Category Archives: Ham Radio

Posts that have something to do with our amateur (ham) radio hobby including the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) and the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club, our local ham radio group.

2015/09/13 (N) Club Business

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Linda is still fighting her cold and I was up way too late last night so we slept until 9 AM this morning.  Because we were getting a late start, and neither of us was hungry, I made coffee but we skipped breakfast.

It was 51 degrees F in the bus so I turned on all three electric toe kick heaters and put on my zip front sweatshirt that I use to work in cool situations.  We took all of the freezer packs out of the house refrigerator freezer compartment and moved them to the freezer compartment in the bus fridge.  Linda also filled four large containers with water and snapped the lids on.  We put those in the refrigerator compartment on the bus, turned on the power, and put the wireless remote thermometer in the freezer compartment.

I was going to raise the front of the refrigerator until the top hinge for the freezer door just touched the ceiling of the alcove but our relatively inexpensive model apparently lacks that adjustment.  Linda was also concerned about how we will latch the doors for travel.  She remembered seeing a very clever latch for a fridge with doors like ours at the GLAMARAMA rally in early June and found a picture of it on her phone.  It is actually fairly simple and if custom made could be installed using the holes for the center hinge (between the doors) on the handle side (right side) of the fridge.

(I still like Scott Bruner’s solution best.  He devised an electromagnet system that is activated by turning the ignition on but has an override switch.  He and Tami have a cafe door, bottom freezer drawer unit.  One electromagnet holds plates on top of the cafe doors where they meet at the center of the fridge.  A second electromagnet is mounted on the right side of the lower case and holds a plate on the side edge of the freezer drawer front.  Very clever, and very fail safe.)

Bruce installs the fixed side of the piano hinge to the top of the wiring chase above the OTR HVAC duct.

Bruce installs the fixed side of the piano hinge to the top of the wiring chase above the OTR HVAC duct.

Our first construction task for today was to finish installing the built-in sofa.  This was a semi-permanent installation with everything in its final place and screwed in.  We will have to disassemble it once to finish cutting it and screening off the openings in the OTR HVAC duct and to drill the 4″ diameter holes in the vertical front panel for the circular registers.  We also need to find a pair of suitable length lifts to support the seat in the open position.  Finally, we need to find and mount some 12V DC LED lights and replace the momentary contact switches in the aft end cabinet with on-off versions.

It took us until 12:25 PM to finish the sofa (for now).  We took a brief break and had an apple for a snack.  Our next task was to put the plywood bed platform back in the coach.  That sounds simple enough but we knew from taking it out that it would be difficult to put back in.  The platform is the size of a queen size mattress, in two sections joined by a piano hinge.  It’s big, bulky, and very heavy, with no good handholds but we managed to get it into the bedroom and setting flat on the storage box base.

The physically hard part was behind us but now we had to get the fixed part of the platform screwed back down to the base, requiring us to put 18 screws back in the holes they came out of.  I rewired the aisle lights before we did that as I was easier to get to the wires.  We used two screws to index the location, checked the reveal along the length of each side, and screwed it down.  I then reconnected the two gas springs while Linda held the platform up.  I also connected the wiring for the two cargo lights but they did not come on.  I will have to change the bulbs and see if that’s the problem but for now we had more pressing tasks.

A view from near the co-pilot/navigator seat of the built-in sofa with the hinged seat base lifted up to reveal internal pieces and storage space.

A view from near the co-pilot/navigator seat of the built-in sofa with the hinged seat base lifted up to reveal internal pieces and storage space.

We went inside, each had an apple, and then returned to the bus.  I had planned to temporarily mount two 12V DC switches but did not have time to fabricate a temporary mounting plate.  We needed the switches hooked up so I just reconnected the female spade connectors on the cable to the spade lugs on the switches and draped the wires over the arm of the passenger chair.

Our next task was to temporarily install the desk.  The installation was only temporary in the sense that we would need to disassemble it to get the Aqua-Hot fan-coil heat exchangers installed in the bases.  My preference was to get the heating system configured as part of the desk installation but we ran out of time before our appointment at Coach Supply Direct.

Our first sub-task was to cut the 1/4″ Baltic birch plywood spacer to fit on the right side of the right pedestal/base.  I cut it to be shorter than the desk and not as deep as the base, which is recessed at the front to create a toe kick space.  I cut the lower back corner out so the space would fit around the HVAC duct / wiring chase.  We peeled off some clear tape from the mirrors in the right rear corner down below the level of the top of the desk and set the spacer in place.

Our next task was to redo some AC wiring to get power to the space between the pedestals and reconnect the passenger side front duplex outlet.  To get power to the interpedestal space I decided to run 2C+G (Romex) cable from the wiring chase through a hole in the bottom of the pedestal, up the inside rear left, and out through a hole in the upper rear left side.  This hole and cable will not be visible unless someone crawls under the center of the desk.

In order to get the cover/shelf in the foot well aligned with the left and right pedestal/base components I decided to use mending plates attached to the back side of the bases and pedestals.  We started with the right hand components.  I attached a plate to the back side of the left rear base projection and one to the underside of the left end of the upper bottom section of the pedestal.  We set the base in place, put the pedestal on top of it, and set the cover/shelf in place.

We carefully shifted the components until we had them aligned the way we wanted.  I then secured the pedestal to the wall (which is 5/8” or 3/4″ plywood not sure which) with a single screw through the back panel centered from side-to-side and a couple of inches down from the top edge.  We double-checked the alignment of the pieces and then secured the pedestal to the base with three screws.  The base is not screwed to the floor or anything else except the pedestal.

We set the left base and pedestal in place and fussed with the alignment for but it was already 4:15 PM.  We had planned to quit working at 4 PM to get cleaned up for our SLAARC meeting and have dinner.  We still have a lot to do tomorrow for me to be ready to leave on Tuesday morning, but it should be manageable.

We went to Panera in Brighton for dinner and both had the Edamame Soba Noodle Bowl.  It was a generous serving that was tasty and filling even though it was only 390 calories.  It was very high in sodium, a common but unfortunate problem with most of Panera’s food, so not something we would eat often.

We arrived at the South Lyon Witches Hat Depot Freight House at 6:30 PM for the monthly meeting of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC).  We had a larger group than usual, at least 30 people.  The business meeting was brief and followed by a program by Steve (N8AR) on the Yaesu Fusion technology.  Steve and several other club members brought different radios to demonstrate and let the attendees try.

We left in time to get home by 9 PM and watch an episode of Sherlock on Detroit PBS, followed by Rick Steve’s Europe and then Music Voyager.  We’ve been working long, hard hours and it was nice to take an evening to relax and do something other than work on the bus.

 

2015/09/12 (S) Making It Usable

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In spite of all that we still have to get done on the bus we got up at 7:15 AM and went to our SLAARC breakfast.  We did not get to go last week because our grand-daughter (Madeline) was here and we won’t get to go next week because we will be at an RV rally.  We did not hang around like we sometimes do and left at 9 AM, but at least we got to go.

When I quit working on the toilet in the bus at 10 PM last night I had come to the conclusion that I had spent six hours trying to fix the wrong thing.  I assumed that the leak was due to a faulty O-ring or a misalignment of two pieces with the slip fit, presumably caused by the 9″ piece of Qest pipe with 1/2″ NPT lavatory fittings on each end.  After hours of effort and numerous attempts it occurred to me that the problem could be the threaded fitting in the first piece.  The fitting is unusual in that it is hollow and has an inside hex shape.  I got my SAE and metric Allen wrench sets but the largest wrenches, 3/8″ and 10mm, were too small and would not engage the fitting.

After dropping Linda at home I went in search of a 7/16″ and 1/2″ Allen wrenches.  I stopped at our bank for a little cash and then went to The Home Depot as they are next door to one another.  No luck there, but I did buy a 20″ flexible supply line with 1/2″ FIP threads.  I tried Lowe’s next but that was another strike out.  I tried O’Reilly’s auto parts store, the Tractor Supply store, and the Sears store across the street.  Nope, nada, nothing.  The guy at Sears suggested ACE hardware back in Howell so I headed that way but pulled into an Advance Auto Parts.  They had a set of Allen wrench (hex key) stubs, with 1/2″ drive sockets.  It included sizes smaller and larger than what I was looking for, in addition to the ones I was looking for, so I bought it.

Back home we installed the three large drawers in the rear of the bedroom.  I then spent several more hours working on the toilet while Linda changed out the handles on all of the cabinet doors.  She even figured out how to remove the handle on the built-in laundry hamper in the bathroom. As I have said here before, she is a clever girl.  I unscrewed the insert with a 7/16″ hex key, cleaned off the old thread compound, wrapped the threads with Teflon tape, and screwed it back in.  I mated the air/water sequence valve with the vacuum breaker and got them mounted to the support bracket, getting them aligned and snug in the process.

The last step was to attach the 20″ flexible supply line to the air/water sequence valve and water supply line.  I attached it to the air/water sequence valve first, looped it around, and attached it to the incoming water supply fitting.  Easy to say but tough to do.  There is a lot of stuff crammed into the back portion of this toilet and there is barely room to get one hand in there to work, never mind two.  To make matters worse (for me) the only hand I could get in there was my left one.  Being right-handed that made a difficult task even more so.

I turned on the water and checked for connection leaks.  I did not see any so I applied air pressure and initiated the flush cycle but it did not work.  Nothing, nada, zilch, no movement of the valve, drain flapper opening, and no flow of water.  The air-water sequence valve is mounted to a horizontal plate.  It installs from underneath and is held in place by a large nut that threads over the top.  I thought perhaps this nut was too tight and causing the valve to bind so I loosened it and the valve started working.  I flushed it several times looking for leaks and did not see any.  We made tiny adjustments to the location and decided to screw it down.  It was 3 PM.

I found the four screws that were originally used to mount the toilet to the floor.  They are very large and quite unusual.  They are 2.25″ long with coarse threads and hex heads with large Philips screwdriver slots.  The center of the heads, where the screwdriver slots cross, are drilled and tapped and there are four black caps with screws built into them that screw into them to conceal them and give the toilet a finished look.  I was concerned, however, about their length.  The underlayment and tile are somewhere between 5/16″ and 7/16″ thick, slightly thinner than the ceramic tile I removed, and the bus subfloor is (presumably) 3/4″ thick.  Anything that penetrates the tile by more than 1″ risks coming through the bottom side of the plywood and potentially screwing into something it should not.  I measured the base of the toilet and it was an honest one inch thick so I decided I would reuse the screws when we got to that point.

At this point we took about 45 minutes to clean up tools and put things away in the garage.  We then turned our attention to getting the built-in sofa installed.  I removed a piece of expanded metal mesh and cut a piece of aluminum sheet metal to cover a hole and used heavy duty double sided 3M tape to attach it to the HVAC duct.  While Linda cut pieces of felt to go under any pieces of the sofa that touched the floor I cut and attached foam weatherstripping to the back edges of the two plenum/support boxes and the return air duct/shelf.

We put the two plenum/support boxes in place against the end cabinets and HVAC duct but did not take the time to cut and screen openings into the duct.  We set the return air duct/shelf in place and put in the vertical front panel but the shelf held it out so I removed the weatherstripping from the back edge.  We also did not take the time to drill the 4″ holes at either end of the vertical panel for the round diffusers as there was no point doing this until the HVAC duct was modified.

We secured each of the plenum/support boxes to the wiring chase with a single angle bracket and to the front panel with a pair of brackets.  I drilled and countersunk a three foot length of 1/8″ aluminum angle and we installed it against the inside of the vertical panel and the top of the shelf.  The shelf is 45″ wide (side-to-side) and there is a 3″ high by 44″ long piece of the vertical panel missing at the floor and centered side-to-side.  The aluminum angle will transfer vertical loads on the central portion of the vertical panel to the shelf, which is 3/4″ plywood with full depth pieces along each edge and a slightly shorter central support piece.

We had been making a list throughout the day of parts that we needed.  When we got to a point with the sofa where we did not have the screws we needed we took a break.  We went to Qdoba in Howell for dinner, our first visit to this particular eatery since we moved to the Brighton/Hartland/Howell area, and both had vegan taco salads.  The salads were good enough although the taco shell bowels were not the best we have had.  The servers seemed a bit stingy with the various ingredients but in the end the salad was substantial and tasty.  It was also a convenient and efficient location being on an out lot of the Meijer’s supermarket property and right across the street from Lowe’s.

After dinner we went to Lowe’s and bought felt drawer/door bumper pads, screws, and two more angle brackets.  Back home we worked on the built-in sofa until 9 PM and called it quits for the night.  I spent two hours at my desk and finalized a featured bus article for Bus Conversion Magazine on Larry and Carol Hall’s GM4106.  I uploaded the article and photo files it to my Dropbox BCM folder, and then e-mailed the publisher, editor, layout person, and Larry to let them know it was there.

I try to finish these posts each night before I go to sleep or first thing the next morning.  If I fail to do that I quickly lose the sequence of events and details.  I tend to be up too late as a result, but if I fall behind by even one day it is very difficult to catch up while also trying to keep up.  As much as I have enjoyed the remodeling project I will be glad to not be so busy this winter and be able to write shorter posts about the interesting people, places, and things we experience.

 

2015/09/06 (N) Grouting

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We got up quietly at 7:30 AM as Madeline was still sound asleep.  Linda did not want to let her sleep too long and get off schedule so I got the “all clear” to grind the coffee beans just before 8 AM.  I made the Costa Rican half-caff because I am trying to use it up so we can replace it with something we like better.  Madeline emerged with Grandma Linda a few minutes later.  After stretching they decided to sit quietly on the living room sofa and read stories while everyone woke up and the adults enjoyed our coffee.

Sometime between 9:30 and 10 AM we left for the Howell Farmers Market.  We walked from one end to the other, with Madeline in her stroller, scoping out this week’s bounty. We then walked back through and Linda bought a few things including hard stem garlic which we had never seen before.  We stopped and chatted with our favorite vendor, Marjorie.

When we got home and put the produce away Linda prepared a snack lunch for herself and Madeline.  The two of them then went on an outing to the farm at Kensington Metropark (KMP) while I stayed behind to work on bus projects.  I decided to start by finishing the assembly of the pieces for the built-in sofa.  I attached the center support for the return air shelf as follows:

  • I determined the center of the long edges of the shelf and drew a line between them.
  • I carried these center marks to the other side and then measured 3/8″ to either side.
  • I connected corresponding marks to create a pair of parallel lines 3/4″ apart and centered on the underside of the shelf.
  • I placed the support in position, determined its fore-aft position, and marked the ends.
  • I then marked a piece of scrap wood, cut it into four pieces, and used them to hold the support in place; two long pieces the same length as the support, and two short pieces across the ends.
  • This allowed me to turn the shelf right side up with the center support held in the correct place and then mark and drill countersunk pilot holes for the screws.
  • I removed the support piece, sanded off any rough spots, put Titebond II wood glue on the edge, and replaced it between the temporary blocking.
  • I stood on the shelf to force the pieces together and ran all the screws down tight.
  • I then removed the temporary blocking.

After sleeping on it last night I decided I would attach the plenum/support boxes to the vertical front panel and the wood wire chase on top of the HVAC chase rather than to the adjacent cabinets or to the floor.  That meant I could go ahead and assemble them as complete, single units.  Easier said than done.

Even though I used right angle corner clamps the two halves I built for each box did not want to go together perfectly.  I managed to get one of them assembled but could not complete the other one by myself.  The problem was that I needed both hands to pull the pieces into alignment and two more hands to operate the drill and screw gun.

By now it was 1 PM, which is Madeline’s normal nap time, but they were not back from the Metropark yet so I gathered up all of the tools and materials I needed to grout the floor tiles in the bus.  That included the special Armstrong S-288 Glacier White sanded vinyl grout, a flat blade screwdriver, the 4″x8″ hard edge float, the smaller margin trowel, the 2″ putty knife (wall scraper), the ScotchBrite sponges, the Revel scrubber, two large buckets for rinse water, paper towels, a large cloth towel, and paper bags.

Madeline pets one of the sheep at the Kensington Metropark animal farm.

Madeline pets one of the sheep at the Kensington Metropark animal farm.

Since Linda and Madeline had still not returned I had a few pretzels with hummus.  They finally got home around 1:30 PM and I heard all about the farm and the animals Ms. M got to see and touch.  The 2-day old piglets were apparently a big hit but so was the playroom.  It was a good outing and I wish I could have gone but I got stuff done that needed to be done.

Madeline finally laid down for her nap at 2 PM but Linda could not help me with the tile grouting as she needed to be within earshot of Madeline’s bedroom.  I decided that we could not afford any further delay for this aspect of the interior remodeling project and resolved to do it by myself.  Without Linda to walk me through the steps, have materials ready, and clean the tools, I needed to be very clear about the steps and their timing.  I must have read the directions on the container of grout a dozen times in an attempt to internalize them but they just would not stick with me.  I needed a spray bottle for water so Linda found one for me.

The afternoon was very warm so I turned off the air-conditioning in our home library, closed up the coach, and turned on two of the three air-conditioners, making sure they were on opposite legs of the electrical service.  I staged all of the stuff in the bedroom storage box as I planned to start on the back side of the bed in the driver side corner by the head of the bed and work my way out.

I finally got started at 2:30 PM.  The grouting involved a specific set of steps that got repeated many times as the directions said to only do 6 – 10 sq. ft. at a time.  That range had to do with the time required to apply and strike the grout, setup time (3 – 8 minutes), misting with water, waiting 20-30 seconds, scrubbing, and finally wiping with a square edged cellulose sponge.  I had to divide the U-shaped bedroom floor into six sections and it took me until 5:30 PM to do that much so my average time was 30 minutes per section, each of which was smaller than 6 square feet.

I took a short break, had something to drink, and checked with Linda on the timing of dinner.  We settled on 6:30 PM and I returned to my grouting.  I had to do the bathroom floor in two sections, which got me into the hallway and joined up with the work from the bedroom.  I went in to clean up for dinner and was greeted by the smell of something baking.  Madeline wanted to make cupcakes so Linda assembled the ingredients and walked her through the steps, letting her do as much of the work as possible.  For not even being three years old yet she is very interested in cooking, but only if it is something she will get to eat! 🙂

Dinner was vegan cheeseburgers, corn-on-the-cob (from the Farmers Market), left over black beans and edamame, and sliced pears.  I worked in the bus from 7 to 8 PM and finished the hallway as far as the bend that transitions into the kitchen.  I cleaned all of the tools and sealed the grout container using Cling-Wrap pressed down onto the surface of the grout to keep air away from it, and locked up the bus.

I washed up and turned on the Yaesu FTM-400 2m/70cm radio in the ham shack while Linda helped Madeline take a bath.  Steve, N8AR, was serving as net control for the weekly SLAARC information net and had already started the net but not yet called for check-ins so I got to participate in the entire net.  We had a small group this evening, most likely due to it being a holiday weekend, but it was still a good net.

I came upstairs to have dessert with Linda and Madeline; chocolate cupcakes (vegan) with sprinkles.  Yum.  I then returned to my office to re-read an article I wrote about replacing the speedometer in the bus and editing it to indicate where the pictures should be placed.  I dealt with several BCM related e-mails and then came upstairs.

Madeline was in her pajamas and sitting in her portable bed while Linda read a story.  She decided that she wanted me to read a couple stories too, so I did.  We got her tucked in with her stuffed animals arranged at the four corners of her bed, turned on the night light, and left her to fall asleep.

I opened the bottle of Apricot wine that Brendan and Shawna picked up from Leelenau Cellars and we each had a small glass.  I worked on this post while Linda cleaned up the kitchen.  It had been a long and very tiring day for both of us but a very satisfying and productive day as well.  We don’t mind that kind of tired.

 

2015/08/29 (S) Up and Down

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When we arrived at the South Lyon Senate Coney Island just before 8 AM there were only five other SLAARC members there but we had 16 by the time the last two people showed up.  Linda (K8LMF) got to sit next to Linda (NF8C) for the first time in quite a while and they had a long chat.  All but one person stayed until 9:45 when we got up to leave and everyone else followed suit.

We were back home by 10:15 AM, changed into our work clothes, and got back to work on the bus remodeling project.  It was a very overcast and cloudy day with a high probability of rain that was forecast to be an all-day event.  That altered our plans a little in that we did not want the pieces of underlayment to get wet and our air-compressor could not be out in the rain as it has an electric motor.

Yesterday we marked and cut the underlayment panels in the driveway, laying them across 2x4s to create space for the circular saw blade.  In order to keep the project moving forward we decided to use the temporary “workbench” in the garage for this work.  Since the workbench was covered with drawer fronts that had to be moved we decided to take a little time to put the new handles on them and reattach them to the drawer boxes.  Sometimes it’s true that “there’s no time like the present” to get something done.

Linda has worked hard on cleaning and waxing the walnut drawer fronts and fixed cabinetry in our motorcoach.  The results so far are amazing and we are feeling like all of our work will be worthwhile as the interior of the coach is going to look very nice when we are done with this project.

We had cut the piece of underlayment for part of the hallway last night but needed to trim it to get it to fit correctly.  I think we took it out of, and back into, the bus at least four times, each trip requiring us to go up and down the seven steps in the entryway/cockpit plus the stool outside the door.  I do not know how many times we went up and down those steps today but it was a quite a few.  To add to our enjoyment and bus conversion physical fitness program we were usually carrying something and it was often heavy and/or large.

The next pieces of underlayment to be cut would fill out most of the living room.  I had planned to cut them a certain way but changed my mind after talking it through with Linda.  We took measurements and I made drawings that were close to scale.  We ended up using the full 48″ width of a 4’x8′ sheet and about 86″ of its length for the piece that fills the alcove where the built-in sofa and storage base will go.  It had two large corner cutouts, one to make it fit with two other installed pieces and the other to go around the base of the media cabinet that doubles as an end table for the forward end of the sofa.  After test fitting it we had to trim a couple inches off of a back corner because of a wire bundle and create a notch for several wires that ran through the floor just in front of the driver’s side HVAC chase.  We waited for a lull in the rain and took it back into the coach.

It fit just right but unfortunately there were defects in the subfloor, such as small gouges and depressed screw heads, that needed to be repaired.  Since we could not use the air-stapler today I did not have a good excuse for not patching the floor correctly so I worked on that while Linda resumed working on the woodwork.  The quart of “ready to use” floor patch was not as ready to use as I would have liked.  The directions said to stir thoroughly and when I opened the container there was a half inch of milky white liquid on top of somewhat drier and stiffer material with the consistency of fine wet sand.  The directions also said the open (working) time was about 15 minutes.

I set the timer on the microwave for 20 minutes, spent five of those trying to stir and mix the floor patch ingredients, and then tried to patch everything that really needed it in the allotted time.  I did not care for this material and wish I had used the Universal Patch and Skimcoat that I used everywhere else.  It was gritty and did not feather out or finish as smoothly as I wanted, but there was nothing to do now but wait for it to dry which would take three hours.

Linda decided to work in the house and eventually fix dinner while I worked in the bedroom (of the bus) trying to remove very old masking tape from the subfloor using a 1.25″ putty knife.  After an hour I had about half of it off but called it quits as my hands were sore.

For dinner Linda cooked a couple of ears of corn-on-the-cob, heated some vegetarian (vegan) baked beans, and cooked two vegan “burgers” topped with vegan cheese.  Mustard, ketchup, pickle relish, and four large leaves of romaine lettuce made for a tasty sandwich.  We each had a glass of the Cupcake Black Forest Decadent Red wine with the meal.  Dessert was fresh sliced strawberries with non-dairy (vegan) peach mango “yogurt.”  It was a tasty summertime meal.

After dinner I tried sanding the floor patches even though the directions said not to sand the dried material.  I used a very old piece of 120 grit sandpaper in my orbital sander and went over the entire area.  I vacuumed the whole area but I could still feel a residual grit on the floor.  I got Linda’s vacuum from the house and tried that.  I then got the Revel wet/dry mop and tried wet moping the area, but it was still gritty.  I was preparing to go over the entire area with the new 80 grit sandpaper but Linda managed to get it clean using the brush attachment on the house vacuum cleaner.

With the area cleaned up we put the piece of underlayment for the sofa nook in place and it fit very nicely but we did not staple it.  We redid our measurements for the passenger side front piece and made some minor adjustments to the dimensions on the drawing.  What I have tried to do wherever possible is to keep at least two factory edges with a common vertex (corner) and use that point and those sides as the basis for my measurements.

It looked like heavy rain was going to hit us from the west but must have tracked north of us.  We continued to get rain, off and on, but nothing heavy every materialized.  Working in the garage we measured and cut the last piece for today.  We made extensive use of the circular saw running it along a saw guide.  By the time we had the sheet cut there was a lull in the rain so we took it to the bus to test fit it.  The fit was close but needed minor trimming in the front outside corner.  By now it was 8:30 PM and we did not want to haul the sheet back out of the bus and into the garage to work on it.  That will be our first task tomorrow followed by stapling the three pieces that we cut today, weather permitting.

We turned in at 10 PM.  There wasn’t anything on TV that interested us, so Linda read for few minutes before falling asleep and I wrote until 11:30.

 

2015/08/22 (S) Clean and Level

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We arrived at the SLAARC breakfast just before 8 AM.  We took the last two seats at the end of the long row of tables, but had to add another one as six more people came in after us.  We had a lively chat that lasted until almost 9:30.  After breakfast we stopped at the Tractor Supply Company store in New Hudson to get a couple more deer blocks and then headed for home.

We took a few minutes to put away tools and straighten up the garage enough that we could set up a work surface for Linda to use for cleaning the walnut drawer fronts for all of the bus drawers.  We set up the two sawhorses we got at Lowe’s yesterday, set two 8-foot 2x4s in the provided grooves, and set a 4’x8′ piece of 2″ rigid foam insulation across them to use as the work surface.  I found an old package of 4/0 steel wool and Linda found some old terry cloth towels.

Foam insulation work surface in garage with walnut drawer fronts laid out for cleaning with Touch of Oranges.

Foam insulation work surface in garage with walnut drawer fronts laid out for cleaning with Touch of Oranges.

Linda removed the drawer fronts from seven of the drawer boxes and tagged them so they could be reunited later as each front is uniquely paired with its box.  She then removed the handles from the drawer fronts and set them aside as they will be replaced with new ones once the cleaning is done.  She started with the back sides of the drawer fronts.  Following the directions she sprayed them liberally with Touch of Oranges wood cleaner, let them sit for 10 minutes, sprayed them again lightly, and rubbed them with the 4/0 steel wool.  She then wiped them off with a terry cloth towel and applied Touch of Beeswax using 4/0 steel wool, always working with the grain, of course.  The wax will have at least 24 hours to soak in before being wiped off.  Once that is done she will flip them over and repeat the process on the front side.

While Linda was doing all of that I hauled the 15 gallon DeWalt portable air compressor out by the bus, plugged it in, and connected the air hose.  I used the 4″ circular pneumatic sander on a few remaining high spots and decided I was done with it.  I had found some old packs of 80 grit half sheets and tried using them on my orbital sander but the grit disappeared very quickly and the sheets snagged and tore on splinters in the plywood.  I spent more time changing sheets than I did sanding with them so I abandoned this approach after the fifth sheet.  I did, however, find a half dozen splintered areas and prepared those by making stop cuts with a utility knife and then peeling the splinter free with a putty knife, creating voids that will be filled with leveling compound.

I was tired of sanding and was clearly not going to get the floor back down to bare wood.  I decided that the floor was as sanded and smooth as it was going to get and it was time to move to the next process; patching and leveling.  Before I could do that, however, I needed to clean the coach.  I vacuumed the floor three times and vacuumed all of the woodwork and wallpaper.  As I worked from the bedroom forward Linda followed behind with a microfiber cloth wiping down all of the woodwork.

I assembled the tools I needed to apply the Universal Patch and Skimcoat; a 3″ putty knife, a 5″ putty knife, a combination smooth and toothed rectangular trowel, a mixing bucket, and a 2 foot long wooden stir stick and a mixing paddle designed to go in a drill.  Each bag of UPS weighs 7 pounds and gets mixed with 1.75 quarts of water, which works out to 1 part water to 2 parts UPS.

The directions on the bag indicated that a full bag of UPS, properly mixed, would cover 20 to 25 square feet 1/8″ thick.  That’s only a 5’x5′ area, but I only had a few gouges that were 1/8″ deep, so an entire bag was going to cover a lot more than 25 square feet when applied as a skim coat.  Not having worked with this material before I had no idea how much working time I would have so I decided to mix half a bag.  The recommended mixing method using a paddle in an electric drill turned out to be a bad idea so used the 2-foot long wooden stir stick to mix the compound.

TEC Universal Patch and Skimcoat applied to the floor in that hallway.

TEC Universal Patch and Skimcoat applied to the floor in that hallway.

I started in the bathroom patching small depressions and then working out from the baseboards.  By the time I got out into the hallway I had not even used half the compound and it was starting to set up.  I hurried to use as much of it as I could, and tried adding a little extra water to extend its workability, but was only able to use about 60% of it before it was too stiff to spread and trowel off smoothly.  I could have waited 1 hour and then mixed and applied more compound but I did not want to risk disturbing what I had already done and it has to set for 24 hours before I can sand it, which I will have to do.

Cleanup required warm soapy water for the tools.  I then poured it into the 5 gallon compound bucket, topped it up with water, stirred it to dissolve the compound as much as possible, and let it sit.

For dinner Linda made Farro with mushrooms, onions garlic, glazed snow peas, and grated carrots.  She needed some dry white wine for the Farro dish and opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio, so we had a glass with the meal.  As rule if a wine is used in a dish it is also a good choice to drink with that meal.

After dinner I went to Lowe’s and got some more 4/0 steel wool and some 80 grit sandpaper sheets.  I stopped at O’Reilly’s for a battery disconnect switch for the lawn tractor but they did not have one.  I tried the Howell Tractor Supply Company but they did not have one either.  I drove to the Brighton Shell station, topped off the fuel in the Element, and went home.  We turned in at 9 PM and watched a 007 movie before going to sleep.

 

2015/08/15 (S) Steve and Karen

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As we were backing out of the driveway to go to our weekly ham radio breakfast we noticed a large mailbox sitting on the ground next to ours.  It was still attached to the upper half of its wood support structure.  The number was 593, which is not an address that occurs on our street.  We left it there and went to breakfast.

We had a mid-sized group of 15 people at our SLAARC breakfast this morning.  On the drive into breakfast we lost power to our GPS every time I transmitted on the 2m ham band.  The GPS and cellular booster worked fine all day yesterday with the new 12VDC extension splitter, but I did not use the mobile ham radio.

After breakfast we went directly to Chuck’s shop in Novi to see if we could retrieve the old refrigerator using our car.  A measuring tape quickly revealed that the fridge would not fit without removing the seats.  Even then it would be too long to close the rear gate and hatch on the Element.  At breakfast Harvey (AC8NO) offered the use of his van and labor to help move the fridge and I will probably take him up on it.

On the drive home I chatted with John (NU8M) on the South Lyon 2m repeater and we were joined by Mike (W8XH).  After John signed and dropped off Linda tried different combinations of power connections while I talked with Mike.  Based on that test the splitter appears to be the problem but we could not determine if it was a voltage drop issue or some form of RFI.

I stopped on the way home to fill the gas tank in my car.  When we got home I put the mailbox in the back of my car and we drove to the end of the street but it clearly did not come from one of our neighbor’s yards.  When we got back to the house we also noticed that there was a footprint on the side of our mailbox.  Closer inspection revealed that the post was slightly loose in the ground and the box was leaning (bent) slightly to one side.  Clearly someone had tried to kick it over (and failed) and there was a very high probability that it was the same person(s) who probably broke the other mailbox and left it on the ground next to ours.  We discussed whether we should report it to the Livingston County Sheriff Department but did not take the time right then to do so.

Linda needed to make a grocery store run and then prep the food for dinner and pick up the house.  With company coming later I did not want to get all sweaty working in the bus and garage so I worked in my office editing and uploading blog posts.  I quit around 3:30 and was writing blog posts when Steve and Karen Limkemann arrived at 4 PM.

We always have a nice visit with Steve and Karen and they are good sports about eating the vegan food that Linda prepares.  Linda made a sweet and sour collard greens cole slaw and vegan potato salad ahead of time.  She cooked corn-on-the-cob on the stovetop and heated vegan beer brats on the grill along with onions and green peppers.  Steve and Karen brought a Malbec wine which we enjoyed before, during and after the meal.  Dessert was fresh strawberries with cashew milk snickerdoodle ice cream.  Really, what’s not to like?

Steve and Karen have rented a house trailer in a trailer park near Venice, Florida for the last few winters.  I think they rented it for January, February, and March and split the time with another couple, but I may not have my facts completely straight.  The owners of the trailer are from England and decided after this last winter that they want to start using it during the winter so Steve and Karen lost the use of it.  They really liked the park and its location so they bought a trailer that was for sale and already set up.  We visited them two winters ago, but we were several hours north of them.  This coming winter we will be much closer to them while we are in Arcadia during January and February and plan to see them more often.  Venice is a very upscale place and there is an excellent vegan restaurant within easy walking distance (a mile) from their trailer park.

We talked about trying to catch the tail end of the Perseids Meteor Shower but the peak was earlier in the week, they would not be visible at our location until midnight, and then only low in the northeast sky, which is not an ideal viewing direction from our yard.  Steve and Karen had a 45 minute drive to get home and left around 10:30 PM.  By that point it had been a long but very satisfying day for us and we were straight away to bed once they were safely on their way.

 

2015/08/08 (S) A New Bus Fridge (Finally)

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We overslept and did not get up until 7:15 AM.  The weather has been very pleasant all this past week but we awoke to light rain.  We left for our SLAARC breakfast at 7:25 AM and took a different route than usual to see how it would be for the bus.  I headed north on Hacker to M-59, east to US-23, and south to I-96 east.  The ramp from US-23 south to I-96 east is a left exit, left entrance, with a very short merge lane in the middle of a major construction project.  I decided that was not our best option for the bus.

We arrived at breakfast at 8 AM to find a dozen people already there but at least 10 more showed up after us.  We enjoyed the conversation, as we usually do, but did not linger and were on our way back home by 9:15 AM.  As soon as we arrived we changed into our work clothes and got busy with the final preparations to move the bus to Chuck’s bus garage in Novi.

I pulled the bus out at 10:30 AM and Linda followed in the Element, which had all of the pieces we had removed from the old refrigerator along with tools, blankets, and some 2x4s.  The bus roof was brushed by a few small, low branches getting from our house to N. Hacker Road, reminding me that I need to covertly trim trees and bushes along our street.  I say covertly because they are not on our property.  The last time I took the bus out we went south on Hacker to Grand River Avenue.  This would have been our preferred route today except that the trees are not trimmed up in a few places and one of them, just before Bendix Drive, clunked the stuff on our roof pretty hard last time.  I did not care to repeat that so I went north as we had this morning in the car.

At M-59 I headed west to Latson Road, a trip of some four to five miles in the wrong direction.  The reason is that Latson Road going south has a relatively new, and easy to navigate, intersection with I-96.  From there we had an easy run to the Beck Road exit, a short jog south to Grand River Avenue, an easy left turn, and the final mile to Chuck’s shop where we arrived at 11 AM.

Chuck had already pulled his bus out of the building and parked it out of the way but there were several trucks and a dumpster trailer blocking access to his door.  They belonged to a motley crew that the owner of the building in front of Chuck’s shop had hired to clean up some of the mess left behind by the sunroom company that just moved out of the building.  He had me pull up to the right and position myself to back up and then negotiated with the workers to move their vehicles.  I pulled up the tag axles and waited.  The workers were not happy about it but they did it.

To get our bus into Chuck’s shop nose first he had me back parallel to the building and then bring it around to the passenger side into a space adjacent to the front building until I was perpendicular to his door.  I was then able to pull straight in but I did not pull in all the way.  Chuck had me stop with the fixed window frame opposite his forklift which he had already positioned for use.  The on again, off again light rain was not a factor as the window frame we needed to open was well inside his shop.

Linda and I unloaded all of the stuff from the car and brought it inside the shop.  We realized that we forgot to bring the camera so Linda tried to capture the progress of the work with her cell phone camera.  I have put those images in a separate gallery post for this date.

Randy, the owner of the Printology business in the suite adjacent to Chuck’s, came over to see what we were up to and stuck around to help.  With me working from an 8 foot step ladder outside the bus, while Chuck and Linda worked inside, we opened the window frame about 24 inches and propped it with a piece of 2×4.  I then carefully lifted the window higher while Linda sighted along the bottom of the upper cabinet.  When I had the frame high enough to be clear of the cabinet Chuck measured the length of 2×4 we would need to prop it open.

It looked like 52 inches would do the trick.  I had a 56″ piece of 2×4 so I cut it down to 52″ with my 7-1/4″ Rockwell circular saw.  I used the first piece to mark a second piece on an 8 foot 2×4 and cut that.  Linda took both pieces inside the bus where she handled one and Chuck handled the other.  As I lifted the bottom edge of the window from outside the bus the window hinge (at the top) made some unpleasant (and a bit unnerving) sounds but I got it high enough that they could put the two braces in place and the frame did not come unhinged.  We had just finished this task when John Rauch and his son, John, arrived at noon to help move the refrigerators.

The old refrigerator was lying face down in the bus.  The two Johns lifted it as a test and determined that they would not have any difficulty moving it.  Linda fetched one of the blankets and dropped it over the sill of the open window to protect it and the side of the coach.  Chuck had placed the long forks on his forklift about two feet apart and slid a narrow pallet over them.  He raised the forks and brought the forklift forward towards the bus.  We got him to position the top of the pallet even with the top of the sill and about 3″ away from the side of the coach.

John and John are very strong and were able to lift the old refrigerator case and pass it through the window onto the pallet.  With a person on ladders on either side of the pallet we slid the refrigerator all the way out.  Chuck then tilted the forks slightly, slowly backed away, and lowered it down.  John and John got the old refrigerator off the pallet, carried it out of the way, and stood it upright on its base.  They then lifted the new refrigerator onto its back, picked it up, and placed it on the pallet.  They went back inside the bus while Chuck brought the forklift up to the coach and raised the forks until the pallet was at window sill level.  John and John slid it into the bus, stood it up, and rolled it into the alcove.  I then secured it in place with a piece of 1×3 wood screwed to the floor across the front to keep it from rolling out while driving.  There is approximately three inches of space above the fridge but it cannot tilt out very far before the upper back edge catches the ceiling of the alcove.

John, John, and Chuck raised the window frame slightly to remove the 2x4s and close the frame when the top hinge started coming apart.  Linda yelled for me and I scrambled over to get another pair of hands on the frame.  With me and Chuck holding the outside (free) edge and the two Johns holding the hinge edge I was able to see where the hinge was out and direct folks as to what to do.  It took several tries and a few minutes (that seemed like hours) but we got the hinge re-engaged and then closed the window frame.  We took a few minutes to rest and chat and Chuck showed John (the father) his race car.   The heavy lifting was all done so John, John, and Randy took off, but before they did Linda gave John (the son) a gift for their new baby girl, Lucy Violet.

Linda and I put all the shelves and bins in the new refrigerator and then reattached the two doors.  That was a bit of extra work as it came with the hinges on the right side but we needed the door to open on the right side.  With the doors on we took a moment to consider our choice of size and color (black) and felt we had made the right decision.  We started to reassemble the old refrigerator but we were all hungry and decided to go to lunch first.  I started the bus and pulled it all the way into the shop so we could close up.  Chuck then drove us down the street to Panera for lunch.  We took our time and had a nice meal and a nice chat.

Back at the shop we decided to switch the buses around so Chuck would be free to leave.  He wanted a picture of the two buses together so I backed ours out of his shop, swung around to the passenger side, got parallel to his bus, and then backed up so the nose of our bus was about 10 feet behind the nose of his.  He and Linda then both took photos with their cell phones.  When the photo shoot was done I pulled forward to the left and then backed in parallel to the building about four feet from the curb.  That gave Chuck plenty of room to pull up next to me on my passenger side and then back around next to the front building and get lined up to pull straight into his bay just as I had done earlier.

Back in the shop Linda wiped out the inside of the old refrigerator and then we reattached the two doors.  As she cleaned each rack, shelf, and bin I placed it back into the refrigerator.  When it was fully reassembled we plugged it in.  It came on, ran for about 60 seconds and then shut off.  It obviously was not cold yet, and might have been cause for alarm if I had not dealt with this “problem” before.

I knew from prior experience that the defrost timer had probably disconnected the compressor and connected the evaporator defroster.  Chuck pulled out three of his lawn chairs and we sat around waiting for the refrigerator to restart.  The only thing missing was three cold beers.  We knew the unit still had power as the lights were working.  There was an outside chance that the overload protector (fuse?) might have blown, but I did not consider that to be likely.  Our patience was rewarded about 25 minutes later when the compressor came back on.  While we were waiting we gathered up our tools and various materials and loaded everything back into the Honda Element.

Chuck had a message from his wife, Barbara, with her ETA so we decided to settle back into the lawn chairs and kibbutz until Barb arrived.  She showed up a little while later and Chuck got out a fourth chair and we sat in the shop listening to the sound of the functioning refrigerator and debriefing the events of the day.  As a result of the window frame hinge coming loose I am now of the opinion that I did not need to remove the two stop blocks.  I suspect they are there to “stop” the hinge from coming apart and I should not have removed them.  Chuck is also thinking about replacing the refrigerator in their bus and is going to check with Prevost regarding these blocks.  As much as anything I was annoyed with myself for the amount of time I wasted removing these blocks but what is done is done and I now need to reinstall the one block that came off undamaged and get a replacement for the other one, even though I can only attach it with one machine screw.  Butch thinks he can make one for me, otherwise I will have to get one from Prevost.

Our local electrical utility, DTE Energy, will pick up used appliances.  In the case of a refrigerator it has to be plugged in and running, which I presume means it is functioning and cooling the interior.  If so, they will take it away and send us a check for $50.  From our end that’s a good deal as we don’t have to pay someone to haul it away.  Because of the R-12 Freon there are very few places that will deal with it.  My guess is that DTE has a sub-contractor who will recover, clean, and recycle the R-12, which is no longer being made and has become very expensive.  They may also recycle the copper tubing and electrical wire, and possibly the metal case and other materials.  Even with the labor to do this work the unit must be worth more than $50 to them.

We all needed to get some dinner so we wrapped up our visit and started up our bus.  I pulled out onto westbound Grand River Avenue followed by Linda in the car.  At Beck Road we turned north and then got on I-96 westbound.  The bus was at 3/8ths of a tank of fuel so I decided to stay on I-96 and go to the Mobil truck stop at M-52, a run of about 30 miles that would allow the engine and transmission to come up to normal operating temperature.  Linda exited at Latson Road and stopped at Meijer’s to do some grocery shopping.

The Mobil truck stop is run down with a very poor, pot-holed apron and parking area, but there are usually several tractor-trailers fueling here when we pull in as it is one of only two places that a semi can refuel between Detroit and Lansing.  There weren’t any trucks getting fuel when I pulled in but it was 7:30 PM on a Saturday evening and there were a half dozen tractor-trailers settled in the parking area for the night.  I poured two bottles of Stanadyne diesel fuel additive into the fuel tank followed by two ounces of Racor Biocide.  I then added 125 gallons of diesel fuel to the tank, which took about 11 minutes.  By the time I paid for the fuel and was ready to pull out it was 8 PM.

I called Linda to let her know I was on my way and then reset the trip odometer.  I drove east on I-96 for 10 miles to the M-59 / Burkhardt Road exit and got on M-59, which only goes east from there.  Eleven miles later I made the turn south onto N. Hacker Road and completed the drive to our house.  Linda heard me idling in the street, where I stopped to lift the tag axles before making the tight right turn into our pull-through driveway, and came out to help get me parked.  Once I was positioned correctly I put the tag axle back down, let the engine low idle for a minute to let the turbo spin down and let the heads cool off and the temperature to equalize, switched the Level Low system out of drive mode, and shut off the engine.  I shut off the air supply to the engine accessories, shut off the chassis batteries, connected the shore power cord, locked everything up, and went in for the evening.

It had been a long day and we were glad to have it behind us.  I had been anticipating the refrigerator exchange, with some dread, for well over a month.  The concern was that we would not be able to move the units out/in through the window frame, requiring us to remove and replace the lower passenger-side windshield, or that something would go wrong, like the hinge, and turn out to be an expensive and difficult problem to fix.  With each passing day it was also becoming a bottleneck in our remodeling project, at least psychologically if not physically.  But it was finally done and ended well.  We will plug in the new refrigerator tomorrow to make sure it works.  We tested it in Chuck’s shop when it was delivered so we expect it to work now.  There is a lot of work to do but now we can get on with it and I expect it to go well.

In spite of being tired we stayed up and watched the PBS broadcast of the Simon and Garfunkel reunion concert they did live in New York City’s Central Park 10 years after they split up as a duo.  Their music remains among my most favorite from my youth and it has lost nothing with the passing of many years.

 

2015/08/06 (R) Three Quarters Framed

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As usual, we started the day with breakfast and then enjoyed our coffee while reading and writing.  Best Pest Control showed up mid-morning to apply the second treatment for hornets, wasps, etc. so we closed up all of the windows and doorwalls while they sprayed.

We located a Wayne-Dalton facility in Livonia so I called them.  As I suspected they were the factory distribution center and would not sell to us directly.  They did, however, give me the name of one of their customers, a business in Milford named The Door Doctor that had a retail store front.  I called them and they had a 12 foot length of the required D-channel bottom weather seal for our small (8′) garage door.  It turned out that they were not actually in downtown Milford but were more conveniently located near the Milford Road exit of I-96.  When the pest control guys were done and gone I drove over and bought the seal.

Back home Linda made quesadillas for lunch and set out some yummy black grapes.  We then made an errand run to Howell.  Our first stop was at Teeko’s Coffee and Tea where we ordered a pound each of fresh roasted Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caff and Costa Rican half-caff beans.  The Yirgacheffe is one of our favorites.  The Costa Rican is something new for us.

Our next stop was The Home Depot for a half sheet (4′ x 4′) of 3/4″ plywood.  They only had one type in a 4′ x 4′ size and I did not like it so we did not buy it.  They had nicer plywood in full sheets (4′ x 8′) but I did not need that much and did not want to fuss with something that size.  We did, however, find a drawer/cabinet pull that we liked and bought one to try out with our bus cabinets.  It’s a Rockefeller style from Liberty in an antique brass finish for a 3″ center-to-center hole spacing.  They also had a matching single screw knob in case we need it.

Our next stop was the Howell Art and Frame shop in downtown Howell to pick up three of our four pieces of artwork.  The owner, Rick, had ordered the fourth frame the wrong size and had to reorder it.  The three that were finished looked very nice and I would like to think that the artist, Ann Metzger, would have been pleased with our choices.  Ann was married to my mother’s cousin and took up painting as rehabilitation therapy for breast cancer surgery in her early 40’s.  She turned out to be quite good and was active in the St. Louis artist’s guild for many years.  We have collected many of her works over the last 44 years.

We stopped at Lowe’s to look at their drawer pulls but they did not have anything similar to the one we got at The Home Depot.  We stopped back at Teeko’s to pick up our coffee order and then headed home.

Back home we moved the paintings to the library and turned our attention to installing the seal on the 8 foot wide garage door.  With the door all the way up we were able to slide the old seal out towards the larger door.  I thought we could install the new one with the door in the same position without removing the track from the bottom of the door.  That was, indeed, the case but it did not go in easily.  I trimmed the ends and ran the door up and down a few times and made minor adjustments on each end until it worked properly.  We still need to redo the side and top seals for both doors.

I tried programming the garage door remote control in my car the day we installed the new opener on the small garage door but wasn’t able to.  At the suggestion of the woman at The Door Doctor, I Googled the model numbers of our various remotes and found the manuals.  I had forgotten that the four 3-button remotes we bought a couple of years ago had to be configured before they could be paired with the openers.  Once I knew how to do that I was able to program mine and Linda’s to work with both doors.  Each of our children also have one and I will have to re-program those the next time they are here.

I exchanged e-mails with Josh at Coach Supply Direct about picking up the extra fabric we ordered, perhaps next Tuesday.  I also e-mailed and texted with Jarel about picking up the desk pieces next Tuesday and possibly the pieces for the built-in sofa.  He did not, however, receive the mailing tube with the drawings and cut sheet today, so we will see if that works out.  I suggested he defer work on the pull-out pantry in favor of the sofa pieces as that will allow me to keep working while he is on vacation at the end of this month.  He still owes us a price estimate for the pantry but at this point it almost doesn’t matter as he will be the one building it regardless of the number.

I talked to Terry at A-1 Upholstery in Elkhart regarding the sofa cushions.  She and her mom, Lou, run the business.  I last talked to Terry in early June and she remembered the conversation.  I described once again what we were looking for and she gave me a rough estimate of the cost.  She said we could stop by Tuesday morning to drop off the fabric and discuss the job and thought they could have it finished by the end of August.  That would be great timing for us.  We are starting to feel like this whole project will come together nicely once we get the refrigerators swapped and can finely get back to work on the floor of the bus.

I installed the new Morgan M-302N I.C.E. style lightning arrestor and connected the radio and antenna cables.  I had a short QSO with Mike (W8XH) via the South Lyon 2m repeater and had no issues on transmit or receive.  I started working on a gallery post of 45 photos from the ARRL Field Day event at the end of June but only got half of it done before dinner.

Linda made a delicious zoodles dish for dinner.  Zoodles are zucchini noodles that she cuts with her SpiraLife slicer and uses in place of grain or rice pasta.  The dish had the usual garlic, onion, olive oil base but also had shallots, mushrooms, kale, and sun-dried tomatoes.  We had fresh watermelon later for dessert.

After dinner I finished the gallery post while monitoring the Novi and South Lyon repeaters.  I then had a long QSO with Mike (W8XH) and Steve (N8AR) that gave me a chance to test the M-302N lightning arrestor on both VHF and UHF at three different power levels.  We continued to have the minor problem with quick, apparently random, audio dropouts on our Yaesu FTM-400 dual band radios.  The apparent randomness has made it difficult to puzzle out what might be causing this and we all agreed that we need to set aside time to plan and execute a systematic test and record the results for analysis.

Butch called to chat about house (bus) battery cabling and other things.  I mentioned that we would be coming down on Tuesday and would try to arrange our timing so we can stop and visit over dinner.  We then watched The Princess Bride on DVD.  It’s our all-time favorite movie and I long ago lost count of how many times we have seen it.

 

2015/08/05 (W) No Mask Wednesday

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Linda was up at 6 AM and left for the bakery around 6:20 AM, I think. I was more asleep than awake and did not get up until later. I wanted to do a load of laundry but needed powdered detergent which I did not have. I also needed to make a run to Lowe’s so I left to take care of my errands without making coffee or having breakfast.

I picked up a couple of 2x4s at Lowe’s that I will use to cut a pair of support arms for propping open the fixed window in the bus while we exchange the refrigerators. I was going to buy a 4’x4′ (half sheet) of plywood to cut for the base of the refrigerator alcove but did not care for the selection. I also did want to wrestle with the size and weight by myself. I will have to go back to The Home Depot with Linda to get what I need. I got my laundry supplies across the street at Meijer’s and headed home.

After unloading the 2x4s I thought I would program the remote control in my car for the new garage door opener. The procedure is very simple but much to my dismay the remote would not connect with the opener. The remote is a 3-button model made by Chamberlin, and both garage door openers are identical Chamberlin models. We have four of these 3-button remotes, one for me, one for Linda, and one for each of our children. We got the 3-button model because we have two overhead doors on our garage and plan (hope) to have a barn someday with an overhead door. All four of the 3-button remotes programmed to the large garage door without a problem and the new door opener came with a single button remote that works just fine, as did the large garage door opener. I won’t know if the problem is the opener or my remote until I can try programming Linda’s remote. If her remote will program then I know it’s my remote, but if it won’t program I still won’t know where the problem lies.

I had originally planned to mask off the interior of the bus today so I could start sanding the floor tomorrow but decided to put it off. Not only would the painter’s plastic be difficult to manage by myself, I realized that it did not make a lot of sense to tape it up in advance of doing the refrigerator swap. I was on the phone with Chuck arranging to bring our bus to his shop this weekend to take care of the refrigerators when our USPS carrier, Michelle, came to the door bearing gifts. Well, OK, they were packages, but I did not expect them until tomorrow so that made them more like gifts in my mind. One was from Amateur Electronics Supply (AES) and the other was from Morgan Manufacturing, so it was all ham radio stuff.

I went to my ham shack/office and mounted the control head for the Yaesu FTM-400 on the stand that just arrived from AES. I e-mailed Steve (N8AR) to arrange a time to test the lightning arrestor before installing it in our cable entry box. I then e-mailed Jarel to start trying to arrange a day next week to drive to his shop in Logansport, Indiana to pick up the custom walnut desk. Finally, I e-mailed Josh at Coach Supply Direct to make sure he was going to be around. I was checking out the TVFool.com website, which Steve recommended, when the art frame shop in Howell called to let us know that three of our four paintings were ready to pick up. They would have all been done but he ordered the forth frame the wrong size and had to reorder it. Linda then called to let me know she was on her way home from the bakery. So much communication, so little time.

When Linda got home we discussed going out to dinner and researched a new place that had opened in Howell. As usually happens, however, there is almost no place that serves anything we choose to eat and we ended up staying home. Linda had a couple of Boca burgers in the freezer and we had those with corn-on-the-cob and fresh fruit (peaches, nectarines, and strawberries). We eat better food, and in smaller quantities, when we dine at home.

After dinner I caught Steve (N8AR) on the radio and we agreed that I would bring the lightning arrestor over to his QTH at 8 PM. I had an e-mail related to the draft of the July issue of Bus Conversion Magazine and checked to make sure a correction had been made correctly.

At Steve’s house my lightning arrestor tested better than the previous one, and should work OK in my system, but it was very clear that there is something wrong with the design and/or manufacturing of these VHF/UHF I.C.E. units. We also came to the conclusion that the quality control testing the manufacturer was doing (if any) was inadequate to reveal the problem. I expect, however, that this one will work when I install it so if it is typical of their units most hams would not have a reason to suspect that it was flawed. Someone would have a problem with it, however, as it is clearly not usable for all frequencies from 40 MHz to 1 GHz as stated on the label. My unit has a 0.31 dB loss at 445 MHz (it should be 0.01) but has an 11.59 dB loss around 635 MHz, which is a huge factor of 16 times loos of signal, and the loss from 500 MHz to 1 GHz is unacceptably large making it useless in that range of frequencies.

Steve captured all of the data and e-mailed it to me. He then tested one of his Polyphaser lightning arrestors and sent me that data file. He also sent me the link to the VNWA software from SDR-Kits.com that I needed to work with the data file. We spent a few minutes talking about the problem we are having at home with our ham radio transmissions interfering with our OTA TV signals. He sent me a link to the free student version of the ELSIE (“L”,”C”) filter design software.

I left about 9:45 PM and called my friend, John Rauch, to see if Saturday noon would work for him in terms of our refrigerator swap. He said it would and that he would check with his son (also John) to see if he could/would also help. I will let Chuck know tomorrow that it looks like Saturday is a “go.”

Linda was asleep by the time I got home so I worked in my office until after midnight. I captured the data attached to the e-mails from Steve and then downloaded and installed both the VNWA and the ELSIE software. I then uploaded my personal blog posts for June 28, 29, and 30. I logged in to the FMCA Freethinkers website, the FMCA GLCC website, and the SLAARC website and installed updates for the themes and numerous plug-ins. With that I came back upstairs and worked on this post in the living room so as not to disturb Linda and finally went to bed around 1 AM.

 

2015/08/01 (S) Refrigerator Swapping (NOT)

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We had a good crowd for our weekly SLAARC breakfast.  We sat across from Mike (W8XH) and had a chance to discuss what to do about the ‘extra’ user accounts on our computers.  We also discussed the release of Windows 10 that occurred on the 29th of July and all came to the conclusion that we would not be upgrading anytime soon.

When we got home I talked to Chuck on the phone.  He said the sun room company was still moving out of the building in front of his shop and that there was still too much stuff in the way to be able to move our buses around.  Given the circumstances we agreed that we would not do the refrigerator swap today and probably not tomorrow.

At breakfast Mike suggested that we look in the Users folder on our computers to see what files were associated with each of these previously unknown users and then delete the User accounts.  It turned out that these users did not exist, or at least had no folders or files associated with them that we could find.  Linda’s computer did, however, have a couple more folders in the Users folder that did not have User accounts associated with them.  When we deleted each of the phantom accounts we were given the option of saving any associated files in a folder on the desktop.  We selected that option each time but no such folders ever got created, confirming (I suppose) that there were no files associated with that account.

Bill, who takes care of the computers and software for the bakery, installed software on our machines when we first got them and Linda speculated as to whether these phantom accounts might have been inadvertently created at that time.  At this point we will probably never know.  We have strong security systems in place and are reasonably careful in how we interact with the online world, but it was a bit unnerving to find these accounts on our machines.

We were on tap for another warm, humid day and I elected not to do any work on the bus or in the garage.  With the phantom User accounts taken care of I transferred the photos that I received of the custom walnut desk from Jarel from my SG3 phone to my laptop computer and edited them for use on our blog.  I copied recent photos from my DSLR camera to my computer and then settled in to copy blog post drafts from e-mails into Word and edit them.

In the course of the day I did a couple of loads of laundry, worked on the sofa design/drawings, chatted on the ham radio, and took time out to have lunch and dinner, which was the left over Pad Thai.  Having sat for a day or two the dish had absorbed the liquid and, although Linda thought the broccoli was now too soft, I liked it better than when it was freshly made.  I also got to add a generous amount of peanuts, which is how I remember Pad Thai being served in restaurants.  After dinner I started reading “Number Theory and Its History” by Oystein Ore.

 

2015/07/29 (W) Drive Shaft

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

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

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

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

 

2015/07/27 (M) Finish Drawings

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/07/26 (N) Rearranging

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/07/25 (S) Monitoring

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/07/19 (N) Another Buddy Visit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/07/16 (R) RV Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/07/15 (W) Prime Wednesday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/07/11 (S) Impactful Tools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/07/09 (R) Graduation Celebration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/07/07 (T) Field Day Photos

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/07/06 (M) Arrested

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our coaxial cable adapter kit.

Our coaxial cable adapter kit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The current status of the cable entry box.

The current status of the cable entry box.

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

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

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

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

 

2015/07/05 (N) Return to HFM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2015/07/03 (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.

 

 

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.

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 1st, 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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.