Tag Archives: FTH

2014/09/28 (N) Oh Canada

Today was all about company—getting ready for company and having company—and this time our company was from Ontario, Canada. Okay, they actually drove down from Frankenmuth, Michigan where they are staying at an RV Park, but they are Canadian citizens who reside in Canada when they are not traveling in their motorhomes. Bill and Karen are fellow converted bus owners and members of both the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches chapter and the Converted Coach Owners group. Mike and Kathy have a purpose built class C motorhome and often travel with Bill and Karen. Kathy is Bill’s sister.

Linda spent the morning preparing vegan lasagna and apple/pear crisp for baking later in the day while I worked at my desk on secretarial and financial duties for our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter.

Company arrived a little after 1 PM. Linda took the ladies on a tour of the house while I took the guys on a tour of the property and then showed them around the house. We had guys’ chat and gals’ chat for a while and then we all gathered around the table on the deck for some grapes and pretzels. Linda put the lasagna in the oven at 3 PM and prepared a salad. When the lasagna was done she put the apple/pear crisp in the oven to bake while we ate. We sat down at 4 PM for dinner and had a very nice meal that included Italian bread and olive oil seasoned with pepper. We opened a bottle of our 2009 Egri Merlot (it may have been our last one) and four of us had a small glass with dinner.

We continued our conversation on the deck after dinner and had our dessert out there. It was an absolutely perfect late September day. When the sun got low in the sky we moved inside as it cools off quickly and the mosquitos come out. We sat in the living room and talked until 9 PM. By then it was dark and they still had a one hour drive back to their RV Park. Kathy had rinsed off the dinner dishes, so Linda loaded the dishwasher and started it. Linda packed her computer and gathered up all of the things she needed for tomorrow so she could get an early start for the bakery. I will be home all day waiting for Bratcher Electric to show up and convert the whole house generator. They are supposed to be here between 1 and 3 PM. Karen took a few photos but I did take any, so I do not have any images to post from today.

2013_10_25-31 (M-R) FOOD At The Phase Place!

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Sometimes I get busy and don’t keep up with my posts. When I go back even as little as a week, as in this post, I find that many of the details are already lost in the continuous flow of daily living.

With the bus work in Williamston wrapped up, I turned my attention to figuring out what body panels and small parts I needed to order from Prevost to fix the damage I did to the passenger side of the bus leaving the campground in Townsend, TN. I spent a fair amount of time in the Prevost CatBase Viewer database. There were enough parts involved that I made an Excel spreadsheet. I called Prevost U.S. Parts and got Roger Anderson on the line. After discussing this for a while, we decided that it would be easiest for me to e-mail him the spreadsheet.

Next up was final preparations for the annual business meeting of our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter (FTH), of which I am the vice-president and secretary. There are a surprising number of documents that are involved in a simple meeting of a small group: an agenda (from the president), minutes from last year’s meeting, financial statements (which Linda and I prepare based on data from the treasurer), proposed amendments to the bylaws, and an updated roster. All of these get converted to PDF files and uploaded to a folder in our Dropbox account. I have provided a link to that folder to all of our members.

We made our usual trip to South Lyon on Saturday morning for breakfast with members of the South Lyon Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC). Linda worked on recipes. I installed the WP-Recipes plug-in and she has started using it to capture and publish recipes for some of our favorite whole-food plant-based (WFPB) dishes. She is evening taking a photograph of the finished dish and adding it to the recipe page. (Click on the Food & Health Tab and then on Recipes in the dropdown menu.)

While Linda worked on recipes I worked on WordPress websites. Besides our own, I am working on websites for our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter (FTH), our FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches Chapter (GLCC, of which Linda is the Treasurer), and our South Lyon Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC).

WordPress is constantly releasing updates and new versions. This generally a good thing, but they always strongly advise that you backup your site (folders/files/database) before installing an upgrade. I haven’t been doing that, so I decided on Saturday that I should. The GLCC website is an add-on domain for our primary/personal site, so I was able to back it up using the backup utilities in the QTH.com cPanel. The FTH website is hosted by iPower and the SLAARC website is hosted by GoDaddy, neither of which use cPanel nor appear to have built in backup utilities. There is some provision for backup built in to WordPress.

When I used the cPanel backup utility to backup our primary/personal site and the GLCC site it was about 1 GB. We only had 2.5 GB on our free Dropbox account, so I signed up for the 100 GB Dropbox plan. I then went on a search for a WordPress plug-in that would do the backups on a schedule. I selected WordPress Backup To Dropbox (WPB2D) and then installed and activated it on all four sites. I am going to test it for a couple of weeks and see how it works. I hope it works well as it is a very simple plug-in to use.

Our FTH meeting was scheduled as a conference call for 6:00 PM EDT on Sunday evening, October 27. We have 40 memberships in the chapter and needed 10 to make a quorum. 6:00 PM came and went and at 6:15 PM we only had 8 people on the line. The president polled the group and decided we would try again the next night; same time, same place.

Our SLAARC information net is held every Sunday evening at 8:00 PM. I was a regular participant up until we moved to the new house. Although I have our 2m/70cm base station antenna mounted on the old TV tower, I do not have the coax run to the ham shack in the basement. Hooking up the radio is inconvenient, especially in cold/dark/wet conditions, all of which we now have. I would like to have the ham shack set up and functioning, but it has not made it to the top of the list yet.

On Monday I drove the bus to W. W. Williams in Dearborn, Michigan to have them look at the auxiliary air system and the speedometer. They thought the constant cycling of the main engine air-compressor was either the governor or the air-dryer purge valve. Since the governor had just been replaced, I authorized replacing the purge valve. They thought the speedometer issue was the “tone wheel”, the sensor, or the gauge. The sensor was just replaced, so I authorized them to check that it was installed correctly and to pull the output shaft housing on the end of the transmission to check the tone wheel.

I called Roger back at Prevost U.S. Parts. He had filled in my spreadsheet and prepared a Prevost quote, so he e-mail those back to me. I decided to hold off ordering until Michele at Phoenix Paint has a chance to look at the damage and decide if she can fix it.

Linda and I had staked out the size/location of our planned bus barn and driveway. We adjusted the stakes slightly, moving the barn 5 feet farther from the road and squaring it up. It’s currently 32 ft. wide by 56 ft. long with a driveway that includes a spur for turning around. Phil from Precision Grading came by Monday evening, measured the area, and dug a couple of test holes to see what soil conditions we had. He said we had 13 inches of good top soil in that area. This will have to be removed and replaced with crushed concrete and 21AA road gravel, so we discussed possible locations on our property for the top soil. Some of it will go in a depressed area behind the proposed barn location. This area forms a lake whenever we get heavy/persistent rain. Some it will probably go on the west side of the main garage driveway, which currently drops off more than we would like, and somewhat unevenly. There are also low spots on the far west end of our property, and some of the topsoil will likely go there.

I spent the rest of this period working on the various websites. In particular, I finally figured out how to configure and use the WP-Members plug-in to restrict access to selected portions of a WordPress site based on a Username and Password. With that feature working, I focused on design (structure) and content for the FTH and GLCC sites. I got sidetracked on Halloween with the idea of installing a “slider” (automated slideshow) in place of the default graphic in the RESPONSIVE Theme I am using for the GLCC site. I selected and installed Meteor Slides based on its demonstration by the authors of RESPONSIVE. It had the appearance of being very simple to install and use, and it was/is once I figured it out. It took me 5 hours to do that, but I did. The site is not ready for viewing yet, but I will share the address when it is.

2013_06_21 (Fri) FMCA Day 3

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We went to bed last night with a 20% chance of rain in the overnight weather forecast. We are not sure when the rain started, but around 5:00 AM the skies opened up and it rained hard for an hour. We are camped on somewhat higher ground with good grass sites and red rock roads, so the water drained away and we did not have flooding or muddy site/road issues. This was not the case in other CAM-PLEX RV parks, as I discovered while walking to the 9:45 AM International Area (INTO) meeting. My timing was bad, and I walked the 3/4 mile to the Wyoming Center in a downpour that included pea-size hail. My raincoat and small umbrella were no match for the rain, and there was not a golf cart or shuttle (school) bus to be found anywhere. In the end it was just water, and clothes eventually dry out. Always looking for the learning experience in any situation, I resolved that we would purchase serious wet weather gear when we had the chance.

Linda remained in the coach to make sandwiches for lunch as we planned to meet up with Louise Stuart and Craig Davis after the 11:30 seminars. We went to the Nostalgic Look Back at the Early Coaches of FMCA, moderated by Mike Middaugh, F3456. Mike is yet another member of the Great Lakes Converted Coaches chapter that we also belong to. Mike was joined by several other vintage converted coach owners who shared photographs of buses from the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s, some of them buses they had owned.

We then walked over to Louise and Craig’s motorhome, a very nice 38′ Monaco Dynasty. We had our respective lunches and a great chat as we got to know fellow members of our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter. The service tech from HWH showed up around 2 PM to fix their slideout, so we took that as our cue to return to the vendor area in search of more knowledge and solutions to problems.

After some further discussion with the folks from A-1 Water Treatment we decided to purchase one of their water softeners with attached pre-filter. It was both heavy enough and bulky enough that we arranged to have them deliver it to our coach after the vendor area closed today.

We then stopped at the WiFiRanger booth and purchased a WiFi Ranger Mobile Titanium (WFR-MT) and optional AC power supply. (The Titanium version is identical in functionality to the standard version except for a metal case in place of a plastic one, and a 5-year warranty instead of a 1-year warranty.) The WFR-M/MT device mounts outside the coach and combines a WiFi “booster” (transceiver) and a WiFi router. The booster communicates with available Wi-Fi signals that can serve as on-ramps to the Internet. These signals originate somewhere beyond our coach and are paid for, and controlled by, someone other than us. These can be public/open (unsecured) or private/closed (secured). Use of a secured signal requires the correct authorization (password). Public/open networks are, by definition, free to use as you do not need a password to connect to them. Secured networks may be free, such as at some businesses, or there may be a charge, as in airports, and some hotels and campgrounds. There is an extensive system of public/open WiFi access points available at the CAM-PLEX, sponsored by WiFiRanger. It has been very good around the Wyoming Center, but varies out in the Boxelder RV Park. The booster allows us to receive this weak signal, use it, and send a suitably strong signal back. It does not, however, guarantee on-demand, robust access, as this is also a function of how many other stations are trying to access the system at the same time.

The router section of the WFR-MT generates a secure, local network that we control. Although it is generated on the outside of the bus, it should be strong enough inside and around the coach to allow us to use our devices wherever we want around our campsite (within reason). We won’t know this for sure until we hook it up, of course, but the device has been used and well reviewed by other travelers, including Technomadia. Being a full-fledged router, it not only allows multiple WiFi devices to securely connect to the Internet (via the external WiFi source), but should allow them to securely communicate with each other. (BTW: Technomadia has the definitive book on mobile connectivity. http://www.technomadia.comor Amazon.com)

I plan to mount the WFR to the cable entrance weatherhead with zip ties if it will work. The device has an Ethernet cable that plugs into a POE (Power Over Ethernet) power supply. The front cable entrance weatherhead opens into the cabinet behind/above the drivers head where a 19″ CRT TV was once housed. It comes with a DC power adapter, but we purchased the AC power adapter as there is already AC power in this cabinet that is supplied from the inverter subpanel.

Our Verizon 4G/LTE MiFi 5510L Jetpack device does essentially the same thing as the WiFi-M, except it communicates with Verizon cell phone towers instead of external WiFi sources. We will be using the Wi-Fi Ranger when possible, and the Verizon 5510L otherwise (assuming it has a usable signal). This means we could have two different WiFi networks running simultaneously. The upside to this is that we could have multiple devices accessing the Internet through different pipelines, resulting in faster data transfer. The downside to this is that devices on one network can’t communicate with devices on the other one. (We could solve that problem with a WiFi Ranger GO.) Although interference between the networks is possible, it is unlikely.

We needed an additional length of hose to hook up the new water softener when it arrived, so Linda picked up a 10′ long food grade hose from the Camco booth. She then returned to the coach to straighten it up for a visit later from Louise & Craig while I went off to the Great Lakes Area Motorcoach Association (GLAMA) gathering at 3:15 PM.

I attended the Great Lakes Area Motorcoach Association (area) meeting in the late afternoon. The main items of interest at the GLAMA meeting were the upcoming GLAMARAMA in mid-September 2013 and the 2014 GLAMARAMA planned for next June. Both rallies will be at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds in Goshen, IN. After that the intention is to move it around through Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Ontario (Canada), perhaps doing two consecutive years in each state/province.

On the walk back to the coach I had a long, technical conversation with Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint in Edwardsburg, Michigan regarding how to remove and reinstall the broken searchlight on the front roof while minimizing damage to the paint. Michele’s shop did the roof repair and repaint on our coach, and she always has a good sense about how to approach something like this. She talked me through the best way to approach it, and after considering the process carefully, I decided to defer an actual repair until we can get the coach back to her shop.

Louise & Craig came by around 5:30 PM and we continued our conversation over snacks and some Red Ass Wine from the Prairie Berry Winery in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The new water softener got delivered just as they showed up, so hookup was deferred until later. We put out the Blue Diamond Wasabi Soy almonds, and I think they caught Louise by surprise. (Sorry Louise. We really should warn folks about these. If you like almonds, and you like spicy, you will find these addictive.)

2013_06_20 (Thu) FMCA Day 2

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Again today there were no early morning seminars that caught our eyes. The indoor vendors opened at 9:00 AM, so we headed over to scope them out and buy a few small things we knew we needed. Jirah LEDs appeared to have a bulb with an elongated neck that might work in our aircraft style swivel downlights, so I bought one to try for $15. I also picked up some nylon straps from Coil-N-Wrap that are used to separate the shore power cord from an adapter or extension cord. Linda picked up an onion keeper, tomato keeper, and a set of stacking measuring spoons held together with magnets from RV SpaceSavers. Where would we be in this world without magnets?

We stopped at Lawrence RV Accessories and talked to Tom, the owner/president of Progressive Industries (PI). We have a PI EMS-50 that I installed last year. It works very well but has developed a buzz. Tom suggested using the bypass switch to clean the contactor contacts by switching it on and off quickly several times before the 2-minute time delay expires. If that doesn’t clear it up, he said they would replace it. PI is well known for their excellent products and warranty policy; they basically stand behind their products for as long as you own them. Our unit has a remote display that is installed in the bay near the unit. I purchased a kit with a second remote and switch. The switch will go in the bay and the 2nd remote will go in the house panel.

We stopped by the Zip Dee Awnings booth and had a good chat with the owner/president. We got some personal instruction on how to deploy our patio awning in full and caravan (partial) positions and he also gave us printed instructions to take with us. A stop at the nearby Magnum booth allowed me to clarify a few things about our inverter and they suggested dialing the charge rate back to 80% if it is currently set higher.

We also had a good chat with the guy from the Aqua-Hot factory. He confirmed what Lloyd Degerald told us yesterday; fuel is the issue and annual maintenance is the key, especially the fuel filter, which needs to be 10 micron, and the nozzle replacement. I described our Parker Fuel Polishing Module (FPM) installation, which caused him some concern; specifically that it not apply pressure to the pump or restrict the return flow. I assured him that the FPM, as installed, doesn’t do either of those things. He confirmed that our older model 100-S unit can use regular coolant and requires ~ 16 gallons, plus whatever is needed to fill all the lines and heat exchangers. He also confirmed that on this unit there will be bleeder valves at the heat exchangers as these are usually high points, and that bleeding the loops is best done there if they are accessible. (They often are not very accessible, and our coach is no exception). The system can be bled by applying air pressure to the tank (through the radiator cap), but that is not the preferred method. We learned in the seminar the day before that the unit has a mixing valve that should regulate the outlet temperature at ~110 degrees F. The mixing valve is adjustable, but is under the unit and very difficult to access. Finally, the expansion tank for our unit should be 5 quarts. I do not know the exact size of ours, but I am sure it is much smaller than 5 quarts. Making space for a larger one will require the water pump to be relocated, but that is something I am considering doing anyway. We also found out that all of the manuals are available online at their website for no charge.

We stopped briefly at the WiFiRanger booth, but decided to come back as the owner (Kelly Hogan, Mr. WiFiRanger) was doing a seminar at 11:00 AM on RV Internet Connectivity. We went to the seminar and it was excellent. It was not specifically about WiFiRanger products, although they obviously sell products designed to address the topic. We returned to the booth and chatted with one of the employees (Evan), but ended up going to Kelly’s trailer (man cave) later for a more personal consultation and demonstration. He also had a variety of free beer.

At this point, we may just buy the WiFiRanger Mobile (WFR-M) and forego the WiFiRanger Go (WFR-GO). The WFR-M mounts outside the coach with a cable going inside the rig for power (and data in some configurations). It communicates with an external Wi-Fi station and regenerates a local/private WiFi network while providing router functionality. The WFR-GO is also a wireless router but it also has wired ports, a special port for the WFR-M, and a USB port for tethering a cellular device, such as our Verizon 4G/LTE MiFi Jetpack 5510L. The WRF-GO allows you to seamlessly integrate these devices, but effectively replaces the router functionality of both the WFR-M and the MiFi device. This means you have paid for three routers but are only using one of them. The penalty for not have the WFR-GO is that you have to switch your devices (phones, tablets, computers, etc.) to whichever WiFi network you are using. We can probably live with that.

While wandering the CAM-PLEX grounds we found Jr. Showman’s bus conversion and had a nice, long chat with him. We gave him a copy of the February 2013 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine, which features our coach. We then walked over to check out the Windmill RV Park, where we will be staying between the rallies.

After dinner we headed over to the Morningside Park grandstand for the opening ceremonies and concert by The Birminghams. I swore I had never heard of this group, but many of their songs were quite familiar to me from my youth, and they gave a very nice concert. Three of the five musicians were original group members. We finally made contact with Louise &Craig from our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter. They sat with us, and we had a nice long chat afterwards. We agreed to meet for lunch the next day.

On the walk back to our coach we watched a thunderstorm develop off in the distance. The storm to the southeast was particularly impressive; one of those iconic western thunderstorms that is isolated in an otherwise clear sky and thus completely visible. The light really is different in the West, and the views are expansive. The prevailing winds at our site suggested that it was moving southeast, away from us, and the overnight forecast was for a 20% chance of rain.