Tag Archives: MiFi

2013/12/26 (R) Our Recent Travels

We left Williston Crossings RV Resort in Williston, Florida at 10:15 AM and traveled to the Turner Agri Civic Center in Arcadia Florida for the Arcadia (Bus’in) Rally 2014. Our route took us down US-27 to I-75 to FL-70 to US-17 and over to the rally venue, covering 200 miles in 3 hours and 45 minutes. I-75 had a lot of traffic and a few construction zones, but US-27 and FL-70 we excellent roads with very few vehicles. I have not been posting maps of our daily travels, so here is the route we have traveled starting on the 19^th. We have traveled about 1,300 miles in that time.

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We were met at the check in station by Bill and Brenda Phelan who now run the Arcadia Rally. Linda took care of the paperwork while I introduced myself, indicating that I had been asked by the publisher of Bus Conversions Magazine to do an article on the rally. We unhooked the car and were escorted to our back-in site. We immediately recognized the bus parked behind us as belonging to Bill and Karen Gerrie. They always travel with Karen’s sister Katherine and her husband Mike, and sure enough, they were here too! By the time the rally starts on Sunday we expect there to be other converted bus people here that we know.

We were escorted to our site, backed in, straightened out, and leveled and then went through our usual arrival routine; Linda setting up the inside while I hooked up the electrical shoreline and checked the house battery state of charge and that the inverter/charger was working. We then deployed the awnings.

While opening and securing the main patio awning the front rafter arm started to come off of the awning shaft. Closer inspection revealed that there was supposed to be a retaining pin or bolt holding these two pieces together, but it was missing. Yikes! I looked down and there was a black bolt of approximately the right diameter and length on ground in front of me. Was it possible that this had just fallen out? I looked at the other end of the roller tube and there was the matching part, but with a Nylok nut on the end. I went back to the other end and looked for the nut, but didn’t see it. It probably fell off a long time ago, if it was ever there in the first place. No one has worked on these awnings since they were installed by the Zip Dee Factory outside of Chicago, Illinois in October 2012. It would have been very, very bad if these two parts had separated while we were traveling on the highway.

I managed to get the bolt back through the mating holes, but I did not have a Nylok nut of the correct size in my parts kit. The Gerrie’s have a 1965 GMC bus that they converted. Bill is a very knowledgeable and resourceful guy when it comes to buses, but he did not have an 8-32 Nylok nut either. I did have some regular 8-32 nuts, however, so I double nutted the bolt and snugged it up nice and tight. We added 8-32 Nylok nuts to our growing list of supplies we needed to buy and things we need to do.

With that chore out of the way, we pulled up the chairs and settled in for a chat. I mentioned the Check Engine Light issue and erratic speedometer problem we’ve been having, and quick as a wink Bill had his ProLink/NexIQ engine diagnostic tool out, hooked up to our bus, and we were reading codes. The DDEC II engine computer did not have any active codes set and only one inactive code. The inactive code was for a fuel temperature sensor high voltage. Joe Cannarozzi (our mobile mechanic) and I had replaced the fuel temperature sensor back in the spring but I never got around to hooking up my ProLink and clearing the old code. That little oversight has caused me way too many anxious moments. My bad.

Bill also had a special card for his diagnostic equipment that allowed us to look at the error codes from the ATEC transmission computer. No codes were set, indicating that the vehicle speed sensor was sending a good signal at least as far as the transmission computer. We assumed that was the case as the transmission was working great and the cruise control was working as it always has. The erratic speedometer appears to be either a wiring problem between the computer and the dashboard or the speedometer gauge itself. The easiest/cheapest thing to do would be to clean the connectors on both ends. The next easiest thing would be to replace the speedometer and hope that’s the problem, but that will not be the least expensive solution if turns out not to be the gauge.

Although I had stopped worrying about the Check Engine Light, it was a great relief to know that there were no active error codes being generated by the engine or transmission computer. One of the great things about rallies in general, and converted bus rallies in particular, is that many converted bus owners have done their own conversions and have a special sense of community about their machines. They know their way around buses, travel with tools and parts, and are usually willing to help each other when there’s a problem.

With a potential awning disaster discovered and averted and the Check Engine Light issue resolve, we finally settled in to our chairs for a long, well-deserved, chat. While we were talking four Sandhill Cranes walked by about 50 feet away. These magnificent gray birds have a distinctive red cap on their heads, and can stand almost 4 feet tall. Although they tend to spend summers much farther north in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Canada, we have them on our property in southern Michigan during the late spring to early winter. We also saw kildeer, and several other birds we did not recognize. On the drive down today we saw pelicans and egrets plus the usual raptors that can often be spotted along highways.

By 5:30 PM it was getting dark and mosquitoes started to appear so we wrapped up our conversation and headed inside for the night. With all of the activity and socializing we had managed to skip lunch. Rather than take an hour to prepare something, we had the chickpea salad Linda made the other day. It’s one of our favorite cold dishes and reminds us of egg salad.

Linda turned on the TV and scanned for channels. We are parked facing west with the front OTA TV antenna pointed slightly north of our nose. That’s somewhat in the direction of Tampa St. Petersburg although they are actually northwest of our location. The scanner found 60 digital stations, so she flipped through them to see what was there. We had the PBS trio, a weather station, the usual commercial offerings, and lots of Spanish language stations. Impressive really; if you look at a road atlas Arcadia is 40 miles east of I-75 and appears to be in the middle of huge swamp.

We could not find a usable Wi-Fi signal so we turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi device and got online. If you need to be online while traveling, you need to have more than one way to get there. (Technomadia has the definitive book on the subject for RVers.) We checked e-mail and I worked on this post. We took a few minutes to have vegan chocolate cake with fresh strawberries. We finished up our online work and went to bed early. Although the rally does not start until Sunday, I have to start acting like a reporter tomorrow so I can write a really good article on this event with lots of good photographs.

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.

2013_06_18 (Tue) Early Arrival

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Upon our arrival at the CAM-PLEX in Gillette, Wyoming yesterday we quickly discovered that we did not have a usable WiFi signal so Linda Googled coffee shops and we found one with free WiFi. This morning we headed off early to City Brew for some coffee, bagels, and Internet connectivity. Alas, no bagels, so I had Raspberry strudel sticks (which were probably not vegan). We couldn’t connect to City Brew’s WiFi, but the adjacent Qdoba restaurant had a strong signal and no customers as they were not open yet. We mentioned that we were not able to connect and when City Brew reset their wireless router it worked fine. Linda caught up on our banking and entered receipts into Quicken while I updated Passwords Plus. I then tried to log in to our website (The Phase Place = www.omnibus-mi.us), which is a WordPress installation running on iPage servers, and discovered that I had not specifically recorded the username and password in Passwords Plus. I also realized that I had probably not updated the contact e-mail address with iPage since bfay@twmi.rr.com was shut down in May. Soooo…. I logged in to the iPage control panel and opened a new support ticket to get these issue resolved.

Our neighborhood – Boxelder, Lot 2, 7th St.

With our online business taken care of for the moment, we headed down the street to the HealthStyles Market to get some Daiya cheese for our dinner “cheeseburgers”. We received a 20% off coupon in our FMCA welcome bag, but didn’t have it with us, so we deferred other shopping for later in the week. What a nice surprise to find an organic market, with some of the vegan products we like, here in the heart of cattle country. The FMCA materials don’t even list grocery stores; instead they list “meat markets”. Yikes!

Because we both have personal and business need for Internet access, we stopped at the local Cellular Plus (Verizon retailer) outlet and purchased a Novatel Jetpack MiFi 5510L 4G/LTE Mobile WiFi hotspot device and added it to our existing Verizon “share everything” plan. This device creates a secure (private) relatively short-range WiFi network which will allow us to connect any/all of our WiFi capable devices together and to the Internet via our Verizon data service, as long as we have a usable Verizon signal. It’s a 4G/LTE device that is backwards compatible to 3G/EVDO, and supports IPv6 addressing in addition to IPv4. Many of its functions are accessible throughout the small device screen and buttons, but the full functionality is easily accessed through a web interface via a connected device.

By the time we returned to the coach it was lunchtime. After a light lunch we decided to deploy the large patio awning. We apparently failed to put the manual for the new Zip Dee Awnings on board, but still had the manual for the old ones. Design changes have been minor in the last 20+ years, and I was familiar with the changes, so though we could figure it out. We weren’t able to open it very far due to the close spacing of RVs in the campground and the fact that our neighbors had slide-outs (as most of the RVs here do). The manual indicated that partial deployment was possible and acceptable, but we could not get the rafter (upper) arms to latch onto the roller tube. Our new Zip Dee awnings are very nice, with a translucent fabric that allows some light through so the interior doesn’t get too dark. They are manual awnings, however, and deploying/retracting the patio awning requires a step ladder because our coach is so tall and the latches are out of reach.

We left the patio awning in what we felt was a secure position and walked over to the CAM-PLEX offices to take care of our camping arrangements for the 4 nights between the two rallies. On the way we stopped and visited with the owners of four vintage Flxible bus conversions that were on display in front of the Wyoming Center. Three of the owners were Great Lakes Converted Coaches members, and the 4th one was the son of a member. Bruce brought sample copies of the February 2013 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine, and said he would bring some over for the owners.

The folks at the CAM-PLEX office were very helpful and gave us our parking placard for the Windmill RV Park. This park is smaller than Boxelder. Most of the sites are 30 A electric, but some are 50 A FU. We were told we could move there on Sunday morning the 23rd at 10 AM as specific sites were first come, first served.

By the time we got back to our coach a predicted storm was building to the west and moving our way. With 50+ MPH wind gusts expected, we decided to retract all of our awnings and close up the windows and roof vents. Thick clouds, a cool air mass, and strong winds kept temperatures inside very comfortable. I went for stroll around the campground to take photographs of the clouds. I then came inside and preceded to nap through storm!

After dinner we finally turned on our new MiFi device and connected our phones, tablets, and computers. We spent quite a while trying to set up the computers on the network so they could see each other and share files, and appeared to have it working, only to have it not work and not be able to get back to where they did. It was not essential that we be able to do this, so we let it go for now. Since we now had functioning Internet access I checked the iPage support ticket and found that they had responded. I followed their directions and once again have administrative access to my WordPress installation and have updated my contact e-mails for iPage.