and we finally got to talk for a half hour starting at 4:30 PM. He turned 90 this past Sunday. Mike Fearer from Bid-Rite Concrete called at 6 PM and arrived about 10 minutes later to discuss the foundation for our 70 foot ham radio tower. I had printed off a page from the Universal Tower website showing their tower base. I also downloaded and printed their base and tower installation instructions. I had a set of these to give to Mike so he would have some idea of what the project is about. We looked at the proposed location for the tower and access for his dump cart. We also talked about the base, a rebar cage, a form around the top of the hole to allow the concrete to be slightly above ground, and a jig to make sure the base is level and the tower is plumb.

He said he was interested in the job and would work with me and Phil Jarrell (the excavator) to get it done. Rather than bid the job he would just do it for time and materials. He also said the current price of concrete was about $100 per cubic yard. We will need about six (6) cubic yards to fill the required 5′ x 5′ x 6′ (deep) hole. He thought he might be available the middle of next week but I don’t think I could have everything pulled together that quickly.

After Mike left I went to Lowe’s and picked up five 40 pound bags of topsoil, a 1-in/2-out signal splitter (rated for 5 MHz to 2.4 GHz), and a plastic snap cover channel for hiding the video cable we ran up into the bedroom from the basement for the TV set. I then went to the Meijer’s supermarket just across Grand River Avenue for soy creamer but they did not have what I was looking for. As long as I was there I had a salad for dinner at the in-store Subway.

While I was sitting there I called Mike Sharpe (W8XH) to confirm that he was available tomorrow to help with the antenna installations on our 40 foot tower. I mentioned that the only thing I lacked was a standoff with a pulley at the end of it for hoisting stuff up to me. He suggested that something like that was essential and I agreed, so I headed back to Lowe’s to see what I could figure out. What I ended up with was a three foot long 7/16-14 threaded rod, a pulley that had a closed eyelet on top (and was big enough for the 3/8ths rope I bought), some 7/16ths washers, and some 7/16-14 nuts.

When I got back to the house I unloaded the topsoil near the part of the east yard that needs to be filled in, took the other stuff inside, and then assembled the threaded rod pulley system. I secured the pulley on one end of the rod using two of the nuts, one on either side of the eyelet. I threaded a nut onto the other end, put on two washers, two nuts, two more washers, and another nut. I ran the first two nuts, with two washers between them, part way down the rod. I left the second pair of nuts, with washers between them, near the end of the rod.

I took the assembly out to the tower and adjusted the position and spacing of the two pairs of nuts and washers so they would bracket two of the horizontal tower members. In use I will secure the rod to the tower at each pair of nuts/washers using plastic cable ties. This arrangement will put the pulley at least 18″ from the tower which should be far enough out that we can hoist the DB8e OTA TV antenna to the top of the tower without it banging into the tower or hanging up on something. This antenna is the largest thing we need to hoist up. The old TV antenna is considerably larger and heavier, but it is coming down via gravity.

There was a message on our answering machine from Linda’s sister, Sr. Marilyn, who lives in St. Louis. She was listening to the news earlier today about the storms that went through our part of Michigan and wanted to make sure we were all OK. By the time we finished talking it was dark and I was done working for the day. Linda called shortly thereafter to let me know she was on her way home and I mentioned the call with Marilyn.

I finally opened the box with the vertical omnidirectional outside antenna for the cellular booster system and discovered that I should have opened it sooner. The mounting bracket was designed to be mounted to a vertical surface, such as the side of a house, not a tube, such as a tower leg. I did not want to postpone tomorrow’s tower work so I will have to get up early and figure out a way to adapt the existing bracket so I can mount the antenna to the top of the tower.

My initial thought was that an aluminum U-channel of the correct size might solve the problem very nicely. I could drill two holes in the bottom of the “U” to match the two holes in the bracket. I could then drill three pairs of holes through the sides of the channel. The antenna would be bolted to the bottom of the channel. With the open part of the channel held against a vertical tube I could secure it with three long plastic cable (zip) ties. Conceptually it should work and be easy to fabricate, but will take time which I won’t have a lot of in the morning. We have to get the two coax cables from Scotty (AC8IL), drop off my car at Brighton Honda for its 100,000 mile service, and be back in time to have the mount fabricated and all of the antennas and tools ready to go by 10:30 AM when Mike shows up.

Linda got home at 9:45 PM, earlier than she thought she would when she left. She and Diane ate at Luigi’s and had a very nice meal. They also enjoyed the movie. We had a big day on tap for tomorrow and we asleep by 10:30 PM.

2015/06/22 (M) Cable Me This

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We turned the air-conditioning off last night and enjoyed the fresh air, pleasant temperature, and lower humidity. The overnight low was 58 which made for good sleeping. We awoke to blue skies and what we thought would be a picture perfect Michigan summer day until Linda checked the morning news (iPad). There was a story about a storm that moved through the upper plains yesterday and had a bead on Michigan for later today and this evening. What had been a 10% chance of rain for today had been replaced by a forecast for strong-to-severe thunderstorms with the possibility of strong winds, large hail, and tornadoes. Ahhhh, summer in Michigan.

Not ones to sit around and wait for the apocalypse we did what any sensible couple would do, I made coffee while Linda reheated the last of the Baked French Toast from yesterday’s brunch. We had breakfast and then sat on the deck enjoying our coffee and contemplating the end of the world, or at least the possible destruction of our brand new roof. But it’s insured, so “no worries, maan” as they say in Jamaica. More coffee please.

We have a whole house generator that runs on natural gas so as long as a storm doesn’t damage it we can survive for a very long time without electric utility power. Losing our AT&T Internet connection, however, would be a genuine hardship as that would require us to use our Verizon Mi-Fi (without the benefit of the new Fusion5s cellular booster which I plan to install on Wednesday) or go to Panera, McDonalds, or one of the libraries to get online.

Keith showed up around 10 AM to cut the grass. We were hoping he would make it as we have not had too much rain this past week and the last few days in particular have been dry. I think this is the first time this season he has been able to cut our grass without it being wet. It looked nice when he was done.

I got a call from Phil Jarrell. He had been successful in reaching Mike Fearer of Bid Rite Concrete on Mike’s cell phone. Based on Phil’s description Mike was interested in looking at our tower foundation project and was expecting me to call so I did, using my cell phone, and this time I was able to reach him. It turned out that the information about his business on the Internet is out of date. He is no longer in Whitmore Lake but now operates from near M-59 and Latson Road, not far from us. We agreed that he would stop by tomorrow at the end of the work day to look at our project.

I did not want to do a lot of heavy work today, as I was still a bit tired and sore, but I needed to mount two lightning arrestors in the cable entry box and mount the cellular booster in the sump pump room so I could figure out what coax cable lengths I needed and go get them from Scott Adams (AC8IL) at Adams Electronics in Wixom. But first I called Mike (W8XH) to let him know I was planning on Wednesday for the tower work, assuming he was still available and the tower was still standing.

Cable entry box showing copper ground plane with Morgan lightning arrestors (lower left), control line arrestor (center top), and cellular and OTA TV arrestors (center).

I determined that I needed two coaxial cables and ordered them from Scott by phone rather than take the time today to drive to his place of business. They will both be LMR-400 with N-connectors on both ends. One will be 50 feet long, for our 2m/70cm Diamond X50-N VHF/UHF base station antenna, and the other will be 15 feet long, to get from the cellular booster lightning arrestor in the cable entry box to the repeater (amplifier) in the sump pump room. I will pick them up early Wednesday morning and install them.

One of the lightning arrestors was for the SureCall Fusion5s cellular booster system. It has N-connectors on both ends, one of which is intended for bulkhead mounting. It came with an angle bracket that fit over the bulkhead end and I used that to mount it. I used the 2′ length of LMR-400 that came with the booster installation kit to position the lightning arrestor so the cable from the repeater could exit one of the 2″ conduits and bend around and connect to it. LMR-400 is a low loss, 50 ohm impedance, coaxial cable that can handle high RF transmit power. The cellular booster only has a 1 Watt transmitter but is operating at frequencies where energy losses in coax cables become significant. To do what it does LMR-400 is just under 1/2″ in diameter. It is fairly stiff and does not make sharp bends so cable runs and connections have to be carefully planned.

The other lightning arrestor was for the Antennas Direct DB8e OTA TV antenna and serves a dual purpose as the power insertion device for the tower mounted amplifier. The coax cable for OTA TV signals is typically 75 ohm impedance RG-6 with F-connectors. It is half the diameter of LMR-400 and much more flexible. It is also typically used to receive low power signals and convey them in one direction; from the antenna to the TV. Because we are 25 miles from the nearest TV tower and some of the towers are 50+ miles away, I ordered a signal amplifier to go with the antenna.

Ideally you want to amplify an OTA TV signal as soon as it comes out of the antenna and this amplifier does just that. It will mount on the same tower leg as the antenna about two feet below the antenna feed point. However, being an active electronic device it needs electrical power to operate. There are two basic ways that could be done.

One way would be to have power wires, such as +5 VDC and DC Ground that are separate from the coaxial cable that carries the radio frequency (RF) energy. The two OTA TV antennas on our bus are set up this way with three wires to supply power and control the enclosed rotor.

The other way is to provide DC power through the coaxial cable itself, which is how this amplifier is set up. The nice thing about this arrangement is that the amplifier only has two connections and they are both coax connectors that can be weather sealed. To get the DC power into the coax cable, however, requires a special device called a power inserter. The power inserter, in turn, requires the coax to be split into two segments so there end up being four connections instead of two. The power inserter for this amplifier very conveniently acts as a lightning arrestor as well, which is why I mounted it to the copper back plane in the cable entrance box.

By boosting what I presume will be weak signals from distant towers the amplified signal should be strong enough to survive the trip through the coax cable to the power inserter, from there to a 1-in/2-out signal splitter, and then through additional lengths of coax to the two TV sets.

After getting the two lightning arrestors mounted in the cable entry box I took a break for lunch and then went to Lowe’s for some supplies. When I got back home I turned my attention to mounting the SureCall Fusion5s cellular booster (repeater amplifier) in the sump pump room. The sump pump is in the northeast corner of the basement, which is also the northeast corner of our ham shack and office. (The ham shack occupies the north wall and my desks occupy the east wall. Most of the rest of the room is storage.)

I gutted and rebuilt this space, with the help of long-time friend John Rauch, before we moved in and created the large closet (small room) around the sump with insulated walls to contain sounds. I installed an electrical sub-panel in this room to provide power to the office and ham shack desks and to an RV outlet by the pull-through driveway. I fed the power for the RV outlet through the bond on the east wall just above the concrete block foundation and ran it underground to the far side of the driveway. It was my intention from the beginning to mount a cable entrance box next to the power feed and have all of the coax cables and control wires for outside devices enter the sump pump room in the same manner as the power.

The ham shack/office walls are finished with T-111 exterior plywood with 4″ groove spacing and I finished the interior of the closet the same way as I knew I would eventually want to mount things to the walls. I mounted the SureCall Fusion5s booster on the west wall of the closet about a foot inside the door and just below my eye level so I could see all of the connectors, switches, and indicator lights on the top and front of the unit. It had four mounting tabs, two top and two bottom, that attached easily to the wall with short wood screws.

There is a duplex AC electrical outlet on that wall and one on the opposite (east) wall. The power supplies for the cellular booster and OTA TV antennas will plug in to these along with the sump pump and the charger/controller for the battery powered backup sump pump. One of the things I bought at Lowe’s were two outlet expanders which I installed in these two duplex outlets. I also bought a switch with a pilot light to replace a single pole Decora switch that will eventually control the light in the closet. I installed the switch but did not complete the wiring as I have to tie it in to the light fixture which requires me to cut the power to that circuit. I would also like to replace the bare bulb fixture while I am at it but have not yet purchased a replacement.

Although it was late afternoon I decided to install the inside antenna for the cellular booster system and run the coaxial cable that connects it to the booster. The antenna is designed to mount to a flat ceiling and provide a hemispherical coverage area below the plane of the ceiling. I had previously figured out that if I mounted this antenna in the main floor hallway near the midpoint of the house I could connect it to the cellular amplifier using a 50 foot length of coax cable that came with the system.

The desired mounting location was opposite the door to the hall closet and the access to the attic is through the ceiling of that closet, so that was very convenient. We emptied the closet, removed the clothes rod, and setup our six foot step ladder. I removed the piece of foam insulation we currently use to seal the attic access opening and climbed up, flashlight in hand to check out what was on the other side of the ceiling.

Our desired location for the antenna was free of problems on the back side so I drilled a 3/4″ hole for the mounting stud and used a piece of rebar to poke a hole through the insulation for the coax cable that came out of the stud. Linda fed the coax and stud through the hole and I put the retaining nut on the stud from the attic side of the ceiling. The antenna is shaped like a coffee filter, is about six inches in diameter at the ceiling, and tapers down to about four inches in diameter about four inches from the ceiling. The housing is white plastic and blends in well with the ceiling paint.

About four feet from where we installed the antenna is a chase that runs from the attic to the furnace room in the basement. It appears that once upon a time something having to do with the furnace ran through this chase, such as the combustion air intake. The combustion air is now drawn through the back wall under the deck and the exhaust goes out through the east wall of the basement via a double wall stainless steel flue pipe. The chase is no longer used for furnace or other utilities although there are electrical cables to switches mounted in the bathroom walls and it still contained a piece of 4″ plastic pipe.

I positioned myself near the chase and guided one end of a 50 foot length of LMR-400 coax down through the pipe and through the hole into the furnace room while Linda held the roll of coax near the top of the ladder and unrolled it. At one point the coax bunched up and Linda had to go to the furnace room and untangle it. At another point the 4″ plastic pipe slipped through the bottom hole into the furnace room which caught me by surprise. Once the cable was mostly fed through I routed it to the location of the antenna, connected it to the pigtail coax from the antenna, wrapped the connection in weather seal tape to keep moisture out, and secured it with a cable tie.

With the antenna installed Linda started preparing dinner while I dealt with the 37 feet of coax in the furnace room. The furnace room does not have a finished ceiling so I had access to the areas above the suspended ceilings in all of the adjacent rooms. In particular I was able to feed the free end of the coax above the ceiling in the office and into the sump pump room. I secured the cable with plastic cable ties at two points in the furnace room to keep it away from the flue and various hot water pipes. I had about 8 extra feet of cable so I made a large coil with two loops such that the free end came off the loop straight down into the connector on top of the booster. I hung the coil on the wall above and to the right of the booster making for a very neat installation.

I took a shower to try and get rid of some of the fiberglass itch while Linda finished the dish she was making for dinner. It was a complex Indian style dish with Basmati rice, garbanzo beans, Swiss chard, onions, and shallots, seasoned with salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, cumin seeds, garam masala, fresh lemon (zest and juice), and fresh dill that Linda grew herself. The house was filled with the aromas of all these ingredients for a couple of hours as they were prepared and combined into the final dish. It tasted as good as it smelled with many flavor layers.

Our beautiful blue sky gave way to high, thin clouds through the morning and then to lower, thicker clouds during the early afternoon. By 2 PM the clouds to the west were dark as I drove to Lowe’s in Howell and the first, heavy rains came as I got to the parking lot. I waited a few minutes and they stopped so I got into the store without getting wet. I had the same good fortune on my way back to the car. The sustained rains came later in the evening along with a tornado watch. We went to bed before 10 AM but did not go to sleep. It took me a long time to write this post and we kept a watchful eye on the weather radar. Although thunderstorms were forecast as a certainty from 1 to 5 AM with the possibility that they might be severe, we finally turned the lights out around 12:45 AM and tried to get some sleep.

2015/06/21 (N) Father’s Day

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Today was Father’s Day and also the summer solstice, which is the official start of the summer season. Climatologically and culturally, at least in this part of Michigan, summer is more closely aligned with the period from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day. The summer solstice is, of course, the day with the most hours of daylight but it is not the day with the earliest sunrise nor the day with latest sunset. Regardless of that detail, one of the things I like about this time of year is that the evening twilight lasts for a long time and fades to the blackness of night very slowly. By contrast, the sun seems to set quickly in the winter and it gets dark very quickly after that.

Linda arranged for our son and daughter, and their families, to come over for brunch today. It was a combination Father’s Day and happy birthday gathering as our daughter was out of town last week on her 34th birthday. Linda spent last evening cooking, which minimized the amount of work required today. I requested pie for Father’s Day and she found an excellent recipe for a vegan apple pie with a crumb topping. She also made a dozen small chocolate birthday cupcakes. The star of the show, however, was a Baked French Toast made with French bread and topped with streusel of ground pecans, cinnamon, brown sugar, and nutmeg with vegan “butter.” It soaked overnight and all she had to do this morning was bake it. She made a large bowl of fresh berries (strawberries, blueberries, and black and red raspberries) and sliced up some cantaloupe.

Company was due at 10 AM so I made a full pot of our Cafe Europe half-caff blend coffee. We each had a cup and Linda transferred the rest of it to our insulated dispenser. I was brewing a second pot when Meghan and Chris arrived around 9:45 AM followed by Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline around 10 AM. Birthday and Father’s Day cards were exchanged but Madeline was the center of attention. She pulled out her toy box and built a Lego tower with her aunt Meghan. We walked around outside a bit, looked at the new roof and the cable entrance box, and played hide and seek in the backyard with Madeline doing the seeking, assisted by her mom. I was hiding behind our gas grill, which had a cover on it. Madeline saw my reflection in the rear door walls of the library, walked right past me towards the reflected image, turned away from my location, and was walking back towards Shawna before she spotted me. Reflections are one of those things that we have to learn about.

The French Toast was done baking at 11 AM and we sat down to a fabulous brunch that included Prosecco and orange juice. The Baked French Toast was outstanding and everyone had more than one piece. By 12:30 PM no one was hungry for dessert so Linda packaged up four cupcakes for Meghan and Chris and four cupcakes for Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline along with a quarter of the pie for each group. By 1 PM Madeline was showing signs of being tired, that being her normal nap time, so everyone gathered up their things and made their way to their cars.

After everyone had left we had some pie. It was also outstanding, as good as any non-vegan pie I have ever had and, frankly, better than most. Linda went for a walk while I settled in to finish the draft of yesterday’s blog post and start writing this one. When Linda got back from her walk she read for a little while and then took a well-deserved nap. By 4 PM I could not keep my eyes open and took a nap that lasted until 6 PM. I have never been into “Hallmark Holidays” but I like Father’s Day. 🙂

For dinner Linda made a salad and reheated the last of the angel hair pasta and black beans and rice. We each had one of the vegan cupcakes for dessert.

Today was my dad’s 90th birthday so after dinner I called to wish him a combined happy birthday and Father’s Day. He did not answer, which is not unusual as without his hearing aids he doesn’t hear the phone ring. I left him a voice message.

I have been busy enough with things the last two years that I have not read any of the magazines we receive as part of our various organizational memberships. Tonight I went through the July 2015 issue of QST, the monthly publication of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). Although my main focus this summer is the remodeling of the interior of our motorcoach, I am trying to get ham radio antennas up and useable. We are also trying to get a base built for the 70 foot tower we bought last summer, get the tower assembled and erected, and at least get some sort of HF wire antenna attached to it.

Linda was tired by 10 PM and trundled off to bed. As a result of my nap I was not sleepy and stayed up using my iPad until well after midnight.

2015/06/20 (S) Cable Entry Box

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We had not been to our local ham radio club breakfast the last two Saturdays because of the GLAMARAMA rally and a visit from Linda’s brother, Ron, and his wife, Mary. The club was conducting VE testing today, rather than the usual 4th Saturday of the month, because the ARRL Field Day event is next weekend. When we got to breakfast at 8 AM there were already a lot of people there and seven more came in after us. We did not take a head count but it was somewhere between 25 and 30 people. We also did not have our usual waitress but the substitute very efficiently got everyone’s order taken and delivered.

The 40 foot tower on the east end of the house with the old OTA TV antenna on top.

I checked with Mike (W8XH) and he is available to help us get the antennas mounted on the small tower on Monday or Wednesday, assuming I have the cable entry box (CEB) installed and all of the necessary coaxial cable on hand. Getting the CEB mounted was my main goal for today, but not the first thing I had to do. I called Chuck as we were leaving breakfast at 9:15 AM. He was at home and suggested we stop by there and pick up a key to his shop. He was working on landscaping when we arrived so we did not stay long and we were back home by 10 AM. Linda finalized her shopping list and headed off to gather the things she needed to prepare tomorrow’s brunch. I changed into my work clothes, gathered up the laundry, put a load in the washer, and got to work on the CEB.

The CEB is designed to mount on the outside of the house, allowing wiring to pass between the inside and outside of the house in a way that is weather tight and animal proof. Coaxial RF cables and control lines enter through the bottom, connect to lightning arrestors in the CEB that provide a path to ground if/when needed, and then continue through the wall of the house and thence to various devices. Those devices might include cellular phone signal boosters, Wi-Fi systems, TV sets, satellite receivers, personal weather stations, or amateur radio gear such as radios, remote antenna switches, and antenna rotators.

The general area on the east end of the house at the base of he 40′ tower where the CEB will be mounted.

Superficially the installation looked simple. With the copper back plane removed there were four mounting holes, one near each corner, and two large holes in the back. All we had to do was hold the box against the wall, mark the locations of the four mounting holes and the big cable entry holes, set the box aside, drill the holes, put the box back up and secure it. Right. Sort of, but not exactly. Mounting the box took seven hours to complete.

The first step was to remove the copper back plane with the three lightning arrestors installed on it. I took care of that yesterday. The next issue was that the house has shiplap siding, i.e., the east wall where I needed to mount the CEB was not a flat surface. I decided to use 1″ square aluminum tube, installed vertically along the back of the box at the outside edges, to span multiple siding boards, ensuring that the CEB would be plumb. I also decided to leave the tube long enough to go all the way to the ground and use it to support some the weight, in effect creating legs for the CEB. That was Linda’s idea. She’s a smart girl and a licensed amateur radio operator.

The back of the CEB with one of the vertical mounting bars.

We had some surplus pavers and garden blocks and I found one that was just wide enough to catch the bottom of the legs. I also had some left over paver base material, which meant I did not need to make a trip to the store. The paver base material was from a project long, long ago (in a place far, far away) and I used it to create a base for the foundation paver, which was approximately 18″ x 12″. I leveled the base side-to-side and pitched it away from the house for drainage.

Yesterday I purchased a 3′ long aluminum tube at Lowe’s and a 4′ long tube at The Home Depot. Three feet turned out to be a good length, so I cut a foot off of the 4′ tube. Things then got trickier. The positioning of the CEB was critical as the two large holes in the back were for adapters for 2″ plastic conduit. I was going to have to cut 3″ diameter holes through the bond that would come out above the plate on top of the concrete block foundation. In the chosen mounting location the bottom corner holes in the CEB would be below the siding. The lower right leg would be at least an inch away from the concrete block foundation and the lower left hole would be in front of a basement window opening so neither of these were going to be screwed into anything.

The CEB in position on the east end of the house with the door open. The copper backplane has been removed.

I wanted the CEB anchored at more than two points so I decided to drill two additional holes in the back, one on each side, approximately half way between the existing top and bottom holes. I measured the spacing between the top and bottom holes as carefully as I could. I measured down from the top end of each leg a distance for the top holes that was just sufficient to make sure the door of the CEB was below the 2″ iron gas pipe that runs horizontally along the outside of the house. I measured down from there for the new middle hole and the bottom hole. I then drilled the three holes through each leg by drilling opposing sides. I had to use a powered hand drill for this work as my drill press was stored behind a large pile of RV furniture that we took out of the bus and was inaccessible.

I attached one of the legs to the back of the box using two short bolts through the top and bottom holes. I then used the middle hole in the leg as a guide and drilled through the back of the CEB. I repeated this procedure for the other leg. I drilled the holes in the legs as accurately as I could but they did not quite line up so I had to enlarge them slightly by using the drill bit like a router bit. Not ideal, to be sure, but aluminum is relatively soft and it worked.

The east end of the house with two 2″ holes for the conduit.

I attached each leg to the back of the CEB using 1.5″ 1/4-20 bolts through the bottom corner holes. I snugged these up but left them loose enough that we could move the legs. The top and middle holes were located in positions that would allow lag screws to be screwed into the siding and underlying plywood. We had to tilt the legs to get them under the 2″ iron gas pipe and then straighten them and set them on the foundation paver. We had to do this multiple times but it was easy once we figured out how to do it the first time.

With the CEB in position I marked the location of the holes for four 3″ 1/4-20 lag screws. We removed the CEB so I could drill the holes for the lag screws and then put it back in position and screwed it to the wall. I marked the locations of the two holes for the conduit as best I could and then unscrewed the box and removed it again. I used our 1/2″ Craftsmen corded drill for the 3″ hole saw. I bought this drill in 1978, along with a lot of other Craftsmen tools, when we moved into our house in Farmington Hills. I still have almost all of those tools and they all still work.

The CEB in position with both pieces of conduit through the back.

With the conduit holes drilled I cut one of the 18″ lengths of conduit in half, inserted the pieces into the adapters, and placed them in the holes. We then put the CEB into position, got the adapters through the holes in the back of the CED, and tried to line up the holes in the legs. The conduit was being forced up as it went through the bond, especially the one on the left, and would not allow the holes in the CEB to line up with the holes in the legs. We took the retaining rings off of the adapters and removed the CEB, again.

I shortened the conduit pieces to approximately 5″ and checked the fit in the holes. We wrapped two bands of adhesive backed foam weather-stripping around each piece of conduit and placed them back in the holes. I then applied a bead of adhesive caulk all the way around each adapter at the wall. We put the CEB in position for the final time, got the conduit adapters through the holes, snugged up the retaining rings, and put the four lag screws in. After tightening the four lag screws I tightened the two bolts in the lower corners. I then tightened the adapter retain rings and put the open end caps on. The conduit ended up getting pulled back out of the wall a bit so I used the thin end of a 10″‘wood shim to try and force the caulk back into the gap around the conduit adapter. It did not go back in very well so I will have to figure out something else to seal around the conduit.

The CEB was finally installed and very solidly anchored. I got the copper base plate and remounted it to the five studs (four corners and one center) using some antioxidant/anti-seize compound on the stud threads. The last step (for today) was to install the snap in covers for the 16 cable entrance holes in the bottom of CEB. I also ordered 16 grommets and will remove the caps and replace them with grommets as I install devices and run their cables and wires into the CEB.

The CEB with the copper backplane installed and the three Morgan lightning arrestors mounted (two lower left, one top center).

The two pieces of conduit open into the sump pump room (large closet) in the northeast corner of the basement just above the wood plate that sits on top of the concrete block foundation. I plan to install the SureCall Fusion5s 5-band cellular booster (amplifier) in this room to keep it close to the CEB and because there is AC power available there. I bought an installation kit for the Fusion5s that includes a lightning arrestor which will get mounted in the CEB. I also bought an amplifier for the OTA TV antenna that will mount on the tower a few feet below the antenna. The amplifier will get its power through the coax from a power inserter that doubles as a lightning arrestor and will be installed in the CEB with the AC power supply (wall wart) in the sump pump room.

I did not get these two additional lightning arrestors installed today. By the time we got the CEB installed we were tired. The high temperature was OK (near 80?) but the relative humidity was very high. I was also very sore the whole time, especially my left knee, undoubtedly the lingering after effect of using the power chisel earlier in the week to remove thinset and mastic from the floor of the bus. Getting down and up at least 50 times during the afternoon did not improve matters, but we got it done.

Even though she was also tired, once we reached a point where I could finish up alone Linda got busy making several food items for tomorrow. In the midst of all that she heated some Amy’s Lentil Soup and made grilled cheese sandwiches with Diaya cheese or dinner. Diaya makes an excellent non-dairy cheese that works well cold or cooked into dishes.

After dinner I returned a call from Butch to find out more about their new property and buildings, and discuss bus and ham radio projects. One of the things Linda made was an apple pie so we stayed up until it was cool enough to wrap up. That turned out to be 10 PM, by which time we ready to turn in for the night.

2015/06/19 (F) Roof Box

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The Apex roofers were back again this morning just before 8 AM and we were up and ready for them. I made coffee but we deferred breakfast until after we settled the bill with owner Pat Davidson. By 9 AM he knew what the added costs were over and above the base quote. The major one was the 32 sheets of plywood they used to repair/replace bad areas of the roof deck. He left around 10 AM and took half the crew with him to start another job. The other four guys stayed behind and finished roofing the garage and cleaning up the job site. The job was pretty much wrapped up by noon. Sergio (the foreman) did the final walk-around and cleanup and left around 1 PM. There is very little evidence that they had been here except for an attractive new roof and two skylights in the living room that light up the space in a nice way.

I spent the morning inventorying coaxial cables. We have quite an assortment of 50 and 75 ohm cables in lengths from 1 to 100 feet. I need to have all the necessary cables on hand when I climb the tower next week to remove and install antennas. If we already had appropriate cables I wanted to use those instead of buying new ones.

The custom cable entry box from Chris at KF7P Metalwerks arrived today. I opened it after lunch, which consisted of fresh apples and leftover black beans and rice. We both agreed that the beans and rice dish was even better than when it was fresh. We unpacked all of the parts that were stored inside the cable entry box and checked them off against the spreadsheet I used to order them. Everything was there but I was initially concerned because the box was turned 90 degrees from what I ordered. I specified a 16″ wide by 20″ tall box but got a 20″ wide by 16″ tall instead. I suspect that Chris buys the boxes with the door/hinge already attached but it would have been nice to know that ahead of time.

We took the box outside and held it in place to see if it would be usable. The lower left corner will hang down in front of the basement window in the sump pump room but that will be OK. The horizontal orientation of the box will actually make it easier to get coaxial cables through the access holes in the bottom.

There were two a Morgan Lightning arrestors mounted on the copper back plane for amateur radio use; one for HF and one for VHF/UHF. The UHF arrestor was upside down so I unscrewed it, rotated it 180 degrees, and screwed it back down. The box also had a Morgan M-348 lightning arrestor. I ordered an M-348B, which is the 12-wire version, but the installed arrestor had 12 terminals on top (3 strips of 4 each) plus one on each side. There were no instructions, however, on how to wire it up so I sent Chris an e-mail regarding the anomalies and missing information.

While I was working on that e-mail, and a couple from Josh at Coach Supply Direct, we got a call from Curtis Coleman of RVillage. The development team had launched some new features and he wanted to walk me through them. He had just been to Prevost in Nashville for some repairs on his tag axle brakes and was headed back to Cleveland, Ohio. He thought he might be headed in our general direction after that.

I spent some time thinking about how to mount the cable entry box on the east wall of the house which is sided in a shiplap fashion, i.e., the horizontal siding boards are angled (not plumb) and overlapped. I needed a hole saw and arbor for my 1/2″ drill to drill the holes for the two 2″ conduits that will pass from the box through the bond into the sump pump room in the basement. I probably already have one but I cannot get to most of the stuff in the garage and can’t afford to delay getting this box mounted; there are too many other things that need to get done that require this box to be in place first.

I was suffering from a decided lack of patience which is not the proper frame of mind for working on scale drawings of custom furniture so I went to Lowe’s to get a hole saw. The fitting measured 2-3/4″ OD and I decided to get a 3″ hole saw just to make sure the hole would be big enough. While I was at the store I considered how I might use different materials to mount the box. I ended up buying a 36″ length of 1″ square aluminum tube and some stainless steel lag screws, bolts, washers, and Nylok nuts. My plan was to cut the tube into two 18″ pieces and use them in a vertical orientation between the box and the house. They would span multiple boards, creating a plumb mounting surface, and provide support for the lower left corner which would otherwise be unsupported.

When I got back to the house I took the tube out to see how it would work. The idea was a good one but the 18″ lengths would be too short. I bought the only piece of 1″ tube that Lowe’s had so I knew I would have to find another one somewhere else. Linda suggested that we try the Lowe’s in New Hudson after breakfast tomorrow but I was still feeling impatient about the whole thing.

I had a long chat with Michele Henry from Phoenix Paint. I then relaxed with a small glass of Moscato, a nice pre-meal wine, while Linda prepared a wonderful dish for dinner of roasted red potatoes with onions, garlic, rosemary, and power greens. It was a simple dish but so delicious and hearty.

The meal concluded and the table cleared I went to The Home Depot in Howell where I found a 48″ length of 1″ square aluminum tube. If 24 inches turns out to be long enough to support the box the way I want I will cut the 48″ piece in half and return the 36″ piece to Lowe’s. I called Chuck on the drive home to follow up on a text message I sent him yesterday regarding the delivery of our new refrigerator to his bus garage in Novi.

Feeling like I had finally accomplished something today we relaxed for an hour and then settled in to watch a movie. Linda had borrowed the DVD of Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon, from the Howell Library earlier in the week and we reserved this evening as movie night.

My goal for tomorrow is to get the cable entry box installed. That sets the stage for climbing the tower and installing three antennas once I have the proper coax cables and some rope to temporarily guy the tower. But those details will wait until Monday as family is coming to brunch on Sunday for Father’s Day and a belated birthday celebration for our daughter.

2015/06/18 (R) Chiseled Bikinis

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The light rain that started late yesterday afternoon continued off-and-on through the overnight hours. We awoke to heavily overcast skies but a forecast that called for dry conditions until the early afternoon. We were up at 7:15 AM and had our usual granola breakfast. I took some more Ibuprofen in advance of working in the bus. We were just getting ready to have our morning coffee when I noticed several cars in the driveway. It was 7:45 AM and the roofers were arriving. Pat Davidson was among them so I went outside to chat briefly with him.

We had our morning coffee and then got to work, Linda at her desk and me in the bus. I spent another two hours using the Makita 11 pound power chisel. By 11 AM I had removed as much material from the floor as I felt was worth the effort. Linda brought the camera out and took a few photographs of me at work after which I packed up the equipment, closed up the bus, and went to Home Depot in Howell to return it to their rental department.

I stopped at Lowe’s on the way home and ordered the new Frigidaire refrigerator for the bus, an FFHT1621QB (16.3 cu. ft., top freezer, black, no ice maker or water). I scheduled delivery for Friday July 3rd to Chuck’s shop in Novi. I will arrange with Chuck to take the bus their sometime after that when he is available to operate his fork lift and I can get Brendan or some friends to give us a hand.

Me using the Makita 11 lb power chisel to remove thinset and mastic from the floor of our H3-40. (Photo by Linda)

Work continued on the roof through the morning and then the crew tarped off the roof and left in a few of their vehicles for a long lunch. As forecast it started to sprinkle around 2 PM as they returned from their lunch break. It never rained hard and they kept on working but always with the tarps at the ready in case they were suddenly needed. One of the guys finished installing our two Velux Sun Tunnel skylights which required a tall step ladder in our living room. They looked very nice when he was done.

I had a chat with Jarel Beatty in Logansport, Indiana about the custom desk he is going to build for the bus. I sent him a follow-up e-mail describing the pullout pantry we also need him to build. I then spent an hour working on drawings before I had to quit and change clothes.

Kate had secured tickets through her cousin, Michaela, for this evening’s performance of The Bikinis at the Meadow Brooke Theatre at Oakland University in Rochester Hills. Kate suggested O’Conner’s Public House (Irish Pub) in Rochester for dinner. The roofers had been working in the living room installing the Velux Sun Tunnel skylights but were done by 3:45 PM. That allowed us to get cleaned up, dressed for the theatre, and out the door at 4:30 PM even though the roofers were still working up on the roof.

We got to the pub at 6 PM. Kate got there shortly before us and had ordered a soft pretzel appetizer before the happy hour prices expired at 6 PM. Conveniently there were three large sticks so we each got one. Kate got the cheesy dipping sauce and we split the spicy horseradish mustard, which really had a kick to it. Linda and Kate each had a Smithwicks ale and I had a pineapple ale. To paraphrase “the world’s most interesting man”: I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer a fruit beer. Not as mysterious as Dos Equis, or as authentic as Guinness, but it’s what I like. Kate had a regular (beef) burger and we both had black bean burgers on soft pretzel buns with fresh hand-cut French fries. The burgers and fries were both really good and the pretzel buns, which had been toasted on a grill, did not get soggy.

The musical was a lot of fun with a wonderful performance by the cast of four women. All four of them were on stage singing and dancing with a lot of energy for most of the performance. Their singing was excellent, each voice having its own unique quality but blending well, and they carried 4-part harmonies in tune with one another and the small 4-pieces band. Two of them, Bambi Jones and Jeanne Tinker, were also in the Meshuggah Nuns musical we saw a month or so ago at the Meadow Brooke Theatre.

The Bikinis is the last production that Kate’s cousin Michaela will work on at the MBT. The production run ends on Sunday and one week later she leaves for a summer stock gig in New England. Meadow Brooke Theatre is a wonderful venue but not convenient to where we live, even less convenient to where Kate works, and very inconvenient to where she lives. All of which is to say, I doubt that the three of us will be going there very often now that Michaela is moving on. That is too bad in a way as we have all enjoyed the shows we have seen. The fact that Michaela, as a cast/crew member, was able to get us tickets did not hurt.

Michaela met us in the lobby where Kate gave her a nice assortment of flowers. She then gave us a behind the scenes tour of the wardrobe area where she has spent the past year working on costuming. We walked out to our cars and by the time we all drove off it was 11 PM. Even with light traffic it took us almost an hour to get home but we arrived while it was still Thursday, albeit just barely.

2015/06/17 (W) Bakery Scraper

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Linda was up at 5:45 AM and out the door by 6:15 AM to beat the morning rush hour traffic headed into the northwest corner of the Detroit metroplex. I got up about an hour later, tended to my morning cat chores, made coffee, had some granola for breakfast, gathered up the trash, and took the big trash can to the street.

The Apex roofing crew started showing up just before 8 AM. After everything was squared away with Apex I went to The Home Depot in Howell to rent the small power floor scraper. The scraper took some of the thinset off but was not as effective as I had hoped it would be. The tool is designed for stripping linoleum floors, so I had no reason to complain that it did not do what I needed it to do. I returned it within four hours and paid the 4-hour rental fee rather than the day (24-hour) fee. The guy in the tool rental department suggested I try a different machine which they had not mentioned to me previously. It was a Makita 11 pound power chisel. I rented it with three chisels.

The roofers were at the point where they needed to install the two Velux Sun Tunnel skylights in the roof of the living room. I showed them where I wanted them installed, if possible, and they tarped off the furniture and floor in the living room. Apex is very good about protecting the yard from damage and capturing the mess that is associated with a roof project. That same care and attention carried over to the inside work, which I appreciated.

Our bus looking forward from the the hallway by the refrigerator and pantry.

After a break for lunch I spent most of the afternoon using the power chisel to strip the area of the floor in the bus where the ceramic tile was installed. I was not able to strip it down to the plywood subfloor, but I was able to knock down most of the ridges of thinset and adhesive that remained after I chiseled out the tiles.

I had a brief chat with Chuck around lunchtime regarding the refrigerator. Butch called mid-afternoon to fill me in on why he was not able to answer the phone last night. Linda called around 2:30 PM to let me know she was leaving the bakery. She pulled in the driveway an hour later and came in the bus to see what I was up to and let me know it was starting to rain. I had made good progress but was not done and decided I would keep the power chisel until tomorrow and pay the 1-day (24-hour) rate.

The roofers were aware of the rain, which was very light though increasing steadily, but were in the middle of replacing plywood and installing the skylights. Some of them finished that up as quickly as they could, cleaned up the roof, and spread out the tarps while the others picked up the debris from the yard and got it in the trash trailer. The trailer was full so they took it with them when the left at 4:40 PM.

We had a snack of pretzels, green grapes and a small glass of Moscato wine. My thumbs were both bothering me (arthritis) so I took some Ibuprofen and then went back to work in the bus. I had to close the roof vents because of the rain so it was warmer inside and a bit stuffy as the humidity had come way up. I worked as long as I could and quit for the day at 6 PM.

For dinner Linda made a simple green salad and then cooked some whole wheat capellini and tossed it with the homemade tomato-based Marinara sauce she made the other day. After dinner I worked in my office for a while. I thought I would upload some blog posts but I had an e-mail from Bus Conversion Magazine with the draft of the May 2015 issue. I proofread part 2 of my 4-part article on the Exterior Makeover of our bus by Phoenix Paint. I found one thing that needed to be corrected and e-mailed it to the editor.

Linda got a DVD of Wild from the Howell Library the other day but we were too tired to watch it and just went to bed. I turned my light out at 9:58 PM, the first time since I can’t remember when that I have done that before 10 o’clock in the evening.

2015/06/16 (T) More Stupid

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Linda was scheduled to go to the bakery this morning but rescheduled to tomorrow due to last night’s weather forecast and the possibility of flooded highways in Detroit. The morning rush hour traffic is bad under the best of conditions and flooded roadways can make it near impossible. She also did not sleep well and woke up tired.

The Apex roofing crew started showing up just before 8 AM and the Wimsatt truck showed up with the shingles a little after 8 AM. They brought a conveyor truck this time and were able to get the shingles off the truck and onto the roof without difficulty. The Apex crew did not waste any time getting to work. It turned out to be a great day for roofing; clear skies, no rain, moderate temperatures, lower humidity, and some breeze. Even so, it is work that is done without the benefit of shade and roofs are hot places to work even on the nicest of days.

Wimsatt unloads shingles onto the garage roof.

Linda continued working on the financials for our amateur radio club while I checked my e-mail. I had a reply from RV Critter Guard telling me what to order and how much it would cost. I placed the order through their website and used PayPal to complete the transaction. I tried calling the concrete contractor that Phil recommended (Bid Rite Concrete LLC in Whitmore Lake) but the phone would disconnect after the first ring and revert to a dial tone. Perhaps the recent storms caused a problem but I e-mailed Phil to see if he had a different number for them. I called the Henry Ford Medical Center in West Bloomfield and made dermatology appointments for myself and Linda.

With all of that taken care of I turned my attention to the bus. The toilet is a Microphor LF-210. It uses pressurized air to operate the waste valve and the water valve and to help push the waste through the drain pipe and into the black tank. To remove the toilet I had to undo three connections—air, water, and waste—and take out the four screws securing it to the floor. If only it was as easy as that makes it sound.

The plumbing at the back of the Microphor toilet in our bus.

Undoing the air line was easy and undoing the water connection only a little less so. The waste connection was another matter. The 1.5″ black plastic drain pipe was routed from the water bay through the floor and into the HVAC chase that runs along the driver’s side of the coach. The converter, Royale Coach, brought it out through a hole in the wood that covers the chase, making it impossible to take the wood cover off. The pipe then made two right angle bends, the first one towards the floor and the second one towards the back of the toilet. The waste pipe was connected to the toilet discharge pipe with a length of rubber hose and a compression sleeve.

The toilet has a large hole in the back for all of these lines to pass through to the inside where they get hooked up. It should have been a simple matter to slide the toilet away from the wall/chase but the last bend in the drain line was below the top edge of the bottom of the hole, preventing it from coming out. After wiggling the toilet enough to get the rubber hose loose from the drain pipe I was able to lift the drain pipe just enough to slide the toilet out. I took pictures for a possible BCM article on our interior remodeling project and then Linda helped me move the toilet out of the bathroom to the front of the coach.

The more I disassemble this coach the more stupid I think the design and construction of its systems are. I don’t know that coaches from Marathon, Liberty, Vantare, Featherlight, Parliament, Millennium, Custom Coach, or any of a dozen other companies that have come and gone, is any better as I have never tried to disassemble one of them. These are one-of-kind vehicles that are custom built specifically for the original purchaser and the over-riding factor in every case is the interior design. Stuff, like toilets, go where the customer wants it, and systems, which are generally buried and hidden from view, get built wherever and however they can be made to fit. The converter does not expect to have to repair or replace anything during the very short 12 month, 12,000 miles, warranty period and if stuff breaks after that, or someone wants to do a remodel or upgrade sometime later, it will all be time and material. How difficult it is to do, and how many hours it takes, is someone else’s problem at that point.

The Apex crew hard at work on the back side of the main roof.

We had a call from Butch updating us on a possible property purchase. They are waiting for a clear title search before making an offer. The property includes a house and a sizable barn. The barn needs a new roof and the house will have to be gutted and the inside rebuilt, but for the right price it will still be a good deal. They already have a good estimate to replace the barn roof and since they are now retired they have more time to work on the house than they would have a year ago. They also have family and friends who can help. Besides, they still have their home/business building in Twelve Mile, Indiana and their bus, which they lived in all this past winter, so they will not be under any pressure to get the inside rebuilt quickly.

Linda started downloading updates from Adobe Creative Cloud, which take a very long time, and then left at 3:30 PM for Ann Arbor. She agreed to take care of grand-daughter Madeline while Brendan and Shawna attended a reception at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor for newly tenured and promoted faculty. I was on my own for dinner and Linda bought an Amy’s pizza so I would have something easy to prepare.

The roofers finished up for the day around 5 PM. By the time they left most of the trash was in their dumpster trailer and the roof was tarped as a precaution against rain even though the forecast for tonight and tomorrow is for dry weather. Rain returns to the forecast tomorrow night into Thursday but turns dry again on Friday, so we are optimistic that they will get the job finished this week. It’s a big job but Apex has a big crew working on it and they got a lot of work done today. We are very pleased with the look of the Certainteed Landmark Pro Max Def Resawn Shake shingle that we chose. I took pictures of the work throughout the day as I always try to do with major projects.

After the roofers left I worked for a while in the bus. I took the mattress into the house along with the electric heating pad controls. I disconnected the two gas struts that support the plywood bed platform so I could open it far enough to reinstall one of the drawers. I left them disconnected as I plan to remove the platform to provide better access to the sides of the box and floor. I also plan to reposition them when I reinstall the platform to provide better access to the storage area underneath. I then took measurements and made a sketch of the file drawer box for the desk.

Installing soffit baffles and replacing roof decking on the front of the main roof.

I cooked the Amy’s Roasted Vegetable Pizza on the outdoor gas grill, both to avoid heating up the house and to see how it responded to that cooking method. I used the grilling mat and the result was quite acceptable. A glass of Franzia Moscato was a nice accompaniment.

After dinner I worked at the drafting board in my office turning my sketch and measurements into a scale drawing. The two boxes for the desk will be trickier than a standard desk box because of the HVAC chase and because I have to put an Aqua-Hot heat exchanger in the bottom of each one. I worked until about 9 PM and then came back upstairs.

The air-conditioner worked fine yesterday but was once again unable to bring the temperature in the house below 74 degrees F even though the outside air temperature never rose above 80. There is clearly something wrong and I am wondering if one of the cold air ducts is open into the attic and/or one of the return air ducts us drawing hot air from the attic. Either of these conditions would reduce the air flow to the house and overtax the evaporator in the air handling unit. The more likely cause, however, is lack of refrigerant. Whatever the case I shut the system off and opened up the house.

I was relaxing in the living room when Linda called at 9:30 PM to let me know she had left her babysitting gig and was stopping at the Whole Foods Market before heading home. The reception started at 5 PM and lasted until 9 PM. She was home by 10:15 PM and straight away to bed as she has to go into the bakery tomorrow and wants to leave early enough to be ahead of the morning rush hour traffic.

2015/06/15 (M) Cover Up

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Linda was originally scheduled to go into the bakery today but it got rescheduled to tomorrow so we did not have to be up by any certain time other than to be ready for the delivery of our new roof shingles. Apex Roofing is scheduled to put a new roof on our house this week, weather permitting, and assuming they can finish up jobs they had scheduled for last week when it rained so much.

The truck from Wimsatt Materials in Waterford showed up at 8 AM with our shingles but they were unable to deliver them. They brought them on a boom truck that was too tall to fit under the phone lines across our driveway and there was nowhere else they could position the truck that would allow them to operate the boon. They were on the phone with their dispatcher and I called Pat Davidson at Apex roofing to let him know what was going on. The decision was that they would be back this afternoon with a conveyor truck which would fit under the wires and be able to get the bundles up to the roof. Pat called back to let me know they would be starting in the morning around 7:30 AM.

Later in the day someone showed up in an Apex van with a large enclosed trailer. We moved our cars and he backed it up in front of our single garage door. Wimsatt did not return with shingles so they will presumably deliver them first thing tomorrow morning. They will need to back into the driveway and position the truck in front of our double garage door but that is also where Apex plans to put their debris trailer. The guy in the van also made it sound like there would be at least six cars/trucks here needing someplace to park. It should be an interesting morning, especially given the overnight weather forecast which includes drenching rains and possible severe weather and flooding. The forecast for the daylight hours, however, looks OK.

After the Wimsatt truck left we finished the last batch of granola for breakfast and then got busy with our chores and projects. Linda spent part of the day at her desk working on the financials for our local ham radio club (SLAARC). She also tried to contact PayPal to opt out of their upcoming RoboCall campaign but was not able to get through to a real person.

I settled into my office for the morning, dealing with e-mail but focusing on editing blog posts for the last seven days. Kate got in touch with me to see if we wanted to see The Bikinis musical production at the Meadow Brooke Theatre this week. Wednesday through Sunday is the final run. She also forwarded an invitation to a former colleague’s retirement gathering in a couple of weeks.

We have an RV Critter Guard that seals around our 50 A electrical cord and water hose to keep “critters” from entering the coach via that access hole. We lost our original foam insert when I forgot to remove it from the cable entrance hole in the floor of the bus utility bay and it fell (blew) out while we were driving. I checked the RV Critter Guard website and my exact products were not listed. I measured our existing tongue and groove plate and then contacted the company via their contact form and explained what I needed. I got an e-mail back indicating that my product was custom made and asking me for one additional dimension from the plastic plate. I got that measurement and e-mailed it to them and indicated that I wanted another plastic plate and two spilt foam inserts. I expect to receive an e-mail tomorrow with the price. Once I have that I will call them to place the order.

I have tried several times in the last two years to order products from EZ Connector but they have always had another question for me that required me to go check something and I have never managed to close the loop with them. I’ve been on a roll the last couple of weeks and decided that today was the day to get this done. The company is in California, so I called them during the afternoon (my time). The woman I spoke to on the phone gave me some good information but suggested I e-mail Joe with my requirements. Joe e-mailed me back and answered several questions but had another one for me. I responded to that question and went on to something else while I await the prices. Once I have the pricing I will have to call them and finalize the order.

I exchanged e-mails with Josh from Coach Supply Direct and got a series of revised quotes from him for our new RV furniture and window shades. What I really need are the drawings that show the exact dimensions of each piece including the size of the base and the location of the pivot (swivel) point. Apparently he is having difficulty getting these from Flexsteel. I would also like to have these for the Lambright Comfort Chairs but we took our own measurements at Bradd and Hall. The whole process of getting furniture is getting very frustrating. I need to contact Mike at Suburban Seating regarding the ISRI 6860 and pick a day to drive to ISRI USA in Galesburg to look at fabrics. While I am at it I should probably get a price from Prevost.

I finally got back to work in the bus this afternoon. I shut off the auxiliary air compressor, closed the valve on the air manifold that supplies air to the toilet and other house accessories, and drained the water separator. I then investigated what will be required to remove the toilet.

There is a shut off valve on the water line behind the toilet so I closed that. The water line is attached to the toilet mechanism with a plastic connector with two wings and looked like I could undo it by hand. The air line looked equally easy to disconnect but the drain looked a bit trickier. It goes out the back of the toilet rather than through the floor. There is a metal sleeve with band clamps at each end that connects the discharge pipe to the drain line. Fortunately the band clamp screws are accessible.

The toilet is screwed to the floor with four Philips head screws. The centers of the screw heads are threaded and there are plastic caps with posts that screw down into the mounting screws to conceal them. With the water, air, and waste lines disconnected once I unscrew the base the toilet should slide forward and then we may have to lift it to get clear of the water line. The trick to getting it back in will be to get the four mounting screws back in the exact same holes.

The humidity outside was near 100% and I did not feel like running the bus air conditioners so I did not remove the toilet today. I need to get it out, however, to remove the last few pieces of ceramic tile from the bathroom floor. Once it is out it will have to stay out until the new floor is installed.

I tried pulling on one of the window latch knobs on the fixed window across from the kitchen counter and was surprised by easily it moved the latch. I did not pull it far enough to unlatch it but it appears that getting the window unlatched will be relatively easy. Getting the frame open without damaging the frame seal, and getting it closed again so it is weather tight, may be slightly more challenging.

I used a chisel to try removing the thinset and mastic that was adhered to the plywood subfloor. It came off better than I thought it would but it was a slow process. In addition to being humid in the coach it was very warm as I have had to leave the roof vents closed with the fans off due to the rainy weather. I removed enough thinset, however, to convince me that it is worth renting the power floor scraper from the Home Depot in Howell for a day and see how it works.

Late afternoon Linda worked in the kitchen making another batch of her fabulous granola and a black beans and rice dish for dinner. She soaked two Hatch chilies, two Ancho chilies, and four Pequin chilies and used them in the bean dish. I had a call from Pat Lintner before dinner to let me know that they took their Prevost to McMillers in Nappanee and were very pleased with work and the price.

I thought about driving to the Lowe’s in Howell after dinner to order the new Frigidaire refrigerator for the bus but it got too late to go. We have decided to have it delivered to Chuck Spera’s shop in Novi. We can pull it inside and he has a forklift, so hopefully that works out OK.

We were both tired and headed off to bed at 10 PM. The weather radar showed a band of more intense rain setting up to our southwest and taking aim at us. Linda fell asleep quickly but I was still up writing when the rains started around 11:15 PM. We had the house closed up with the air conditioner running and a small fan for air movement so the sounds of the weather are not as noticeable as when we have the windows and doorwalls open. I checked the radar again on Wundermap and it looked like we might be in for a long stretch of persistent rain unless the line drifted south just enough to miss us. The strongest weather in the region stretched from Ft. Wayne, Indiana WSW to just south of Logansport, Indiana but there were lots of pockets of yellow with some orange on the screen over all of the southern half of Michigan’s lower peninsula and the northern half of Indiana. It looked like it might be another restless night.

2015/06/14 (N) WordPressing

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We had yet more rain overnight. I heard the rain around 6 AM and checked the Wundermap app on my iPad but did not get up. Linda did not need to go to the Howell Farmers Market today as the refrigerator is quite full and the rainy weather made the prospect less appealing. We finally got up at 9 AM and I made coffee. Linda checked the weather forecast. It called for a 100% chance of rain between noon and 3 PM with thunderstorms and up to 2″ of rain. By 10:15 AM it was raining steadily again.

We deferred by one more day getting back to work on the bus. The monthly meeting of our South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) was this evening and we did not want to get involved in physical work today. I wanted to do a load of laundry but deferred that as the high humidity makes it harder to get the clothes dry.

I opened the three boxes that made up the OTA TV antenna shipment from AntennasDirect.com and laid all the parts out on the floor. As I wrote yesterday I need to determine exactly what types/lengths/connectors I need to get everything hooked up and make sure I have it on hand before I climb the 40 foot tower next to the house. After I laid all of the parts out this morning Linda asked how I was going to get all of that stuff up the tower.

Our new Antennas Direct DB8e Over-The-Air TV antenna.

My plan is to preassemble as much stuff as possible. I will then take a 100 foot rope with me when I climb the tower, loop it over one of the crossbars, and drop it back down to the ground where Linda can tie it to a bracket, or directly to some part, and pull it up to me. As I describe this it occurs to me that I should probably rig up a pulley. We also figured out that we should run the TV co-ax inside the house before I climb the tower. That will allow Linda to scan for signals and talk to me on our portable ham radios while I am on the tower if the antennas need to be aimed. I called Mike (W8XH) to see if he would bring his climbing harness to our ham radio club meeting this evening and he agreed.

For breakfast I had some of the Pepperidge Farm cinnamon chocolate chip bread Linda bought and we both had fresh grapefruit. After breakfast I got cleaned up and dressed and then partially assembled the OTA TV antenna. I then went to my office and settled in at my desk to upload blog posts. I had not been in my e-mail for a few days so there were some things I had to respond to before working on our blog.

I got my blog posts uploaded for May 29 through June 7 and then decided to update the other three WordPress websites I work on. Much to my dismay I was not able to log in to the FMCA Freethinkers website. I got an error message instead and the contents looked to me like the site might have been hacked. I notified the President of the chapter and indicated that I would contact the ISP technical support folks and see what they can tell me. I have never opened that site up to the members of the chapter because I never quite finished it but I intended to and I have a lot of time and effort invested in its development. Still, if the site is totally corrupted I may just delete it and abandon the whole project.

I wrapped up my work just in time for dinner. Linda reheated the two leftover vegan cheeseburgers and served them with the remaining vegan potato salad and fresh nectarines.

Linda spent a little time during the afternoon getting the treasurer’s report ready for our SLAARC meeting. We left at 6 PM and were at the Witch’s Hat Depot in South Lyon by 6:30 PM. We have changed the meeting format to have social time from 6:30 to 7:00 PM, followed by a business meeting, and then a program. I got the climbing harness from Mike (W8XH) as soon as we arrived and put it in the car. I then had a brief chat with Scotty (AC8IL) regarding Universal Towers in Clinton Township, Michigan and LMR-400 co-ax. Scotty stocks LMR-400 but also stocks RG-213 which he thinks is better for outdoor use. His opinion is based on a Motorola white paper that discusses potential problems with the aluminum foil wrapped copper braid outer conductor in LMR-400 in the presence of moisture.

Tonight’s business meeting was a discussion about preparations for the upcoming ARRL Field Day lead by this year’s club field day chair Paul (KD8SNZ). The program was a presentation by Larry (K8UT) on the N1MM Logger+ contest logging program that we will be using to log contacts on four different networked computers. Larry is a member of the N1MM development team. I asked Larry if I could send him the URL for my broken WordPress website and he said he would look at it. We left at 8:45 PM.

When we got home Juniper was hunched over something in the living room and I could see immediately that she had caught another mouse. It was very small, like the last one, and for all I know it was the same mouse. I got her to drop the last one and it escaped into my office. Linda grabbed one of the antenna boxes and pulled out the shipping paper that was stuffed inside. I managed to get Juniper to drop the mouse in the box, from which it was not going to be able to escape, and then took the box outside and set it free. If it has any sense it won’t come back in the house and it will tell all if its little mouse friends to steer clear of this place. Juniper is a very skilled hunter and will catch anything in that house that moves that is smaller than she is.

Linda prepared some fresh strawberries and served them with some non-dairy ice cream. She logged in to Amazon.com and ordered six live traps and a new cover for my iPad, both eligible for Amazon Prime. We then spent a little more time reading and writing and checking the weather. The 10-day forecast is for continued rain almost every day. We are still expecting the new roof shingles to be delivered tomorrow but we won’t be surprised if they are not. We are also expecting that Apex will have to push the start date of our project back due to all of the recent rain delaying other jobs that are ahead of ours. We turned in for the night at 10:30 PM; late for Linda and early for me. She was asleep fairly quickly but I stayed up writing and played a few games on my iPad as I do most nights.

2015/06/13 (S) On to Illinois

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It has turned out to be a wet June so far and we had more heavy rain last night. In spite of waking up during the night I was up at 7:30 AM and made coffee. Everyone else got up as suited their level of rest and we sat around chatting for a while. Ron put a load of laundry in the washing machine and then we sat down to a light breakfast.

Ron and Mary spent most of the rest of the morning repacking all of their stuff for the drive to northwest Illinois and their week-long bicycle ride. FedEx Home Delivery delivered the Cyclo 5-Pro Mark II Dual Head Orbital Polisher I ordered along with all of the foam pads and detailing chemicals.

Ron retrieved their laundry from the dryer and after they finished packing we had a light lunch. By 1 PM they were ready to load up the car so we helped get their bags out. After a brief “farewell and safe travels” they were on their way. They had a five hour drive but would gain an hour as they entered the Central Time Zone so they would be at their motel by 5 PM local time with plenty of daylight and time to eat dinner.

Linda took a short nap and then went for a walk. I read through the manual for our SureCall Fusion5s cell phone booster and was part way through the manual for the Cyclo 5 when I decided to take a nap. Linda returned from her walk and a little while later a USPS mail carrier delivered the OTA TV antenna I ordered from Antennas Direct. All I am waiting for now is the cable entrance box I ordered from KF7P Metalwerks.

Once the cable entrance box arrives I will have a bit of a project. First I will need to drill two 2″ holes through the east wall of the house and into the sump pump closet in the northeast corner of the basement, mount the box to the wall, and ground it to the outside ground rod by the tower. I may also need to install additional ground rods. I will then need to climb the tower by the house and do the following:

take down the old OTA TV antenna and rotator;
mount the new OTA TV antenna and aim it;
mount the amplifier for the OTA TV antenna;
attach a short piece of 75 Ohm co-ax from the antenna output to the amplifier input and weatherproof the connections;
attach a longer piece of 75 Ohm co-ax to the output of the amplifier and weatherproof the connection;
mount the outside antenna for the cell phone booster system;
attach one end of a 50′ piece of LMR-400 or RG-213 co-ax to the cell phone antenna and weatherproof it;
unmount our Diamond SG7900 2m/70cm ham radio base station antenna and remount it at the top of the tower;
attach a 50-to-60 foot length of LMR-400 or RG-213 co-ax to the ham radio antenna;
dress and secure all of the coaxial cables with plastic cable ties (zip ties).

Once I am done with tower work I will need to do the following to complete the installation:

install the lightning arrestors in the cable entrance box for the cell phone booster and OTA TV (?) co-ax cables;
route each of the co-ax cables into the bottom of the cable entrance box and attach them to appropriate lighting arrestors;
attach additional co-ax cables to the lightning arrestors and feed them through the 2″ holes into the basement;
mount the Surecall Fusion5s in the sump pump room and connect the co-ax for the outside antenna and the power supply;
run a 50′ length of LMR-400 from the sump pump room across the basement ceiling and up through an old vertical furnace exhaust chase to the attic;
drill a hole in the ceiling of the main floor hallway near the chase;
mount the inside done antenna for the cell phone booster system to the ceiling with the co-ax dongle in the attic;
connect the antenna dongle to the co-ax coming up from the basement;
run additional co-ax from the sump pump room to the ham shack;
run additional co-ax from the sump pump room to the video distribution point in the laundry room (or directly to the locations of the two TV sets);
turn on the Fusion5s booster (transceiver), adjust the gain (if needed) and test it with our phones and Mi-Fi;
test the TV sets (and hopefully not have to go back up the tower to reposition the antenna);
connect our Icom IC-7000 amateur radio and test the antenna connection.

As I wrote out this list it occurred to me that I need to make a list of all of the co-ax types/lengths/connectors I need and that, at a minimum, I probably need to order a length of LMR-400 orRG-213 co-ax cable and the proper N-connectors to complete the ham radio antenna connections. It also occurred to me that I might be able to do some of the inside wiring while I am waiting for the cable entrance box to arrive. Also, once the TVs are connected Linda can scan for channels and communicate with me with our HT ham radios if I need to change the aim of the antennas on the tower.

All of this reminded me that I need to follow-up with a Bratcher Electric on running a new 100 Amp main feed from the transfer switch to the panel in the furnace room in the garage. I also need to order some new split foam fillers from Critter-Guard and new electrical hardware for connecting the bus to the toad from EZ-Connector in California.

I must have been sleeping lightly and dreamed all of these details because I got up from my nap around 5:30 PM, finished reading the manual for the Cyclo 5, and then took a shower and got dressed for dinner. Barb Spera had called Linda yesterday to see if we were available for dinner this evening. They had really enjoyed our meal at La Marsa in Brighton a couple of weeks ago and wanted to go again so we agreed to meet them there at 7 PM. We did not have to wait for a table and our waiter, Najheem (Naa-gheem), was delightful. Barbara had the Koshary again, and Chuck had the Chicken Shwarma with tabbouleh salad, while we split an order of spicy vegetarian ghallabah with rice and a salad. I had a mango smoothie and we all enjoyed the swarm pocket bread and garlic spread.

It was after 9 PM when we got home and we headed off to bed at 10. We knew Ron and Mary had arrived at their destination because Ron played a Scrabble word. Linda had also checked that our daughter and son-in-law were on their way back from Las Vegas.

2015/06/12 (F) Forms and Family

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I was awake at 6 AM but not fully rested so I stayed in bed. I got up at 7:30 AM, fed the cats, cleaned their litter tray, and then settled in at my desk to continue editing blog posts. I had edited four more posts by 9 AM when I heard footsteps and running water, signaling that people were up and about. I wrapped up my work and went upstairs to make coffee.

We sat around drinking coffee and tea and visiting. Both cats have gotten more comfortable with Ron and Mary being here, but especially Juniper, who is seeking their attention and sleeping on the living room sofas while we sit and talk.

Ron and Mary were expecting a package today but found out late yesterday that it had not been sent. As a result they needed to have documents e-mailed to us so they could deal with them and return them before they leave tomorrow for a week-long bicycle ride in northwest Illinois. The e-mails came through and all of the documents were PDFs so they were easy to save and print. I restarted my old Dell Precision Workstation in Windows 2000 Pro mode as that is where the scanner is installed and we would need it later to scan the signature pages, save them as PDFs and e-mail them back to the sender. (I normally use this computer to run Linux.)

I left at noon for a 12:15 PM appointment at the Honda dealer to have the oil changed in my Element. My car has just under 99,000 miles and really needed its 100,000 mile service, but I did not have time for that today so I had them change the oil and scheduled a return visit for Wednesday June 24 at 10 AM. It has a torn driveshaft boot on the driver side front and the mechanic thinks the drive shaft should be replaced as water and dirt have certainly gotten in there and there is probably rust. Ron tended to concur with that opinion.

Linda gave me a short grocery list before I left and I went to the Brighton Meijer’s after my car appointment. By the time I got back Ron and Mary had finished reviewing documents. I was going to scan the signature pages but it turned out that one of the signatures had to be notarized and the documents had to be faxed back in their entirety. Linda researched places to get all of that done and they were headed out to take care of that as I returned home. While I was out UPS dropped off a package from Prevost Parts with the window panel seal I ordered earlier in the week. That’s two UPS deliveries to this week so my confidence is restored.

While Ron and Mary were out Linda made potato salad and I worked in my office. I restarted my Dell Workstation in Linux mode (Ubuntu 14 point something) and installed about 45 updates. While that was happening I edited a few more blog posts and got caught up. Now all I have to do is post them.

Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline drove up after Madeline got up from her afternoon nap. They arrived around 4 PM. I quit working at my desk just before that and came upstairs. Madeline is always excited to visit Grandma Linda and Grandpa Bruce but having Ron and Mary here was a bonus for everyone.

For dinner Linda served the potato salad, baked beans, and vegan cheese burgers with all the fixin’s. We had a break in the rain and she cooked the burgers outside on the grill. We had fresh strawberries and non-dairy “ice cream” for dessert. Ron and Mary picked up an apple pie from the Grand Traverse Pie Company store in Brighton so everyone else tried some of that as well. Conversation was about family, work, and travel.

By 7 PM Madeline was showing signs of being tired so Brendan and Shawna gathered up their things and headed back to Ann Arbor. We stayed up until 10 PM talking, but did not play Mexican Train, and then turned in for the night.

2015/06/11 (R) Absent 34

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Ron and Mary had a long drive yesterday, and an exhausting 10 days prior to that, so they went to bed tired. Consequently they did not get up early and I did not make coffee right away. I was up at 7:30 AM and went to my office instead. Chris at KF7P Metalwerks accepted my change to the cable entrance box late last night and sent me a PayPal invoice. I paid that this morning and e-mailed him back to clarify and confirm a couple points about the box. Once everyone was up we had coffee (us) and tea (them) on the back deck and enjoyed a beautiful early summer morning. We eventually went back inside and had the granola for breakfast that Linda made yesterday. So good.

After breakfast we gave them a tour of our partially disassembled motorcoach and explained what we are trying to do. I mentioned that the motorized windshield roller shades were not winding up straight and that the driver side was binding part way up. One of the MCD vendors at the rally last week told me to put a piece of tape on one end (lengthwise) to force the shade to not run (in that direction). Ron, who is a retired mechanical engineer, suggested that I create a tapered roller by putting tape around the roller tube at 5 to 7 places. The tape cannot go all the way around the roller tube because of the shade but it can go most of the way around. Ron’s suggestion was one layer towards the outside, two layers next, then three layers and finally four layers in the center. These tapered rollers are commonly used in industry to keep conveyor belts centered.

We had just exited the bus when a minivan that I did not recognize pulled in our driveway. It was the electric power company meter reader. We chatted briefly, and she was very nice but was obviously on a tight schedule.

Ron and Mary needed a duffle bag and some batteries so we drove to the Dick’s sporting goods store at US-23 and Lee Road. They found a nice duffle bag but not the batteries so we stopped at Meijer’s on the way back to the house and they found what the needed there. We also picked up a card for our daughter, Meghan, whose 34th birthday was today.

Back at the house we called Meghan and wished her a happy birthday via voice message. We got a text message later saying thank you. We also had a voice message on our home phone from Pat Davidson at Apex Roofing indicating that the shingles for our new roof would be delivered on Monday. For lunch we had pretzels and pita chips with hummus and some grapes. I slipped off into the small bedroom and opened the box from Cellular Solutions to make sure everything was there. It was.

Although Ron and Mary slept well last night they were still tired and decided to take naps. That left Linda free to go for a walk and me to work in my office. I transferred rough drafts of blog posts from my e-mail to MS Word and then started editing them but did not have time to upload them to WordPress before we had to leave to go to dinner.

We left around 5:15 PM for La Marsa. They were in the second of two days of their 4th year celebration for the Brighton location and everything was 34% off. They were backed up 90 minutes for carry out orders but we got a table after only a short wait. We had Koshary and they had kabobs. After dinner we went for a walk around the Brighton Mill Pond where we saw two gigantic snapping turtles in the pond. One of them almost caught a muskrat and they eventually bumped into one another and seemed to be fighting. It was quite the show. Snapping turtles are nothing to mess around with and the shells on these two were about 2 feet long, front to back. Gigantic.

When we got back to the house we played 13 rounds of Mexican Train. By the time we finished it was midnight and we all got to bed around 12:15 AM.

The Phase Place

Welcome to the next phase (hosted by QTH.com)

Author Archives: BRF

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

2015/07/09 (R) Graduation Celebration

2015/07/08 (W) Custom Desk Design

2015/07/07 (T) Field Day Photos

2015/07/06 (M) Arrested

2015/07/05 (N) Return to HFM

2015/07/04 (S) Another Fourth

2015/07/03 (F) 4th Anniversary

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

2015/07/01 (W) Coach Supply Direct

SLAARC Field Day 2015

2015/06/30 (T) Three Score and Five

2015/06/29 (M) Website On The Air

2015/06/28 (N) Field Day Teardown

2015/06/27 (S) ARRL Field Day

2015/06/26 (F) Field Day Setup

2015/06/25 (R) The Mouse

2015/06/24 (W) Up The Tower

2015/06/23 (T) Grounded

2015/06/22 (M) Cable Me This

2015/06/21 (N) Father’s Day

2015/06/20 (S) Cable Entry Box

2015/06/19 (F) Roof Box

2015/06/18 (R) Chiseled Bikinis

2015/06/17 (W) Bakery Scraper

2015/06/16 (T) More Stupid

2015/06/15 (M) Cover Up

2015/06/14 (N) WordPressing

2015/06/13 (S) On to Illinois

2015/06/12 (F) Forms and Family

2015/06/11 (R) Absent 34