Tag Archives: 50A RV electrical hookup

2015/10/20 (T) Pop-X Pickle

It’s a good thing there are still five weeks until we depart for Florida; there are a lot of unfinished items that need to be taken care of on the bus and around the house/property before we go.

When Phil is here my attention tends to be on what he is doing. He really knows his stuff, and is an excellent contractor to work with, but since he is not working from drawn plans there are inevitably questions and discussions about just exactly what it is I want and whether that is the best idea or even doable.

Phil had ordered a load of sandy soil for delivery first thing this morning and the “train” (double trailer) showed up not long after he did. The sandy soil he wanted was not available so he got clean sand instead. The train driver of the backed it over our third culvert and into the part of our yard were Phil wanted the material dumped. That took a lot of skill and was impressive to watch. I took a few photographs but video was really required to capture what was happening. The Sony SLT-a99v does video in several different modes but I am just beginning to learn how to use it as a still camera and did not want to mess around with shooting video. Besides, I am not a videographer; it’s a completely different way of thinking than being a still photographer.

Phil digs the trench for the electrical conduit from the SW corner of the garage to the far side of the driveway extension where he also dug a hole for the post that will support the RV outlet box.

With the material on site Phil was at the point where he needed to dig the trench for the RV electrical feed. That meant I had to quickly make some final decisions. I had an 8 foot 4″x4″ treated post and the PVC conduit pieces I needed to go from the post under the driveway to the other side but not enough to go all the way to the garage. If I only put conduit under the driveway I could cap it, let Phil bury it, and then dig it up later and finish trenching from there to the garage. I would not do that by hand, however, so it would mean having Phil come back next year just to dig this little trench. Although I could have him dig the foundation hole for the ham radio tower at the same time that still did not make any sense to me. Among other considerations I would have to fill the trench in by hand after I ran the cable.

Another option was to still use conduit just under the driveway but go ahead and run direct burial cable like we did two years ago for the pull-through driveway in front of the house. I would need three (120VAC) or four (240/120VAC) large wires (or equivalent service entrance cable, each at least 80 feet long to get from the outlet box location in the post to the riser pipe on the garage and through the wall into a circuit breaker box. Not only would I have to get the wire, which would be expensive, I did not have the outdoor outlet box or other parts I needed, so it would take me quite a while to go buy everything. I also did not know exactly where/how I would feed the circuit. (I had some ideas about that but they depended on just what the electricians do tomorrow.)

The most expeditious, and least expensive, option was to get more conduit and additional fittings and run the conduit all the way from the post to the southwest corner of the garage. I left at 9:30 AM for Lowe’s as Phil started digging the trench and the hole for the post.

At Lowe’s I picked up five more 10′ pieces of 2″ PVC conduit, a 45 degree elbow, another 90 degree elbow, a right angle entry box, and a bag of 2″ conduit clamps. By the time I got back to the house Phil had the post set in place and most of the trench dug. I got all of the conduit pieces laid out on the ground and got the PVC cement, a hack saw, and the rope and weight.

Since Phil could not do anything else on the driveway until the conduit was installed he helped me install it (or vice-versa). We joined 10′ sections to both ends of one of the 90 degree elbows and then dropped the weighted rope through it. We then set the elbow and one of the straight sections in the trench with the elbow at the base of the post and the other straight section going straight up the post where I secured it with two clamps. We proceeded to drop the weighted rope through additional straight sections of conduit, applied PVC cement to the ends, and put them together. The conduit had to be inserted about 3″ into the mating piece and twisted as it went in. I was glad Phil was there to help with this as I did not have the grip strength to do it by myself. (I don’t have a lot of physical limitations but the arthritis in the base of my thumbs makes itself known in specific situations.)

When we got near the southwest corner of the garage we measured and cut a section of straight pipe to get us to a turn in the trench. Because of a decorative grass plant the trench could not go directly to the desired location on the west side of the garage and had to go between the grass plant and a nearby small evergreen bush and then turned towards the garage. We installed a 45 degree elbow to get around the corner and it ended up in the center of the trench. When I said Phil knew what he was doing I meant it. We again measured carefully and cut a short section of straight pipe to get us to a 90 degree elbow that would turn up and bring the conduit out of the trench and up the side of the garage. I measured and cut the vertical riser section and we cemented it into the elbow. We now had a complete run with conduit coming out of the trench vertically on both ends.

Phil back fills the trench for the electrical conduit from the corner of the garage to the RV electrical post.

While Phil used his excavator to scoop and push dirt back into the trench and tamp it down I closed off both ends of the conduit. At the garage end I removed the gasketed cover from the entry box, cut a short piece of 2″ conduit, and put it in the fitting hole on the back side. Next I brought the weighted rope up through the bottom fitting hole of the box and used Gorilla tape to secure it inside the short back pipe. I put a cap on the other end of the short back pipe and then put the entry box on top of the riser sideway. I coiled up the extra rope, taped it inside the box, and put the gasketed cover back on. I did not cement any of these connections. When permanently installed the gasketed cover will point away from the wall and the hole in the back will have a longer piece of paper 2″ conduit cemented in and going through a hole into the wall of the garage.

At the post I used a Rigid brand pipe cutter, designed specifically for cutting large plastic pipe and conduit, to cut off the vertical riser at a convenient height above the top of the post. I threaded the rope through a 3/8″ hole in the center of a 4″ disc of 3/4″ plywood and tied a big knot in it. I modified the 2″ cap by drilling three adjacent holes lengthwise from the bottom up and cutting out material with a hacksaw to make a slot. With the rope hanging over the edge of the conduit I lined up the slot in the cap with the rope and put the cap over the end of the conduit.

Since I decided to not have Phil build the area leading up to the planned barn location I wanted to pull all of the unneeded yellow plastic stakes out of the yard and put them away. Re-staking the layout, however, is a time-consuming task so I put 10″ metal (iron) spikes at the locations of the front corners of the barn and the center point for the curved transition into the driveway. I drove them flush with the soil so Keith would not hit them with his mower but we can find them later with a metal detector.

With the conduit installed and the trench filled and tamped, Phil filled started building the “curbs” for the driveway. He had excavated parts of the driveway path and filled in other areas to create a base for the construction fabric and road gravel that was eight inches below the finish grade. The construction fabric is 12’6″ wide and Phil likes to wrap it up on the sides about 8″ so when he staked out the driveway to be 11′ 2″ wide. Phil used the sand to build up the areas along both sides of the driveway so that it looked like he had cut the driveway out, but that is not, in fact, what he had done.

My main bus project today was cleaning up the kitchen and living room, which mostly involved moving tools back to the garage. It is a confined workspace and tends to get cluttered over time as we fetch tools for this and that. I also wanted to be able to see the desk and its Corian countertop.

Two of the three sets of cushions in place on the new built-in custom walnut sofa/storage base.

I called Butch in Quartzsite, AZ regarding the distributor tester. He suggested that I send him an e-mail requesting Bill’s e-mail address and he would send it in his reply. We then discussed the refrigerator and he suggested that I set the freezer to a colder setting, leave the fresh compartment setting as is, and monitor it for a while to see if it changes. I did that and reset the min/max memory for both compartments.

Phil is not done with the French drain yet and spent part of the afternoon working on that instead of the driveway. He made lots of trips back and forth with the front loader to take the topsoil he had removed to create the driveway, spread it out along on top of the pea gravel that fills the drain trench, and grade it off to blend with the undisturbed yard along either side of the drain. Before he is all done with these two separate, but inter-related projects, he will have to bring in several truckloads of topsoil. It will be used to fill low spots, especially at the west end of the property, and to cover everything that has been disturbed. All of the topsoil will be finish graded to blend into the existing contours of the property and then seeded with grass seed.

The view from the living room looking towards the hallway. The new built-in custom walnut desk has its Corian countertop in place and the new refrigerator is in place next to the built-in custom pull-out pantry.

I did not want to get involved in any complex or time-consuming projects so I hung out on the west half of our yard where Phil was working and took lots of pictures with the new camera. Actually, I had been doing that all day trying to document the work as it progressed. When I wasn’t taking photos I gathered up broken branches and larger deadfall and carried or dragged it to the brush pile on the west side of the line of large fir trees that separate the east and west halves of our five acres.

Linda called around 3:30 and asked me to see if her wallet was on her desk. She thought she had it with her but could not find it. She finally located it in her car where it had been since falling out of her case this morning. She was on her way home by 3:50 PM.

I had a final chat with Phil, who won’t be back until Saturday, and then closed up the bus and the garage. We were headed to Ann Arbor this evening and I needed to get cleaned up and put on nicer, more appropriate clothes for our evening out. I used to wear Oxford shirts and nicer pants every day for work, and sometimes a sport coat and tie or even a suit. These days it’s mostly polo shirts and blue jeans or sometimes REI ripstop nylon convertible cargo pants. And this summer it has mostly been my work jeans and work shirts.

We left around 5:15 PM and were parked in Ann Arbor before 6 PM. We agreed to meet Kate at the Lab Cafe which was just around the corner from the Thompson Street parking garage. (This garage is behind the former Border’s book store #1 which also housed the company’s corporate headquarters. Our daughter started with Border’s as a cashier at this store and within four years was a regional manager for their PaperChase product line before the company imploded and went bankrupt.)

Kate was sending Linda text message updates on her travel status and ETA so we ordered a couple of decaf coffees to go. At $3.75 each they were pricier than we are used to paying for coffee but they were “hand-crafted” and the coffee was very good. It took the barista at least 10 minutes to make our cups, grinding the beans just before brewing and then slowly pouring hot water through individual filter holders after pre-wetting the filters. In the time it took to make our coffee I would have been on my second cup at Panera.

Linda (front) and Kate (behind) take in the interior of one of the Pop-X art exhibit sheds.

The music was too loud and really awful, a bad combination in our opinion, so we sat outside in spite of the occasional attempt to rain. When Kate showed up we walked the short distance to Liberty Park to see the Pop-X Art Exhibit. Organized by the Ann Arbor Art Center, all of the art was displayed in “sheds” designed by an architect, one artist per shed. The sheds were approximately 10 feet square with steep pitched roofs. The roofs, and the two sides they pitched down to, were covered in clear wavy plastic panels to let in a lot of natural light. The back end was solid and the front had a pair of sliding “barn style” doors hung from tracks. There was a solid floor that was elevated relative to ground level and provision for electrical power. They were designed to be sold as potting sheds after the exhibit was removed at the end of the week. Although the light was fading I was still able to get some decent shots with the new Sony a99v DSLT camera. It has much greater light sensitivity than the Sony alpha 100 it is replacing as my primary camera and this was my first opportunity to take advantage of that since getting it.

Our main reason for coming to Ann Arbor was to have dinner with Kate but Pop-X was a nice bonus. Ann Arbor has a LOT of dining options; hundreds I would guess just in the very walkable downtown area. We decided to try the Grizzly Peak Brewing Company after Linda confirmed that they had some things on the menu we could eat. It was a bit of a walk but the rain held off and it was an otherwise pleasant evening.

Linda had a dark Porter with definite chocolate tones and I had a hard cider with distinct cinnamon/vanilla tones. It was also supposed to have roasted pecan notes but I did not detect that. Kate had a red beer that was not hoppy and thought I might have liked it. I had a sip of Linda’s Porter and it was very agreeable. We both had small couscous and greens dinner salads, which were very nice, and both had wild mushroom burgers, which were excellent. Linda said her chips were also very good and my French fries were tasty and generously portioned. Kate had a burger and all of our meals came with pickles. Kate does not care for pickles, which I knew, and does not care for vinegar in general, which I did not know, so Linda and I split her pickle rather than have it go to waste. The waiter was very attentive and a good sport when I asked for a gallon of ketchup for my fries. He brought two very full bottles for the table and a bottle of Frank’s hot sauce. We tipped him accordingly.

At 9:30 PM we started a slow stroll back to the parking garage and chatted a while longer by our cars, which coincidentally were parked very close together. It was 10:40 PM by the time we got home. I fed the cats and we went straight to bed. I was up later than I wanted to be trying to outline this post but I had not had much opportunity to work on it throughout the day.

2015/10/19 (M) Flashless

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Linda was up at 5:45 AM and out the door by 6:15. I woke up but went back to sleep and finally got up at 7:30 and got dressed. I turned on the furnace in the garage and turned up the thermostats in the bus and then had breakfast. Rather than grind up a small quantity of coffee beans and get the coffee maker dirty I had a cup of tea. I retrieved Butch’s e-mail and called Clyde in Canton to arrange pickup of the antique Sun distributor tester that Butch bought from him last night on Ebay. I will drive down Friday to pick it up.

Phil showed up around 8:30 AM, unloaded his front loader, and got to work on the French drain. I went out around 10 AM and talked to him briefly. I then walked through the southwest corner of our property looking for a corner marker. I did not find one but I did discover some REALLY big trees with REALLY BIG vines woven through them. The base of the vines was as big as one of the trees, about 30″ in diameter. I had never seen a vine root that size.

Back at the house I called John Palmer, of Palmer Energy Systems in Florida, to update him on my recent call to Magnum Energy technical support. He said he would talk to Tom in the next couple of days and try to get me the connector (terminal block) I need. We agreed I will call him back on Friday.

Next I called A-1 Upholstery in Elkhart, Indiana and talked to Terry. I ordered a bolster cushion to fill in the space behind the sofa seat cushions and below the sofa back cushions. It will be 6″ high x 4-3/4″ deep x 78″ long and will be one density of firm foam rather than a firm center layer with softer outer layers on top and bottom (like the seat cushions). She will use a plain beige fabric as it will not be visible and so it does not have to match the other sofa cushions. She said it would be ready in early November, which is plenty of time for us to drive down and get it. The price was $125, which sounded like a fair price to me.

I got out my old Sunpak DX-8R ring flash and connected it to one of my Quantum high voltage battery packs but the battery pack appeared to be dead. The two battery packs I have are almost unused but have apparently self-discharged and are now dead. This also happened to my original battery packs. The only flash equipment I have is set up to run off these packs but I am not inclined to replace them again as I do not use them enough to keep them charged which makes it hard to justify the cost as they are expensive. Unfortunately that leaves me, for the moment, without any flash capability for the new Sony SLT-A99V DSLT camera. Buggers.

I sent a TXT message to Joe to let him know that I did not see any indication of axle/hub seal leaks on the inside of the bus wheels. I then called Bill in Mexico, Indiana and left him a message regarding the antique Sun distributor tester. I will drive it at least as far as Elkhart, Indiana when I pick up the bolster from A-1 Upholstery and transfer it to Bill if he can meet me there. There is also the possibility that I will drive it all the way to Bill’s place in Mexico, Indiana and stop by Jarel Beatty’s cabinetry shop in Logansport to have him cut down the connector on the passenger side HVAC duct cover. If I do I will also pick up the drawings for the desk, sofa, and pull-out pantry as long as I am there.

Phil checks the grade of the new driveway extension. The laser level is set up by the utility pole.

I went back outside and walked through the layout of the driveway extension with Phil. He then set up his laser level, took elevation measurements at various points, and made an annotated sketch. He needed to think about the data and figure out what we could actually do given the change in grade from the existing concrete driveway to the road at the third culvert and the need to flatten out before reaching the culvert to tie in with where the barn will (might) eventually go.

Keith, from Kish Lawn Care, showed up around 11 AM to mow the grass. I got out our leaf blower and let Phil know that I would be occupied for a little while with yard work. I blew the leaves off of the rear decks, out from under/around various bushes, and off of the two boulder retaining walls into the yard where Keith could mulch them with his riding lawn mower.

About the time I was done blowing leaves Phil had a plan to discuss. The elevation drops 7-1/2 feet from the concrete driveway (that goes from the street to the garage) to the street at the third culvert some 200 feet away. Phil thought that our best bet was to slope down from the driveway over a distance of 40 feet, level out for 40 feet, and then gently slope down for 70 feet to the area in front of the future barn location. That would leave another 50 feet with a slight drop to get to the street. Some of the area down there will be close to level, however, so another RV could park down there.

We also discussed running power and agreed that I would buy about 40 feet of plastic conduit to get under the level area and headed towards the southwest corner of the garage. We would need the conduit first thing tomorrow morning so I decided I would go to Lowe’s this evening.

I finally got to work in the bus around 1:30 PM. I positioned the sofa seat, secured the piano hinge to the stationary backboard with four screws and then drilled all of the other screw holes using my smallest VIX bit. I installed all of the little screws, dialed back the thermostats, and closed up the bus. My time-on-task was short but it was a big item to check off of my “list.”

The Sunpak DX-8R ring flash can operate on four AA batteries so I put a set in and connected it to the hot shoe on top of the camera. The camera was able to trigger the flash (more than once) but the shots were seriously overexposed. I did not take the time to try and figure out if the flash can be controlled by the camera based on light coming through the lens. If not it won’t be usable in most situations.

It was a mild day with blue skies and white puffy clouds so I took the new camera outside to capture some images of the work Phil is doing. I shot a few frames of the more colorful trees in our yard while I was at it.

Linda texted me at 3:40 PM to let me know she was leaving the bakery and stopping at the store on the way home. Phil continued to find rock, concrete, and brick debris as he dug out the driveway extension. He used the 30″ toothed bucket on his excavator to sift out the larger pieces and pull them into a pile and then used his front loader to put all of it into his dump truck. I got a metal tine rake and raked out some of the smaller stuff, not because it needed to be removed but because I needed to do something physical and wanted to smooth it out to get a better idea of how it will look when finished.

Phil started securing his equipment at 5 PM and we were wrapping up our last discussion of the project for the day when Linda got home at 5:30. After unloading a few groceries she started fixing dinner. Phil took off and I continued raking for another half hour until dinner was ready. Linda served the rest of the polenta with puttanesca sauce and steamed sliced parsnips. I thought we finished the Cupcake Black Forest wine last night but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that we still had enough for our meal this evening.

After dinner I went to The Home Depot looking for a fuel filter for our Cub Cadet lawn tractor. THD sells Cub Cadet equipment but only had generic fuel filters so I did not buy one. I went to Lowe’s, where we get a 5% discount on everything we buy! and bought the following: four 10-foot pieces of 2″ PVC non-conductive conduit, a 90 degree elbow, a coupler, two end caps, 1″ and 1-1/4″ self-drilling screws, an 8′ long pressure treated 4×4′, and a clamp on saw guide. The saw guide was an impulse purchase but I had a $10 Off card for a total purchase of $50 of more. We have struggled with makeshift saw guides all summer and fall and I still have more careful cutting to do. I already have a saw guide but could not find it and should have bought a new one at the beginning of the bus remodeling project.

Phil called the house while I was out so I called him back. He had figured out that extending the driveway to within 10 feet of the front of the proposed bus barn would add 25% to the cost of the project. That was more than I was prepared to spend at this time so we will defer that work until we build the barn, probably in summer 2017. We watched Scorpion and NCIS Los Angeles and then went to bed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

2015/01/01-07 (R-W) Q 2015 W1

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2015/01/01 (R) Hola 2015

The salt restraining tube for the water filter housing. The slotted end (R) goes down and the o-rings sit in the other end.

Having stayed up later than usual last night to see the old year out and welcome the new year in we were in no hurry to get up this morning, especially given that the temperature outside was in the upper 20s. But Linda said she would make her yummy vegan cinnamon rolls for breakfast so I felt obligated to get up and eat them. Besides, it’s my job to make the coffee. The rolls took quite a while to make and we ended up having them for brunch, but they were worth the wait.

I spent much of the morning looking for new games in the iStore. I downloaded a dozen free ones and then started trying them in turn. Most of them immediately tried to sell me a full version or ran a full-screen advertisement each time I tried to start a new round of play. If they did that I immediately deleted the app. I cannot imagine what makes a game developer think someone with tolerate that more than once. At some point I realized that my AppleID was still associated with an old e-mail address so I initiated the process of changing it. The process was not as seamless as I thought it could/would/should be, but I eventually got it sorted out. Or as they say or Doc Martin, “sorted.” As it turned out my credit card information was also out of date so I updated that as well. Obviously I do not make iStore purchases very often.

I needed to regenerate our portable water softener even though it was 48 degrees F outside in the shade. It was, however, comfortable enough in the sun to be able to work. I started at noon cutting the plastic drain pipe that I bought at Herb’s Hardware the other day to a length of 10″ which is the length of a standard water filter. I cut eight 3/8″ slots in the bottom end of the tube and got an O-ring from Butch to fit in the swaged upper end. The purpose of the tube is to hold salt so that incoming water is required to pass through it to get to the softener but the salt crystals cannot actually wash into the softener.

Linda helped me transfer the contents of a 40 pound bag of solar salt to several two-gallon zip lock bags. I then put a small quantity of salt in a one-quart zip lock bag and gently smashed it with a two-pound sledgehammer, although as I write that it seems to be something of an oxymoron. I inserted the tube into the removable filter housing, slotted side down, and poured the salt around the outside of the tube. I smashed a second bag of salt and added it to the housing. I put the housing back on the filter head and slowly ran water through the softener for almost two hours. I got a water hardness test strip from Butch and tested the output of the softener. It was still showing 7 grains of hardness, exactly the same as two days ago. It appeared that the regeneration process had not had any effect. Bummer.

I discussed the situation with Butch and he suggested I back flush the softener. To do that I needed a hose with female hose fittings on each end. This is the kind of hose used to hook up a washing machine but neither one of us had one with us. Butch, however, had a female-female adapter which allowed me to connect a male hose end to a male fitting on the outlet of the water softener. (Backflushing literally means running water through the softener in the reverse direction to flush out any debris that may after gotten in through the normal inlet.)

The salt retaining tube in the filter housing with salt around the bottom outside and the o-ring visible at the top.

After backflushing the softener I tried regenerating it again. This time I used a 26 ounces of fine grain non-iodized table salt. With my homemade diverter tube still in place I added the salt around the outside and screwed the housing back on. I let the salt sit in the housing for 20 minutes to start to make a brine and then ran water through the softener until I got a very salty taste at the output. I then shut the outlet valve and let it sit for 20 minutes. When the time elapsed I ran water through the softener for another 15 seconds, checked it for saltiness, and shut the outlet valve. At the end of another 20 minutes I ran water through it at a very slow rate for 20 minutes and then checked it again for salty taste. It was still slightly salty and as it was getting close to sunset I decided to let it sit overnight. I will finish flushing it tomorrow and check the hardness again.

While I was fussing with our water softener Butch recharged theirs in about 30 minutes. When he tested the water at the end it indicated zero (0) grains of hardness; completely softened. Their softener is different from ours and the regeneration procedure is very straightforward and apparently works. For now I need to figure out a guaranteed procedure for regenerating ours, but long-term I need to figure out some other arrangement of just get a different softener.

The arrangement I am considering would be in conjunction with redoing the water bay. With a different arrangement of tanks I could create space in the bay for the softener, multiple filter housings, and associated plumbing. I could set up an arrangement that would divert the incoming water (after the first/sediment filter) through a clear filter housing into which I could put the salt. That clear housing/head would be permanently modified to force water through the salt and allow me to see when the salt was gone. It would also eliminate the need to remove and reinstall the filter the way I have to now. Alternatively I could put a tank between the filter housing and the softener (instead of the clear housing) and use it as a brine tank. If the tank was big enough to hold a 40 pound bag of solar salt it would work just like a home softening system. Water would sit in the tank with the salt for days so that the brine was ready to use when it was time to regenerate the softener. I could even rig up a separate pump just for pumping the brine into the softener. I’m going to give this a lot of thought before I start changing things around, but last winter in Florida and this winter in Quartzsite have made it very clear that hard water is a problem and we need a very effective and efficient way to deal with it.

While I worked with the water softener Linda began preparing a Tex-Mex bean soup for dinner and then went for a long walk. She finished making the soup when she got back while I took a short nap. It cooled off quickly as the sun set and nothing is quite as satisfying on a cool evening as hearty, hot soup. It also had a bit of red pepper heat which was a nice bonus. It was really good soup.

I had a few e-mails from Gary at BCM and a nice follow-up e-mail from Kathy at the Michigan Assessment Consortium. She attached a copy of their holiday letter so I attached a copy of ours in reply. I spent a little time browsing websites for OTA TV antennas and turbo boost gauges and finally went to bed without resolving what to do about either thing. I have a lot of nights that end like that.

2015/01/02 (F) Crazy Days In Q

Contact is established with our cat, Jasper.

The “show” at Desert Gardens officially opened yesterday and runs through the end of February, so Quartzsite is quickly be transformed into a crazy place. We were chatting with Butch, Fonda, Jim, and Barb after breakfast and Barb reminded us that starting now driving and parking “downtown”, and especially along Kuehn Street south of I-10, during the day will be difficult to impossible. She offered to drive us down in the golf cart and come pick us up if we did not want to walk. She also told us that many vendors will hold purchases for pickup at the end of the day. We exchanged cell phone numbers, which we had not yet done since they arrived. She suggested that if we wanted to eat out we should go early or right before closing as we might not be able to get seated/served otherwise. There’s no doubt that we have lucked out on our arrangements this winter, and the situation just keeps getting better.

Linda was browsing on her iPad and discovered an all vegan grocery store in Rancho Cucamonga, California; the largest all-vegan grocery store in the world. I looked up Rancho Cucamonga on Google Maps and it is located about half way between Los Angeles and San Bernardino. Based on the speeds I like to drive (often just below the speed limit or 68 MPH, whichever is less) it looks like a four hour drive one-way from Q. That’s obviously too far for a regular grocery run, but we might make a day trip in that direction sometime this winter and find the store while we are over there.

One of the things I did after climbing in bed last night was spend a little time looking at the Sure Marine Service website. SMS is a major supplier of repair parts for Webasto diesel-fired hydronic systems headquartered in Seattle, Washington. After studying their parts diagrams I became unclear (and concerned) as to whether the burner we removed from Butch’s old unit was a DBW2010 or a DBW2020. They are very similar but not identical. I am almost certain that our original burner is a DBW2010, but our AHU-xxx Aqua-Hot is so old that the model number is no longer referenced on the website and model specific documentation, like a service manual, is not available for download.

The reason I was looking at the parts diagrams was to identify the bearing kit for the blower as I wanted to order two of them today. What I could tell from the website was that the 2020 is a higher BTU output burner and so one of the differences is that the 2010 uses a 0.35 GPH nozzle while the 2020 uses a 0.60 GPH nozzle. That alone might account for why we seem to have poor combustion, although even money is still on bad bearings. The unresolved issues and the inability to investigate at midnight did not make for a good night’s sleep.

I have the Aqua-Hot service/repair manual for the unit I bought from Butch, both on paper and on my iPad, so I spent some time this morning looking at the iPad version. I could not tell if they used the same bearing parts so I did not order anything today and won’t until I can determine model numbers. I asked Butch if he knew which burner was in the Aqua-Hot I bought from him, but he did not. The service manual shows a Webasto label that identifies the burner model, but does not show where the label is located. More investigation was needed.

After I got dressed I e-mailed Bill Gerrie (RetiredBusNut) in Ontario, Canada with questions about gauges and sending units for our bus engine and transmission. I then started dealing with the water softener. Linda returned from her walk and started preparing lunch, so I emptied the filter housing of the little bit of salt that was still in the bottom, rinsed it clean, re-installed the filter, and let it run for 20 minutes to fully flush out any residual salt water.

Linda made a warm garbanzo bean and kale salad for lunch with lemon juice and garlic. It was the first time she had tried this recipe and we both agreed it was a keeper. After lunch I tested the hardness of the water coming out of the softener and it registered on the test strip between zero (completely soft) and 1.5 (definitely soft) so I dumped the remaining (hard) water in the fresh water tank and refilled it with 120 gallons of nice, soft water. After the tank was full I retested the water coming out of the softener and got the same reading as before. Finally, some good news on the water softener front.

With water softening taken care of (for now) I did an online search for a panoramic camera tripod head. I really like shooting panoramas and the Microsoft Image Composite Editor (MS-ICE) does a remarkable job stitching images together. Most of my panoramas have been handheld, which makes the performance of MS-ICE all the more impressive. I have shot a few panoramas using a tripod but without a nodal point (spherical) pan head, so that is what I was searching for online. B&H Photo had a Manfrotto on sale for $280, marked down from $600, but their order desk was closing for the day and I did not want to be rushed making this decision so I did not order it. They will reopen tomorrow, so I will think about it overnight and do some more research.

I got our old Webasto burner out of the front bay and found the label. It is, indeed, a DBW2010, specifically a DBW2010.75 with a 0.35 GPH nozzle rated at 45,000 BTU. Linda recorded the details, including the serial number, and then helped me rewrap it in bubble wrap so I could put back in its storage pail.

Linda then went to Parker, Arizona with Butch and Fonda to check out the Safeway grocery store and look for some things at Walmart. The Parker Safeway was supposed to carry Daiya vegan cheese products but they were nowhere to be found. It appears that our closest source will be Whole Foods. There are five of them in the greater Phoenix area but that is a two hour drive one way.

While the three amigos were gone I removed the cover from the Aqua-Hot in our coach and found its label. Much to my relief it is also a Webasto DBW2010.75, 45,000 BTU. It should also have a 0.35 GPH nozzle, and probably does, but I did not pull the burner out to check. I noticed some soot on the final fuel filter inside the housing and in other places so that gave me something new to be concerned about. I was pondering the situation when Jim and Barb and Roho came over to visit and we had a good long chat. When they went back to their motorhome I put the cover back on the Aqua-Hot and put all of my tools away.

My plan for tomorrow is to turn the Aqua-Hot off, let it cool down, and pull the burner to check the nozzle. It’s possible, though not likely, that I do not have the burner seated quite right and there’s a chance, though very small, that reinstalling it will fix, or least improve the performance. My money (literally) is still on the blower bearings. Hopefully it does not also need a new motor as everything on a Webasto is more expensive than seems reasonable. It’s another fine example of precision German engineering and manufacturing.

Even though I have quite a few e-mail addresses that I use to segregate electronic correspondence into manageable categories my inboxes still end up flooded with e-mails. Very few of them are spam—we have good spam filtering on all of the accounts—but some of the highest volume inbound traffic is notifications of things like failed login attempts on WordPress websites. Those e-mails do not get replies and often do not require any specific action on my part, but they sometimes obscure the presence of other e-mails that do require my attention.

Microsoft Outlook is able to deal with incoming (and outgoing) e-mails based on user-defined “rules” but I had never played with that feature until today. I used the online help system to read about the whys and wherefores of e-mail rules and then tried creating some. Once I understood what I was trying to accomplish it was mostly point and click to get it done, with a little typing thrown in. What I ended up doing was creating sender/subject subfolders under the inbox of certain accounts and then creating a rule for each subfolder that directs incoming e-mails matching the criteria to the correct folder. By keeping the sub folders under the inbox folder it will be clear to me that these are e-mails that I have received but not yet dealt with.

For dinner Linda made a cooked shredded Brussels’ Sprouts dish with tomatoes, dried cranberries, and pistachios and served it alongside the leftover Mexican rice with a glass of sangria. Ole! We agreed that both of these dishes were keepers and went well with the fruity wine. The rest of the evening was quiet. Linda read and played her online games while I finished up working on this post. I finally went to bed and started reading the service and repair manuals for the Aqua-Hot system and the Webasto burner. According to the long-term weather forecast tonight should be our last night with an overnight low temperature below freezing.

A few of the vendors at Desert Gardens, Quartzsite, AZ.

2015/01/03 (S) Hammer Stahl

I got up at 6:30 AM today. I had been awake for a while before that and had some things I needed/wanted to do on my computer. These were quiet tasks that I could do in the front of the coach, with the heat turned up, without disturbing Linda.

I always check my e-mail first. There was a group message from Hillary at RVillage to all of the Ambassadors regarding a new feature they will be rolling out soon and seeking our assistance. I mentioned this to Linda when she got up and we watched the two YouTube videos. We did not have time today but will work on it tomorrow in advance of a 5 PM (4 PM PST) web meeting.

My first project today was updating the spreadsheet I maintain for our FMCA Freethinkers Chapter, which I started working on last night. The chapter treasurer maintains our checking account but as the secretary I maintain the records including the roster and who has paid their dues for what years. Because I have all of those details I also generate the quarterly and annual financial statements. I entered the information for dues payments that had been received between November 1 and December 31. I then added the five worksheets for 2015 (four quarters and year), which tie together and link back to the 2014 statement, and updated the cumulative financial statement.

Linda got up so I put my work aside to make coffee while she made breakfast. We had a few bananas that were ripe so she made green smoothies for breakfast. We happen to like kale but if we didn’t, green smoothies would be an excellent way to get our daily dose along with several other healthy ingredients.

We talked about visiting the market area today and decided to go later when it was a bit warmer. The temperature a 9AM was still only 40 degrees F so Linda bundled up and went for her morning walk while I continued to work on my spreadsheet.

Once I finished the spreadsheet I worked outside for a bit. I removed the cover from the burner end of the Aqua-Hot while it was running to check for an exhaust leak (sight, smell, touch) but I could not detect one. When the cycle finished I turned the burner off. My plan was to let the unit cool off and then remove the burner to check the nozzle size and do a general inspection of the combustion chamber and visible parts, but that did not happen today.

What I did instead was return to my computer and start putting Webasto repair parts in my shopping cart on the Sure Marine Service website. The bearings on the installed burner are definitely whining and need to be replaced. They are supposed to be replaced regularly anyway, so I put two sets in the cart. It is very likely that they are causing the motor to run slow which means insufficient combustion air, and possibly lower fuel pressure, leading to the dark smoky exhaust. I also put a fuel solenoid valve in the cart. There is a good chance that the valve and/or the solenoid are not working on the other burner. There’s also a chance that the ignition coil has failed, but the solenoid valve costs 1/2 as much as the coil, so I’m hoping it’s the valve. I got the order submitted with UPS ground shipping and used PayPal to make the payment.

Once I completed the SMS order I loaded the B&H Photo app onto my iPad and spent quite a bit of time going between their website and the Sony online store trying to figure out if I should order a panoramic tripod head and/or new camera, possibly with a lens and flash unit. Sony has the Alpha 99 FF body marked down from $2,800 to $1,900 with the vertical grip and an extra battery thrown into the deal, an additional $500+ value. They will also bundle in the SAM 28-75mm f/2.8 lens for $400. The lens by itself is normally $900, so that’s another $500 savings.

So for $2,500 I could get $4,200 worth of Sony’s top-of-the-line “flagship” DSLR (DSLT, actually) equipment, except for one thing; it was all on back order with an ESTIMATED ship date of February 4, 2015. That’s my birthday, so if it actually shipped on that date it would be quite the birthday present, but if it was delayed very much there would be the very real possibility of it arriving at our location in Q after we had left. Not good.

So what about B&H Photo? It turns out that they (claim to) have all of these pieces in stock and they are selling the body with the added pieces for the same price as Sony, but they are not offering the lens at the bundled price. That was the deal breaker that saved me spending a lot of money today. Besides, I have been waiting a long time for Sony to officially announce and the ship the new (rumored) flagship alpha a99-II with its 36MP FF 35mm sensor and long list of awesome features. To decide now to by prior generation technology it would have to be a very attractive deal, much better than what I was seeing online.

I ended up ordering a Manfrotto Nodal Point Pro panoramic tripod mount from B&H. It should be here by the end of the week. When it arrives I think we will hike up to the top of “Q Mountain” and try to capture the true essence of Quartzsite in the winter, which is RVs from horizon to horizon.

We headed down to the market area on Kuehn Street with Butch and Fonda and walked around for a couple of hours in the Tyson Wells Show grounds north of Kuehn Street and west of Central Avenue (US-95). This particular market area had really filled up with vendors in the last few days. Linda bought a nice white apron and really nice Hammer Stahl 5.5″ Santoku knife. She checked online when we got back and she paid about 55% of the MSRP on the HS website. She bought it from Cutlery by LeClaire, which also has a website, and has it on sale for $20 more than the price on the HS website, marked down $20 from their “regular” price. The point is, she got it for what appears to be a good price of $59 and it came in a nice box with a ceramic sharpener thrown into the deal.

We drove farther west on Kuehn Street and pulled into the Desert Gardens show grounds. It was getting near sunset, so we did not stay long, but Linda and I walked enough of it to get a feeling for the place. It was a “rougher” setup than Tyson Wells and many of the booths were selling large, rough rocks and gemstones. The vendors also had a lot more equipment set up and were using it to process materials. We’ll be back, probably more than once, and earlier in the day so we can spend more time.

When we got back to our motorcoaches Fonda came over and worked with Linda for a little while on their business records. We then had a nice salad and some of the spicy bean and pasta soup (that Linda made the other day) with crackers and sangria. I spent more time after dinner researching stuff on my iPad and working on this post.

We appear to be in one of the few places in the country that is not getting clobbered by bad weather. The temperature is not even supposed to drop below freezing overnight. It will still be cool tomorrow, however, and we did make specific plans before going to bed.

A view of “Q” Mountain from the Desert Gardens Show area.

2015/01/04 (N) Our Village

We had vegan pancakes for breakfast which prompted me to suggest that Linda invent some recipes, even if they are interesting and successful variations on existing ones, and feed them to our grand-daughter. Linda could put them on our website using the WP Ultimate Recipe plug-in and, if they met with her approval, name they after “Bitty” (youngest grand-daughter’s latest nickname, although I think I will always prefer “Schmoo”). Perhaps Pancakes Madeline; Sautéed greens a la Madeline; Pasta Madeline; or Madeline’s vegan mac and cheese. Being retired gives me a lot of time to think.

Joe’s brother, Jim L., finally returned from Nevada today and was able to get the park model trailer unlocked. Barb has been wanting to get in and clean it since she and Jim (different Jim) arrived. Barb is a keep busy kind of gal. She is responsible for maintaining the apartment and laundry room while she is here and told Connie she would also do some deep cleaning on their house trailer, so it’s been bugging her that she could not get in to do it. As for my part, all I did was lock the door on the trailer the way Connie asked me to. Barb and Jim (husband) had lots of keys but could not get any of them to work.

Today was shower day. This is always more of a production than we would like because we keep the cats’ litter tray in the shower. Most of the time that works really well—it is out of the way and contains any mess they might make—but it is inconvenient when we want to use the shower for its intended purpose. Besides pulling the tray out into the hall by the bathroom door we have to clean up any stray litter in the shower to make sure it does not end up in the gray water waste tank. Litter tray or not we still have to spray the shower walls when we are done, squeegee off the glass door, let everything dry, and then reassemble it as a giant cat litter box. But it works and it’s one of the compromises we willingly make to live with our cats in so few square feet.

Once I was dressed I went outside to chat with Jim L. (Joe’s brother) and we discussed the possibility of upgrading the electrical service at our site to “50 Amp” (240VAC, 50A, 4-wire, the equivalent of a 120VAC, 100A residential service). It’s not an issue for us right now as the cool weather has us burning diesel fuel to make space heat, but once the weather turns warm we may need our air-conditioners. We have three but can only run one on a “30A” service and still have enough power to run other things. A 30A service is just what it says; 30A of current at 120VAC. A “50A” RV service is slightly more than three times that amount of power.

The electrical hookups here are very interesting. Perhaps all RV park power pedestals work the same way, but I have never looked inside one so I don’t know. The meter is at the top and the area below it has a top-hinged cover. Under the cover are three panels about 3″ wide and 15″ tall. The panels have an outlet towards the bottom and a circuit breaker near the midpoint. Behind the panels are busses for the hot, neutral and ground with male blade connectors. The panels have female blade connectors that engage their male counterparts when the panel is slipped and then hinged into place. It is secured with a single screw. If Jim L. can find a 50A panel all we will have to do is unscrew and remove the 30A panel and plug in the new one, once we verify that 240 VAC (L1& L2) are present in the box and wired to the distribution busses.

Instead of her usual morning walk Linda setup her laptop on the dinette table and worked on accounting and tax issues for Butch and Fonda. I set my laptop there as well to work on the roster for our FMCA Freethinkers Chapter and Jasper got in between us, so we had a nice, cozy computing session. When I placed my order with B&H Photo yesterday I checked a box to receive shipping status information via TXT message. I got one this morning letting me know that my package had shipped from NYC. Cool.

With accounting chores done for now Linda prepared vegan hot dogs with mustard, onion, and relish for lunch. She then went for a long walk while I stayed at the coach and worked with a new feature on the RVillage website. I was posting a lot of suggestions to the topic thread on the Ambassador forum and got a phone call from Curtis, the founder/CEO of RVillage. We had a long chat and I was still on the phone with him when Linda got back. I worked with the website some more and at 5:00 PM we connected to an Ambassador meeting using GoToMeeting on my computer. This is a very exciting new feature and I think RVillagers and RV-related businesses are really going to like it once they know about it and see how it works.

Linda made mock (vegan) stroganoff for dinner. She normally uses Basmati but the only rice she had enough of was Texmati so she used that. Although I did not care for the texture of the Texmati in this dish (a bit crunchy), the taste was still very good. This dish requires real cooking, which means it makes a real mess. By the time everything was cleaned up and put away it was 8 PM and we were both tired. I continued to research engine and transmission gauges while Linda read and played word games. I also revisited the SonyAlphaRumors website but there was absolutely NO new information on the a99-II. I went to bed wondering if this camera will ever actually exist. Based on the comments I see online I am not the only one wondering if this camera will ever be a reality.

One of the hundreds of vendors at the Tyson Wells market area in Q.

2015/01/05 (M) VSWR 1.0

Yesterday we finished up the coffees we have been using since we left Michigan at the end of November so this morning I had to open new bags and transfer the contents from their vacuum sealed bags to our metal storage canisters. I had Teeko’s roast Ethiopian Yirgacheffe regular and decaffeinated separately, so I opened 1/2 pound bags of each. I also opened a 1/2 pound bag of our special Sweet Seattle Dreams, which is 1/2 Sweet Dreams (decaf) and 1/2 Seattle Blend (regular). I then made a pot of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe 1/2-n-1/2 while Linda prepared our granola with fresh bananas and fresh blueberries.

Linda went for her morning walk while I continued to do online research regarding the enigma known as the Sony a99-II DSLT camera and the supposedly discontinued, but apparently still very much available, Sony alpha a99. If I did not already have a nice assortment of compatible Minolta A-mount lenses and flash equipment I think I would stop wasting my time with Sony cameras. But I do, and so I continue to wait and be frustrated along with thousands of other “enthusiast” (sub-professional) photographers. Because Sony builds the image stabilization (anti-shake) feature into the alpha bodies instead of the A-mount lenses the feature is available even with older Minolta lenses and the new lenses are slightly less complicated and less expensive than the Nikon and Canon lenses, which have the image stabilization built into each lens. I think this was one of Sony’s best innovations.

I also continued to look at automotive gauges and sending units and decided to call Bill Gerrie (in Ontario, Canada) to follow up on his reply to an e-mail I sent a few days ago. We had a great chat and he was able to clarify some things and add quite a bit of specificity to his written reply. As a result I have a pretty good idea of what I am looking for; now it’s just a matter of finding it and deciding to place the order.

I was starting to work at my computer when Linda returned from her walk. She eventually fixed a couple of vegan hot dogs wrapped up in tortillas with mustard, onions, and relish. As I was finishing my meal I got a call from Gary Hatt at BCM. He recently acquired an Eagle bus conversion and had some questions about the air-conditioners and the Aqua-Hot. He plans to be in Quartzsite next to week and we are looking forward to finally meeting in person since I have been writing articles for the magazine for almost two years.

Linda has been having a problem with the brightness (or lack thereof) of the touch screen on her 19 month old Windows 8.1 Samsung laptop. It will go very dim for no apparent reason and cannot be adjusted. There was a driver update available for the Intel HD Graphics processor so we downloaded it, installed it, and re-started her computer. The screen was now bright, which was more useful than dim, but still not adjustable. That could be a coincidence or a fix, we will have to wait and see. Even though it was working (for now) I drove to the local Family Dollar and bought an HDMI cable and some lightly carbonated water. (The water had nothing to do with Linda’s laptop computer display, we were just low on sparkling water.) The cable will allow us to connect her computer to one of our two flat panel LCD (LED) TV/monitors if needed. (We did that after dinner and it worked, mirroring the built-in display to the monitor and setting the resolution to match the monitor’s 1900x1080p native mode. But it also caused the built-in monitor to dim, although not as much as before. When we turned off the monitor and unplugged it the built-in display did not return to full brightness.)

Mid-afternoon I saw Butch working on his Tarheel screwdriver antenna so I inquired as to what he was doing. He had connected his MFJ VSWR meter to it through a six foot length of coax. He had also unplugged the control harness for the tuning motor and rigged up a temporary switch to extend and retract the antenna. He had done this because he was getting meter readings when connected through the installed coax that indicated the antenna was not resonant at any frequency or that the meter was not working correctly. I climbed up on his ladder to have a look and saw VSWRs that were often greater than 31:1, and never fell below 10:1, with complex impedances that were rarely 50 ohms and with both resistance and reactance values that were all over the place. Clearly something was not right. It was not his installed coax and I was fairly certain I was not his meter, which I had used back at their house to check the VSWR on his CB and 2m ham antennas.

I climbed onto the roof of their bus so it would be easier to reach things and I could work sitting down. We tried adding a ground strap as a counterpoise but it didn’t help. Butch then grounded the strap to the chassis at the motor but that did not help either. Our concern was that the antenna was not sufficiently bonded (grounded) to the roof but nothing we tried made any difference. I decided to set the antenna to its shortest length (highest operating frequency), set the meter to a lower frequency, and then slowly lengthen the antenna, thereby lowering the operating frequency, while looking for some sort of response on the meter.

I got no change on the meter and finally realized that the antenna (via the meter) was behaving as though it was not grounded. I noticed what looked like a thick washer between the SO-239 antenna connector and the base mounting plate of the antenna. The mounting plate is the ground reference for the antenna and is connected to the base of the antenna through a coil of insulated wire (an inductor) known as a base loading coil. The spacer was a plastic insulator that was, indeed, preventing the case of the SO-239 antenna socket from making contact with the mounting plate. As a result the antenna was not grounded through the coax cable shield, preventing the meter from obtaining meaningful readings.

We removed the antenna connector, removed the insulated spacer, reassembled the connector to the antenna, reattached the coax and meter, and took additional measurements. This time we got excellent readings that made very good sense. We checked the upper bound, lower bound, and the midpoint of most of the high frequency (HF) ham bands and were always able to obtain VSWRs of 1.3:1 or less, which was excellent. Butch had been considering redoing the mounting of the large motorized fold-over base so it was a good thing we figured this out as it saved him a lot of unnecessary work. If I can solve one problem without creating others I figure it’s a good day. BTW: VSWR stands for Voltage Standing Wave Ratio and 1.0 is not a beta version, it is shorthand for a ratio of one-to-one (1:1), which is the best SWR you can have. Anything below 1.5:1 is considered excellent, below 2.0:1 good, and below 3.0:1 usable if that’s the best you can do.

Chayote is a fruit that is a member of the squash family and is related to other gourds such as melons and cucumbers. Linda bought one last week when we went to Albertson’s grocery store in Blythe, California and decided to prepare it for dinner tonight. She sliced it into long thin broad strips and sautéed them with onions, oregano, salt, and pepper. She served it alongside the leftover mock (vegan) stroganoff with a glass of sangria. Our wine friends can cringe all they want; we find the Vella and Franzia boxed wines generally agreeable and the sangrias go surprisingly well with a variety of dishes. And it has me drinking red wine, so it’s healthy too!

We lost our WiFi connection this evening. Not sure why. The wireless gateway still shows up in the WFR list but won’t associate with the WFR. Butch had the same problem at the same time so something obviously changed. We will ask Barb to open the trailer tomorrow, or get Jim to do it if she is not comfortable, so we can reset the gateway. Hopefully that will do the trick.

The sunsets in Quartzsite are amazing almost every night. This shot was taken from our campsite in Q.

2015/01/06 (T) You’ve Got Mail (Maybe)

Our mail situation here is interesting. Remember that, per our Jamaican tour guide, we do not have problems, only situations, and situations are easier to deal with if I regard them as interesting rather than annoying. With regards to receiving mail, the “situation” is as follows. Although every structure in town has a street address—necessary for police, fire, EMS, trash collection, and other municipal services—the Quartzsite post office does not deliver mail to said locations. They have an annex building on the northeast side of town that is nothing but P. O. boxes and all of the locals, and a lot of seasonal residents (including Joe and Connie, who own the property where we are staying) have a P. O. Box.

Where things get interesting is that the main post office and the street addresses are associated with one ZIP code but the P. O. boxes have a different ZIP code. If something is coming to us via UPS or FEDEX we have to use the street address and associated ZIP code, but if it is being mailed to us USPS we have to use the P. O. Box number and associated ZIP code, or have it sent c/o General Delivery using the main ZIP code. To confuse matters further, Joe and Connie had to return to Nevada because of Joe’s health and are having their Quartzsite mail forwarded back to their home, so we cannot have mail sent to us “care of” them as we originally planned as it just gets forwarded to Nevada. Outbound mail does not appear to be a problem, but then why would it be?

The other situation that developed yesterday was that our WiFiRanger Mobile Ti disconnected from Joe and Connie’s WiFi (DSL) gateway and would not reconnect. The WFR is telling us that the WPA password may be incorrect, but that is unlikely as we have been using it since we arrived last month, as have Butch and Fonda who also lost their connection yesterday and could not reestablish it. The evidence suggests that the gateway needs to be reset. Why? Who knows? DSL gremlins perhaps. Or mischievous Internet fairies. Or a problem with the local DSL service? Or perhaps Butch keyed up his 600 Watt linear HF ham radio amplifier and blew out every wireless DSL router within a quarter mile? Whatever the cause, once we can get Barb or (brother) Jim to open the trailer we will power cycle the gateway and see if that restores our ability to connect to it.

In the meantime, in order to get online last night and again this morning, we turned on our Verizon MiFi. The Verizon signal here is strong and steady, and the data rate is much faster than the DSL/WiFi connection, but we only have a 4 GB data plan so we tend to use WiFi when available. It is not always available, of course, especially while traveling (and especially if we are boondocking at Wally World or other such locations) and when it is available it is not always reliable or is so slow as to be useless. This can be the situation, for instance, at larger RV rallies and even some RV parks.

So we logged into our Verizon Wireless account, looked at our current plan, and saw that for a mere $10 more per month we could increase our data plan from 4 GB to 10 GB. The cost for exceeding your monthly data plan limit is $15/GB, so the extra $10/month was a no-brainer. And VZW made it soooo easy to change our plan (once we were logged in); just click the data plan we want, review changes to our account, and click “Apply Changes.” Done; they have our money and we have more data allocation. Interestingly, they upped our data allocation immediately for the current billing cycle, which is Dec 20 – Jan 19, and added the $10 to the bill we will receive for that cycle. No pro-rating going on here, but then we can use the whole 10 GB if we want/need to.

Interestingly the cost to go from 10 GB to 15 GB was an additional $20/month, so the 10 GB plan seems to be a sweet spot after which you pay a premium for additional access. On the one hand Verizon wants to sell you data bandwidth but on the other hand there is a finite amount of data they can move through their network, so if you want to use a larger chunk of their capacity it figures that it would come with premium pricing.

Until a few months ago Millenicom was reselling 20 GB MiFi plans (on Verizon’s network) for $70. It was the best deal around; a sufficient amount of data for the same price we were paying Verizon for only 4 GB. Kind of unfair, when I think about it. Well, Verizon decided to stop selling bulk capacity to Millenicom (and other MVNAs?), took all of the accounts in-house, and Millenicom went out of business. Not really a big surprise when you think about it. Verizon also notified those customers (as I understand the situation) of their “options” which were not, apparently, as attractive as the deal they had with Millenicom. Not really a big surprise when you think about it.

Anyway, we will see how we do with 10 GB/month while we are on the road. We can change back to our 4GB plan when we get home, but I doubt that we will, and we can increase it to 15, 20, or even more GB per billing cycle if we need to, but that is unlikely. We have an AT&T landline at home with DSL service that provides an “always on” Internet connection (when it works). It has a 150 GB/month data allowance and allows us to monitor and control our whole house generator and WiFi thermostat. We have discussed adding a security system and a personal weather station linked in to Weather Underground’s Wundermap when we get home. I don’t think our DSL connection is fast enough, however, that we could use 150 GB in a month if we tried.

Linda went for her morning walk and I made a quick run to Barry’s Breads. Barry is a really nice older gentleman who has a small bakery stand on the north side of Kuehn Street east of Central Avenue. Just behind the stand, however, is a larger trailer in which he bakes all of his products. Those products include breads, rolls, savory items, and sweet goods. Most of his products use butter, cream cheese, cheddar cheese, or ranch dressing, but his Basic Bread is just that, flour, water, sugar, salt, and yeast. I have had some difficulty figuring out what time of day to stop by but this morning he finally had loaves of bread, and some hamburger buns made from the same recipe, so I bought a loaf and a pack of four buns.

When I got back I started working on another article for Bus Conversion Magazine. A little over a year ago I installed an RV-Critter Guard to seal around the shorepower cord and water hose where they enter the utility bay through the floor. I took a few pictures during the installation and have had the article on my “future” list ever since. By the time Linda got back from her walk I had the article mostly finished and was starting to look at the photographs.

She had stopped at the Salvation Army store, which was open, to use their facilities and ended up buying a grocery bag full of clothes for $1. Not $1/item, $1 for the entire bag. Most of the items were tagged with color codes indicating prices of one or more dollars each but they had too much inventory and needed to move some product. They told Linda that when that happens they have their $1 bag sale. Deal. She called Butch and Fonda to let them know and I think they headed there before going to check the post office box and then stop at the post office if needed.

Linda cooked a couple of our Boca vegan mock hamburger patties and served them with fresh sliced onion, lettuce, and pickles on two of the buns I had just purchased. Not an entirely WFPB meal, but very few of our meals are. Still, we try to get as much plant-based whole foods as we can every day.

Linda went for a second walk after lunch and headed down Central Avenue towards the Kuehn Street markets. She is so fond of her 5.5″ Hammer Stahl Santoku knife that she wanted to buy the 3.5″ paring knife if Cutlery by LeClaire had it for sale as an individual item.

While Linda was gone I finished working on the photos for my RV-Critter Guard article. When she returned from her walk she had both the Hammer Stahl 3.5″ Paring Knife AND the 3.0″ Birdsbeak Paring Knife. As we learned the other day from an Alton Brown video paring is actually a technique in which food is held in one hand and a knife in the other; no cutting board is involved. Paring knives are generally smaller with a shorter blade and most of the weight is in the handle, allowing very fine control of the cutting edge and tip.

The Birdsbeak is a particularly interesting and unusual knife. The bottom/cutting edge is slightly concave rather than convex like the classic chef knife. The bottom edge joins the top edge in a point with a shape that resembles certain types of curved bird beaks. In use, the knife is often held stationary and the food is pressed or turned into it, such as decorative peeling, pitting of fruit, or slicing strawberries. Linda is often reluctant to spend money on herself so I think it’s nice that she found something she wanted and made the decision to buy it. Like any high quality tool it will make the work it is designed to do easier and more enjoyable.

While I was uploading my article to our Dropbox Linda went outside to sit. Barb wandered over and I mentioned that the DSL wireless Internet gateway had quit working. She let me in the trailer where I found it sitting on the dining room table. I powered it off, waited 60 seconds, and powered it back on. All of the status lights came back on in the expected sequence and I was once again able to connect our WiFiRanger Mobile Ti to it. We ended up standing by their Country Coach Intrigue motorhome and having a long chat.

Butch and Fonda were gone for most of the afternoon so we only got to chat for a little while when they returned before the sun dropped behind the southwestern mountains and the temperature dropped along with it. Linda and I talked about going out to dinner, which we have only done once since we got here, but she remembered that we had a FedEx package scheduled for delivery today and that it might arrive as late as 8 PM. So we had leftover soup with crackers and sangria. This was the third and final meal we got out of this pot of soup and it was good to the last drop. It was a packaged mix but Linda thinks she can recreate it; getting the spices right will be the tricky part.

After dinner I read DSLR reviews on the Digital Photography Reviews website and continued to look at gauges and sending units for the bus. Around 8:30 PM I was having trouble staying awake but by 9 PM I had gotten my second wind and decided to write another short article for BCM. This one was on the failure of Butch and Fonda’s main engine air-compressor on the drive down, how he dealt with it on the road, and eventually ended up installing a rebuilt one here at our campsite in Quartzsite. I had the article written by 11 PM and decided to work on the photos tomorrow.

Sunset envelopes our coach as Linda prepares dinner.

2015/01/07 (W) Catch 22

My main pair of reading glasses broke yesterday; not the lenses or the frame, but one of the nose pads. Well, not the actual pad, but the small plate and mounting loop, specifically the mounting loop. I was cleaning them and the whole assembly fell out. The loop was split and had opened up. The loop was a very small and delicate piece of ductile metal so I squeezed it back into a circle. I removed the very tiny retaining screw, reinserted the mounting loop, and put the screw back in. I was able to do this using only the tools available on my Leatherman. The repair did not hold and it fell out again last night. This time a piece of the loop broke off so the only repair will be a new mounting pad if I can find one. There is a Wal-Mart in Parker that probably has an optical shop but I don’t know how universal this mounting system is.

I checked the level of the floor and counter in the kitchen last night and the coach appears to have settled slightly on the driver side. Not a lot, but enough that I can feel it and it registers on the level. I generally have to start the main engine and build up full air pressure in order to level the coach but I thought today would be a good day to finally pull the portable air compressor out of the car and see if the leveling system will work without the main engine running. As it turned out that did not happen today because we ended up driving to Parker, Arizona.

Our destination in Parker was the Wal-Mart. The store did not have an optical department but we found an eyeglass repair kit in the pharmacy area with a pair of screw-in pads and a pair of snap-in pads. They also had a repair kit with a tiny screwdriver, spare screws, and other parts. Between the two kits I was able to install a new pad in the car to replace the broken one. That saved us a trip the optical shop in town.

Parker sits on the Arizona side of the Colorado River which is the boundary with California. We decided to drive across and then take CA-62 over to US-95, follow it south along the River back down to Blythe, and then take I-10 back to Quartzsite. Butch called while we were in Parker to let us know that there was a Farmer’s market at Desert Gardens. It operates on Wednesdays from 8 AM to noon so we did not make it back in time but resolved to go in future weeks.

I worked on my “roadside repair” article for BCM while Linda went for a walk. Jim and Barb had gone to Blythe to buy a new faucet and Jim L. stopped by and helped Jim B. install it. They borrowed a caulk gun from us (we carry two in the bay) but had to go buy caulk. UPS showed up with yet another package for us, after which we had a long conversation about the inadequacies (incompetence) of the U. S. Post Office in Quartzsite. (The UPS driver told me that both UPS and FedEx have extra drivers and trucks delivering into Quartzsite during the peak season. What a novel idea.)

Back to the post office. We are waiting for a shipment of two bottles of water hardness test strips that we ordered through Amazon but were shipped via USPS by a swimming pool supply company in Elkhart, Indiana. I gave them the P. O. Box here in Q since the post office does not deliver mail to street addresses and it appears that they will likely get returned to the sender rather than delivered to us. The root cause of the problem (and it is a problem) is that Joe and Connie are having their mail forwarded to their home in Nevada. If their names are not on the mail the post office won’t put it in the box, but if their names are on the mail it still does not get put in the box, it gets sent to Nevada. So as of now the box is sitting there but cannot be used; a genuine “catch 22.”

Fine, we will just use General Delivery. The problem with that (and it is a problem) is that you can only pick up the GD Mail at the Quartzsite post office between 11AM and 1 PM, and there are untold numbers of people trying to do the same thing. That means ridiculously long lines and ridiculously long waits. Considering that the influx of seasonal “residents” to Quartzsite has been going on for over 30 years the postal “service” has had ample time to figure out how to handle the situation. I mean, Amazon practically runs its holiday operations with seasonal employees, many of whom are RVers. Gee, I wonder if there are any RVers around Quartzsite this time of year. While the post office is trying to figure out how to not deliver our mail we have two more UPS shipments scheduled to arrive on Friday.

Linda made a zoodle dish for dinner. She used her SpiraLife to turn a zucchini into long thin strips which she cut into 6″ lengths and then used like spaghetti in the dish. The other ingredients were onions, garlic, mushrooms, asparagus, and green beans. Everything got sautéed in a pan with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. We had a glass of Lamb’s Valley Organic Sweet White wine and it was a lovely meal.

After dinner I put the finishing touches on my BCM air-compressor repair article and e-mailed it to Butch to proof-read. The only thing worse than writing an article that makes me look stupid is writing one that makes someone else look stupid, especially a friend.

I had an e-mail from Gary, the publisher of BCM, letting me know that the December 2014 issue was finally available online. I downloaded both the SD and the HD versions. I then clipped the cover from the SD version, pasted it into MS Paint, and saved it as a JPEG file. I opened it in Faststone Image Viewer, resized it to a thumbnail, and sharpened it. I then edited the BCM page on our website, adding the thumbnail image, the title of my article, and a brief description. I have a similar entry on that page for every issue in which I gave had an article, starting with the February 2013 issue. The December 2014 article was my 14th in 23 months.

The last glow of this sunset reflects off the passenger side of our motorcoach in Quartzsite, AZ.

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Tag Archives: 50A RV electrical hookup

2015/10/20 (T) Pop-X Pickle

2015/10/19 (M) Flashless

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

2015/01/01-07 (R-W) Q 2015 W1