Tag Archives: Brighton Honda

2016/04/21-25 (R–M) Bad Brakes & More

2016/04/21 (R) More Bad Brakes

[NOTE: There are no photos for these posts.]

We were up before 8 AM, had coffee in the living room by the warmth and glow of the fireplace, and had fruit for breakfast around 8:45 AM. We left at 9:40 to take my car to Brighton Honda for its 110,000 mile service appointment at 10 AM. Linda followed me in the Civic to drive me back to the house but as long as we were that close to Brighton we decided to go to the Verizon corporate store. To our surprise, the store was permanently closed. We were pretty sure there was still an “authorized retailer” a little farther down on Grand River Avenue (which never made any sense to me) but after the authorized retailer in Arcadia, Florida was unaware of the Mi-Fi device I was interested in (AC791L) I really wanted to talk to someone in a corporate store.

We did not investigate further as to whether the store had been moved and, not having any other business in Brighton, we headed home. On the way I got a phone call from our State Farm insurance agent’s office about a long-term care premium that was due last month. Apparently one of our children did not recognize it was a bill when they checked our mail and did not alert us to its presence. It wasn’t a big deal, and Linda took care of it when we got home.

I started a load of laundry and settled in to work at my desk. I did not have a reply yet to my support ticket for our WiFiRanger. I checked-in to RVillage and saw that our member status had been upgraded to GOLD. I did a search for used tractors and was researching a portable water deionizing system at AutoGeek.com when I got a call from Curtis Coleman of RVillage. While Curtis and I were talking I got a call from Gary at Brighton Honda. He left a message and I called him back. The rear brake rotors and pads on my Element needed to be replaced. It seems we have not been able catch a brake break in the last six weeks.

Linda made a haircut appointment with Renee for tomorrow at 10 AM but got a call back from Renee that she was not working tomorrow. Renee had an opening at 1:15 PM today so Linda took that instead. It was already noon so Linda heated a can of Amy’s Chili and we split that for lunch along with some fresh black grapes. We left at 12:40 PM for the drive to Twelve Oaks Mall. I went along because I wanted to stop at the corporate Verizon store in Novi.

I don’t usually go along with Linda to her haircut appointments since she now cuts my hair at home, but it was good to see Renee again. She did a nice job with Linda’s hair and we were out of there in under 30 minutes. For many years the Verizon store was located on the Twelve Oaks Mall property near Twelve Mile Road but it recently moved, so we put the address in the GPS unit. The new location was nearby on Novi Road just the other side of I-96 from Twelve Oaks and West Oaks Malls.

We were assisted by Christina, who was both knowledgeable and helpful. We went in thinking we might upgrade both of our phones and our Mi-Fi device and increase our data plan. I was interested in the AC791L Mi-Fi device. They did not have one in stock but she knew what it was and said we could have one delivered to our house on Monday via FedEx. We then looked at phones and Christina steered us towards the latest offerings from Motorola. We selected one for pricing purposes and she worked up the costs, including a higher data plan.

The new phones would have each cost $26 a month for 24 months, and the extended warranties would have been another $11 each per month for as long as we cared to pay it. The phones had some nice features—specifically a shatterproof screen, wireless charging, and a screen-facing flash (for those all-important selfies)—but $74/month ($37 x 2) for two years seemed like a lot of money to us, especially given that our Samsung Galaxy S3 phones still work just fine. Another negative for us is that the new phones are also bigger and we like the size of our S3’s. Besides, I have a belt clip flip-top soft case for mine that fits nicely and works well.

Offsetting the increased phone costs was the fact that the line charges for our phones would drop from $40 per month per line to $20 per month per line. Also, the $80 we currently pay for 10 GB of shared data per billing cycle would now buy us 12 GB of data for the same time period. Finally, upgrading the phones would get us an additional 2 GB of data per phone per billing cycle for “life”, so our 12 GB plan would actually be 16 GB. We would lose the bonus data, however, if we ever reduced the monthly gigabytes on our plan.

In looking at the cost worksheet I noticed that for $100 per billing cycle we could get 18 GB of shared data and bump that up or down at will without losing anything. In the end we bought the AC791L Mi-Fi device for $90 ($100 with a $50 rebate and a $40 activation fee), changed the data plan to 18 GB for $100 (per billing cycle), and decided to keep our current phones. Ignoring the one-time charges connected with the new Mi-Fi device we increased our monthly data from 10 GB to 18 GB, got a new/better Mi-Fi device, dropped our monthly cost from $180 to $160 (before taxes), and were not locked in to anything. Christina also said to keep our eyes open for special deals on phones, especially around Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Roger that, and will do.

By the time we got back to I-96 and Grand River Avenue (GRA) in Brighton it was 3 PM so we stopped at Brighton Honda to check on my car. While waiting for parts the technician got shifted to another job so my car was not ready yet. Making a left out of the dealership onto GRA is always difficult and can be impossible in heavy traffic. Our solution is often to turn right and go to Panera on GRA just south side of I-96, which is exactly what we did. They did not have any decaf brewed but were happy to make some for us. It had been cool and overcast all day so we sat by the gas fireplace and enjoyed several cups of coffee.

While we were sitting there I took a minute to call Philip Jarrell and let him know we were back in town. We discussed the French drain he installed at the west end of property last fall, which seemed to be working well, and the trenching on the other side of the road, where the culvert empties, which had become a small pond. I mentioned that the new driveway and RV pad looked nice, and that I really wanted to get the ham radio tower erected this year. That project would require his services for a morning. By 4:15 PM I had not heard anything further from Gary at Brighton Honda so we drove home.

Gary called at 5 PM to let me know the car was done and the technician was test driving it to make sure everything was correct. The dealership was open until 8 PM, and we did not want to fight rush hour traffic, so Linda fixed dinner. We had a salad of arugula and Italian kale with slivered almonds and dried cranberries, microwaved sweet potatoes, and vegan Italian sausage. Everything was very tasty and I particularly liked the spices in the mock sausage. Linda tries to make our diet primarily plant-based whole foods, but not having been vegans for most of our lives we find a certain satisfaction (comfort) in the occasional veggie burger, soy hotdog, seitan stroganoff, or other “mock” dish.

After dinner I hung up some laundry and started another load in the washer. I checked e-mail and had one from my niece Amanda. She and Ryan were looking at Wednesday, September 27, 2017 as a wedding date and wanted to know if all of us could make it to Hermann, Missouri for the event. I replied that it would not be a problem for Linda and me and cc:d Brendan and Meghan. I then texted both of them to alert them to the e-mail. I also had an e-mail from Kate de Fuccio wanting to know when we expected to be back in Michigan. I let her know we were back and had gotten preoccupied with opening the house and unloading the bus, but I felt bad that I forgot to text her as soon as we were home.

I also had a reply to my WiFiRanger support ticket requesting that I send screen shots of three of the tabs in the control panel. I replied that I would try but did not mention that I really wasn’t sure how to do that. Linda (the Google Queen) suggested that I “Google that” so I did. It turns out that “alt+prtsc” captures the current window as an image and copies it to the clipboard. From there you can do what you want with it. Easy breezy. (I subsequently ended up with something called “Easy Capture Manager” on my computer that just requires me to push the “prt sc” key and then lets me select what I what to capture.)

By 6:545 PM we were headed back to Brighton Honda to retrieve my car. Linda dropped me off and returned home. I paid the bill and returned home a few minutes later. Thursday night is CBS comedy night and by 8 PM we were ready to just sit and laugh. But first I had to transfer some of the laundry from the washing machine to the dryer. I worked on blog posts while being entertained and hung up the dry laundry before going to bed.

2016/04/22 (F) Networking

I was up a little later than usual last night and would have slept in this morning but the cats had other ideas; they always do. We were up by 8 AM and I made a pot of the Costa Rican Terrazu half-caff coffee that we bought yesterday at Teeko’s Coffee and Teas. We were both still a little tired, and the thick fog further subdued our moods. We countered that by treating ourselves to an easy start to our day enjoying our coffee in the living room to the warm glow of the fireplace.

We eventually got dressed, had breakfast, and got on with our day. Linda got a call from Bill, who handles computer and networking technology for the bakery, and he walked her through the VPN setup for the bakery’s upgraded server. She then made a grocery list and went shopping. When she returned I discovered two boxes on the front porch. UPS had obviously been here without my being aware of it. The large box was the Instant Pot Linda ordered the other day and the small box was my prescriptions, which I was not expecting to see for another week.

My main focus for the afternoon was dealing with networking issues. I uncoiled a long Cat 7 Ethernet cable that I found in the ham shack yesterday. I unplugged the network cable for Linda’s computer from our AT&T gateway/router and plugged in one end of the Cat 7 cable in its place. I took the other end of the cable into the bus, plugged it in to the HP Color LaserJet 3600 printer, and turned the printer on. I brought my laptop computer upstairs, connected it wirelessly to the gateway, and tried printing a simple Word document without success. I checked the printer settings and the TCP/IP addressing mode was configured for a manual address that did not match the address range of our home network. I reconfigured it for DHCP and it acquired a new IP address in the correct range. I tried printing again but it still did not work. I reconfigured the address in the printer device properties on my computer and was finally able to print. That was a relief as we would really like to leave this printer on the bus and have it networked rather than operating from a USB cable.

I then turned my attention to the WiFiRanger Mobile Ti (WFR-MTi). I took my computer to the bus so I could use it to control the WFR and capture screen shots. I was able to connect it to the WFR without difficulty but the WFR could not “see” (detect) any external Wi-Fi signals even though it is on the roof outside the bus and my computer could see them from inside the bus. Back in the house I plugged in the Amped|Wireless SR20000G Range Extender / Router and configured it to repeat the AT&T gateway which does not broadcast a very strong signal. Back in the bus my computer could see the strong signals from the Range Extender but the WFR still could not detect any external Wi-Fi signals. I captured the screen shots for the MAIN, WIFI, and SETUP tabs, as requested by technical support at WiFiRanger, and pasted them into Word documents for uploading to their support system.

I took my computer back to my basement office and cabled it in to the network switch. I wrote a reply to the WiFiRanger tech support thread, attached the screen shots, and posted it. Clearly the WFR is not working and I am certain I will end up requesting an RMA and returning it for service, probably sooner than later, but I wanted to start with the online tech support system in case they had any good ideas that had not occurred to me.

Linda spent the afternoon getting acquainted with the Instant Pot and running it through its test procedure. It checked out as fully functional so she used it to prepare seitan stroganoff for dinner. I laid down at 5 PM and napped for an hour, finally getting up at 6 PM when Linda put our dinner salads on the table. She served the stroganoff over brown rice with a side of steamed broccoli and the whole meal was wonderful.

We sat in the living room until 8 PM and then decided to watch Sleepless in Seattle on PBS. I had forgotten what a good movie it is and enjoyed seeing it again. Linda fell asleep right after the movie ended and I watched Episode 6 of Ken Burn’s JAZZ before calling it a night. Like all of Ken Burn’s documentaries, JAZZ is a masterpiece of historical storytelling. At some point I would like to watch all 10 episodes back-to-back.

2016/04/23 (S) Ham & Eggs

Today was our first Saturday back home, and that meant it was also our first opportunity to have breakfast with our fellow amateur radio operators (hams) from the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC). Before going to sleep last night I set wake-up alarms for 7 AM this morning, but I was awake before then and had time to grab a quick shower before getting dressed. I also took a few minutes to reattach the ham radio antenna to the magnetic mount on my car and reinstall the ICOM IC-2820 radio control head and microphone. Even so, we were still on our way by 7:30 AM and arrived at George’s Senate Coney Island on the north edge of South Lyon around 7:50 AM. During the drive I was part of a group chat with Steve (N8AR), Mike (W8XH), and Bill (W8NN), who was on an HT while riding with Larry (K8UT). The Yaesu Fusion repeater sounded good and it was good to be on the air again with friends.

Besides our coffee, dry toast, and dry English muffin, Linda and I split a fresh fruit plate. It was OK at best, but we don’t go for the food. It was good to see and talk to folks in person and to be back into this part of our “at home” routine. Today was testing day so a few people left to run the testing session, but most of the group, which numbered 19 people, stayed until 10 AM.

There was an accident this morning on westbound I-96 just east of the US-23 interchange. It was still being cleared when we drove home so we got stuck in a traffic backup that could easily have been avoided. Fortunately we did not have to be any particular place by any particular time and worked our way slowly through the congestion.

Back at the house I worked at my desk while Linda started cooking black beans in her new Instant Pot as she wanted to use some on a salad for our lunch. Normally she would have to soak dry beans overnight and then cook them for quite a while, but the Instant Pot, which can function as a pressure cooker, took them from bag-to-plate in 45 minutes, during which time Linda went for a walk. Pressure cookers can be very useful.

Once we got back to our house my initial task was to proofread and markup corrections to my article in the latest draft of the June 2016 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine. Once that was done I uploaded the PDF to a folder in my Dropbox and e-mailed Gary and Jorge that it was there. Next I checked my WiFiRanger support ticket and discovered that my reply yesterday, with screen shots attached, did not post correctly. I replied again and this time it posted correctly, or at least appeared to. With that task taken care of I copied a few images from the Sony a99v camera to my computer. I then started transferring files from my computer to the NAS that we had with us in the bus. I was about to start copying files for from that NAS to the older one we left at home when Linda called me up to lunch.

She made a large salad for each of us with tomatoes, blueberries, sliced strawberries, black beans, slivered almonds, and dried cranberries with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. She also made some hot tea after lunch which we took to the living room. Both of us were tired and by 2 PM laid down and took naps. It was 68 degrees F in the house but it felt very cool. I think winters in Florida and Arizona have reset my comfort zone from 70 degrees F, plus or minus, to 78 degrees to 80 degrees F. Jasper found a sunny spot on the floor by one of the living room windows and Juniper curled up with me. I got up at 3:15 PM and took my iPad out on the deck to work in the crisp air and warm sun. Linda came out around 3:45 PM but decided it was too cool and went back inside; I did the same around 4 PM.

Linda arranged for us to meet John and Diane Rauch at Camelia’s Mexican Restaurant at 6 PM. Camelia’s is walking distance from our old house, but we never walked there because the route was not pedestrian friendly. It’s a half hour drive from where we live now. I reinstalled the cellular booster in my car and we left at 5:20 PM to leave a little extra time in case we encountered traffic problems. And sure enough, we did. The right lane of eastbound I-96 was closed where it ties in to southbound I-275 as the right lane continued to be closed for a construction project.

Our children’s grade school vocal music teacher, Jennifer Davidson, (who moved here from Tennessee) once remarked that Michigan only has two seasons “winter and road construction.” Truer words were never said. We stayed to the left, because that’s what we had to do to get onto eastbound I-696. Although traffic was slow it was moving, unlike the right hand lanes trying to stay on I-96/I-275. Vehicle speeds returned to “normal” once we got past the split, which around here is 5-to-10 MPH over the maximum posted limit, and a few minutes later we exited the freeway at Orchard Lake Road. This is the same exit we used for 35 years to get to our house, and I have undoubtedly used this exit more than any other Interstate highway exit in country. It was familiar, yet strange, as we rarely get back here anymore except to visit with John and Diane, meet someone at Camelia’s (or one of the other many restaurants that can be accessed from the Orchard Lake Road exit), or go to our optometrist or veterinarian, both of whom are two to three miles south of this exit.

We had our fill of chips and salsa and split an order of vegetarian fajitas. They were OK, and much better than the ones we had a week ago at Mi Camino Real in Logansport, Indiana. After dinner we went to John and Diane’s house, which is very close to the restaurant, and continued a nice conversation in a quieter setting. By 9:30 PM we were all tired and started wrapping up our visit. We left a little before 10 PM, got home at 10:30 PM, and went right to bed on stomachs that were still very full. WTVS (Detroit PBS) was fundraising around an early Rolling Stones performance that did not grab my interest so I watched Lidia’s Kitchen and the beginning of Martha Stewart’s Cooking school. She was filleting fish so I turned the TV off and went to sleep.

2016/04/24 (N) Family

We went to bed on full stomachs last night and I did not sleep well, suffering from indigestion for much of the night. I should have used a second pillow and tried sleeping on my back with my head elevated, but that is not a natural sleeping position for me and I doubt that would have slept any better. To compensate for the poor sleep I stayed in bed and kept falling back to sleep. Linda was up way before me, having apparently slept better than I did, and I finally got up to stay at 9 AM. That was unusually late for me, but at least I felt somewhat rested.

As soon as I got up Linda sliced oranges for our breakfast and prepared to toast bagels while I prepared our morning coffee. We were not quite done with our preparations when I got a phone call. It was from Chuck Spera so I answered it.

Chuck and I talk frequently but not usually at 9:30 AM on a Sunday morning. He and Barbara were on the road and had just crossed into Kentucky on I-75 having left Sevierville, Tennessee early this morning. Before pulling out this morning Chuck had noticed a little oil by the driver side tag axle during his walkaround, specifically in the holes of the Alcoa aluminum wheels. He had removed the decorative hub cap and found an oil film there as well, but did not see any pooling. He assumed that an axle seal was leaking a little but was not sure how to check the oil level in the hub or add oil if needed. Because of both past and recent experiences, Chuck figured I would know the answers to both questions. While that was probably unjustified optimism, in this case I did, and gladly shared what I knew about the sight glass and rubber plug in the wheel hub for the oil reservoir.

We had just finished our bagels and orange slices when Brendan texted Linda to see about plans for today. We had all planned on getting together at Meghan and Chris’ house this afternoon to visit and have dinner but Madeline had come down with Hand, Foot, & Mouth disease (a virus) earlier in the week and Brendan thought he might be getting it too. Given that Linda had not yet fully recovered her hearing we agreed that it would be best to avoid contact until we knew that no one was contagious.

Madeline was understandably disappointed that she would not see us today and, in lieu of that, requested a FaceTime session. We were equally disappointed that we would not get to see her (and her parents) but an hour of FaceTime made up for it a bit. After our FaceTime session we lingered in the living room by the fireplace enjoying our coffee and doodling on our iPads. We finally got dressed at noon and left for Meghan and Chris’ house at 12:30 PM.

We arrived around 1:15 PM and were greeted by our daughter with a paper grocery bag full of some of our mail. We had a long, relaxed afternoon to visit and catch up. Meghan made vegan burgers from scratch and a salad with beans, corn, red bell pepper, and avocado with a lime-based dressing. We brought a bottle of Barefoot Red Moscato and I found it very much to my taste (sweet).

We departed just after 7 PM and stopped at the new Gas 2 Go station at the northwest corner of I-96 and Latson Road. The station was still under construction when we left in November. I was pleased to see that it is a Shell Oil Company station with a Tim Horton’s. I have had a preference for Shell gasoline for most of my adult life and Tim Horton’s has coffee on a par with Dunkin Donuts, although I do not like the lids they use. There is also a traffic signal on Latson at the side road for the station, no doubt because this is also the access road for the Livingston County Road Commission complex. (Leave it to them to take care of themselves while the rest of rest life and limb to get out of the Lowe’s/Walmart center just south of there.) Whatever the reason, it will slow down traffic exiting I-96 and heading south on Latson Road, making it easier to get out of the Lowe’s/Walmart parking lots.

We were home a little after 8 PM and turned on the TV to watch Grantchester on PBS and Elementary on CBS. Around 8:40 PM I realized I had missed the SLAARC Information Net which started at 8 PM. I need to reestablish the habit of tuning in on Sunday evenings, but that time slot competes with some of our favorite programming on PBS.

2016/04/25 (M) Pick Up Sticks

We had a typical start to our day. After catching the weather on channel 10.2 we were up by 8 AM, had coffee and granola with blueberries and bananas, and used our iPads in the living room with the fireplace turned on. Our Kitchen Aid mixer broke last year and today Linda was finally ready to replace it. She decided to get the slightly larger and more powerful model with the crank up mixing bowl as she wants enough power to mix bread dough. She also wanted it in white to match most of the other kitchen appliances. To our surprise the white color was more expensive than red or blue but less expensive than some other colors including copper bronze. She was trying to convince herself that red or blue would be OK but I convinced her to order white. All of our appliances (and cabinet knobs) are white. With Amazon Prime it will be here on Wednesday.

The weather forecast was calling for a cold front to move through our area triggering rain, and possibly thunderstorms, starting late in the afternoon and extending through the evening and into the overnight hours. The grass in most of the yard is not very tall yet, except right in front of the house by the concrete driveway. The yard is also moist, but not soggy, and we do not expect Keith to be here to cut the grass for the first time this season until sometime next week at the earliest. The temperature mid-morning was in the low 60’s and was forecast to reach a high of 72. All-in-all it was an excellent day to pick up sticks around the yard in advance of Keith’s first visit and get the Honda self-propelled lawn mower out and cut the grass in front of the house.

I started my yard cleanup with area around the front berms, raking small branches out of the grass and stacking larger ones on existing brush piles. While I was working out front a UPS truck showed up with our Max Burton Induction Cooktop and our new Verizon Mi-Fi unit. I signed for the Mi-Fi and took the packages inside. Linda used the induction cooker to make some nectar for our hummingbird feeder and also prepared a batch of homemade granola. She eventually came outside and helped me pick up some of the downed tree limbs in the back yard. We got the easternmost two acres (2/5ths of our yard) picked fairly well. We will work on the westernmost three acres another day.

I got the Honda lawnmower out and topped up the tank with fresh fuel. Small engine Honda equipment is known for starting on the first pull, but my experience is that this is only true when they are new. No doubt our lawnmower needs to be cleaned up and tuned up, and would start more easily if it was, but I eventually got it started and once it warmed up it ran fine. I mowed the little bit of the lawn near the house/driveway that looked like it was overdue for a cut. This is also one of the only parts of the yard anyone really sees if they pull into the driveway.

I had just shut the lawnmower off and was putting it in the garage when the U. S. Mail truck pulled into the driveway. It was our mail carrier, Michelle, and she had a very large box for us, along with our typical bundle of Monday junk mail. The box was not very heavy and Linda informed me that it was the 48 rolls of toilet paper she recently ordered. Well, alrighty then.

It was approaching 1 PM so Linda made salads for our lunch with the leftover bean-corn-tomato salad (that Meghan made yesterday) on top of a bed of mixed greens. After lunch Linda took her Amateur Extra flash cards outside to study and I focused on getting the new Verizon Jetpack Mi-Fi (Netgear AC791L) assembled and activated. Assembly consisted of installing the Lithium Ion battery and back cover. I decided to charge it for a bit while I read the user guide and activation procedure.

When I was fairly certain I had all of the information I needed at my fingertips I called the 877 activation number and keyed in the requested information. It took a couple of tries to get it right but I finally did. With the activation completed I turned the device on, looked up the SSID and Password, and connected my iPad to it. I then entered the relevant information in a new entry in Passwords Plus.

I got a phone call from Gaye Young and chatted with her at some length about RVillage and its relevance to FMCA. (Gaye is the FMCA National Secretary and chairperson of the National Education Committee.). She and husband Jerry are at the Rally in the Pasture at FMCA National President Charlie Adcock’s place in Arkansas (or maybe it’s Alabama?) and I knew from talking to Curtis Coleman last week that he was on his way there too. A year and a half ago the NEC researched and recommended that FMCA partner with RVillage and a year ago the FMCA executive board accepted and endorsed that proposal but then nothing happened. The FMCA Executive Director was recently let go and Charlie is now trying to get the RVillage train back on the tracks, along with lots of other things as FMCA continues to loose members at an alarming rate.

I suspect that the loss of members is a combination of several factors. For one, the median age of FMCA members has been in the upper 60’s for quite some time. That means a certain number of members are “aging out” almost daily. For another, the downturn in the economy in 2007 was particular hard on the RV industry. Not only was the industry slow to recover, when it did it was building mostly towables, not motorhomes. In the past many RV dealers basically “included” an FMCA membership with the purchase of a motorhome, or at least provided information about the Association and an application form. Another possible factor is that RVers under 50, including Gen-Xers and Millennials, don’t tend to join things. FMCA is not the only organization suffering membership decline and having difficulty attracting new members, especially younger ones.

Chuck and Barbara got home yesterday and were settled enough for Chuck to call me at 5 PM and update me on their hub oil leak. Linda made salads for dinner and reheated the brown rice and seitan stroganoff. After dinner I replied to an e-mail from Gaye and then settled in to watch TV with Linda. And so it goes.

2015/11/23 (M) Elemental Errand Run

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I got up a little after 7 AM. Juniper was prowling around the bed which is her way of letting us know she wants to be fed. If one of us does not get up and put food in their dishes Juniper starts chewing on the charger cords on our night stands and/or pushing things off onto the floor. I needed to get up anyway. The Tylenol PM had worn off and I was having difficulty finding a comfortable position. To my surprise and consternation, my back was much worse than when I went to bed. I could not find a comfortable standing position and was barely able to walk. I managed to get my robe and slippers on and make it to the bathroom to get my bite guard out, clean it, and put it back in its case. I made my way to the kitchen where I took three Ibuprofen with some orange juice and had a couple of cherry strudel bites (vegan). I then sat in the living room with the heater pad against my lower right back and set on high.

Linda got up at 8:15 AM. At 9 we had fresh grapefruit and cherry mini-strudels (vegan) for breakfast with orange juice and the last of the Ethiopian Yiracheffe coffee. We drank most of the coffee in the living room where I lingered until 10 with the heater pad on my right lower back.

I called Brighton Honda and the service department confirmed that they rotated my tires at my last service visit so they did not need to be rotated today. I called Discount Tire in Howell and cancelled my 10 appointment. That took some pressure off of our morning.

A clean bus is a happy bus, or at least makes for a happy bus owner. Although we have kept it vacuumed as we worked it needed a good interior cleaning. The insides of the cabinets needed to be vacuumed, the wood work need to be dusted, and the counters and mirrors needed to be cleaned. Linda did most of that yesterday. We also wanted to wash the floor but decided to do that after everything was loaded on board.

I did not get all of the tool boxes repacked last night so I continued working on that today as best I could. I also needed to go through all of the tubs that we keep in the front bay, decide what really needed to travel with us, and repack the tubs. The situation with my back, however, made for slow and uncomfortable work.

We took a break at 12:30 PM to have lunch. Linda has been using up frozen food to clear out the refrigerator so she made vegan “hamburgers.” The packing and loading work was further interrupted by several things we had to do away from the house and bus.

I dropped off my Honda Element at Brighton Honda for a 1:30 PM oil change appointment. Linda followed me in her car and picked me up. We went to Staples in Brighton and bought a pack of 9x12x4 inch boxes. I needed three of them to hold the complete sets of BCM issues (37 magazines each) that will be given away as door prizes at the Arcadia Bus Rally. I called Teeko’s to see if our coffee order was ready to pick up. It was. I called Brighton Ford’s NAPA parts department to see if the air filter had arrived. It had, but the parts guy wasn’t sure where it was and thought it might take a little while to find. No problem.

We drove to Teeko’s first to pick up our coffee and visited for a while with Mary. We then drove to Brighton Ford, which is next door to Brighton Honda, to pick up the air filter. The Honda dealership called to let me know my car was ready to pick up, so the timing was really good. Linda dropped me off at the Honda dealer and went on to Meijer’s. I got my car and headed home. In total the errand run took about two hours.

There was a USPS Priority Mail package waiting for me on the porch when I got home. It was a set of the BCM issues I need to make a complete set to use as a door prize at the Arcadia Bus Rally at the end of December. In my correspondence with Gary (owner/publisher) he agreed to send three sets and to ship them next week to the RV resort in Williston, Florida. Sometimes I wonder why I bother spending time and effort communicating carefully and in detail.

I continued working in the garage and Linda started cleaning the house. We worked until 6 PM and called it a day. We did not accomplish as much today as we wanted to but we got a lot done and felt good about that. Our original plan was to have the bus loaded by the end of the day tomorrow. As things stand we plan to finish loading it on Wednesday. As of now we are still committed to leaving Friday morning and should be able to do that.

Linda picked up a couple of Amy’s frozen enchilada dinners which, along with some fresh black grapes, made for an easy but tasty meal. After dinner I integrated the magazines I received today with the issues I already had to make one compete set which I boxed up and labeled. At 8 PM we settled in to watch our Monday night TV shows before taking some more Tylenol PM and going to bed.

2015/11/20 (F) The End of Projects (for now)

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Linda was up at 5:45 AM again and off to the bakery at 6:15 but this was the last time until spring 2016. There is still more to do on both the software project and year-end accounting but she will do it remotely. We need the weekend and the first three days of next week to get the motorcoach, the house, and us ready to travel and prepare for our Thanksgiving Day family gathering. Also, unlike the last two winters, Linda does not plan to fly home in late February to take care of year-end accounting and tax work. She will handle all of that from Florida instead, so she has to make sure she has everything she needs with her in the bus when we leave.

This was likewise the last day for me to work on bus projects. The things I needed to do in the bus included:

Install metal edging to protect exposed tile edges.
Grease the steering column.
Install filter material over the HVAC holes under the bed.
Mount the West Mountain Radio RigRunner on the dashboard.
Pull the chassis battery tray out and check/clean/tighten the connections.

But I had a few other things to attend to first.

I was up and dressed at 7:45 and had an alarm set on my iPad for 8 AM to remind me to pick up our coffee bean order from Teeko’s. I had a bowl of granola for breakfast and then called Brighton Honda. My last oil change was at 99,280 miles and I now have over 105,000 on the odometer so I made an appointment for Monday afternoon to have the oil changed. I had a cup of tea in the living room where I spent some time with our cats. I then went to my office and replied to an e-mail from Gary at BCM. I called Teeko’s to make sure our coffee was ready to pick up. Mary did not have it packaged yet but said she would have it ready in an hour. I indicated that it would be longer than that before I got there. I called Discount Tire in Howell to see about having the tires on the Element rotated. They were running 2 – 3 hours so I made an appointment for Monday morning. I called Brighton Ford/NAPA to order an air filter for the bus.

I moved the brass colored stair edging into the bus and checked the temperature. It was 64 degrees F so I bumped the thermostats up just a bit. I also switched the remote temperature sensors so that #1 was in the freezer (top) and #2 was in the fresh food compartment (bottom). I removed the ham radio antenna from its magnetic mount and put it in the car. I finally left at 11:45 AM on my errand run.

My first stop was Wendy’s where I had an order of French fries for lunch. I then went to Lowe’s, which was just across the street, for carpet stain remover and looked at tarps while I was there but did not buy one. I don’t think we will be able to create enough space in the garage for the lawn tractor so I want to cover it for the winter. From there it was less than a mile east on Grand River Avenue to the car wash. I had taken the ham radio antenna off before I left the house but the car wash knocked the magnetic mount cellular booster antenna loose. I pulled into a parking spot, put the cellular antenna back in position, and reattached the ham radio antenna.

I backtracked that same mile and stopped at Teeko’s to pick up our coffee order. It seemed light but Mary already had it bagged and I was anxious to move along so I did not check it. I continued west on GRA to the Bank of America branch near The Home Depot (which I should have done after stopping at Wendy’s). With colder temperatures coming the next few days I decided to drive to the Shell station in Brighton and top off the tank. The sign said regular was $2.05⁹/gallon but the pump I used was set to $1.95⁹. Deal.

When I got home I checked the coffee order and realized something was not right. There were supposed to be 16 vacuum sealed 1/2 lb. bags, four each for four different coffees, for a total of eight pounds of beans, but there were only 10 bags. Some of them were definitely much less than a half pound but I did not have a scale and so I had no way to know for sure what the total weight was. Three bags were also unsealed and some of the beans had spilled into the larger bag. Two of those bags were the same bean but unfortunately the third one was different so I had no way of knowing which bag, or bags, the loose beans came out of. I dumped the loose beans into the bag that was the most open as that was the easiest one to get them in. I closed the three unsealed bags with spring clips, put everything back in the carry bag, and drove back to the coffee shop.

I was not pleased with the situation, especially the fact that I had to make this extra trip, but I worked through my frustration while driving and was friendly and courteous while I was there. Being upset and nasty to people never accomplishes anything good. Roger was there in addition to Mary and once I explained what we had ordered on Monday evening from Jeff it was obvious that something got lost in translation. They will make it right and we will pick it up late in the afternoon on Monday.

For some time now we have felt that we do not always have Jeff’s full attention when he is waiting on us. Teeko’s has had its challenges over the last couple of years, first with road construction making access to the strip mall more difficult, and now with the opening of a Panera on the opposite corner of the intersection. My sense is that they have struggled financially as evidenced by the fact that they never spent the money for a proper neon sign. As a result the shop is not as visible as it should be even though it is located at a major intersection. Jeff got married last year and they just had their first child in September. With those added responsibilities he went back to work driving a delivery truck for PepsiCo, which has a major plant on the south central side of Howell. His parents, Roger and Mary, have been left to run the coffee shop during the day, which I suspect is not what they intended to be doing in their retirement. Still, they are always very pleasant to deal with and I feel for their situation.

As much as we like Panera, when we still lived in Farmington Hills we tried to patronize a series of small, independent coffee shops but they all failed in the end. Some failed because of mis-management, but ultimately they could not compete with the Starbucks, Panera, and Einstein Brothers stores in the area. Sadly, I suspect this will also be the fate of Teeko’s even though it is a nicer coffee shop than the Biggby’s just down the street. And it’s too bad (for us at least) as we really enjoy being able to purchase a variety of green beans and have them roasted to order.

Back home I finally got to work on the bus around 3 PM. I got all of the old silver colored metal stair edging from the garage and determined where each piece had been installed. I realized that I did not have a good way to cut the new edging nor did I have the time to measure, cut, and install it before it got dark. I really wanted/needed the exposed edges of the tile protected so I decided to reinstall the old edging. Although it had obviously seen heavy use over the years it was still serviceable. Of equal importance was that it was already cut to approximately the correct length and angles. I checked that the holes on the new edging would fall in different places than holes in the old edging. That was the case, so I held each piece in place and drilled a small pilot hole at every third hole. I changed to a different bit to drill through the metal that secures the edge of the plywood bus floor and then screwed each strip of metal edging in place. The new edging will cover the holes from mounting the old edging.

This was the only work I was going to get done on/in/around the coach today. Linda had called by this point to let me know she was heading home and was going to stop at Meijer’s along the way. As soon as she got home she started making three batches of granola. She is going to make and freeze as many batches as she can fit in the freezer so we can enjoy this fabulous granola well into winter.

While Linda made granola I worked at my computer cleaning up old e-mail. Dinner was vegan Pad Thai; not like the real thing, of course, but it was easy, hot, and tasty enough. We had some small oranges for dessert. I worked at my desk for a while after dinner deleting old e-mails. I quit at 8 PM to watch a few TV shows and work on this post.

2015/10/08 (R) A Mighty Hose

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Linda was up before 6 AM to drive to the bakery ahead of the worst of the morning rush hour traffic. I was aware of her getting up but fell back asleep. She is very quiet as she goes about her preparations on such mornings, which I appreciate.

I got up around 8AM, fed the cats, and cleaned their litter tray. I made half as much coffee as usual and measured out a bowl of granola, probably a little more than usual. I took my coffee to the living room and turned on the fireplace, expecting to settle in with my cats and work on my iPad, but the iOS 9.0.2 update was available so I started the installation and read the last few pages of Number Theory and Its History by Oystein Ore. I read from screens more than from paper these days, but I still like to curl up with a printed book.

Jasper used to sit next to me on the sofa in the morning but seems to prefer sleeping on top of one of the back cushions these days. Juniper, who never used to pay much attention to me, has taken his place. She has always sought out warm places to curl up but has always preferred Linda’s lap to mine.

My bus project for today was reassembling the plumbing to the two fan-coil heat exchangers that go in the bases under the two desk pedestals. Yesterday I cut new holes for the supply and return hoses. My first task was to remove the hoses from the bleeder valves and install barbed plastic plugs in the ends to prevent coolant from coming out. I then pulled the hoses back and out through the new openings.

The area behind the desk where the heater hoses emerge from the passenger side OTR HVAC duct.

I worked on the hose for the right hand (rear most) heat exchanger first. I positioned the base, routed the hose to the lower fitting, and marked where to cut it. I put a plastic paint tray liner under the hose before I cut it but more coolant came out than I expected. I got as much of it in the liner as I could and grabbed a bunch of paper shop towels. I got the liner outside without spilling any antifreeze and poured the used antifreeze in a one gallon jug that I keep for just this purpose. I used a funnel that is also reserved for use with antifreeze.

I took the cut off piece of heater hose outside, plugged end down, and set the open end in the tray liner. We already had a bucket of soapy water in the bus as we had planned on hanging wallpaper yesterday. I wrung out the sponge and then squeezed some of the soapy water on the floor and cleaned it up with paper shop towels.

The left and right desk bases and center cover/spacer set in place. The heater hoses are not yet connected.

With the mess cleaned up I slipped two hose clamps over the end of the hose and worked it onto the lower fitting on the heat exchanger. If only it had been as easy to do as that description! The 3/4″ i.d. rubber heater hose did not just “slip” over the 3/4″ o.d. copper pipe even with some residual antifreeze lubricating the inside of the hose and the outside of the pipe. Indeed, it took considerable and simultaneous pushing and twisting to get the hose on. It was also a lot harder than I expected to work with the heat exchangers installed in the bases, even without the desk pedestals in place.

I was interrupting my work as needed to take photographs and as I finished up the first hose the camera refused to trigger the shutter. The LCD screen indicated that the compact flash memory card was full so I went to my office to offload the images from the last few days. My other CF card was empty so I put that in the camera and set it aside. I had not backed up my photos to the Network Attached Storage units in quite a while so I decided to take the time to do that. While I was at it I backed up my blog posts from December of 2014 through July of this year along with several issues of The Gypsy Journal.

As long as I was at my computer I checked my e-mail accounts, logged into RVillage, and logged into my account at B&H Photo. My new Sony alpha 99 and accessories were on their way from New York and due to be delivered by the end of the day tomorrow. I am excited to finally be getting a new digital camera with a full frame (35mm) sensor that will work correctly with all of my old Minolta A-mount lenses.

By this point it was lunchtime so I cleaned up (antifreeze is definitely NOT good eats) and scrounged around the kitchen for something tasty but easy to fix. My “go to” meal is usually roasted red pepper hummus and sourdough pretzel nibblers. We had a little hummus left, which I finished, but I was still hungry so I made a bowl of popcorn. I would probably not make a good bachelor.

I went back to the coach and contemplated attaching the other hose to the left heat exchanger. While I was thinking about it Linda called to let me know she was on her way home. It was 1 PM so I decided to wait for her to get home to help me install the second hose. I had some phone calls to make and used the time for that.

I called Karen at Bratcher Electric to schedule the upgrading of our 60 Amp sub-panel in the garage to a 100 Amp main panel. While I had her on the phone I asked if Mike would itemize the quote. I also mentioned that they had picked up two or three whole house generator customers through my referrals and perhaps Mike could provide some consideration for that in the pricing. Next I called Ferman Miller at Countertop Plus in Shipshewana, Indiana to check on the Corian desk top and table. Ferman answered the phone and said he had called Josh this morning to let him know the pieces were ready for pickup. I then called Josh to see what his plans were.

We originally agreed that he would pick them up and bring them to our house on his way to visit relatives in the northeast side of the Detroit metropolitan area. His plans had changed and he won’t be visiting his relatives anytime soon. He is leaving on Tuesday for a FMCA area rally in the Carolinas and will be gone for a week. Before he leaves he needs to get something to a customer in Cleveland in addition to getting our stuff to us or deciding that we will have to drive to Shipshewana to get it ourselves. One option is that we meet him somewhere on Sunday. Ann Arbor is a possibility but Toledo or Defiance (Ohio) are more likely rendezvous points.

Linda got home around 2 PM and changed into her work clothes. With Linda’s help I was able to avoid the mess I had with the first hose. The second hose was even harder to get on than the first one but we managed to do it. In part because of the arthritis in the joints at the base of my thumbs I do not have as much grip strength as I would like and often need. The twisting and pushing was hard on my hands and the confines of the base and proximity of crisp wooden edges resulted in lots of small cuts. This was not something I anticipated in the design and construction of the bases and the installation of the heat exchangers.

I took a break and drove to Northwest Plumbing Supply to see if they had a bleeder valve like the ones in our bus system. They did not and had never do seen anything like it before. The showed me a couple of things they did have but I did not buy anything. I got a call from Brighton Honda that my car was ready for pickup so I headed home to get Linda. She drove me to the dealership and then went on to Meijer’s for a few grocery items.

I drove to Lowe’s in Howell and was fortunate to find Lars in the plumbing department. The store was not very busy and he took an interest in showing me various plumbing options that might allow me to replace the bleeder valve with something that would do the same thing while also giving me a way to add antifreeze to the system. What I ended up with was 3/4″x3/4″X1/2″ copper sweat T and a 1/2″ sweat ball valve with a waste port.

Bruce works on attaching the heater hoses to the fill/bleeder valve T assembly he built. (Photo by Linda.)

Back home I cleaned some 3/4″ and 1/2″ copper pipe with 120 grit plumbers sandpaper. I cut two pieces of the 3/4″ pipe about 3″ long and one piece of the 1/2″ pipe about 1-1/2″ long. I brushed the inside of all the fittings and test fit the pieces. I then applied flux to all of the surfaces to be soldered, inserted the two 3/4″ stubs into the run fittings, inserted the 1/2″ stud into the bull fitting, and put the ball valve on the other end of the 1/2″ pipe. I used the lever on the ball valve to mount the assembly in my bench vise. I removed the waste port cap to protect the neoprene seal and opened the ball valve so as not to trap heat inside. I then heated the T and the end of the valve and applied the solder.

I figured there had to be an easier way to get heater hose onto the heat exchanger and that Butch was the guy who would know what it was. I called and he said antifreeze can obviously be used and works fairly well but that a small amount of dish soap would also work as a lubricant and not harm the antifreeze or the Aqua-Hot and its components. As long as we were on the phone I caught up on their activities.

They were still there at the RV Park in Bouse, Arizona but only until the 15th of this month. The terms and conditions of their employment as managers of the park had not turned out to be as described during the interview process and they are wrapping up after only a month on the job. They will move their bus back to Quartzsite and spend at least part of the winter at Joe and Connie’s place where we both spent last winter. I know it was a big disappointment to them that the situation in Bouse did not work out, but their situation in Q will be familiar, comfortable, and inexpensive, as well as convenient to the Quartzsite Gem and Mineral Club which they joined this past winter.

For dinner Linda made a blend of onions, garlic, mushrooms, and power greens and served it over a baked potato topped with Daiya cheese. It was very yummy, and the potatoes kept the dish warm all the way to the end. The weather had turned cloudy through the afternoon and we got the first raindrops during dinner.

The fill/bleeder valve T assembly with the heater hoses connected. The assembly is located between the bases at the floor and will be hidden by the center connector/cover.

I had really hoped to have the hydronic heating system reassembled today so we went back out to bus after dinner to hook up the heater hose that runs between the two heat exchangers. This was actually two pieces of hose with my homemade bleeder/fill valve half way between the two exchangers. Even with dish soap the two hoses were very difficult to get onto the heat exchanger fittings and the bleeder/fill stubs, but I got them on. Linda took pictures while I grunted, groaned, and moaned and I took a few more when I was done.

It was 8:45 PM when we finally quit working, secured the bus, and went inside. I cleaned my hands as best I could but I could not get all of the black from the rubber hoses to come off. We sat for a while in the living room and had the last of the frozen chocolate torte that Linda made a couple of weeks ago. We finally turned in around 10 PM and watched Rick Steve’s Europe, Travel in the Americas, and a couple of cooking shows while I worked on this post.

2015/10/07 (W) The Root Cause

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We had Linda’s homemade granola for breakfast with fresh blueberries. Berry season is just about over for the year and they will become more expensive as they have to be transported from farther away. I made a pot of Sweet Seattle Dreams, the half-caff blend that Jeff makes just for us, and we drank it in the living room. Linda checked in on the world and pulled up the latest video from NutritionFacts.org while I researched hardwood veneers on Rockler.com.

After breakfast and coffee I called Metro Environmental Services to arrange to have the culvert under the road cleaned out. They were able to schedule us for this afternoon so I accepted that appointment. I then called Brighton Honda to check on my car and left a message for Rob, the service advisor who wrote up the repair for the driver side door lock. I had no sooner left that message than I got a call from Karen at Bratcher Electric.

Mike had worked up the quote to install the 100 Amp disconnect, tie it into the output of the transfer switch, and run a 100 Amp 4-wire service entrance cable to the current sub-panel, making it into a main panel. They would also disconnect and cap the current sub-panel feed from the basement as part of the work. At just north of $1,300 it was a good $300 higher than I expected. My expectation, however, was not based on anything specific other than my own sense of the cost of materials and the amount of labor that might be involved, plus a desire for it to not cost more than $1,000. 🙁

With the phone calls taken care of we worked in the bus for the rest of the morning. Linda worked on stripping the remnants of wallpaper that remained after we removed the mirrors from the lower outside hallway wall yesterday. I worked on re-routing the heater hoses for the fan-coil heat exchangers. She got her job done before I got mine done. That’s usually the way it is.

To start, I removed one of the old 4″ round plastic grates and used my inspection mirror and a flashlight to examine the inside of the HVAC duct. What I discovered was that the two heater hoses were secured periodically with plastic cable clamps to the outer wall of the HVAC duct. I also discovered that the metal part of the duct is just the inner wall and top. The bottom is the plywood subfloor of the bus and the outer wall is the plywood wall. As originally built the metal portion of the duct could be removed but when Royale Coach did the conversion they built cabinets around the ducts and put wood wiring chases on top of them in such a way that they can no longer be removed without partially disassembling the coach.

The location of the hoses and wires in the duct was such that I could safely use my 4″ bi-metal hole saw to cut access holes for the hoses. I determined where the cable clamps were located by measuring inside the duct. I then marked where the access slots in the bottom back of the bases would be located and determined where I needed the two hoses to emerge from the duct.

The manual sheet metal nibbler used to cut a line between the bottoms of the two holes in the HVAC duct.

There was already a 4″ hole at one of my needed locations so I drilled a second one next to it with an inch in-between. I used Chuck’s hand powered sheet metal nibbler to connect the holes together to make an opening that looked like the track around a football field. We vacuumed up the metal chips and I then installed door edge molding all the way around the edge of the opening. I was able to reach the screws holding the first pair of cable clamps with a #2SR screwdriver and remove them. This large slot will be behind the left end of the center connecting cover of the desk and the hose for the heat exchanger that goes in the left base will come out of it.

Plastic U-channel door edge molding installed around the new heater hose opening.

The location of the next pair of cable clamps corresponded, roughly, to where I needed the hose for the right heat exchanger to emerge. I drilled two 4″ holes, side-by-side, at that location and nibbled out the little bit of metal in-between them to make a second slot. Again, I installed the door edge molding around the entire edge. The molding was a tight fit, and I had to use a screwdriver to get it to go on the inner curves, but I got it on. The U-channel is locked in mechanically and has adhesive in it so it should stay put once it has had a few days in place. Once the hoses are re-routed I will put screen material, and perhaps some solid plates, over the openings to prevent critters from gaining access to the living area by way of the HVAC PCTS (Prevost Critter Tunnel System).

The access holes in the OTR HVAC duct in the area behind where the desk will be installed.

Linda had two medical appointments this afternoon, both routine diagnostic procedures, so she got cleaned up, changed her clothes, and left around 12:30 PM as I was finishing up the second slot. I went inside and was thinking about making something for lunch when the doorbell rang. It was our mail carrier, Michelle, with a package that was too big for the mailbox. A few minutes later the doorbell rang again. I figured it was Michelle again, but it was one of the guys from Metro Environmental Services. They were supposed to call first but just showed up.

I put my shoes on and walked them down to the clogged culvert that goes under the road. I was really hoping they could clean it out from the south side but when we went into the woods we could not see the end of the culvert. They got a metal detector and located the end of the pipe. It was almost completely buried and had a massive root running right in front of it from a very large nearby tree. They got a shovel and dug out around the root, exposing much of it and the end of the pipe.

The tree was probably 30″ in diameter at the base and the root was at least 10″ in diameter. I got my (new) 18″ chain saw but had trouble getting it started. It turned out it was out of gasoline. Once I got it started I tried to cut through the root on either side of the culvert. I thought I was all the way through on one end (closest to the tree) and most of the way through on the other end, but the root would not budge. I dulled the teeth on the chain to the point where the saw would no longer cut and did not want to take the time to put a new chain on just to ruin it quickly. The guys finally agreed to hydrojet the culvert from the north side of the road.

The actual cleaning out of the culvert did not take that long. The pump produces 2,000 PSI and they used about 300 gallons of water from the onboard tank on their truck. The head on the end of the hose has one forward facing nozzle and many rear/side facing nozzles. The forward facing nozzle loosens and cleans out the area directly in front of the head while the other nozzles force the head forward and blast whatever is in the pipe back out towards the entrance.

They started with a small head and ran it in until there was water coming out the other end of the culvert. They then pulled the hose back and switched to a much larger head and ran that all the way through and back. When they were done muddy water filled the culvert and the depressions on either end. On the inlet end the water was only about 3″ deep in the bottom of the culvert but on the outlet end it was near the top. They billed me for the minimum first hour amount even though I think they were here longer than that.

I called Phil to let him know what we had run into. He was surprised, to say the least, as he thought he had checked the other end of the culvert. Obviously not, but that’s water under the road, so to speak. Besides the problems with the root and the discharge end of the culvert being below the surface, it looked to me like the discharge area was something of a low spot and it was not obvious to me where water would flow from there. I have learned, however, that I am not very good at judging such things visually.

Cory, our neighbor across the street, had come over to see what was going on. He offered that the discharge area does, in fact, drain to the south through his property and eventually to Golf Club Road. Cory has been here for 30 years so I have no reason to doubt the truth of that. The elevation where Golf Club ends at Hacker and where our street ends at Hacker appears to be about the same. Our street is fairly level while Golf Club has a little bit of up and down, but it is subtle. I suggested to Phil that we might have to clear a path into the woods for his small digger and do some trenching to give the water a way out.

While Cory and I were chatting I noticed that the trees along this part of the road were hanging out over the road on both sides and were rather lower than they should be. This is the very thing I complain about with regards to the way most of our neighbor’s fail to maintain their properties along the road. I decided I should do something about it so I got our pole saw and spent a couple of hours trimming the low overhanging branches.

Linda went to the Whole Foods Market in West Bloomfield following her medical appointments and got home just as I was finishing up the pruning. She went for a walk while I called John Palmer of Palmer Energy Systems in Florida. I bought our Magnum inverter/charger for the bus from John along with various accessories and batteries. I needed a 4-wire terminal block for our Magnum Battery Monitor Kit (BMK) because I had messed up the one that came with it when I originally installed it. John confirmed that Magnum Energy had recently been acquired by Sensata, and was in the process of relocating the plant to Minnesota, but that several of the old-timers were still on board. John needed to talk to Tom anyway and asked me to call him back in a week to see if he was able to get the connector.

I checked with the service department at Brighton Honda again and Rob said he expected to get the new door lock mechanism back from the locksmith tomorrow morning and to have the car ready for me to pick up by the end of the day. It will be nice to finally have it back.

The cloudy weather finally broke today and we saw some blue sky with brighter light levels than we have had recently. The day was lovely but a little on the cool side by late afternoon so we both had a cup of hot tea. Linda took advantage of the light to work on her counted cross-stitch project, a holiday stocking for grand-daughter Madeline, and I went back to the bus to sand off the last traces of the old wallpaper from the outside wall in the hallway.

I used our Porter-Cable 1/4 sheet palm sander with 80, 120, and finally 220 grit sandpaper. The sander has an integral dust collection bag but it does not capture all of the dust. I used the vacuum cleaner to pick up as much of the residual dust as I could and then used a tack cloth to wipe down the wall.

For dinner Linda made pan-grilled tofu with caramelized onions in sweet barbecue sauce. She served it open-faced on rye bread, because that is what we had, and steamed some fresh green beans as a side dish. Yum.

After dinner I drove to Lowe’s. I needed something I could use to plug the two heater hoses to keep them from leaking as I pull them back through the HVAC duct and out through the new slots I made for them today. I ended up buying two 3/4″ barbed plastic plugs. While I was there I looked to see if they had any bleeder valves but they did not. They do not sell parts designed specifically for hydronic heating systems and I will have to go to Northwest Plumbing and Supply for such items.

While I was in the plumbing isle I looked to see if I could figure out some combination of parts to make a fill valve for the system but did not see anything that inspired me. I would love to have one or more high point expansion tanks on this system but I do not have any easily accessible places for them from which I could also run overflow drain lines. There is a good sized volume of unused space behind the drawers on the passenger side of the bedroom but it would be a very difficult place to install anything. Perhaps Northwest Plumbing and Supply will have something.

On the way home I stopped at the BP station and topped up the fuel tank in Linda’s car. I drove home with greater consideration for fuel economy than usual and managed to get the average MPG up to 56.7 before it dropped back to 55.4 as I pulled in the driveway. It will drop into the upper 40s as soon as Linda starts the engine tomorrow morning but it was fun to get it into the driveway with numbers above 55 MPG.

2015/10/02 (F) Tire Nibblers

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It dropped into the mid-40s last night and the house cooled off proportionally. It starts getting light at 7 AM these days and cool mornings are just another reason to stay under the covers a little longer. I finally got up at 7:30 AM, got dressed to work, and made our morning coffee. After our breakfast of fresh mixed berries and homemade granola I turned on the fireplace and we enjoyed our coffee to its dancing light and warmth.

Chuck called to let me know he had set out one of his sheet metal nibblers for me to pick up at the shop. I left around 10:30 AM and drove Linda’s Honda Civic to Discount Tire in Howell. (My Honda Element is tied up at Brighton Honda until the middle of next week to get a broken driver-side door lock replaced.) I noticed last night while we were out that several tires on the Civic were under-inflated and the sidewalls were badly weather-checked. They still had plenty of tread but the paperwork indicated they were put on five years and 80,000 miles ago. Time for a change.

At Discount Tire the sales associate confirmed that the date code was from 2009 and corroborated my observations. The tread was probably good for another 20,000 miles but I do not mess around with old tires with cracked sidewalls. Michelin no longer makes the Defender, at least not in the P195/65R15 size, so I bought a set of four Continentals that should perform equally well and last for 90,000 miles. That means they will age out before the wear out, which is fine with me. It was going to be a two hour turnaround time so I texted Linda and Chuck and settled in to wait. Thank goodness for iPad games.

The technician pulled the car in at noon and a few minutes later asked me if I had the key for the wheel locks. I had looked for it earlier and not found it. He wasn’t sure he could get them off at all and would certainly ruin them in the attempt. That sounded like a bad situation getting worse so I had them set the tires aside while I took the car to Brighton Honda and had them remove the special lug nut from each wheel using their master key set. I bought a new set at the Honda dealership (so any Honda dealer can remove them in the future) and had them put those on and made sure I had the key when I left.

While I was there Rob gave me a quote on four Continental tires. The installed price, including a rebate in the form of a Visa gift card, was 30% lower than the price I paid at Discount Tire so I showed the quote to the guy at the counter when I got back. He said the quote was for a different, less expensive, discontinued tire. I had no way of knowing if that was true or not but he also asked if the guy who wrote me up gave me the rebate form for the tires I bought. I said ‘no’ so this guy printed out an extra receipt and gave it to me with the rebate form. That narrowed the price difference to 20% and I was satisfied with that. I liked the tires I had purchased and did not want to undo and then redo the sale. I have also had good experiences over the years with Discount Tire, including their nationwide free rotation and balancing policy.

When the tires were finally mounted, balanced, and installed I headed for Chuck’s shop in Novi. He was there when I arrived and had three different metal cutting tools laid out to show me. One was manual, one was electric, and one was powered by a drill. We decided that the manual one and the drill powered one were most likely to work for what I needed to do. He put them in a cardboard box along with cans of three different chemicals he was getting rid of. His trash, my treasurers.

On the way back to the house I stopped at the Shell station at Beck and Grand River Avenue to top up the fuel tank. I texted Linda and then headed for home. I arrived home at 3 PM to find lunch on the table. That was a nice surprise.

After lunch we uninstalled the desk in the bus and set the pedestals on part of a large blanket in the center of the kitchen floor. We draped the blanket over them and then uninstalled the hinged sofa seat and set it across the pedestals. We folded the blanket back over the seat and set the desk bases on top of it. We now had clear access to the wall behind the desk and the wall behind the sofa.

I got a 3″ brush from the basement and then got the Zinzer 123 Primer, opened it, and stirred it. It was still in good shape as it has been in the library since last fall when we repaired and repainted the west wall after Darryl was done installing the new HVAC system. Rather than pour it into another container I found a lid from a copy paper box to put it under the one gallon can. Linda finished masking off the woodwork and counters in the bus and then helped me spread painter’s plastic to protect the floor. We spread out an old bathroom towel, put the box lid on that, and then put the can inside the (upside down) box lid. I set the can lid aside and worked directly out of the can.

I started in the back of the hallway and primed the upper half of the outside wall as I worked towards the front. The lower half of this wall has vertical mirror tile wainscoting. We wanted to remove it but assumed the pieces were glued directly to the plywood wall, as they are elsewhere in the coach, in which case removing them would have done a lot of damage. We repositioned the plastic, towel, and paint and I continued up the passenger side priming the plywood next to and (mostly) under the windows. Completing that side up to the cockpit required one more repositioning of all the stuff. I was working in close proximity to the new living room captain’s chairs so we wrapped those in painter’s plastic as well.

Bruce primes the bare plywood behind the sofa and under the driver side living room window.

I moved to the driver’s side and primed the area under the window and up the left side. Even though Linda had masked off all of the woodwork with painter’s tape I worked carefully and stayed away from the tape. We are not sure that the priming is even necessary and I did not want to risk getting any on the woodwork.

By the time we finished it was 5:30 PM and we were done working on the bus for the day. We had only worked for a couple of hours, and only accomplished a small task, but it was a critical path task that stood in the way of getting a whole chain of other important things done. Tomorrow we will sand the primer with 220 grit paper using the palm sander and try hanging the new wallpaper.

Linda made a pizza for dinner using the gluten-free almond meal recipe she got from Mara. She topped it with greens, onions, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, and Daiya non-dairy cheese. There is also cheese in the crust along with garlic and other good things. We had a nice salad first with walnuts, beets, and sun-dried tomato vinaigrette. The salad was very good and the pizza was outstanding.

Philip Jarrell called to let us know he would be here at 8 AM tomorrow to start our French drain and driveway project, weather permitting. Detroit Public Television shows classic movies at 8 PM on Fridays and tonight’s selection was “Bullit” starring Steve McQueen and Jacqueline Bisset. We watched This Old House and a couple of travel shows after that and then went to sleep.

2015/09/30 (W) Annual Checkups

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We were both scheduled for our physical exams today. Mine was at 9:20 AM, and I needed to leave by 8:20 to be sure I was there on time, so I got up at 7:30, showered, and dressed. I took my vitamin and allergy meds but did not make coffee or have breakfast, Linda’s appointment was at 1 PM so she slept in. We both had our blood drawn a week ago and the lab results had already been reviewed by our doctor and made available to us via the Henry Ford Health System MyChart patient information system.

We are both basically in good health with only minor issues, such as arthritis in the base of my thumbs or worn out knee joints in Linda’s case. Both of our blood analysis results were OK across the board but that does not mean we were completely happy with them. My blood pressure was a little higher than I would like but the doctor thought it was fine. Linda’s total cholesterol is higher than she would like so we are still learning what dietary choices and physical activity have to do with controlling that. We respect our doctor’s judgement but we are also re-calibrating our own understanding of what is desirable for us versus what is “normal” for adults our age living in the USA.

The problem with “normality” is that it is a statistical concept. In a population that is overwhelmingly unhealthy we do not necessarily want to be normal. As an example, American medicine considers the normal range for total cholesterol to be 120 to 200 and yet research, as reported by Dr. Michael Greger at NutritionFacts.org, shows that real health is associated with a number less than 150. Most Americans have total cholesterol way above that except for one group; active vegans. As another example it is generally accepted that as people age blood pressures in the 130’s over 80’s are “normal” and yet in rural China and Africa, where people eat mostly whole-food plant-based diets, “normal” is 110 over 70 for their entire lives. Heart disease and other “western” aliments are also virtually unknown. We are still works in progress.

I do like my morning coffee even though it is usually half regular and half decaffeinated so I left my physical exam and headed for the Tim Horton’s at Beck and Grand River Avenue. While I was in line I got a call from Chuck wanting to know if the new windshield cut down any of the wind noise. He was headed to his shop just down the street so I suggested he stop and chat over a cup of coffee. I told him what intersection I was at but mistakenly told him I was at Dunkin Donuts so he stopped there first. We have air/water leaks around the other windshields, side windows, and the entrance door so I could not tell any difference from replacing just one windshield. I trust, however, that the new one will not leak air or water and it is currently not cracked or dinged, so I am happy with it.

Linda texted me that she was leaving early for her appointment and was going to stroll around the mall. When I got home and tried to lock the driver side door on my Honda Element the key stuck in the lock and would not turn or come out. This lock has been failing for a while but the failure mode has been an inability to insert the key. Fortunately I had a second key in the house and was able to unlock the passenger door and rear lift gate. Not only was I unable to remove the key, the latch was disconnected from both the outside and inside handles and I could not get the door open. I called Brighton Honda to make sure they could give a ride back to the house and then removed the ham radio control head and microphone, the GPS, the cellular booster, and the 2m/70cm antenna before driving to the dealership.

Rob checked me in and tried jiggling the key harder than I had. The key still did not come out but he managed to get the latch to re-engage with the handles so we could get the door open. He wrote up the work order and I only had to wait a short time for the shuttle to return and drive me home. Rob called later in the afternoon with the estimate. They had to order a new latch which should be in on Friday, and then send the latch and one of my keys to a locksmith to have the lock matched to the key. By the time they got the mechanism back from the locksmith and installed in the door he figured it would be the middle of next week. That was not ideal for me but it was what it was. The car was not very usable in its current condition so I did not really have a choice. I was all too well aware that this was another case where I put off fixing something longer than I should have. I was lucky, in a sense, that it failed when and where it did as I was not stranded somewhere calling Linda to bring the spare key.

When I got back to the house I attached the battery charger to the battery in the lawn tractor. Philip Jarrell is supposed to start working on our French drain and pull-through driveway extension tomorrow and the lawn tractor is parked where he will be working. I added gasoline to the tank but even after bringing the battery to full charge and using the jump start feature on the charger I was unable to get it started. After repeated attempts I gave up. When Linda got home we disengaged the transmission and pushed to another part of the yard where it would be out of Phil’s way.

I have mentioned before that this lawn tractor was left here by the previous owners. The mower deck was pretty messed up and we removed it this past spring. We have a lawn service, Kish Lawn Care, mow the grass so we really do not have a reason to buy a new lawn tractor/mower. Still, I thought it would be useful for hauling materials and debris around the property and I put new drive tires on it in 2013 and bought an 18 cubic foot dump trailer this year to pull around behind it. Whatever the problem is I’m sure it can be fixed, and probably by me, if/when I have time; which I do not at the moment.

I spent much of the rest of the day in my office except for dinner. I reviewed the final draft of an article I wrote which is running in the October 2015 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine. I then logged in to the B&H Photo website and finally ordered the Sony alpha99 (a99v) DSLT body and a few accessories. The body comes with the vertical grip battery pack for no extra charge, a $378 value, so that was a nice surprise. The body comes with one battery but the grip, which holds two additional batteries, does not come with any, so I ordered five additional batteries giving me six total for two complete sets. I also ordered two 64 GB memory cards and a small case for carrying an extra battery on my belt. B&H is closed until October 7 for SUCCOS. My order is scheduled to ship on the 8th and arrive on the 9th, no added shipping charge.

I spent the rest of my time editing drafts of blog posts and selecting/processing a few photos to go with some of them. I hope to have the posts for the first two weeks of August uploaded in the next couple of days. When I finally came upstairs we watched a show on PBS about the life long work of biologist E. O. Wilson. It was fascinating.

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.

2015/06/25 (R) The Mouse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2015/06/24 (W) Up The Tower

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2015/06/23 (T) Grounded

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2015/06/12 (F) Forms and Family

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2015/06/10 (W) Ron and Mary

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Same routine as yesterday; up at 7 AM, open up the house, feed the cats, clean the litter tray, start a load of laundry, make the coffee, and drink the coffee while using our iPads.

Our daughter’s 34th birthday is tomorrow but she is flying to Las Vegas today to meet up with her husband who is there on a company outing. We will celebrate her birthday when they get back, perhaps in conjunction with Father’s Day and Linda’s birthday, which is at the end of the month.

Linda left at 9 AM for Brighton Honda to have the 12 V battery in her car checked. The battery light came on the other day so we thought it might need to be replaced. Around 9:20 AM I heard thunder and a short time later we had a brief, heavy downpour. Linda called at the same time and said the battery tested OK. The problem could be the alternator, of course, but presumably the dealer service people know that and checked for that. If not, we will likely be back there sooner rather than later.

Linda headed on to Meijer’s to do the grocery shopping. Today was trash pickup day so I took the trash can to the street. After meeting with Brad from Chuck It Junk Removal the other day we decided we would rent their trailer for 5 days. For the same price as having them physically handle 1/3 of a truck of junk (5 cu. yd.) we can get rid of a full truck of junk (15 cu. yd.) by loading it ourselves. Deal.

I got a call from Phil Jarrell regarding my request for pricing to dig a foundation hole for a ham radio tower foundation. It was a useful conversation in that I had not previously realized that I will need a concrete contractor in addition to the concrete supplier. The only thing the concrete supplier will do is show up with a cement mixer truck and dump the concrete where they are instructed to. The concrete contractor will actually place rebar, build forms, provide carts or a pumper, and get the concrete from the truck to the hole. Phil recommended Mike Fearer of Bid-Rite Concrete as a good guy who would work with me to get this done.

I talked with Chuck about getting a key to his shop so we could have the new refrigerator delivered there and have the old one picked up without having to trouble him to be there. He agreed and suggested that we contact the guy down the street about removing the old windshield and installing the new one as part of the refrigerator swap.

Rather than dig into our bus interior remodeling project I have used the last couple of days to finalize decisions about various products and order them. One of the things I have wanted/needed for a while is a cable entrance box that will allow me to route transmission lines and control cables into the basement from outside. I talked to Chris Perri, KF7P, at the Dayton Hamvention last month and decided that I liked his custom fabricated cable entry boxes. I got his business card at the Hamvention and exchanged a couple of e-mails with him this week. I decided this morning how I want the box initially configured and e-mailed my specs to Chris. I would like to run the cabling for the cell phone booster through this box so I needed to get it on order. Speaking of which, the cell phone booster system arrived today via UPS so I am feeling more comfortable that all of the stuff I am ordering will actually get delivered to our house.

Wednesday’s and Fridays are when Recycle Livingston is open and the Wednesday hours are 11 AM to 5:30 PM. We had my car loaded up with recyclables and Linda drove over after lunch to drop them off. When she got back she made a batch of her yummy granola and I got a couple more loads of laundry done while continuing to work at my computer.

After doing my alternate tile layout for the bus floor yesterday I decided that I liked the way it looked better than the original ad that it would not involve any more cutting than the row/column layout. I also felt confident that I had an accurate enough tile count to go ahead and order the tiles. I drove to the Shell station to fill my tank and then drove to Lynch Carpet in Howell. I ordered 12 boxes of the 16″ x 16″ Armstrong Alterna Luxury Vinyl Tile in the La Plata Creme Fresh pattern, and a gallon each of the vinyl adhesive and Glacier vinyl grout. There are 14 tiles per box (24.89 sq. ft.) for a total of 168 tiles (just under 300 sq. ft.). The inside floor area of the bus is around 300 sq. ft. before subtracting out walls and cabinets but we will be using some of the tiles on vertical surfaces in the entry stairwell and cockpit and around the box that supports the bed platform. My estimate is that I will have 10 extra tiles. The guy at Lynch Carpet suggested that I use a scrap piece of tile as a spacer when installing the tiles but I may use the little plastic “X” pieces designed for this purpose.

From Lynch Carpet I drove to Lowe’s in Howell to see if they had a different portable air compressor that might be more appropriate than the 6 gallon Porter Cable we just bought. The Porter-Cable air compressor has a maximum regulated pressure of 150 PSI but that is also the maximum tank pressure. I will have to test it on one of the front bus tires to determine if it will get the job done and if not I will return it.

The guy at Lynch Carpet also suggested that I rent a handheld grinder from Abe’s or A-1 Rental, both in Howell. Abe’s did not have any grinders of any kind and A-1 was closed on Wednesdays. The gal at Abe’s suggested the tool rental service at the Howell Home Depot, so I stopped there. They also did not have a handheld grinder but they did have a floor model concrete grinder. It was so heavy that I doubt if we could have gotten it into the bus and it was too big to maneuver in the tight spaces where I need to work. They did have a lighter/smaller floor stripper and I may give that a try before I resort to grinding off the thinset with an angle grinder and diamond impregnated wheel and/or a belt sander with a very aggressive belt.

Pat Davidson called from Apex Roofing while I was out so I called him back. They will be able to start on our roof next week Monday or Tuesday and will deliver the shingles on Friday this week. I confirmed that we wanted two of the 14″ light tunnels for the living room. I also indicated that I had scrapped the idea of building a dormer or installing a roof hatch as I simply did not get this taken care of in time.

Linda had closed up the house and turned on the air-conditioning while I was out. It was pulling moisture out of the air but would not bring the air temperature lower than 78 degrees. Not good. This will be our third summer in this house and we have not used the air-conditioning very much. The first summer we were gone for most of June, all of July, and a few days in August. We had the unit serviced last year and thought it was working OK but perhaps did not really use it after that. We did install filters in the return air grills so perhaps they are restricting the airflow too much. It is also possible that it needs refrigerant. I will have to check our records from last year and then call TOMTEK to arrange to have it serviced again.

Linda’s brother, Ron, and his wife, Mary, arrived early this evening. They are on their way to northwest Illinois for a week-long organized bicycle ride. They have to be there on Saturday and will be spending the next three nights at our house. Visits from them are usually not more than once a year but we really enjoy their company when they are here.

For dinner Linda made a nice green salad and then made whole wheat angel hair pasta with onions, garlic, and mushrooms lightly sautéed in olive oil. Ron does not imbibe but Linda, Mary, and I had a glass (or two) of Moscato. We moved to the deck after dinner and had fresh strawberries for dessert. It cooled off as darkness set in and we eventually moved back inside. The other three were in the kitchen and I was sitting on the sofa when Juniper suddenly caught a mouse in the middle of the living room, or at least that is where I noticed that she had it. She took it downstairs and I got her to drop it in the bathroom sink but I was unable to get it into a container to take it outside and it escaped into my office. I closed the doors but I have no doubt it can go wherever it wants in the house from there. When I returned upstairs we chatted until 11 PM and then all turned in for the evening.

2015/05/16 (S) Trucks and Buses

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To paraphrase, “If it’s Saturday we must be in South Lyon” and that was, indeed, the case. Most of the regulars were missing from our weekly breakfast gathering of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC), but six of us showed up and had a great conversation. By the time we headed towards home it was starting to rain lightly.

We stopped at Brighton Honda to get some information on the Honda Ridgeline pickup truck. The salesman was very nice, but unfortunately Honda has stopped making the Ridgeline. They are reintroducing it in the fall of 2016, but we will likely make a decision about a new car/truck sooner than that. There are still a few in stock around the country but we already have an orphaned Honda Element. We like the car, but would be happier if they were still being made. In this case, however, it was a moot point as the Ridgeline is not towable four wheels down.

We drove next door to Brighton Ford to look at F-150 pickup trucks. We were assisted by Frank Stapleton and he was easy to work with. He insisted that we meet his new car sales manager, Eric Wilkinson, before we left. We felt that was unnecessary at this stage in the process, but he also seemed like a nice enough guy. The entry level XL 2-door may be reasonably priced (not really, but what car is?), but the slightly nicer XLT 4-door short bed with 4-wheel drive, towing package, and off-road package looks like it would price out at $45,000 give or take three grand. Without X -Plan pricing that is simply not going to happen, and even with X-Plan pricing it is not a sure thing. Frank really wanted us to test drive one but given the rainy weather we were not in the humor to do that today.

The F-150 is a nice truck, nicer in fact than many cars, and perhaps nicer than a pickup truck needs to be or should be. On the plus side it certainly has ground clearance, but on the negative side (for us) it is also BIG. The back seat room in the four door body style is cavernous, made larger by fold up seats, and that would be very useful for us when traveling in the bus. Between the back seat and the bed we could store a LOT of stuff. It has well-placed handles by all four doors, and it is a god thing as we both needed them, along with the running boards, to get in and out. There are several engine options including the 2.7 L and 3.5 L Eco-Boost models, both of which feature twin turbochargers. These are high-tech engines, with incredible power and torque and decent fuel economy. I liked the sound of that, but unfortunately that technology comes at a significant price premium. Interestingly, Ford is using an aluminum body and the truck weighs in at about 4,700 pounds. Our Honda Element weighs over 4,000 pounds and it is not nearly as big as the F-150. How well the aluminum will hold up is unknown.

We were almost home when we decided to keep driving and visit LaFontaine Nissan. While not as convenient as the Brighton dealerships, it is only 15 miles from our house, 13 of those headed east on M-59. Linda checked their hours on her phone and they were open until 4 PM. The purpose of our visit was to look at the Nissan Frontier pickup truck and the Nissan Xterra SUV, both of which Edmonds.com suggested were viable off-road alternatives to a Jeep Wrangler while Consumer Reports indicated they were more reliable and more practical than a Jeep Wrangler. Bobby Lundwall, the Commercial Manager, assisted us and we met the General Sales Manager, Don Poley, before we left. Bobby was very helpful and brought a Frontier and Xterra around front for us to see. Again, we were not interested in test driving one at this stage, especially in the rain.

The Nissan Frontier pickup has an available 4-door, 4-wheel drive, short bed model. It is considered a mid-size truck and is noticeably smaller than a Ford F-150 in every way. The Pro-4X off-road version has 10.1 inches of ground clearance at the differential, which should be adequate for our needs. It has a transfer case but is only towable four wheels down with the 6-speed manual transmission. We looked at the Xterra but found it harder to get in and out of, especially the back seat. It is taller than the Frontier and after due consideration we agreed that we were not really in the market for an SUV.

The Frontier does not have the bewildering array of options that the F-150 has and would be more suitable for the 95% of our driving that is on local paved and dirt roads. It would be perfectly adequate for hauling materials from Lowe’s to the house and has an available tent option for camping. We presume that aftermarket bed covers, canopies, and even small truck campers are available but we would check on that before buying one. Ditto for Blue Ox base plates and the ability to install an SMI Air Force One auxiliary braking system.

We did not test drive one, but it was easy to get in and out of, and comfortable to sit in, at least in the front seats. It weighs about 4,500 pounds, basically that same as the much larger F-150. The only negatives at this point are the manual transmission and lack of choice on interior fabric; the Pro-4X only comes with a charcoal interior, either cloth or leather. The bottom line was that it is probably a better fit for us than a Jeep Wrangler or a Ford F-150 and could be acquired for under $35,000 equipped the way we want it. Nissan also has zero percent financing available at the monument, although that is often in place of other incentives. The fact that it requires a manual transmission to be towed four wheels down, however, probably knocks it out of contention.

Storage compartment under the lift-up bed platform. The two boxes concealed and protectd 4″ flexible HVAC ducts.

Once we got home we had a light lunch. I then changed into my work clothes and got back to work deconstructing the inside of our motorcoach. (I like the term deconstructing as I think it is more descriptive of what I am doing that demolishing or even disassembling.) My goal for today was to finish removing all of the carpet and all of the carpet tack strips. I accomplished all of that except for a piece of carpet on the wall behind the driver’s seat and a piece on the front wall of the entry stairwell. My first task, however, was to cut a short slot in the 3/8″ plywood filler that was under the dinette in order to free an AC electrical cable that ran through it and then through the floor.

Getting the carpet off of the sides of the bed platform was interesting. There was a piece of wood trim installed along the top edge of the side of the bed base facing the front of the bus and just under the plywood bed platform. The trim strip is rabbited on the underside and conceals a 12VDC strip light that is tied in with toekick lights in the bathroom and the floor lights in the hallway. The power for the lights comes from inside the bed base through a small hole in the plywood and carpet. The trim strip also appeared to be installed over the carpet and needed to be removed to get the carpet loose along the top.

Under-bed storage compartment with bot HVAC ducts uncovered.

There was also an adjustable HVAC louver on each side of the bed. The louvers were installed from the outside and had flexible heater ducts slipped over them on the inside and secured with screws. The flexible ducts were in the storage area under the bed and were covered by wood boxes to protect them. The boxes, in turn, were carpeted to match the rest of the storage compartment. To disconnect the wiring for the strip light and remove the boxes I had to first empty out all of the stuff stored under the bed so I could get in there to work. The bed platform is hinged about one foot from the head end and the foot end lifts up, supported by two gas struts, so there was plenty of room to work once I emptied it out.

I have disassembled enough of the bus at this point to have some idea of how the conversion was built. The cover “boxes” for the flexible ducts were actually half-boxes with a long side and top and one small end. They were installed into a corner using a cleat screwed to the floor that the bottom edge of the long side was then screwed into. There was a similar arrangement to catch the free edge of the top and it was screwed to the inside wall of the platform base. All of these screws were put in through the carpet that covered the boxes and were essentially invisible so I had to find the screw heads by touch and back them out.

The area just forward of the bed base with the bed platform raised and facing the driver side of the bus.

Once I got the protective boxes loose I discovered that the floor and wall were also carpeted. There was a small bump out in each rear corner that served as wiring chases for AC electrical outlets on each side of the bed, and these bump outs were carpeted. It seemed clear to me that the HVAC ducts, which are part of the OTR HVAC system, may have originally been installed directly into the HVAC chase outside the bed base and later repositioned to the sides of the bed thus requiring the louvers, flexible ducts, and cover boxes. They also greatly reduced the available storage space under the bed.

The OTR HVAC chase runs along the floor-wall junctions on both sides of the bus for most of the length of the coach and a 12″ section of it is accessible on either side of the bed. Removing the two flexible ducts, sealing up the openings, and installing the louvers outside the bed platform will free up additional storage space under the bed which is a good thing as we can always use for storage space. That’s a nice bonus but adds some additional work to the remodeling project. Such is the nature of remodeling; you never really know what you have until you have completed the deconstruction phase.

The aft side of the bed base. There is not a lot of room to work in here so I will remove the bed platform when I install the new tile floor. I plan to use the same tile on the sides of the bed base.

It was overcast all day with humidity near 100% and rained off and on into the evening. It was also warm so I kept opening the roof vents and running the fans to make it more comfortable in the coach, but every time I did it started raining shortly thereafter. When I was done working on the bus for the day I moved the ten concrete blocks that had been supporting the propane tank for the whole house generator and pulled up the utility marker flags for the underground gas line to our meter. Keith will be here to cut the grass this coming week and I want him to be able mow these areas.

Linda spent the afternoon thoroughly cleaning the kitchen. She also prepared a sugar-water solution, filled the hummingbird feeder we bought at Lowe’s the other day, and hung it off the railing of our rear deck. A hummingbird found it almost immediately which was very cool. For dinner Linda made pan-grilled tofu slices with caramelized onions and sweet BBQ sauce served on tortillas. She also sautéed fresh broccoli and sliced up some fresh strawberries and pineapple.

After dinner Linda went to the Edmonds.com website to see if she could get a better feel for dealer cost and Fair Market Value for the Ford F-150 and Nissan Frontier. While she was at it she looked up the Chevy Colorado (GMC Canyon), and Toyota Tacoma. The Chevy Colorado was Motor Trend Magazine’s 2015 Truck of the Year. Both the Colorad0/Canyon and Tacoma are mid-sized pickup trucks. Toyota’s full-size pickup is the Tundra.

Brendan called while we out to see if Linda could sit with Madeline tomorrow night while he and Shawna had dinner with their friend Jorge. Depending how the day goes tomorrow I may go to Ann Arbor with her. We had two episodes of Sherlock left to watch and the DVDs have to go back to the library on Monday, so we watched both of them this evening. It was a double feature so I made popcorn in-between episodes.

2014/11/03-09 A Week at Home

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Note: There are no photographs for this consolidated post. Sorry. 🙁

2014/11/03 (M) Getting Ready

Linda was up early and off to the bakery. I got up an hour later and had some raisin toast for breakfast. Whenever I have had time since I got home on Friday I have been working on the project list for our bus. I worked on it some more this morning but eventually had to set it aside while I made some phone calls, tried to deal with an issue with Linda’s Samsung laptop computer, and got documents ready to upload to my Dropbox for a meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

I called Bill Jensen, the national service advisor for conversion shells at Prevost Car Inc., but his voice message said he was unavailable indefinitely and gave alternate contact info. The main contact was Kevin Laughlin so I called him. I described the shorter ride height linkage and the downward pointing position of the ride height valve lever arm in its neutral position. He agreed that neither of these seemed right.

I called Prevost and ordered a new ride height valve and two CX-96 (Gates) drive belts for the OTR air-conditioning compressor. I then called Martin Diesel in Defiance, Ohio and made an appointment to have the diesel generator in our coach serviced on the 20th and 21st if needed. I also needed to call Webasto technical support but did not get that call made today; maybe on Wednesday (or Thursday).

Linda’s Samsung laptop suddenly decided to turn the screen brightness down and she has not been able to turn it back up. It’s bright enough to see in somewhat dim conditions, but still uncomfortably dim for general office use. I did a Google search and found that lots of other folks had encountered the same problem and had advice on how to fix it. I shared several links with Linda but she could not get it to work.

I put the finishing touches on the FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter’s financial statements, roster, and minutes of last year’s’ meeting. I uploaded them to Dropbox and e-mailed the chapter members that the materials where there.

Linda got home later than usual from the bakery so we decided to go to La Marsa in Brighton for dinner. It’s our favorite local restaurant but was more crowded than on a regular Monday due to the buffet they have the first Monday of each month and we had to wait about 20 minutes for a table. We ordered the almond garlic Ghallaba from the menu, one of our two favorite vegan dishes, but it was not as good as usual. Not bad just somewhat flat, as if they had left out the garlic. It was 8:30 PM by the time we got home and we turned in for the night fairly quickly.

2014/11/04 (T) Election Day

Linda did not go into the bakery today. We spent much of the day together and this is what we did:

Had raisin toast for breakfast with Orange juice and banana…
..
Got passport photos at Rite-Aid in Brighton…
Went to Panera for coffee…
Drove to Dearborn for dental hygienist appointments…
Drove back to Farmington Hills where we went to McDonald’s and had French fries for lunch…
Drove a mile to the Henry Ford Health System Columbus Center in Novi for flu shots…
Drove back home where we had a few chips and hummus for an afternoon snack…

I drove to Brighton Honda for a 3:30 PM appointment to have the Element’s recalled air bag serviced. The appointment took 45 minutes by which time the traffic was really bad. Because of the combination of rush hour traffic and the ongoing re-paving of Grand River Avenue just west of the dealership a left turn was going to be near impossible. I needed to get to Latson Road and Grand River Avenue so I made the easy right (and correct) turn out of the dealership and quickly got on I-96 westbound. I took the relatively new Latson Road exit and stopped at Walmart to stock up on ICE brand water. I went to Meijer’s for a Mega-Millions lottery ticket and then to O’Reilly’s Auto Parts for two more 12VDC duplex power outlets. It was still raining lightly, as it had been for most of the day, so I returned home by way of Grand River Avenue and Hacker Road which kept me on pavement for most of the trip.

Linda heated up the leftover chili for dinner. She continued to try different things to get her Samsung laptop to allow her to adjust the screen brightness and return it to normal but nothing worked. I took a little time to update WordPress websites and tweak the Wordfence login security. We then filled out and printed our passport renewal applications and got them ready to mail. We also figured out how to create, share, and synchronize multiple calendars on multiple devices so that we can now see the same information on our laptops, tablets, and smartphones. It’s all about Google.

Linda was tired and needed to get up early but something had broken on our bed foundation and needed to be fixed, if only temporarily. We are still using the plastic foundation that came with our select comfort air mattress years ago and one of the cross members that carry the load to the side rails had come loose from the interlocking top platform and dropped down. We had to get the mattress off the bed to work on the platform. We got it put back together for now, but we need to get a box spring or other foundation to replace it. That probably won’t happen until spring.

2014/11/05 (W) The Day After

Yesterday’s election results were generally as predicted, so nothing to cheer about from our point of view, but the world did not come to an end either. Elections change very little in the short-term and the daily tasks of living continue regardless of who does or does not get elected. We were happy, of course, that Gary Peters won the U. S. Senate seat and that Debbie Dingle was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives. We were especially pleased that our friend, Brian Robb, won re-election to the Ypsilanti City Council and that Richard Bernstein was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court, but saddened to learn that Casandra Ulbrich failed in her attempt to get re-elected to the State Board of Education. And so it goes with American politics.

Linda was back at the bakery today reviewing the period accounting and continuing to answer questions and monitor the use of the new software. I took care of some e-mails and then headed to the Brighton post office to mail our passport renewals. I refueled my car at Meijer’s for $2.899/gal and then stopped at Bed, Bath, and Beyond to exchange two Sodastream CO2 cartridges. BB&B is in the same strip mall as the Panera, so I stopped in for some coffee.

When I got home UPS had already delivered my package from Prevost. I took the trash can to the street first and then I opened the box and verified the contents. I installed one of the Sodastream cartridges but the display would not reset. The unit has an LCD display so I figured it had a battery hidden somewhere. I released a clip at the top of the display and the whole display module came out with the nickel-sized battery was installed on the back side. I started to remove it and the display changed, so I figured it needed a new battery. I did not think we had any of this type of battery in the house but Linda told me later that we did.

I had not backed up all of my photo files from last week so I spent some time in the early afternoon copying files from my camera to my laptop and then from my laptop to both of our NAS units. I printed off all of the documents I needed for the FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter annual meeting and was responding to an e-mail when Tony and Mark from GSI showed up to install the new natural gas fireplace logs and hookup the new natural gas outdoor grill.

Tony and his wife own GSI but he had Mark install the fireplace while he worked on the grill. He installed the new disconnect but when leak testing discovered that there was a small leak on the output side of the shutoff valve. I had to shut off the gas supply to that branch circuit, which also supplies gas to the kitchen range and the fireplace, so he could work on it. Tony removed the new disconnect, installed a new valve, and reinstalled the disconnect. I turned the gas supply on and he retested for leaks but did not find any. He suggested that we run it for a while to burn off manufacturing oils and other things that initially produce odors and can affect the taste of foods cooked in the unit. I got the stainless steel heat diffuser and two cast iron grills and set them in place. The left burner lit easily using the battery powered piezoelectric igniter and the right grill lit easily from the left one.

Linda got home at 3:30 PM while Tony and Mark were still working and took over interacting with them while I got ready for our 4 PM telephone meeting. She got instructions on how to light/operate both appliances, paid them, and then joined me for the meeting. By 4:05 PM we had 14 “F” numbers represented, safely exceeding our quorum requirement of 10, and Bob Pelc called the meeting to order. The meeting was friendly but efficient. We conducted all of the necessary annual chapter business and adjourned at 4:42 PM. I was re-elected to another 2-year term as chapter secretary but did not run for chapter vice-president, the position I have held since the chapter was formed in June 2010.

After the meeting Linda shut off the outdoor grill and we sat in the living room monitoring our fireplace logs and discussing dinner options. As a result Linda decided to make waffles. She tried a different recipe and substituted pastry flour instead for regular flour. Neither of us understand the difference, at a food chemistry level, but she apparently invented/discovered something that will stick to Teflon-coated cookware; really, really tightly. The waffles were crispy and tasted fine, once we got them out of the waffle iron, but they would not have won any prizes for presentation.

We spent a couple more hours after dinner sitting in the living room letting the firelogs operate with the flue opened a bit. Tony and Mark said it can take up to 20 hours of use for the unit to stop producing odors and suggested that we operate it with the flue slightly open while breaking it in. The logs are a non-vented design, just like a kitchen range, which means they are designed to operate without being vented to the outside yet not produce harmful combustion by-products such as carbon monoxide. At 8:50 PM I turned the logs down to their lowest setting. Linda shut the unit off at 9:15 PM (it has an On/Off/Remote switch but we do not have a remote). The pilot light does not consume enough air or produce enough heat and combustion by-products to be a safety or economic concern, so I left it on, closed the flue, and went to bed.

2014/11/06 (R) Inductive Thinking

Linda left the house before I awoke and spent a long day at the bakery. I spent most of the day at the dining room table working at my computer. I typed up the draft minutes from yesterday’s FMCA Freethinkers annual meeting, generated PDFs of the chapter’s financial reports, uploaded files to the Dropbox folder, and reorganized it.

I took a break at noon and drove into Novi to have a look at Chuck’s latest bus projects and then go to lunch at the local Leo’s Coney Island. The new wedge cabinet and Corian top look and fit great between the end of the new couch and the kitchen base cabinet. He did a nice job replacing the outside Jenn Air electric cooktop/grill, which was mounted in a pull-out tray in one of the bays, with two Indufix 2-hob induction cooktops. The tray has an open bottom and is supported by four heavy duty extension slides, two on each side. The induction units are from Germany and came with European “208VAC” plugs. They are strictly 208/240 VAC devices and do not have a neutral connection. The wire colors are also different with brown and blue for the L1 and L2 (hot, load) and yellow/green for the ground. Chuck had an addendum sheet explaining the color codes and how to match them up to the U. S. standard.

For lunch I had a small Greek salad without feta cheese and an order of French fries. Chuck had a more substantial meal with a salad, chicken on skewers, and rice. I was back home by 3:00 PM and settled back into my computer-based work.

Linda got home around 6:15 PM and made barbecued tofu sandwiches with grilled onions and corn on the cob. We washed it down with Leelanau Cellars sweet Red Table Wine. It was labeled semi-sweet but it reminded me of the King of the North wine from Red Trail Vineyards in North Dakota which had a distinctly grape juice taste. I liked it and Linda said she did too, which surprised me a little, as she tends to like dryer red wines.

After dinner Linda read and played online word games on her iPad to the warm glow of our new natural gas fireplace logs. These logs are a high-efficiency, unvented design and actually through heat into the living room rather than up the chimney. I continued reformatting the Freethinkers chapter roster, uploaded it to my Dropbox, and e-mailed the members to let them know it was available and ask them to review their listing and get back to me with corrections. RVillage had notified me that someone wanted to join both the CCO and GLCC groups so I logged in and approved those.

I discovered the other day that Wordfence will allow me to block individual IP addresses so I would like to find the time to go back through the “User Locked Out” notification e-mails and enter some of the most egregious repeat offenders. But not tonight. It’s late, Linda is already asleep, and I’m tired.

2014/11/07 (F) 50% plus

My objectives for today were the following:

Finish up yesterday’s blog post and start working on today’s…
Read a few of the blogs I follow in Feedly (I am way behind)…
Move the spare Aqua-Hot from the garage to the library…
Move any other freeze sensitive items from the garage to the library…
Finish the drywall compound work in the library…
Call Webasto technical support…
Measure the inside of the Honda Element…
Buy plywood to build the storage divider for the Element…
Start building the storage divider for the Honda Element…
Use the blower to clear the leaves from the deck and planting beds….
Prepare the FMCA Freethinker annual chapter certification paperwork…
Select a few photos to go with blog posts going back to early October…
Start uploading blog posts to our website…

That was obviously more than I could possibly accomplish in one day, but it helps to write it down. Here is how I did…

Finish up yesterday’s blog post and start working on today’s…check.
Read a few of the blogs I follow in Feedly (I am way behind)…check.
Move the spare Aqua-Hot from the garage to the library…check.
Move any other freeze sensitive items from the garage to the library…some.
Finish the drywall compound work in the library…check.
Make an unplanned trip to Lowe’s and Sherwin Williams for paint supplies…Yes.
Prime the areas in the library where the drywall work was done…Yes!
Call Webasto technical support…check.
Measure the inside of the Honda Element…check.
Buy plywood to build the storage divider for the Element…no.
Start building the storage divider for the Honda Element…no.
Use the blower to clear the leaves from the deck and planting beds….no.
Prepare the FMCA Freethinker annual chapter certification paperwork…no.
Select a few photos to go with blog posts going back to early October…no.
Start uploading blog posts to our website…no.

That’s 6-1/2 + 2 out of 13 + 2 or 8-1/2 out of 15 which is over 50%; not bad. I might have gotten one or two other things done, or at least started, but we ended up meeting Chuck at BD’s Mongolian Bar-B-Que in Novi for dinner at 7:00 PM. Barbara was still attending to out-of-town family business and Chuck appreciated not dining alone. We were at the restaurant for over two hours and had a nice meal and great conversation in spite the very loud, upbeat youthful vibe of the place. Next time we will try Sizzling Sticks in Northville; same kind of food but a much more subdued atmosphere according to Chuck. Overall it was another good day.

2014/11/08 (S) Steve and Karen

We had a good sized crowd at the ham radio breakfast this morning. We did not have to be anywhere at any particular time, and we were enjoying the conversation, so we stayed a little longer than usual. Once we got back to the house I changed into work clothes for drywall and painting while Linda gathered up the recyclables and finished her grocery list. She left to run the errands and I got the painting tools/supplies out.

Linda dropped off the recyclables, stopped at the bank, stopped at Lowe’s to return something that it turned out we had not purchased there, and then did the grocery shopping at Meijer’s. While she was gone I put a first coat of paint on the areas of the west wall of the library where I had repaired the drywall. The item she planned to return was a can of Great Stuff Fire Block that broke yesterday when I tried to use it. It turned out that I had not purchased it at Lowe’s as they do not sell it. They sell a 3M product for the same application, which I had sitting in the garage but had overlooked. I used it to try to fill gaps around the gas supply pipe and the condensate drain, which were open clear through to the outside, and the double-walled flue pipe and gas pipe that pass through the furnace closet wall. I applied the foam from inside the furnace closet and will need another can to finish the job from the outside of the closet.

Linda started putting together supper while I gathered up laundry and started a load. I spent some quiet time with Jasper, our very sweet 10-year old cat, and then settled in to write and read for a while.

Steve and Karen arrived at 5 PM and we visited while Linda put the finishing touches on dinner. She made the warm Farro dish with kale, dried cranberries, almonds, garlic, and onions and roasted asparagus as a side. She has the Farro dish tagged “good for company.” We still have a few bottles of the 2009 Egri Merlot and the slightly sweet full body of this wine went very nicely with the earthy Farro. She made a chocolate cake for dessert with raspberry sauce made from fresh raspberries. I think the cake was her best yet; very moist with just the right texture. Vegan baking is tricky and Linda is still figuring it out. Sometimes the cakes are a bit dry and other times they lean towards being brownies but tonight she got it just right.

Steve brought his Raspberry Pi single board computer (SBC) and an SD card with photos of their recent (September) trip out west. He connected the Pi to our TV/monitor in the basement so we could all comfortably see the photos. They had excellent weather and some fall colors the days they were in Yellowstone National Park and got some nice images. But we spent most the evening sitting in the living room enjoying the new natural gas firelogs and catching up on what we had been doing since we last saw each other. They left around 10:30 PM and we had everything picked up by 11 PM and headed off to bed.

2014/11/09 (N) Wrapping Up

Today was mostly about wrapping up the library drywall/painting project and other minor chores, doing laundry, and getting me packed for a two week return visit to Twelve Mile, Indiana to work on our bus and help Butch and Fonda work on theirs.

Linda made blueberry pancakes for breakfast, which is always a treat. I made a trip to Lowe’s for a nine inch disposable paint roller cover and another can of 3M Fireblock spray foam. I used the can of spray foam to finish sealing the gaps in the utility closet wall openings where the black iron gas pipe and the double-wall flu pass into the garage. I only needed a little more foam to finish the utility closet openings so I used the rest of the can to fill gaps around the rear entrance door in the garage.

I used some scrap packing paper from recent Prevost shipments and some frog tape to mask the opening for the library furnace return air grille. I then used flat black spray paint to make everything that is visible through the slots in the cover disappear. Finally, it was time to paint walls.

I used a small brush to cut in the adjacent wall and ceiling with the Sherwin-Williams Extra White satin finish paint. I removed the cover plates from two outlets and a switch and then rolled on a new/final coat of paint. I cleaned up my paint supplies and then we brought the outdoor grill (and cover) into the garage to store for the winter. We also brought the patio table umbrella and base into the library and set the umbrella in the base for the winter rather than let in lie on the floor.

Linda made another batch of granola while I checked stuff on my computer and took care of laundry and packing. We had leftovers for dinner at 5:15 PM and then headed to South Lyon for the monthly SLAARC (ham radio) meeting where I was re-elected as VP for a second year and Linda was elected Treasurer for the coming year. The program was a presentation on Software Defined Radios (SDR) by Mike Alexander (N8MSA). When we got home we finished the chocolate cake and raspberry sauce with a glass of Leelanau Cellars Autumn Red wine and then turned in for the night.

2014/05/05 (M) Towering Heights

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It dropped into the upper 30’s early this morning. Although I did not really want to go outside and work, it was the perfect time to adjust the pressures in the bus tires and reset the baseline pressures on the Pressure Pro TPMS. I had a 10 AM service appointment for my car and wanted to take care of the bus tires before the air temperature warmed up or some of the tires sat in the sun.

I took the Honda Element to Brighton Honda for the 85,000 mile service which consisted of an oil change and multi-point inspection. A quick trip to Best Buy to look for a case for my new ASUS laptop computer did not result in a usable case but I did discover a new Logitech mouse, the T630; very thin and stylish but unfortunately not in stock. They printed out a sheet for me to take along.

I called Wayne (KD8H) and arranged to go see the Heights Tower he had for sale at 2 PM. Mike (W8XH) came along to help me inspect it. Mike has a Heights Tower so he is very familiar with them. The tower was already down and disassembled into sections that were stored horizontally on saw horses. The fold-over mount (FOM) was made of steel rather than aluminum and was rusty but very substantial. Wayne had the motor for the FOM but no longer had the threaded rod. The top tower sections had the mounting plate for a Ham II rotator and the bearing plate for the rotating mast. He also had the Ham II rotator, and was willing to include that in the deal. I wrote him a check and arranged to come back later in the week with a truck or trailer to pick everything up. After I dropped Mike back at his QTH and returned home I e-mailed several SLAARC members to see if they might be have a truck and/or trailer and time to help me retrieve the tower parts.

I had been doing research on cases for the ASUS G750 series (ROG) laptop computer and found two on Amazon Prime from Everki that looked promising as they were designed to hold up to an 18.5 inch (diagonal) computer. The Advanced was a padded top-load zipper case with a slender front zipper pocket. The Lunar was also a padded top-load zipper case but had a larger zippered front pouch and a slender zipper pocket in front of that. It also had a slot across the back that allowed it to be placed over the extended handle of a roller case. The Lunar was 3x the price of the Advanced, but the Lunar looked like it would better accommodate the AC power adapter and other accessories I tend to haul around. I had checked the ASUS ROG forum (Republic of Gamers) previously and the general opinion was that these two cases were both of good quality and big enough to hold my computer and related stuff. I ordered one for delivery on Wednesday (2-day), no extra charge with Amazon Prime.

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Tag Archives: Brighton Honda

2016/04/21-25 (R–M) Bad Brakes & More

2015/11/23 (M) Elemental Errand Run

2015/11/20 (F) The End of Projects (for now)

2015/10/08 (R) A Mighty Hose

2015/10/07 (W) The Root Cause

2015/10/02 (F) Tire Nibblers

2015/09/30 (W) Annual Checkups

2015/07/29 (W) Drive Shaft

2015/06/25 (R) The Mouse

2015/06/24 (W) Up The Tower

2015/06/23 (T) Grounded

2015/06/12 (F) Forms and Family

2015/06/10 (W) Ron and Mary

2015/05/16 (S) Trucks and Buses

2014/11/03-09 A Week at Home

2014/05/05 (M) Towering Heights