Tag Archives: Mike (W8XH)

2015/06/28 (N) Field Day Teardown

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I was up at 7:15 AM and showered.  The rain finally cleared out leaving blue skies but with scattered white clouds still blowing across the region on brisk winds out of the NNE.  Linda was up by 8 and got the fresh fruit ready for our breakfast cereal while I made the coffee, which we enjoyed in the living room to warmth of the natural gas fireplace.  I did not expect to be using the fireplace this time of year but we have the furnace turned off, and are still getting overnight lows in the 50’s, so the fireplace is an effective and charming way to alleviate the slight morning chill in the front of the house.

In spite of the weather the food tent stayed up and open for business.

In spite of the weather the food tent stayed up and open for business.

I finished up the draft of my blog post for yesterday and started on this one while I drank my coffee.  By 9:45 AM I was ready to install the #6 green coated ground wire I bought last night.  I also decided to switch out the coax from the cable entry box (CEB) to the ham shack.  Linda had made a grocery list and left to do the shopping.

Outside I opened the CEB and disconnected the current VHF/UHF coax and let it slide back into the sump pump room (SPR).  Inside I removed the suspended ceiling tile in the northeast corner of the ham shack and routed the ground wire over the wall into the SPR.  I fed it through an existing cable tie on the bottom of one of the floor joists and through the outer wall into the CEB.  I had an unused copper ground lug and used it to connect the ground wire to the lower right mounting stud for the CEB copper backplane.

Back inside I uncoiled a length of 50 ohm coax that I borrowed from Mike (W8XH) and followed the same path as the ground wire.  Outside at the CEB I installed an N-male/SO-239(F) adapter onto the PL-259 connector on the end of the coax and attached it to the N-female socket on the lightning arrestor.  I was finished working in the CEB, closed the cover, and went back to the basement.

I decided to install the 36″ copper ground bar on the wall behind the ham shack desks just below the 120 VAC outlet strip, which required me to move the desks away from the wall.  I attached the end of the ground wire to one of the studs by spreading the strands and placing them under a washer and wing nut.  I need to get another copper lug to do this right.

Steve (N8AR) operating the 6m opening from the radio in his car.

Steve (N8AR) operating the 6m opening from the radio in his car.

I had a five foot length of braided tinned copper strap and used it to connect the ground terminal on the Go Box to the ground bar.  I spread the braid apart to make a small hole near each end, slipped the holes over the studs, and clamped them under washers.  This was a temporary arrangement for testing purposes.  I need to configure a length of #10 copper wire with a ring terminal on one end and a make spade connector on the other but did want to take the time to do that today.

With everything hooked up I called Mike (W8XH) to see if he was available for a quick radio test.  He was still at home and about to leave for the SLAARC Field Day site but gladly delayed his departure long enough to help me test the new configuration.  The result was a better send and receive signal on 2m, both direct and through the South Lyon K8VJ repeater, with an S3 received signal strength with the pre-amplifier turned on.  The direct signal was also a little better on the 440 MHz band but my received signal from the Novi repeater was still weak and noisy and my transmit signal was still not strong enough carry the repeater.

I had planned to leave around 11AM for the SLAARC Field Day site but wanted some lunch before I left.  I had just made a sandwich and was gathering up my equipment when Linda got back from her grocery shopping.  By the time I left it was past noon.

I was interested in our ham radio club’s participation in this year’s ARRL Field Day event but neither Linda nor I had had any need or desire to operate radios.  I worked all day Friday on the setup of the towers and antennas and helped a bit last night with the emergency teardown of the VHF/GOTA canopy.  The 24-hour Field Day operating window closed at 2 PM today but some of the teardown began before that time and I wanted to be there to help.

SLAARC members enjoying lunch outdoors at the Field Day site.

SLAARC members enjoying lunch outdoors at the Field Day site.

Some teardown was already underway when I arrived at the SLAARC Field Day site and lunch was also just being served, so everyone took a break to get something to eat except Steve (N8AR).  He was sitting in his car making contracts on the six meter (6m) band using the mobile radio in his car.  He had connected it to the 6m beam antenna on top of the big tower.  The 6m band is known as “the magic band” because it will suddenly “open” and allow very clear communication over great distances and then just as suddenly close.  It had apparently opened up this morning from the Mississippi River to the East Coast and south into the Caribbean.  One of our members made a contact with someone in the Dominican Republic.  While I was watching and listening I heard calls coming in from South Dakota and New Mexico.

This is the fourth year that Marianne Roney, the wife of one of club member Ed Roney (KD8OSM), has taken care of the Field Day meals, which include lunch and dinner on Saturday and breakfast and lunch on Sunday.  The meals are $5 per person per meal, which is a bargain for the variety and quantity of things she prepares and provides, except that there is typically very little we can eat.  She would make special provisions for us if we asked (she did the first year) but it is extra work for her and we are still left with not being able to eat most of what is available, so we do not purchase meals.

Operating stations are often staffed by two people, one operating the radio (left) and the other logging the contacts (right).

Operating stations are often staffed by two people, one operating the radio (left) and the other logging the contacts (right).

As the operating event was drawing to a close the computer in the 40m tent shut down.  The computers are not used to operate the radios, but are connected to them and are used to log the contacts using the N1MM Logger+ program.  The program reads key information about frequency and mode from the radio so all the logger has to capture are call sign, operating category, and section.  (Club member Larry, K8UT, is a member of the N1MM Logger development team.)  Every radio was paired with a laptop computer running this program, and the computers were all linked together via Wi-Fi.  As a result, the operators/loggers at each station could see all of the contacts that were being made regardless of which station made the contact and each computer contained a complete list of contacts.  The program also flags “dupes” (duplicate contacts).  In a contest situation this allows the operator to see that they have already worked that station on a particular band and mode and not spend time working it again on the same band and mode as duplicate contacts do not contribute to the contest score.

Just as it had started 24 hours earlier, at 2 PM it was all over without any fanfare.  The radios and computers were shut down and then the AC power generator was shut down.  Cords were unplugged, coiled, and staged near the vehicles they would eventually be loaded into.  Radios and computers were carefully disconnected, boxed (in some cases) and carried to the vehicles of their respective owners.  Tarps were pulled from the tents and folded and then the tents were collapsed and folded.  Four of use took down the 40m crossed dipole (inverted V) antenna and then took down the small support tower and disassembled it.  A larger crew eventually lowered the bigger tower, which required a winch, until it was resting in a step ladder.  This was necessary because of the two beam antennas at the top of the tower.  They removed the 6m and then the 20m beam antennas and then lowered the tower to the ground.  Part of the crew disassembled and packed the two beam antennas while the rest of them took the tower apart

A path map from Eric's (K8ERS) cell phone of the early morning 6m band opening.

A path map from Eric’s (K8ERS) cell phone of the early morning 6m band opening.

We were essentially done with the teardown by 4 PM.  The teardown is always much faster than the setup and yet it was very relaxed and went very smoothly.  In spite of weather challenges all day Saturday and overnight into Sunday, and the disappointment of not having all of our stations on the air due to losing tents to the wind, we had a beautiful last day for the event and teardown.  Blue skies, white puffy clouds, cool temperatures, lighter breezes, and low humidity combined with a sufficient number of competent, helping hands, made for easier work for everyone.  The group stood around reflecting on the event and everyone was in a good mode, a sure sign that the 2015 ARRL Field Day had been a success for the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club.

I was the last one to pull out, right behind Steve who was towing a fully loaded enclosed trailer with a lot of the club’s equipment in it and on it.  We chatted via the South Lyon repeater on the drive home, our last radio work for the day.  I was home by 5 PM and just relaxed until dinnertime, tired from the sun, fresh air, and work.  For dinner Linda made a potato and spinach curry dish that she found in her Indian cookbook.  She also steamed some asparagus that she bought at the Howell Farmers Market this morning.  We had a quiet evening of reading, writing, and games before turning in at 10 PM.

 

 

2015/06/27 (S) ARRL Field Day

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At 5 AM I was vaguely aware of the sound of rain.  The cats were chasing each other through the house so I got up to make sure nothing was amiss, such as another mouse.  They were just having a bout of morning friskiness.  I added a little food up to their bowls, which drew their attention, and went back to bed.

My Amateur Radio vanity license plate. There were a LOT of these in the parking lot at the SLAARC Field Day site.

My Amateur Radio vanity license plate. There were a LOT of these in the parking lot at the SLAARC Field Day site.

I finally woke up and got up about 8:15 AM and got dressed in a suitable manner for today’s American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Field Day event.  The temperature was in the mid-50s, overcast and raining with blustery winds; not exactly the nice summer day we were all hoping for.  Some of the members of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) were gathering for breakfast at the usual place (Senate Coney Island) at the usual time (8 AM) but we obviously did not join them today.

I went to my office to retrieve my Sony DSLR and decided to turn on our Icom IC-7000 ham radio.  I had it tuned to the SLAARC (K8VJ) repeater in South Lyon when Keith, KD8YYJ, announced his presence.  He was driving from the west side of Howell to Wixom and seeing what repeaters he could hit.  We chatted for 10 to 15 minutes and I invited him to stop by the SLAARC Field Day site at the South Lyon Township James F. Atchison Memorial Park.

I worked all day yesterday as part of the SLAARC Field Day setup crew.  There was more setup to do starting at 9 AM this morning but the setup mostly involved radios, computers, Wi-Fi networking, and power.  I was not in any humor to rush off into the clammy weather conditions, and Linda was up by this point, so we had breakfast.  She found some Silk brand ‘yogurt’ at Meijer’s last week so we had that.  It was OK.  It is a creamy style yogurt, which is not my preference, but it was tasty enough.  Bananas, cinnamon raisin bread, and juice rounded out the meal.  Linda even made the coffee.  I turned on the natural gas fireplace to ward off the chill in the living room where we lingered and enjoyed our morning brew.

The SLAARC Field Day operating stations use wirelessly networked computers (left) running N1MM Logger+ to record the contacts that are made. HF transceiver to the right.

The SLAARC Field Day operating stations use wirelessly networked computers (left) running N1MM Logger+ to record the contacts that are made. HF transceiver to the right.

I finally left for the Field Day site around 11 AM.  The operating event started at 2 PM but the first of four meals was lunch today at noon and I wanted to capture photos of the rest of the setup and the lunch event.  It was raining lightly when I arrived and continued to rain until I left at 2:15 PM.  In between arrival and departure I took some photos and helped out a little bit, but there were plenty of people there taking care of what needed to be done.

Mike (W8XH) brought his Icom IC-2820H dual band mobile radio and several lengths of 50 ohm coax and we transferred those to my car.  He then walked me through the various menus and functions his new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE radio, a dual band (VHF/UHF) 50 Watt rig with digital voice capability and a color touch screen display.  A group of SLAARC members recently purchased a Yaesu DR-1X repeater that works with the new Yaesu digital voice and data modes in addition to the traditional FM mode and are testing it as a replacement for the current, and very old, K8VJ repeater.

Mike’s IC-2820H is available for $350 but the FTM-400DR has a $100 rebate through the end of June, bringing the price down to $500.  As much as I would like to have a VHF/UHF radio in my car I am looking at one of these radios to install in the cockpit of the bus so we can use it going down the road.  The long-term plan is to put the Icom IC-7000 HF/VHF/UHF radio in our towed vehicle and get the Hi-Q 80-6 antenna mounted and operational in addition to the Diamond SG-7900 VHF/UHF antenna that is already on the Honda Element.

For base station use I would like to get an Elecraft K3s or Flex SDR rig.  The K3s has become the rig of choice among the members of the SLAARC who are serious about working HF and contesting.  Either of those are radios that could be fairly easily moved from the house to the bus when we travel.  Antenna options in the bus could include running coax to the Hi-Q on the toad and/or a “flagpole” HF vertical that is mounted using the towbar receiver or a base stand that goes under one of the tires.  An antenna switch would allow the use of the VHF/UHF antenna that was already installed for the cockpit radio.  All of these “base station” options would obviously be for stationary use only.

[Photo 3 – HC]

The ARRL FIeld Day event showcases the ability of amateur radio operators to set up equipment in the field on short notice and keep it on the air for 24 hours, no matter what. The weather turned bad for the event. The portable generator is under the tent in the right foreground.

The ARRL FIeld Day event showcases the ability of amateur radio operators to set up equipment in the field on short notice and keep it on the air for 24 hours, no matter what. The weather turned bad for the event. The portable generator is under the tent in the right foreground.

I uncoiled the coax cables that Mike lent me to see how long they were.  There was a 5 foot piece that was too short for what I needed, and a piece that was approximately 40 feet, which was longer than I needed.  The third piece was at least as long as the 40 footer.  I “tagged” his coax with small white cable ties so I could identify them later and return them to him.

I did not want to mess around switching coax cables in the rain so I unboxed Mike’s Icom 2820 and got it set up to use with my existing antenna and transmission lines.  I spent a little time with the manual and then powered it up.  It was already configured from when Mike used it in his ham shack so I did not need to do any setup to use it.  I monitored both the South Lyon 2m and Novi 440 MHz repeaters and was able to “hear” both of them, although the South Lyon signal was much better (stronger, quieter, clearer) than the Novi.  A couple of SLAARC members were on the South Lyon repeater taking care of Field Day business.  I waited a suitable amount of time after they were done and called for Mike (W8XH) and he came back right away.

We repeated the testing we had done last night.  The performance with the 2m South Lyon repeater seemed to be much better but the performance on the 70cm Novi repeater was the same or worse with a fading component to the noise.  I think we were on the air 15 to 20 minutes.  Based on the test results from last night and this afternoon I think I have two separate issues that are probably interacting; the IC-7000 needs to be grounded and the 25 feet of coax from the cable entry box (CEB) to the radio (Go Box) needs to be shorter and much higher quality.  I need to install the ground bar on the wall behind the ham radio desks and then purchase a suitable length of ground wire and run it from the CEB to the copper ground bar.  I will also need to get a 15 foot length of 50 ohm LMR-400 coax from Scott (AC8IL) with an N-male connector on one end and a PL-259 connector on the other end.

Linda prepared our dinner at 5 PM.  She made corn-on-the-cob and “cowgirl steaks,” a new (to us) vegetable protein product she found at Meijer’s.  After dinner we drove back to the SLAARC Field Day site to socialize with club members at dinnertime.  The weather at our house was still rainy with light-to-moderate winds and occasional stronger gusts.  We arrived at the Field Day site to find a flurry of activity and strong, steady winds out of the north with continued sporadic rain.

Jim (KC8WMW) stays dry as he works the GOTA (Get On The Air) station in one of the tents.

Jim (KC8WMW) stays dry as he works the GOTA (Get On The Air) station in one of the tents.

The small red tent that was originally supposed to be the VHF tent was nowhere to be seen and at least eight people were engaged in trying to control and fold up the large canopy that the club purchased yesterday at Costco to serve as the combined VHF and GOTA tent.  We quickly learned that the small tent, which was not being used, had collapsed and the large tent, which was unoccupied but full of radios and computers, had come unstaked and blown over in the wind.  Those who were not helping with the equipment canopy were gathered in the food canopy.  I pitched in on the equipment canopy rescue and Linda took the camera and joined the folks in the food tent.

After gathering up all of the pieces of the canopy and getting them back in the trailer some of the team added extra ropes and stakes to the windward end of the food canopy and both the 20m and 40m tents.  Another part of the team, including me, got Marty’s (KB8JIU) satellite tracking equipment out of the screen room, which had been draped with solid plastic tarps to keep the rain out, and then took the room down, disassembled the legs, folded it up, and stuffed it in the trailer.  The red tent was stuffed under a picnic table that was in the screen room so I grabbed that and put it in the trailer.  The support pole for one end of our off-center-fed dipoles was bending over to the south more than we liked.  Steve, N8AR, tied a rope around the existing rope, which was inline with the antenna and being used to keep it taught.  He slid the second rope up the first one as far as he could get it to go and then pulled it out to the northwest (the antenna was oriented east-west with the tension rope running east off of the east end).  He pulled it out until the support pole was reasonably vertical and I staked it down.

The winds really howled out of the north driving the rain before them. This shelter (from Costco) did not survive along with another tent and a screen room.

The winds really howled out of the north driving the rain before them. This shelter (from Costco) did not survive along with another tent and a screen room.

So the bad news was that some of our Field Day setup had not survived the weather which had not even reached severe conditions.  The good news was that our generator was still producing power, all of our towers and antennas were intact and functional, we had our two key stations on the air, and our food canopy was full of people and hot food.  Not the Field Day everyone had hoped for, but a great opportunity for teamwork and camaraderie and a learning experience to be sure, even if it was not the kind of lesson we wanted to learn.

We left around 7:30 PM and went to the New Hudson Lowe’s, which was very close to our Field Day site, where I bought 18 feet of AWG 6 stranded copper wire with a green sheath.  As soon as the weather improves I plan to run this from the CEB to the ham shack and use it to connect the ground bar in the shack to the copper backplane (ground plane) in the CEB.  I will then connect the ground on our Go Box (Icom IC-7000) to the ground bar and see if it helps with my noise issue.

Back at the house Linda wanted to watch an episode of NCIS Los Angeles, which we can now do thanks to our new OTA TV antenna.  We then watched an episode of Christina Cooks, Christina Perillo’s vegan cooking show from a decade ago.  These are still relevant and useful episodes and we especially enjoy them having seen and met her and her husband Robert on our two Taste of Health Holistic Holiday at Sea vegan cruises.  Linda read and I wrote for a while before lights out and off to sleep.

 

2015/06/26 (F) Field Day Setup

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I was up at 7 AM and ready to leave for breakfast with the other SLAARC members who would be setting up our temporary field site for the ARRL Field Day event.  I called the SLAARC repeater and Steve (N8AR) came back and wanted to know if I had the site use permit from the township?  No, I did not.  Paul, N8BHT, got on the air and said he gave it to Linda so I went back home.  Linda was up but had no recollection of receiving it.  We looked through the materials she got from Paul but could not find it.  I left again for breakfast but after more radio QSO went back a second time to retrieve all of the records and bring them with me to the field day site.  (Our best guess is that he gave the permits to the other Linda (NF8C) who is the club secretary.

SLAARC's Field Day setup begins in earnest when Steve's equipment trailer arrives.

SLAARC’s Field Day setup begins in earnest when Steve’s equipment trailer arrives.

By this time it was too late to make it to breakfast so I stopped for coffee and fueled my car.  Mike (W8XH) also did not go to breakfast with the group in South Lyon so we were the first to arrive at the site.  Another 10 guys showed up shortly thereafter.  John’s Sanitation then arrived and dropped off our rented porta-potty.

We had 12 people for most of the day and 14 total who were there for at least part of the day.  It was a good group and just the right size for the task.  We worked steadily from 9 AM until almost 5 PM except for an early afternoon lunch break.  By the end of the day we had erected two towers and set up six antennas (20m beam and 6m beam co-located on the taller tower, two off-center fed dipoles from the taller tower, a 40m crossed dipole from the shorter tower, and a 40m 1/4 wave vertical with four elevated counterpoise wires).  We also put up three radio tents, a screen room, and the big food tent.

Larry (K8UT) holds the 6m beam while Steve (N8AR) and others attach the 20m beam to the mast of the taller tower.

Larry (K8UT) holds the 6m beam while Steve (N8AR) and others attach the 20m beam to the mast of the taller tower.

The weather was cloudy and dull and not the best for taking photographs but I took pictures anyway.  I had to be deliberate in my shot selections, however, as both of my memory cards were almost full.  All of the work that needed to be done today was finished by 4:30 PM and most of us took off.  Our Field Day chairman, Paul (KD8SNZ), and a new member, Ron, setup their tents as they would be spending the night and keeping an eye on the site.  Steve (N8AR) and Eric (K8ERS) stayed a bit longer to test the antennas using the mobile radio in Steve’s SUV.

Back home I took a nap for an hour before dinner.  Linda grilled Portobello mushrooms and corn on the cob and cut up some fresh strawberries and cantaloupe.  After dinner I went to my office and transferred all of our recent photographs from the Sony alpha 100 DSLR to my computer and then to our older NAS device which we had with us this past winter.  I then started backing up all of the photographs we had taken since December 2014 from the old NAS unit to the new one.  This involved a significant number of images, a lot of gigabytes of data, and took a bit of time.

Rather than sit around waiting for file transfers to finish I decided to turn on the Icom IC-7000 ham radio and see if I could figure out why I could not hear the Novi 440 repeater on Wednesday when we tested the antenna and coax installation.  I checked the Nifty guide for the Icom IC-7000 and, as Mike had suspected, I did not have the Tone Squelch frequency set correctly for the Novi repeater.  I changed the mode on the 440 MHz band from ‘Tone’ to ‘TSQL’ and then caIled Mike (W8XH) on the phone to see if he could help me do a radio check.  We spent about an hour going back and forth between the Novi and South Lyon repeaters.

With the correct settings I was able to work both repeaters although I had a lot of background noise (static).  I played with the noise reduction (NR) and pre-amplifier functions and both seemed to help.  Mike tried various combinations of power and simplex operation and we determined that the basic problem seemed to be a weak signal in both directions.  I am still suspicious of the fact that I do not have the Go Box grounded as I vaguely recall from three years ago having noise problems with this setup until I grounded the box, which is tied to the radio ground.

Field Day is an "all hands on deck (antenna)" event for our SLAARC group.

Field Day is an “all hands on deck (antenna)” event for our SLAARC group.

Mike was suspicious of the coax I used to go from the lightning arrestor to the radio but looked up the specifications on my Diamond X-50N antenna and suggested that an antenna with more gain might be in order.  We also discussed the location where I placed the antenna on the tower.  Although most of the antenna is above the tower it is on the northwest leg.  The two repeaters lie to the southeast so the tower may be ‘blocking’ some of the signal although that does not seem likely to me.  Of more concern to me is that I mounted the base of the antenna so that two of the three counterpoise (ground plane) rods are even with, and parallel to, two of the three topmost crossbars.  If anything is being blocked it is likely those as the crossbars are between the rods and the repeater locations.

Ed (KD8OSM) jumped in briefly to let us know that I also had a ‘hum’ that sounded like the 60 Hz power line frequency only higher pitched.  I have a small fan installed in the back of the Go Box so I hummed the same pitch as it was producing into the microphone and both Ed and Mike confirmed that this was the tone they were hearing.  The fan is audible, but not that loud, and was two feet behind the microphone so I would be surprised if it was picking up the fan noise.  It is possible that the fan is inducing the hum electrically, but I believe it is a DC fan, so that seems unlikely.  I do not have an AC line filter installed on the fan, or anywhere in the box, so that may be a next step.

The larger of the two towers is up and secured. It has a 6m beam antenna on top of 20m beam antenna on a common mast with a rotator. We also attached one end of an off-center-fed dipole to this tower.

At the SLAARC Field Day site atop the Lyon Township Atchison Memorial Park the larger of the two towers is up and secured. It has a 6m beam antenna on top of 20m beam antenna on a common mast with a rotator. We also attached one end of an off-center-fed dipole to this tower.  Tents are being erected to house the various operating stations.  The weather was overcast and forecast to get much worse before Field Day as over on Sunday.

Mike and I wrapped up our QSO and I shut the radio off.  I checked my e-mail and saw that the May 2015 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine was available.  I logged in to the website and downloaded both the standard and high definition versions of the April and May digital editions.  By the time I got to bed it was well after 11PM.  I finished up yesterday’s blog post draft and outlined as much of today’s post as I could before I lost the sequence and details of the day’s events.

 

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.

Setting up the tools and parts outside the "drop zone" of the 40-foot tower on the east end of the house.

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)

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)

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)

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 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)

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)

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.

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.

 

2015/06/22 (M) Cable Me This

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We turned the air-conditioning off last night and enjoyed the fresh air, pleasant temperature, and lower humidity.  The overnight low was 58 which made for good sleeping.  We awoke to blue skies and what we thought would be a picture perfect Michigan summer day until Linda checked the morning news (iPad).  There was a story about a storm that moved through the upper plains yesterday and had a bead on Michigan for later today and this evening.  What had been a 10% chance of rain for today had been replaced by a forecast for strong-to-severe thunderstorms with the possibility of strong winds, large hail, and tornadoes.  Ahhhh, summer in Michigan.

Not ones to sit around and wait for the apocalypse we did what any sensible couple would do, I made coffee while Linda reheated the last of the Baked French Toast from yesterday’s brunch.  We had breakfast and then sat on the deck enjoying our coffee and contemplating the end of the world, or at least the possible destruction of our brand new roof.  But it’s insured, so “no worries, maan” as they say in Jamaica.  More coffee please.

We have a whole house generator that runs on natural gas so as long as a storm doesn’t damage it we can survive for a very long time without electric utility power.  Losing our AT&T Internet connection, however, would be a genuine hardship as that would require us to use our Verizon Mi-Fi (without the benefit of the new Fusion5s cellular booster which I plan to install on Wednesday) or go to Panera, McDonalds, or one of the libraries to get online.

Keith showed up around 10 AM to cut the grass.  We were hoping he would make it as we have not had too much rain this past week and the last few days in particular have been dry.  I think this is the first time this season he has been able to cut our grass without it being wet.  It looked nice when he was done.

I got a call from Phil Jarrell.  He had been successful in reaching Mike Fearer of Bid Rite Concrete on Mike’s cell phone.  Based on Phil’s description Mike was interested in looking at our tower foundation project and was expecting me to call so I did, using my cell phone, and this time I was able to reach him.  It turned out that the information about his business on the Internet is out of date.  He is no longer in Whitmore Lake but now operates from near M-59 and Latson Road, not far from us.  We agreed that he would stop by tomorrow at the end of the work day to look at our project.

I did not want to do a lot of heavy work today, as I was still a bit tired and sore, but I needed to mount two lightning arrestors in the cable entry box and mount the cellular booster in the sump pump room so I could figure out what coax cable lengths I needed and go get them from Scott Adams (AC8IL) at Adams Electronics in Wixom.  But first I called Mike (W8XH) to let him know I was planning on Wednesday for the tower work, assuming he was still available and the tower was still standing.

Cable entry box showing copper ground plane with Morgan lightning arrestors (lower left), control line arrestor (center top), and cellular and OTA TV arrestors (center).

Cable entry box showing copper ground plane with Morgan lightning arrestors (lower left), control line arrestor (center top), and cellular and OTA TV arrestors (center).

I determined that I needed two coaxial cables and ordered them from Scott by phone rather than take the time today to drive to his place of business.  They will both be LMR-400 with N-connectors on both ends.  One will be 50 feet long, for our 2m/70cm Diamond X50-N VHF/UHF base station antenna, and the other will be 15 feet long, to get from the cellular booster lightning arrestor in the cable entry box to the repeater (amplifier) in the sump pump room.  I will pick them up early Wednesday morning and install them.

One of the lightning arrestors was for the SureCall Fusion5s cellular booster system.  It has N-connectors on both ends, one of which is intended for bulkhead mounting.  It came with an angle bracket that fit over the bulkhead end and I used that to mount it.  I used the 2′ length of LMR-400 that came with the booster installation kit to position the lightning arrestor so the cable from the repeater could exit one of the 2″ conduits and bend around and connect to it.  LMR-400 is a low loss, 50 ohm impedance, coaxial cable that can handle high RF transmit power.  The cellular booster only has a 1 Watt transmitter but is operating at frequencies where energy losses in coax cables become significant.  To do what it does LMR-400 is just under 1/2″ in diameter.  It is fairly stiff and does not make sharp bends so cable runs and connections have to be carefully planned.

The other lightning arrestor was for the Antennas Direct DB8e OTA TV antenna and serves a dual purpose as the power insertion device for the tower mounted amplifier.  The coax cable for OTA TV signals is typically 75 ohm impedance RG-6 with F-connectors.  It is half the diameter of LMR-400 and much more flexible.  It is also typically used to receive low power signals and convey them in one direction; from the antenna to the TV.  Because we are 25 miles from the nearest TV tower and some of the towers are 50+ miles away, I ordered a signal amplifier to go with the antenna.

Ideally you want to amplify an OTA TV signal as soon as it comes out of the antenna and this amplifier does just that.  It will mount on the same tower leg as the antenna about two feet below the antenna feed point.  However, being an active electronic device it needs electrical power to operate.  There are two basic ways that could be done.

One way would be to have power wires, such as +5 VDC and DC Ground that are separate from the coaxial cable that carries the radio frequency (RF) energy.  The two OTA TV antennas on our bus are set up this way with three wires to supply power and control the enclosed rotor.

The other way is to provide DC power through the coaxial cable itself, which is how this amplifier is set up.  The nice thing about this arrangement is that the amplifier only has two connections and they are both coax connectors that can be weather sealed.  To get the DC power into the coax cable, however, requires a special device called a power inserter.  The power inserter, in turn, requires the coax to be split into two segments so there end up being four connections instead of two.  The power inserter for this amplifier very conveniently acts as a lightning arrestor as well, which is why I mounted it to the copper back plane in the cable entrance box.

By boosting what I presume will be weak signals from distant towers the amplified signal should be strong enough to survive the trip through the coax cable to the power inserter, from there to a 1-in/2-out signal splitter, and then through additional lengths of coax to the two TV sets.

After getting the two lightning arrestors mounted in the cable entry box I took a break for lunch and then went to Lowe’s for some supplies.  When I got back home I turned my attention to mounting the SureCall Fusion5s cellular booster (repeater amplifier) in the sump pump room.  The sump pump is in the northeast corner of the basement, which is also the northeast corner of our ham shack and office.  (The ham shack occupies the north wall and my desks occupy the east wall.  Most of the rest of the room is storage.)

I gutted and rebuilt this space, with the help of long-time friend John Rauch, before we moved in and created the large closet (small room) around the sump with insulated walls to contain sounds.  I installed an electrical sub-panel in this room to provide power to the office and ham shack desks and to an RV outlet by the pull-through driveway.  I fed the power for the RV outlet through the bond on the east wall just above the concrete block foundation and ran it underground to the far side of the driveway.  It was my intention from the beginning to mount a cable entrance box next to the power feed and have all of the coax cables and control wires for outside devices enter the sump pump room in the same manner as the power.

The ham shack/office walls are finished with T-111 exterior plywood with 4″ groove spacing and I finished the interior of the closet the same way as I knew I would eventually want to mount things to the walls.  I mounted the SureCall Fusion5s booster on the west wall of the closet about a foot inside the door and just below my eye level so I could see all of the connectors, switches, and indicator lights on the top and front of the unit.  It had four mounting tabs, two top and two bottom, that attached easily to the wall with short wood screws.

There is a duplex AC electrical outlet on that wall and one on the opposite (east) wall.  The power supplies for the cellular booster and OTA TV antennas will plug in to these along with the sump pump and the charger/controller for the battery powered backup sump pump.  One of the things I bought at Lowe’s were two outlet expanders which I installed in these two duplex outlets.  I also bought a switch with a pilot light to replace a single pole Decora switch that will eventually control the light in the closet.  I installed the switch but did not complete the wiring as I have to tie it in to the light fixture which requires me to cut the power to that circuit.   I would also like to replace the bare bulb fixture while I am at it but have not yet purchased a replacement.

Although it was late afternoon I decided to install the inside antenna for the cellular booster system and run the coaxial cable that connects it to the booster.  The antenna is designed to mount to a flat ceiling and provide a hemispherical coverage area below the plane of the ceiling.  I had previously figured out that if I mounted this antenna in the main floor hallway near the midpoint of the house I could connect it to the cellular amplifier using a 50 foot length of coax cable that came with the system.

The desired mounting location was opposite the door to the hall closet and the access to the attic is through the ceiling of that closet, so that was very convenient.  We emptied the closet, removed the clothes rod, and setup our six foot step ladder.  I removed the piece of foam insulation we currently use to seal the attic access opening and climbed up, flashlight in hand to check out what was on the other side of the ceiling.

Our desired location for the antenna was free of problems on the back side so I drilled a 3/4″ hole for the mounting stud and used a piece of rebar to poke a hole through the insulation for the coax cable that came out of the stud.  Linda fed the coax and stud through the hole and I put the retaining nut on the stud from the attic side of the ceiling.  The antenna is shaped like a coffee filter, is about six inches in diameter at the ceiling, and tapers down to about four inches in diameter about four inches from the ceiling.  The housing is white plastic and blends in well with the ceiling paint.

About four feet from where we installed the antenna is a chase that runs from the attic to the furnace room in the basement.  It appears that once upon a time something having to do with the furnace ran through this chase, such as the combustion air intake.  The combustion air is now drawn through the back wall under the deck and the exhaust goes out through the east wall of the basement via a double wall stainless steel flue pipe.  The chase is no longer used for furnace or other utilities although there are electrical cables to switches mounted in the bathroom walls and it still contained a piece of 4″ plastic pipe.

I positioned myself near the chase and guided one end of a 50 foot length of LMR-400 coax down through the pipe and through the hole into the furnace room while Linda held the roll of coax near the top of the ladder and unrolled it.  At one point the coax bunched up and Linda had to go to the furnace room and untangle it.  At another point the 4″ plastic pipe slipped through the bottom hole into the furnace room which caught me by surprise.  Once the cable was mostly fed through I routed it to the location of the antenna, connected it to the pigtail coax from the antenna, wrapped the connection in weather seal tape to keep moisture out, and secured it with a cable tie.

With the antenna installed Linda started preparing dinner while I dealt with the 37 feet of coax in the furnace room.  The furnace room does not have a finished ceiling so I had access to the areas above the suspended ceilings in all of the adjacent rooms.  In particular I was able to feed the free end of the coax above the ceiling in the office and into the sump pump room.  I secured the cable with plastic cable ties at two points in the furnace room to keep it away from the flue and various hot water pipes.  I had about 8 extra feet of cable so I made a large coil with two loops such that the free end came off the loop straight down into the connector on top of the booster.  I hung the coil on the wall above and to the right of the booster making for a very neat installation.

I took a shower to try and get rid of some of the fiberglass itch while Linda finished the dish she was making for dinner.  It was a complex Indian style dish with Basmati rice, garbanzo beans, Swiss chard, onions, and shallots, seasoned with salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, cumin seeds, garam masala, fresh lemon (zest and juice), and fresh dill that Linda grew herself.  The house was filled with the aromas of all these ingredients for a couple of hours as they were prepared and combined into the final dish.  It tasted as good as it smelled with many flavor layers.

Our beautiful blue sky gave way to high, thin clouds through the morning and then to lower, thicker clouds during the early afternoon.  By 2 PM the clouds to the west were dark as I drove to Lowe’s in Howell and the first, heavy rains came as I got to the parking lot.  I waited a few minutes and they stopped so I got into the store without getting wet.  I had the same good fortune on my way back to the car.  The sustained rains came later in the evening along with a tornado watch.  We went to bed before 10 AM but did not go to sleep.  It took me a long time to write this post and we kept a watchful eye on the weather radar.  Although thunderstorms were forecast as a certainty from 1 to 5 AM with the possibility that they might be severe, we finally turned the lights out around 12:45 AM and tried to get some sleep.

 

2015/06/20 (S) Cable Entry Box

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We had not been to our local ham radio club breakfast the last two Saturdays because of the GLAMARAMA rally and a visit from Linda’s brother, Ron, and his wife, Mary.  The club was conducting VE testing today, rather than the usual 4th Saturday of the month, because the ARRL Field Day event is next weekend.  When we got to breakfast at 8 AM there were already a lot of people there and seven more came in after us.  We did not take a head count but it was somewhere between 25 and 30 people.  We also did not have our usual waitress but the substitute very efficiently got everyone’s order taken and delivered.

The 40 foot tower on the east end of the house with the old OTA TV antenna on top.

The 40 foot tower on the east end of the house with the old OTA TV antenna on top.

I checked with Mike (W8XH) and he is available to help us get the antennas mounted on the small tower on Monday or Wednesday, assuming I have the cable entry box (CEB) installed and all of the necessary coaxial cable on hand.  Getting the CEB mounted was my main goal for today, but not the first thing I had to do.  I called Chuck as we were leaving breakfast at 9:15 AM.  He was at home and suggested we stop by there and pick up a key to his shop.  He was working on landscaping when we arrived so we did not stay long and we were back home by 10 AM.  Linda finalized her shopping list and headed off to gather the things she needed to prepare tomorrow’s brunch.  I changed into my work clothes, gathered up the laundry, put a load in the washer, and got to work on the CEB.

The CEB is designed to mount on the outside of the house, allowing wiring to pass between the inside and outside of the house in a way that is weather tight and animal proof.  Coaxial RF cables and control lines enter through the bottom, connect to lightning arrestors in the CEB that provide a path to ground if/when needed, and then continue through the wall of the house and thence to various devices.  Those devices might include cellular phone signal boosters, Wi-Fi systems, TV sets, satellite receivers, personal weather stations, or amateur radio gear such as radios, remote antenna switches, and antenna rotators.

The general area on the east end of the house at the base of he 40' tower where the CEB will be mounted.

The general area on the east end of the house at the base of he 40′ tower where the CEB will be mounted.

Superficially the installation looked simple.  With the copper back plane removed there were four mounting holes, one near each corner, and two large holes in the back.  All we had to do was hold the box against the wall, mark the locations of the four mounting holes and the big cable entry holes, set the box aside, drill the holes, put the box back up and secure it.  Right.  Sort of, but not exactly.  Mounting the box took seven hours to complete.

The first step was to remove the copper back plane with the three lightning arrestors installed on it.  I took care of that yesterday.  The next issue was that the house has shiplap siding, i.e., the east wall where I needed to mount the CEB was not a flat surface.  I decided to use 1″ square aluminum tube, installed vertically along the back of the box at the outside edges, to span multiple siding boards, ensuring that the CEB would be plumb.  I also decided to leave the tube long enough to go all the way to the ground and use it to support some the weight, in effect creating legs for the CEB.  That was Linda’s idea.  She’s a smart girl and a licensed amateur radio operator.

The back of the CEB with one of the vertical mounting bars.

The back of the CEB with one of the vertical mounting bars.

We had some surplus pavers and garden blocks and I found one that was just wide enough to catch the bottom of the legs.  I also had some left over paver base material, which meant I did not need to make a trip to the store.  The paver base material was from a project long, long ago (in a place far, far away) and I used it to create a base for the foundation paver, which was approximately 18″ x 12″.  I leveled the base side-to-side and pitched it away from the house for drainage.

Yesterday I purchased a 3′ long aluminum tube at Lowe’s and a 4′ long tube at The Home Depot.  Three feet turned out to be a good length, so I cut a foot off of the 4′ tube.  Things then got trickier.  The positioning of the CEB was critical as the two large holes in the back were for adapters for 2″ plastic conduit.  I was going to have to cut 3″ diameter holes through the bond that would come out above the plate on top of the concrete block foundation.  In the chosen mounting location the bottom corner holes in the CEB would be below the siding.  The lower right leg would be at least an inch away from the concrete block foundation and the lower left hole would be in front of a basement window opening so neither of these were going to be screwed into anything.

The CEB in position on the east end of the house with the door open. The copper backplane has been removed.

The CEB in position on the east end of the house with the door open. The copper backplane has been removed.

I wanted the CEB anchored at more than two points so I decided to drill two additional holes in the back, one on each side, approximately half way between the existing top and bottom holes.  I measured the spacing between the top and bottom holes as carefully as I could.  I measured down from the top end of each leg a distance for the top holes that was just sufficient to make sure the door of the CEB was below the 2″ iron gas pipe that runs horizontally along the outside of the house.  I measured down from there for the new middle hole and the bottom hole.  I then drilled the three holes through each leg by drilling opposing sides.  I had to use a powered hand drill for this work as my drill press was stored behind a large pile of RV furniture that we took out of the bus and was inaccessible.

I attached one of the legs to the back of the box using two short bolts through the top and bottom holes.  I then used the middle hole in the leg as a guide and drilled through the back of the CEB.  I repeated this procedure for the other leg.  I drilled the holes in the legs as accurately as I could but they did not quite line up so I had to enlarge them slightly by using the drill bit like a router bit.  Not ideal, to be sure, but aluminum is relatively soft and it worked.

The east end of the house with two 2" holes for the conduit.

The east end of the house with two 2″ holes for the conduit.

I attached each leg to the back of the CEB using 1.5″ 1/4-20 bolts through the bottom corner holes.  I snugged these up but left them loose enough that we could move the legs.  The top and middle holes were located in positions that would allow lag screws to be screwed into the siding and underlying plywood.  We had to tilt the legs to get them under the 2″ iron gas pipe and then straighten them and set them on the foundation paver.  We had to do this multiple times but it was easy once we figured out how to do it the first time.

With the CEB in position I marked the location of the holes for four 3″ 1/4-20 lag screws.  We removed the CEB so I could drill the holes for the lag screws and then put it back in position and screwed it to the wall.  I marked the locations of the two holes for the conduit as best I could and then unscrewed the box and removed it again.  I used our 1/2″ Craftsmen corded drill for the 3″ hole saw.  I bought this drill in 1978, along with a lot of other Craftsmen tools, when we moved into our house in Farmington Hills.  I still have almost all of those tools and they all still work.

The CEB in position with both pieces of conduit through the back.

The CEB in position with both pieces of conduit through the back.

With the conduit holes drilled I cut one of the 18″ lengths of conduit in half, inserted the pieces into the adapters, and placed them in the holes.  We then put the CEB into position, got the adapters through the holes in the back of the CED, and tried to line up the holes in the legs.  The conduit was being forced up as it went through the bond, especially the one on the left, and would not allow the holes in the CEB to line up with the holes in the legs.  We took the retaining rings off of the adapters and removed the CEB, again.

I shortened the conduit pieces to approximately 5″ and checked the fit in the holes.  We wrapped two bands of adhesive backed foam weather-stripping around each piece of conduit and placed them back in the holes.  I then applied a bead of adhesive caulk all the way around each adapter at the wall.  We put the CEB in position for the final time, got the conduit adapters through the holes, snugged up the retaining rings, and put the four lag screws in.  After tightening the four lag screws I tightened the two bolts in the lower corners.  I then tightened the adapter retain rings and put the open end caps on.  The conduit ended up getting pulled back out of the wall a bit so I used the thin end of a 10″‘wood shim to try and force the caulk back into the gap around the conduit adapter.  It did not go back in very well so I will have to figure out something else to seal around the conduit.

The CEB was finally installed and very solidly anchored.  I got the copper base plate and remounted it to the five studs (four corners and one center) using some antioxidant/anti-seize compound on the stud threads.  The last step (for today) was to install the snap in covers for the 16 cable entrance holes in the bottom of CEB.  I also ordered 16 grommets and will remove the caps and replace them with grommets as I install devices and run their cables and wires into the CEB.

The CEB with the copper backplane installed and the three Morgan lightning arrestors mounted (two lower left, one top center).

The CEB with the copper backplane installed and the three Morgan lightning arrestors mounted (two lower left, one top center).

The two pieces of conduit open into the sump pump room (large closet) in the northeast corner of the basement just above the wood plate that sits on top of the concrete block foundation.  I plan to install the SureCall Fusion5s 5-band cellular booster (amplifier) in this room to keep it close to the CEB and because there is AC power available there.  I bought an installation kit for the Fusion5s that includes a lightning arrestor which will get mounted in the CEB.  I also bought an amplifier for the OTA TV antenna that will mount on the tower a few feet below the antenna.  The amplifier will get its power through the coax from a power inserter that doubles as a lightning arrestor and will be installed in the CEB with the AC power supply (wall wart) in the sump pump room.

I did not get these two additional lightning arrestors installed today.  By the time we got the CEB installed we were tired.  The high temperature was OK (near 80?) but the relative humidity was very high.  I was also very sore the whole time, especially my left knee, undoubtedly the lingering after effect of using the power chisel earlier in the week to remove thinset and mastic from the floor of the bus.  Getting down and up at least 50 times during the afternoon did not improve matters, but we got it done.

Even though she was also tired, once we reached a point where I could finish up alone Linda got busy making several food items for tomorrow.  In the midst of all that she heated some Amy’s Lentil Soup and made grilled cheese sandwiches with Diaya cheese or dinner.  Diaya makes an excellent non-dairy cheese that works well cold or cooked into dishes.

After dinner I returned a call from Butch to find out more about their new property and buildings, and discuss bus and ham radio projects.  One of the things Linda made was an apple pie so we stayed up until it was cool enough to wrap up.  That turned out to be 10 PM, by which time we ready to turn in for the night.

 

2015/06/14 (N) WordPressing

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We had yet more rain overnight.  I heard the rain around 6 AM and checked the Wundermap app on my iPad but did not get up.  Linda did not need to go to the Howell Farmers Market today as the refrigerator is quite full and the rainy weather made the prospect less appealing.  We finally got up at 9 AM and I made coffee.  Linda checked the weather forecast.  It called for a 100% chance of rain between noon and 3 PM with thunderstorms and up to 2″ of rain.  By 10:15 AM it was raining steadily again.

We deferred by one more day getting back to work on the bus.  The monthly meeting of our South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) was this evening and we did not want to get involved in physical work today.  I wanted to do a load of laundry but deferred that as the high humidity makes it harder to get the clothes dry.

I opened the three boxes that made up the OTA TV antenna shipment from AntennasDirect.com and laid all the parts out on the floor.  As I wrote yesterday I need to determine exactly what types/lengths/connectors I need to get everything hooked up and make sure I have it on hand before I climb the 40 foot tower next to the house.  After I laid all of the parts out this morning Linda asked how I was going to get all of that stuff up the tower.

Our new Antennas Direct DB8e Over-The-Air TV antenna.

Our new Antennas Direct DB8e Over-The-Air TV antenna.

My plan is to preassemble as much stuff as possible.  I will then take a 100 foot rope with me when I climb the tower, loop it over one of the crossbars, and drop it back down to the ground where Linda can tie it to a bracket, or directly to some part, and pull it up to me.  As I describe this it occurs to me that I should probably rig up a pulley.  We also figured out that we should run the TV co-ax inside the house before I climb the tower.  That will allow Linda to scan for signals and talk to me on our portable ham radios while I am on the tower if the antennas need to be aimed.  I called Mike (W8XH) to see if he would bring his climbing harness to our ham radio club meeting this evening and he agreed.

For breakfast I had some of the Pepperidge Farm cinnamon chocolate chip bread Linda bought and we both had fresh grapefruit.  After breakfast I got cleaned up and dressed and then partially assembled the OTA TV antenna.  I then went to my office and settled in at my desk to upload blog posts.  I had not been in my e-mail for a few days so there were some things I had to respond to before working on our blog.

I got my blog posts uploaded for May 29 through June 7 and then decided to update the other three WordPress websites I work on.  Much to my dismay I was not able to log in to the FMCA Freethinkers website.  I got an error message instead and the contents looked to me like the site might have been hacked.  I notified the President of the chapter and indicated that I would contact the ISP technical support folks and see what they can tell me.  I have never opened that site up to the members of the chapter because I never quite finished it but I intended to and I have a lot of time and effort invested in its development.  Still, if the site is totally corrupted I may just delete it and abandon the whole project.

I wrapped up my work just in time for dinner.  Linda reheated the two leftover vegan cheeseburgers and served them with the remaining vegan potato salad and fresh nectarines.

Linda spent a little time during the afternoon getting the treasurer’s report ready for our SLAARC meeting.  We left at 6 PM and were at the Witch’s Hat Depot in South Lyon by 6:30 PM.  We have changed the meeting format to have social time from 6:30 to 7:00 PM, followed by a business meeting, and then a program.  I got the climbing harness from Mike (W8XH) as soon as we arrived and put it in the car.  I then had a brief chat with Scotty (AC8IL) regarding Universal Towers in Clinton Township, Michigan and LMR-400 co-ax.  Scotty stocks LMR-400 but also stocks RG-213 which he thinks is better for outdoor use.  His opinion is based on a Motorola white paper that discusses potential problems with the aluminum foil wrapped copper braid outer conductor in LMR-400 in the presence of moisture.

Tonight’s business meeting was a discussion about preparations for the upcoming ARRL Field Day lead by this year’s club field day chair Paul (KD8SNZ).  The program was a presentation by Larry (K8UT) on the N1MM Logger+ contest logging program that we will be using to log contacts on four different networked computers.  Larry is a member of the N1MM development team.  I asked Larry if I could send him the URL for my broken WordPress website and he said he would look at it.  We left at 8:45 PM.

When we got home Juniper was hunched over something in the living room and I could see immediately that she had caught another mouse.  It was very small, like the last one, and for all I know it was the same mouse.  I got her to drop the last one and it escaped into my office.  Linda grabbed one of the antenna boxes and pulled out the shipping paper that was stuffed inside.  I managed to get Juniper to drop the mouse in the box, from which it was not going to be able to escape, and then took the box outside and set it free.  If it has any sense it won’t come back in the house and it will tell all if its little mouse friends to steer clear of this place.  Juniper is a very skilled hunter and will catch anything in that house that moves that is smaller than she is.

Linda prepared some fresh strawberries and served them with some non-dairy ice cream.  She logged in to Amazon.com and ordered six live traps and a new cover for my iPad, both eligible for Amazon Prime.  We then spent a little more time reading and writing and checking the weather.  The 10-day forecast is for continued rain almost every day.  We are still expecting the new roof shingles to be delivered tomorrow but we won’t be surprised if they are not.  We are also expecting that Apex will have to push the start date of our project back due to all of the recent rain delaying other jobs that are ahead of ours.  We turned in for the night at 10:30 PM; late for Linda and early for me.  She was asleep fairly quickly but I stayed up writing and played a few games on my iPad as I do most nights.

 

2015/05/23 (S) Radio Cabinet Company

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Today was “V. E.” testing day (volunteer examiner) so a half-dozen members of our amateur radio club were at breakfast even earlier than usual.  (Our club does not test volunteer examiners, we have members who volunteer to give amateur radio licensing exams to people who want to get or upgrade an amateur radio license.)   We were later than usual and ended up at the far end of a very long table arrangement, as there was a large turnout, but that gave us a chance to chat with a different group of people.

Mike Sharpe (W8XH) had a flyer he printed on his mother’s car, a 2005 Ford Taurus in excellent condition with only 21,000 miles.  He was asking $5,800 which is slightly below the suggested Blue Book value.  I texted our son to see if they might be interested in the car.  Linda and I both had Ford Taurus cars starting in 2000.  I had a beige station wagon with a beige interior and Linda had a red sedan with a gray interior.  Our children eventually ended up with these vehicles, Brendan with my car and Meghan with Linda’s.

Back at the house Linda made a shopping list and headed to the grocery store while I changed into my work clothes and got to work in the bus.  My focus today was deconstructing the cabinet above the refrigerator.  I could tell from the dimensions that it was probably a box-within-a-box, but did not know how it was built.  I removed all of the carpeting from the inside surfaces, labeling the back of each piece in case I decided to reinstall them.  With the carpet out it became obvious that the floor, sidewalls, and back of the cabinet could be removed as I could see the screws and angle brackets that held them in place.

The cabinet above the refrigerator in our bus with the inside panels removed revealing lots of wiring.

The cabinet above the refrigerator in our bus with the inside panels removed revealing lots of wiring.

The floor was in two side-to-side pieces which were narrow, each sidewall was a single piece, and the back was in two pieces.  All of the pieces were sized to fit through the front openings in the face frame, a very clever design.  There were cleats supporting the floor and spacing the back and side walls out from the larger permanent structure of the refrigerator alcove.  The panels I removed served the dual purpose of getting the bottom and sides to line up with door openings and providing space to run wires while concealing them.  Things got trickier after that.

The walnut face frame was assembled with glue and pocket screws.  It had cleats along both rails and the two end stiles, all of which appeared to be glued and screwed to the face frame.  In addition, the piece of walnut veneered plywood that separated the refrigerator space from the cabinet above was glued and screwed to the underside of the lower rail cleat.  In other words, it was a solid and very professionally assembled cabinet.  The bottom board was attached to the two sides with angle brackets and it appeared that I might be able to remove the face frame and bottom board once the side and top cleats and brackets were unscrewed.  The top rail of the face frame, however, was tucked up behind some ceiling trim, preventing me from pulling the whole assembly straight out.  I loosened the trim and found that pulling it straight out was probably not my best option.  To get it out I would have to drop it straight down which will require the refrigerator to be out of the alcove.

The Aqua-Hot has been on with the thermostats set to 55 degrees F in case it got too cold.  It was cool today so I turned the engine preheat pump on to warm up the main engine.  When it was time for lunch I started the main engine and let it high idle while we ate.  After we were done with lunch I moved the coach backwards (to release the brakes if they were bound up) and then forward enough to put the tires at a different spot.  I set our electronic level on the centerline of the floor and then lowered the front and passenger side rear to level the coach.  When I walked around it actually felt level, which it rarely did when trying to level off of one of the floor tiles or the kitchen counter.

I quit working around 2:30 PM as Linda was getting ready to prep ingredients for the risotto she planned to make for dinner and got cleaned up.  I used to cook a lot but since we switched to a vegan diet Linda has done almost all of our cooking and, except for making coffee, tea, and popcorn, the kitchen has been her exclusive domain since she retired and we moved to the new house.  But I offered to help and she agreed to let me so I diced an onion and five cloves of garlic while she sliced mushrooms and other things.  By the time I was done I had about 40 minutes before Steve and Karen were due to arrive, so I updated my medical history for Root Canal Specialty Associates.  I have a follow up visit with them in Wednesday.

Steve and Karen arrived at 4 PM and we settled in to conversation and munchies (they brought a mixed fruit salad, pistachios, and mixed nuts).  We finished up the open bottle of Malvasia Bianca from Heart of the Desert Winery (Eagle Ranch) in Alamogordo, New Mexico.  After chatting for a while about our respective winters—ours in the Southwest and theirs near Venice, Florida—we gave them a quick tour of the inside of the bus.  It looks quite a bit different now compared to January 2014 when they spent a couple of nights in it at Williston Crossings RV Resort enroute to Venice, Florida.  It will look even more different (hopefully) once we are done with the remodeling.

Linda eventually had to attend to the final preparations for dinner.  Karen helped by stirring the mushroom risotto while Steve and I stayed out of their way chatting in the living room.  Linda roasted refresh asparagus and sliced a baguette to go with the risotto.  I opened a bottle of the 2013 Egri Merlot to go with dinner.  Steve does not drink alcoholic beverages or coffee and Karen prefers drier red wines, but she seemed to enjoy the Merlot all the same.

The weather had been beautiful all day and we sat on the rear deck after dinner enjoying our last sips of wine.  Once the sun dropped behind the trees it cooled off to the point where it was uncomfortable and we went back inside.  I turned on the natural gas fireplace logs but left a window open which seemed to strike the right balance of temperature and mood.  By 10:30 PM we had caught up on travels, families, and hobby interests.  They had a 45 minute drive to get home and usually leave around that time.  We had a long but very satisfying day and were quickly to bed once they were safely on their way home.

 

2015/05/21 (R) Cats, Cars, and Tenure

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Linda got up around 6 AM and got ready to go to the bakery.  I was aware she was up but I slept in.  Once up I showered and dressed for the day.  I did not plan to work in the bus today so I did not put on my work clothes.  Instead I needed to catch up on blog entries and take the cats to a 2 PM appointment at Plaza Veterinary Hospital in Farmington, Michigan.

I was putting a few things back in the master bedroom closet and noticed that the air-conditioning return air grill was stuffed full of insulation.  We had found this in the other return air grills and removed it but we overlooked this one.  I removed the grill and then removed the insulation and threw it away.  There was a 1/2″ thick filter material stuffed up in the register behind the insulation.  I trimmed the filter to just fit inside the grill and reattached it to the ceiling.  Putting the rest of the house back together will take both of us so we will do that this evening.  Besides, we like to give the carpets as much time as possible to dry out.

I went out around 9:30 AM to fuel my car and get a cup of coffee at the co-located Dunkin’ Donuts.  Back home I put my floor mat back in front of my main computer station and settled in to check e-mail and work on my blog.  There was a new driver available for the NVIDIA GeForce GPU in my ASUS laptop, so I initiated the download.  AT&T was providing me with a 160 KB download speed and the 277 MB driver said it would take an hour to download.  No point tying up the Internet connection until the download finished so I used my iPad while I waited.

The driver downloaded a little sooner than predicted and then installed quickly.  When I finally opened my e-mail and had another 50 MB of stuff to download; a lot of it BCM related.  They are trying to wrap up the April 2015 issue and sent me several drafts since I last checked my e-mail.  I have not been 100% successful in getting folks attached to the magazine to transmit large files via Dropbox instead of attaching them to e-mails.

Tim Olsen from our GLCC chapter called yesterday to let me know he had registered for GLAMARAMA and wanted to park with the chapter.  I updated my spreadsheet and need to e-mail a few folks to clarify their intentions before giving an updated coach count to the rally parking coordinator.  As often happens, I did not have much time left to work on blog posts before I had to round up the cats and take them to the vet.

Both cats complained for most of the trip to Plaza Veterinary Hospital, but they are cats and that is what they do.  I weighed them on the scale in the lobby and gave the receptionist the pertinent facts concerning their health.  Once in the exam room I opened their carriers.  Juniper immediately came out and explored the room.  We were early and had to wait a while but Juniper stayed very busy.  Perhaps she was looking go for a way out.  Jasper did not leave his carrier.  Perhaps he figured he was safer staying in there.

Dr. Carron examined Juniper first since she was already out of her carrier.  The cats both got a clean bill of health other than some tartar on their teeth.  Dr. Carron did not suggest, however, that they needed to be cleaned at this time.  They each got vaccinated albeit for different things.  Jasper also had blood drawn.  He is just a month shy of being 11 years old and Dr. Carron likes to do annual blood work on cats 8 years of age and older.  Juniper is due for a 3-year rabies booster in December of this year but Jasper is not due again until sometime in 2017.  Besides rabies certificates we may need an International Health Certificate for each cat to get them into Mexico and/or back into the United States if we decide to make the trip to Puerto Penasco in February 2016.

I had just left Plaza Veterinary Hospital when Linda texted me that she was wrapping up at the bakery.  It was already after 3 PM at that point and traffic was thick and slow in the usual places.  I had a nice QSO with Mike (W8XH) on the South Lyon 2 meter ham radio repeater for the last six miles of my trip.  He and several other club members bought Yaesu digital radios at the Dayton Hamvention to use with the new Yaesu Fusion 2m repeater that five of them bought from Yaesu for a special promotional price of only $500.

I got home around 4 PM and replied to Linda’s TXT message.  I got the cat carriers inside and set them free.  There was no hesitation about leaving the carriers this time.  Linda got home around 5 PM, 90 minutes after she left the bakery, and I filled her in on the cats’ veterinary appointments.  While we were chatting we got an e-mail from our son letting us know that Shawn’s tenure at the University of Michigan had been approved by the Board of Regents at their meeting today.  We were understandably pleased (and relieved) to finally receive this news and texted back our congratulations.  Shawna sent back a cell phone photo of themselves celebrating at a local Ann Arbor establishment.  They looked very happy.

Most car dealerships in this market are open until 9 PM on Mondays and Thursdays, and neither of us was ready for dinner yet, so we paid a visit to Champion Chevrolet on Grand River Avenue between Brighton and Howell.  We were greeted by Ken, but he only dealt in used cars and handed us off to Dan Danaher.  He had a Chevy Colorado on the lot so we checked it out.  It was not the 4-door crew cab Z71 off-road model, but it did have 4-wheel drive.  We climbed in/out of the front and back seats and played with the tailgate.  The front seats were fine but I could not sit in the back without the driver seat being all the way forward.  The 4-door Crew Cab adds about 7″ of rear leg room but it would still be tight.  That is one of the tradeoffs with mid-size trucks.  The front seats fit us nicely but this is not a truck for tall and/or large people IMHO.  The Z71 off-road version may sit slightly higher but we should still be able to get in/out without needing an accessory step or running board.

The MSRP for the truck we saw was just over $30,000 and overall felt very similar to the Nissan Frontier, nice but not luxurious.  In other respects, however, the trucks were very different.  The Colorado 4×4 models have a transfer case and can be towed four wheels down with an automatic transmission.  We liked the Frontier but it can only be towed 4-down with the manual transmission and for that reason alone is not a viable alternative for us.

Dan gave us a brochure on the Colorado and made a few notes on what we are looking for.  We would obviously like to see the 4-door crew cab and drive the Z71 4×4 off-road model before deciding to buy one.  He said he would call if/when he had those available for us to see and test drive.  If we ordered by the end of the month we would get a 2015 model but it would take 8 – 10 weeks to arrive.  Starting June 1st orders will be for a 2016 model and still take 8 – 10 weeks for delivery.  Recent history suggests a 0.5% to 1.0% price increase for the new model year.  We do not plan to order a new car before the end of May and a 1% price increase would not motivate us to change our minds about that.

On our way back to our car we took a quick glance at the Camaro sitting outside the showroom door.  If we were buying a nostalgia car thus would be it.  Linda’s first car, purchased before we were married, was a used 1967 Chevy Camaro convertible.  It was white with a red interior and had a 327 cubic inch V8 under the hood.  No emissions controls in those days, just raw power and $0.35/gal gasoline.

We drove to Panera in Brighton and had black bean soup and Mediterranean veggie sandwiches for dinner.  By the time we got home we were ready to relax.  First we took the spacers out from under the living room furniture, so we had someplace to sit, and put a few items back where they normally go.  I opened one of the bottles of Malvasia Bianca white wine from the Heart of the Dessert (Eagle Ranch) winery in Alamogordo, New Mexico and we celebrated our daughter-in-law’s attainment of tenure.  It’s been a good year for our son and his family and it is nice to see things finally falling into place for them.  The wine was very similar to the late harvest Rieslings we get from Michigan’s Leelanau peninsula; very sweet and thus a good cocktail or dessert wine.  We watched the final episode from season 1 of A Touch of Frost before turning in for the evening.

 

2014/10/08-15 GLCC and Bus Work

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2014/10/08 (W) Rally Ho!

Today was a travel day so I had a light breakfast and went to the Small Town Brew for a cup of coffee rather than create a mess making my own.  I donated $2 for this cup and did not have a refill so the three cups I consumed over the last two days averaged out to $1 each.  I spent most of the morning helping Butch investigate possible routes for the engine preheat plumbing for their new International Thermal Research (ITR) Oasis Combi diesel-fired hydronic heating system.  I also adjusted the front bus tire pressures and all four of the car tire pressures.

As noon approached I switched to departure mode.  I changed out of my work clothes into something cleaner and more comfortable for driving, finished packing all the stuff I had in the guest bedroom, and loaded it into the bus or the car.  I targeted a 1 PM departure.  Butch had to go to town so we said farewell until Friday and he took off.  By the time I started the bus, pulled it across the street, moved the car over, hooked it up for towing, and checked the lights (with Fonda’s help) it was closer to 1:30 PM than 1:00 PM.

The drive to Elkhart was pleasant and uneventful.  The speedometer sat on zero for the first quarter of the trip, bounced around for the second quarter, indicated 85 MPH (max speed) for the third quarter, and settled in to something like the correct speed for the final quarter.  This is the way it had behaved for quite some time before it got unplugged so this confirmed that it did not work correctly and needed to be replaced.

I took SR-16 east to US-31 north to US-20 east to CR-17 north.  CR-17 becomes MI-217, the Michiana Parkway, which ends at US-12.  I took that west to Old M-204 west and followed it past Phoenix Paint back into Indiana where it becomes SR-19 south.  I turned east on CR-4 and a mile later turned into the entrance to Elkhart Campground on the south side of the road.  This route is at least 15 miles longer than necessary.  There is an exit for SR-19 north off of US-20, which is a much more direct route, but requires driving through the heart of Elkhart.  There was major road construction on this stretch of SR-19 the last couple of years, including a bridge, with narrow lanes and weight restrictions.  That work is all completed, and the road is much better now, but it is still a more urban route with stop lights, turns, and traffic.

Our coach (front, right) at the FMCA GLCC Surplus & Salvage Rally, Elkhart CG (Elkhart, IN).

Our coach (front, right) at the FMCA GLCC Surplus & Salvage Rally, Elkhart CG (Elkhart, IN).

I checked in to the campground and then got parked in my assigned site.  I was one of the last coaches to arrive.  I went through my arrival routine and got the coach setup to use before visiting with fellow GLCC chapter members, some of whom I had never met.  I chatted briefly with Michele Henry from Phoenix Paint to confirm her availability to work on a BCM article later in the evening and then went to Martins supermarket to get a salad for dinner.  The Martin’s supermarket on SR-19 at CR-4 has a really nice salad bar and I made a big salad with lots of ingredients, all vegan of course.

I took my salad over to the meeting room at 6 PM and had dinner with the group.  I was expecting Michele at 6:30 PM so I excused myself and went back to my coach.  She showed up a little after 7 PM.  We worked until almost 10 PM and managed to go through the entire article.  I did not have the photos on my new computer so the selection, processing, and captioning of images will occur later.

2014/10/09 (R) GLCC Surplus and Salvage

I went over for coffee around 8 AM without eating breakfast first.  By 9 AM plans had been made for car pools to visit the various RV surplus and salvage businesses in the area.  I went back to the coach and had a grapefruit for breakfast and then spent the morning taking care of e-mail and uploading blog posts starting with September 19th.

By noon I was tired of staring at my computer so I turned my attention to the speedometer.  After removing the dashboard cover I figured out a socket and ratchet combination that allowed me to remove the two Nylok nuts from the back of the instrument.  With the retaining bracket removed the old instrument slipped out the front of the dashboard.

Rear view of new VDO speedometer with custom adaptor cables.

Rear view of new VDO speedometer with custom adaptor cables.

I needed to redo the wiring so I got out my electrical tools.  I also tested to voltage to verify that the lighting circuit was 24VDC.  It was, and the actual instrument runs on either 12 or 24, so it didn’t care.  The existing connectors for the old instrument appeared to be the same 4-pin flat connectors used in personal computers for providing power to hard disk drives, CD drives, and other peripheral components.  I checked online and found that Michiana PC was located behind Menard’s a short distance away on the other side of the toll road.  I got an adapter cable with the proper connectors on it and then stopped at Menard’s for two different spade connectors.  As long as I was out driving around I stopped at Phoenix Paint to pick up coupons for Marco’s Pizza.  Since I had to drive past Martin’s on the way back to the campground I stopped and bought groceries.

The new VDO speedmeter temporarily connected.

The new VDO speedmeter temporarily connected.

Back at the coach I put the groceries away and got back to work on the speedometer project.  I cut leads from the old instrument light wiring as I needed the plug.  I then cut the unneeded end off the computer power cable.  I wired the lighting connector, spade connectors, and jumpers.  I then wired the instrument connector spade lugs to the computer power cable.  When all the wiring preparation was done I attached all of the wires except the two for the signal (#16 & #20) and connected the cables to mating chassis connectors.  I temporarily set the speedometer in dashboard hole, turn the chassis batteries on, and then turned the light switch on for the dashboard lights.  The speedometer lights worked, so I turned the ignition to ‘ON’ without starting the engine.  The gauge needle swept up to max and back to zero and the odo displayed 0.0.

I turned the ignition off and disconnected the chassis batteries.  I then pulled the instrument out of the dashboard and disconnected the two cables.  I got the H3-40 Service Manual out and figured out which wire was the + signal (#16) and which one was the ground (#20).  With the cables protruding through the mounting hole from the rear I pushed the spade terminals fully on and reconnected the cables.  It was getting to be late afternoon by this point and I decided to leave the finally assembly for tomorrow.

The new VDO speedometer (above & right of center).

The new VDO speedometer (above & right of center).

I took a shower and shaved and had plenty of hot water as the Aqua-Hot continued to cycle automatically.  I prepared an Annie’s Kung Pao noodle bowl for dinner and took it over to the meeting room at 6 PM.  I stayed there until 8 PM enjoying bus chat with a small group of chapter members that I know well.

The new VDO speedometer installed in the old hole.

The new VDO speedometer installed in the old hole.

Several members developed problems with their BCM subscriptions over the summer.  Pat Lintner gave me a flash drive so I could provide him with the issues he did not receive.  I took care of that back at the coach and then continued to upload blog posts and respond to e-mails.  I was two days behind on writing blog posts and stayed up until I was caught up which made for a very late night.

2014/10/10 (F) Bus Business

I was up way too late last night catching up on writing drafts of blog posts for the last few days.  Linda sent a text message this morning at 6 AM that I read at 7:30 AM letting me know that she was starting the drive to Elkhart.  I went over to the meeting room at 8 AM to have coffee and Linda showed up at 9 AM.  We visited with the other rally attendees until 10 AM and then went back to our coach to have granola for breakfast.

L-to-R: GLCC secretary Tami Bruner, Newsletter editor Scott Bruner, and Treasurer Linda Fay.

L-to-R: GLCC secretary Tami Bruner, Newsletter editor Scott Bruner, and Treasurer Linda Fay.

At 10:30 AM we drove to Phoenix Paint to deliver some additional copies of Bus Conversion Magazine to Michele and visited with her and Roxanne for a while.  Josh was supposed to come look at our coach in the afternoon but had to make an unexpected trip to Chicago.  Michele called him and got him rescheduled for tomorrow morning between 9 AM and noon.

Before returning to the campground we stopped at Martin’s supermarket for salad toppings and Radio Shack for a miniature “grain of wheat” light bulb.  Radio Shack did not appear to have the bulb I was looking for, but I learned later in the day from Butch that the bulb I need comes with two bare wire leads that fold over to form the contacts.

GLCC members gathered for the Friday evening dinner and business meeting.

GLCC members gathered for the Friday evening dinner and business meeting.

When we got back to the coach we were going to have lunch but I got busy giving a tour of our bus tour and then touring the late 1990’s MCI 102D Vantare conversion parked next to us.  Butch and Fonda arrived (in their car) while all of that was going on.  We visited for a while and then they took off for Bontrager’s RV Surplus store.

Many of the GLCC members were away shopping for surplus bargains so we hung around our coach where I worked at my computer and Linda read until she got tired and laid down briefly.  I was thinking about lying down too when Pat Lintner stopped by and then Butch/Fonda returned.  Before we knew what had happened to the afternoon it was getting to be dinner time.  Linda made our dinner salads and we went over to the meeting room a little before 6 PM where we enjoyed our salads in the company of our friends.  President Larry Baker conducted a brief business meeting at the conclusion of which Linda was elected to another 2-year term as chapter Treasurer and I was elected to a 2-year term as chapter President.  Dean Chipman was elected chapter Vice-President and Tami Bruner was elected chapter Secretary.  Pat Lintner stayed on as National Director and Frank Griswold as Alternate National Director.

L-to-R: GLCC National Director Pat Lintner talks to newly elected President Bruce Fay and members Charles Martin and Ed Roelle.

L-to-R: GLCC National Director Pat Lintner talks to newly elected President Bruce Fay and members Charles Martin and Ed Roelle.

Butch and Fonda had to get back to their home to tend to their dogs and left shortly after the voting was concluded.  We visited for quite a while with the chapter members before returning to our coach for the evening where we had a glass of wine and went to bed.

2014/10/11 (S) Transfers

The day dawned clear and cold with the morning low temperature in Elkhart at 32 degrees F and frost on the ground and vehicles.  We went over for coffee at 8 AM and chatted with fellow chapter members while they had breakfast.  Josh was supposed to come look at our coach between 9AM and noon but called to see if late afternoon would be OK.  It was fine with me and he agreed to call before he came over.

We returned to our coach and had granola for breakfast.  We spent the morning chatting with folks, including the Thornton’s, who stopped by to pay their dues.  We had transferred some things to Linda’s car yesterday and transferred some more things this morning.  By noon Linda was packed and ready to leave for home.  She texted me later to let me know she had stopped in Ann Arbor to visit family and shop at Whole Foods Market before getting back to our house.

Ed Roelle and Marty Caverly came to our coach to listen to our Aqua-Hot.  Ed agreed that it should not be producing any visible exhaust after initial startup and thought a likely cause was worn bearings in the blower shaft causing reduced rpm which resulted in reduced air flow which resulted in a rich fuel/air mixture.  Ed and Marty both thought the unit sounded normal for a unit with worn bearings.

After looking at the Aqua-Hot I found former chapter President Larry Baker at his coach and we transferred quite a lot of “presidential stuff” to my car.  He had been collecting and transporting this “stuff” for the last six years and was all too eager to be rid of it.

Josh called at 3:45 PM to let me know he would be at my coach around 4:45 PM.  I made a quick run to Radio Shack to check again for the “grain of wheat” 12 VDC bulb, but they did not have it in stock.  Josh arrived a little before 5 PM and we discussed our desired interior renovation for over an hour during which time he also took measurements.  By the time we wrapped up our discussion most of the rally attendees had left for dinner at a local restaurant.  I called Linda and then had dinner in the coach; a simple green salad, a roll with garlic vegan butter spread, and grapes.

I decided to top off our fresh water tank while there was still some daylight rather than doing it in the morning when it was forecast to be cold.  After the tank was full I shut off the water, disconnected and drained the hoses, and stowed them in our fresh water tub.  I removed and stowed the pressure regulator and water softener.  I then turned each of the three Aqua-Hot loops on, one at a time, to see if I could figure out which circuit included the heat exchangers in the water bay and front storage bay.  As best I could determine, the bays are plumbed into the bedroom circuit.  I would have preferred to have them plumbed in with the bathroom as we like the bedroom cool for sleeping but want to be able to keep the bays warm enough to avoid freezing.

Scott Bruner and his dad, Richard, were out so I chatted with them about the Aqua-Hot.  The Marin’s had a propane camp fire going at their rig next to ours so we went over there to talk for a while.  I finally got cold and went in for the night around 9:45 PM.  I uploaded the blog posts for the last three days of September and then went to bed and worked on this one.

2014/10/12 (N) Arduino SBC

I got up around 7 AM, got dressed, and spent an hour packing clothes, computers, and other things that would eventually be transferred to the car for the trip home.  I went to the meeting room at 8 AM to have one cup of coffee and socialize with the GLCC chapter members who had come over for breakfast.  There are special names for breakfast on the last morning of a rally.  The one I like best is “hitch up breakfast.”  Whether you have a motorhome towing a car or a car/truck pulling a trailer, most RVers have something that has to be hitched up for towing before they can depart.  It is also a distant but quaint reference to hitching up a team of horses to a wagon; the original RV having one to six horsepower.

I do not normally have coffee or breakfast on days when I have to drive the bus, but the bus driving portion of my day was only going to be two hours and I would not be pulling out until sometime between 10 and 11 AM.  Those who wanted to eat breakfast were done by 9 AM and a crew of women busied themselves cleaning the kitchen and re-packing the supplies.  Some of those supplies were destined for my car which was already connected to the back of our bus, so everything got loaded into Pat and Vicky Lintner’s car and they brought it over to my site and I transferred it to my vehicle.

I dumped the waste water holding tanks and stowed the drain hose.  By 9:45 AM I was packed and had the bus and car ready to travel except for a few last minute details.  I joined a small group of guys for some final conversation as several coaches pulled out.  I was in a site directly behind Scott and Tami Bruner and although I could have left before them it was going to be a lot easier to wait until they pulled out, which they did shortly after 10 AM.

I went through the final steps of preparing the car to be towed, turned the coach chassis batteries on, turned the shore power off, disconnected the shore power line, and stowed it.  I had opened all the air valves earlier, so I secured all of the bay’s, locked the entrance door (from the inside), and started the engine.  While it was building air pressure for the suspension and brakes I called Linda at 10:29 AM to let her know I would be underway shortly and then called Butch.  I did not get an answer at Butch and Fonda’s house so I called Butch on his cell phone.  He had misunderstood my travel timing and indicated that they might not be home yet when I arrived at their place.

I pulled out of my site at 10:30 AM and reversed the route I had taken on Wednesday, going east on CR-4 (IN) to SR-16 (IN) north, to Old M-204 (MI) eastbound to US-12 (MI) east to M-217 (MI) south (the Michiana Parkway), which became CR-17 (IN) southbound.  I left CR-17 and got on westbound US-20 over to US-31 south which I stayed on all the way to SR-16 west towards Twelve Mile.  I had a call from Pat Lintner while I was driving regarding the dates for the 2015 Surplus and Salvage rally which will be in mid-September.

I arrived in Twelve Mile at 12:15 PM.  I got the car detached and moved it out of the way.  While I was doing that Fonda got home from church.  After tending to their two dogs (Rascal and Daffy) she helped me back the bus across the street into its parking spot next to their bus.  I plugged in the shore power cord to get AC power to the house systems but left the bus systems on temporarily so I could reprogram the new VDO speedometer.

On the drive from Elkhart the speedometer, which had not been calibrated, was indicating just under 8 MPH when I was traveling 60 MPH according to my GPS.  That meant the signal from the Allison ATEC transmission computer was putting out fewer pulses per mile than the default speedometer program.  For some reason I thought the default might be 200,000 PPM so I computed the ratio between actual and indicated speed and divided  200,000 by that number which gave me 26,316.  I programmed that in using the PULSE mode but would not be able to test it until later in the week.  If the indicated speed is in the ballpark I will use the ADJUST mode to manually move the pointer to indicate the same speed as the GPS.  There is also a CALIBRATE mode that counts the pulses over a one mile distance and then programs that into the instrument.  That is the most accurate way to calibrate the speedometer/odometer if you have someplace safe to do it with accurate mile markers.

With that done, I turned off the chassis batteries and the unneeded air circuits in the front bay but left the valve for the engine air accessories turned on.  I typically do this when I leave it with someone in case they have to start it.  I turned the Aqua-Hot electric heating element on and turned on the bedroom thermostat but set the temperature to a cooler setting.  The heat exchangers in the water bay and front storage bay appear to be tied-in with the bedroom heat exchanger.

I transferred stuff from the coach to car the car and by 1:25 PM I was ready to roll, but Butch called and said he was almost back to the house so I waited for him.  He had made progress on the Wiremold in the bus kitchen and wanted me to see it.  He had also bought a 125 A main lug electrical panel so we discussed the mounting and installation, part of which I will probably work on later this week.  He had also received the ITR Oasis Combi unit, so I had to see that too.  Fonda built a 3-D cardboard mockup and Butch had it sitting in the water bay where he plans to install the Combi.  We will probably do more work on their bus than on ours over the next two weeks, but that’s OK; their bus has more/critical projects at this point than ours and he has helped me a lot with our projects.

I pulled out at 2:05 PM and decided to take a slightly different route home:  SR-16 east, US-31 north, US-6 east, I-69 north, M-60 east, I-94 east, M-14 east, US-23 north, M-36 (Nine Mile Road) east, Pontiac Trail north, to Dorothy Street and the SLAARC monthly meeting at the South Lyon Witch’s Hat Depot.  I do not usually take US-6 across Indiana although it is a fine road known as the Grand Army of the Republic Highway.  It is flatter than US-20 with more towns and associated lower speed limits and stop lights, but it was a nice drive with different scenery.

I arrived at the SLAARC meeting at 7 PM.  The business meeting was already concluded and Mike (W8XH) was setting up for his program on the Arduino SBC (single board computer).  He bought the experimenters kit and had been playing with it enough to discuss it with the group.  Larry (K8UT) discussed the four projects he has built using the Raspberry Pi platform and passed around some of the hardware.

It was 9 PM by the time I finally got to our house.  Linda helped me completely unload the car as I had an 8:30 AM service appointment at Brighton Honda and she was leaving before 6 AM for the bakery.  She had fixed some strawberries for me and they made a nice treat after a long day of snacking on vegan junk food while driving.  I worked for a while on this post before turning in for the night.

2014/10/13 (M) Grain Of Wheat

Linda was up early and out the door at 5:45 AM.  I got up a little after 7 AM, started a load of laundry, had a couple of homemade muffins, and got ready to take my car to Brighton Honda for its 90,000 mile service.  I got coffee at the Dunkin Donuts across the street from the dealership first and waited in the lounge working on yesterday’s blog post while they worked on my car.

I forgot to specify synthetic oil so the put in regular oil.  When the car was done I headed to Novi and immediately noticed a front-end shimmy that was not there when I dropped it off.  They had rotated the tires and may not have re-torqued the lug nuts correctly.  It also pulled to left, which might be a tire inflation issue.  I did not have time to take it back so I will see if it settles out on the drive to Indiana tomorrow.  If not, I will need to get at least the front tires/wheels loosened and retightened, and perhaps balanced.  Worst case I will have to get the front end aligned.

I found the FedEx/Kinko’s on Grand River Avenue just east of Novi Road and made 10 copies each of two 24″x36″ electrical diagrams; one for the DDEC I ECM (Engine Control Module) and one for the Allison 700 Series ATEC (Automatic Transmission Electronic Control).  I folded up an ATEC diagram for me and one for Chuck and rolled up the other eight and put them in a tube for safe keeping.  Chuck and I have DDEC II’s controlling our main engines so I rolled the 10 DDEC I diagrams up and put them in a second tube to protect them.  By the time I was done it was 10:45 AM and Chuck was at his shop just up the street so I drove there.

He had installed a dual battery maintainer and wanted me to see it.  He mounted it on the back wall of the small bay above the passenger side drive tire of their bus which got it close enough to the chassis batteries (in a tray above the tag tire) for the built-in charging cables to reach the correct battery terminals.  He was still pondering where to tie in the AC power source so we discussed some alternatives.  He had also put the red covers on the bulbs in his new VDO speedometer so I got to see that.  Ours are white for now but most of the dash lighting is green.  The red makes the speedo stand out, but if I change ours from white it will likely be to green.  Chuck had a supply of spare 12VDC, 1.2W “grain of wheat” light bulbs that are used in our illuminated switches and let me have four.  Our Aqua-Hot switch does not currently light up when it is turned on.

After checking out his projects we went to the Panera at Grand River Avenue and Novi Road for lunch.  We had a good chat and solved all of the world’s problems so he went back to the shop to find some new ones and I went home to take care of chores.  I continued doing laundry and worked on the SLAARC WordPress website setting up user accounts for several new club members.

Linda got home around 5:30 PM and got busy making dinner.  She started with a nice salad featuring a ginger dressing.  Dinner was 45 minutes later; a baked potato with Brussels sprouts on the side, a glass of Leelanau Cellars Winter White with Peach wine, and grapes for dessert.  She worked on something for Butch while the potatoes baked and I worked on e-mail.

We were both tired after dinner but took some time to sort and fold the laundry from which I selected and packed the clothes I will need for the next 10 days.  We were tired and turned in after that.  I had received an e-mail from Butch with seven photos attached of the place we are considering staying in Quartzite, AZ.  It took us a while, but we eventually matched them up with the correct lot on the Google Maps satellite view.  It is not the corner lot as Butch and I previously thought, but the 3rd lot north of Kenoyer on the east side of N Lollipop Lane.  With that issue resolved we turned out the lights and went to sleep.

2014/10/14 (T) A Crowning Achievement

Linda was up at 5:15 AM again and out the door on the way to the bakery at 5:45 AM.  At this hour of the morning she has clear sailing all the way to Hamtramck which is much less stressful than the parking lot that develops on I-96 inbound just a short time later.  I was up at 7:15 AM, showered, and started gathering and organizing all of the stuff that I had to load into the car for the trip back to Indiana.

Keith showed up at 9 AM to cut the grass as I was loading my car.  He was rained out yesterday and today was not looking too good either but he figured he would have a go at it.  I wrote out his check and paid him in advance as I would be gone long before he finished.  I had time for a cup of green tea and pulled out of my driveway at 9:30 AM.

My first destination was Gusfa Dental in Dearborn, Michigan where I had an 11 AM appointment.  Dr. Steve and his assistant, Margaret, installed my new permanent ceramic crown on the upper right tooth that had a root canal procedure in mid-September.  The crown fit almost perfectly and only required a little modification on the surfaces that abut the two teeth immediately adjacent.  The bite was just right.  Gusfa Dental is definitely not the cheapest clinic around, but the work is top notch and they have been our dentists for almost 40 years.

I was done and out the door at 11:20 AM and headed directly for Twelve Mile, Indiana.  The drive was wet but uneventful.  Given my starting point in Dearborn I changed my route yet again, this time taking I-94 west to M-60 southwest to I-69 south to the I-80/90 Indiana Toll Road west to exit 92 at SR-19 (IN) in Elkhart.  From there I headed south on SR-19 and wound my way slowly through Elkhart until I picked up US-20 westbound on the south side of Elkhart.  From US-20 I picked up US-31 south and exited at IN-25 south of Rochester, Indiana where I bought some groceries at the Kroger store.  I texted Linda and then called Butch.  As I was getting ready to head south on IN-25 I got a call from Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint with some questions about the Zip Dee awnings we had installed on our coach after she finished painting it.  I took IN-25 as far south as Fulton and turned east onto a small farm road that took me to Meridian then south to SR-16 and east to Twelve Mile.

While driving down Meridian I saw one of the most intense and perfect rainbows I have ever experienced.  It was deeply colored, very clear, and an entire semicircle was visible.  A second rainbow, fainter and partial, formed above the first one on the right (south) end.  The sky was very dark to the east with bright, low sun from the west.  The trees were blazing with color, intensified by the rains, and white farm houses glistened as if they had just been freshly painted.  It was spectacular but I was not able to get a photo of it.  I arrived in Twelve Mile at 5 PM and immediately unloaded and stored my groceries.  I then brought my clothes and technology items into the house and put them in the guest bedroom where I stay when I am here.

Butch needed some parts for various bus projects so I drove us to Home Depot in Logansport.  One the drive in he got a call from his brother Tom.  He had a problem with his air compressor and wanted Butch to look at it so we went there after our stop at Home Depot, with a stop at the local Mobil station so I could fill the fuel tank in my car.  Butch quickly made a tentative diagnosis of the compressor problem as the starting capacitor and/or switch.  Tom and Butch did some pondering about details of Tom’s project in which he is converting the front half of a Crosley sedan into a trailer.

We visited for a while back at the house and looked up the grain of wheat bulb I needed for the illuminated switches in the H3-40.  Napa Auto Parts shows it in their automotive lighting catalog as a #37, 12 VDC, 1.26 W, wedge based.  Butch looked online and found a place (Bulbtown) that sells them for $0.42 each.  Orders over $50 get free shipping and handling so we discussed doing a bulb inventory of each bus and then pooling our orders.

I spent a few minutes showing Butch how the photos that Joe sent of the lot in Quartzite matched up with the Google Maps/Earth satellite and Streetview images.  By the time we were done with that it was late and we all turned in for the night.

2014/10/15 (W) MC-9 AC Wiring

Cockpit house systems switch panel.

Cockpit house systems switch panel.

Butch bought a brass nipple (NPT) last night to thread into the fitting on his fresh water tank but the fit was still too loose.  He needed the nipple in order to put the fresh water tank back in the bus.  Between that and the really soupy 54 degree F weather it was obvious that today was not going to be an outside work day.  I suggested that we work on the AC wiring on their bus instead—a nice inside project—after breakfast.

House electrical closet in Butch & Fonda's MC-9 before rewiring.

House electrical closet in Butch & Fonda’s MC-9 before rewiring.

I had homemade granola with fresh blueberries and soy milk, a glass of orange juice, and two cups of Seattle Blend 1/2 decaf coffee.  While the coffee was brewing I unscrewed the switch panel with the Aqua-Hot switch and replaced the “grain of wheat” bulbs in the Aqua-Hot switch and the Engine Preheat switch.  We then got to work on the AC (house) wiring for their bus conversion.

New 20-slot AC panel for inverter circuits.

New 20-slot AC panel for inverter circuits.

The bus had three small main lug load centers, with six circuit breakers each, mounted in a future closet in the bedroom.  We ran an extension cord through the passenger side rear slider window to power a work light, disconnected the shoreline, and switched off the inverter.  I then removed the three panels one at a time, labeling each cable as I pulled it out.  With all of the old panels out we mounted the new 20-position panel box for use with the inverter circuit.  I spent the rest of the work day, except for a lunch break, pulling old and new electrical cable into the new box and making the connections to the ground bar, neutral bus, and the GFCI circuit breakers for all of the circuits that will be fed by the inverter.  We tied in the main AC power to the inverter AC input and checked that all of the circuits worked as planned, which they did.  I will mount two of the smaller boxes tomorrow and pull the cables for the shorepower/generator only circuits into those boxes.

We quit working for the day at 7:30 PM and I washed up before making my dinner.  I had a nice salad with “power greens” and various toppings and leftover Koshary.  Yum.  I drew a glass of Moscato, did the dishes, and went back to the house.  I had a text and an e-mail from Linda so I replied to those.  We were all tired and turned in a little after 9 PM.

 

2014/09/07 (N) Findlay Hamfest

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I set alarms on my phone and iPad last night to make sure I got up at 5:00 AM.  My natural tendency is to stay up a little later each night, something I am now able to do as I do not usually have to get up by any certain time in the morning.  Usually.  Today, however, was the annual Hamfest put on by the Findlay, Ohio Amateur Radio Club and I needed to be at Mike’s (W8XH) QTH in time for a 6 AM departure.  We picked up Steve (N8AR) at the Park-n-Ride lot at Lee Road and US-23 around 6:15 AM and drove non-stop to Findlay, Ohio, arriving at the county fairground at 8:15 AM.  We had a good chat on the way down, which is as much of a reason for going as the bargain hunting once we got there.  I have included a couple of photos in this post.  For more photos, visit:

http://wp36test1.slaarc.com/gallery-2/hamfests/2014-09-findlay/

We each paid our $7 admission fee and got our ticket with a tear-off stub for the hourly and grand prize drawings.  We got parked and set our Kenwood TH-F6 handheld radios to 146.475 MHz (simplex).  We filled out our raffle ticket stubs, dropped them off, and started working our way up and down the rows of outside tables.  The outside sales area was essentially a flea market, sometimes referred to as “trunk sales” because people back their cars up to the road and sell stuff from their trunks.  The spots are cheaper to rent for the day, but you take a chance that the weather will be nice.

Outside vendors (trunk sales) at the Findaly ARC Hamfest in Findlay, OH.

Outside vendors (trunk sales) at the Findaly ARC Hamfest in Findlay, OH.

We worked the flea market first while the temperatures were cool and the sun wasn’t overhead but also because almost everything offered for sale was used equipment at negotiable prices.  These are often one-of-kind items and the bargains tend to disappear quickly.  By mid-morning I had purchased a good sized NEMA enclosure (steel box with weather tight gasketed door) and a Harris 22.2 telephone butt handset (tester).  I plan to use the NEMA box to create a cable entrance box with lightning protection for RF transmission lines, AC power lines, and control lines.  I got the telephone test set because it will allow me to hook up to the phone line the same way the AT&T technicians do, and because it is not the sort of thing most folks have in their home.

Bruce (W8RA) gave a short shopping list to Steve (N8AR) yesterday at breakfast.  Mike (W8XH) spotted a matched three-piece set of vintage Heathkit gear, one piece of which was on Bruce’s list.  Steve looked at it and they got Bruce on the phone.  Apparently it was close enough to what Bruce wanted that Steve bought the whole set for him as the seller was not willing to sell them separately.

We then moved to the inside vendors, most of whom were selling new merchandise at fixed prices.  There was some used equipment, however, and I bought an Icom CI-V interface set.  This device will allow me to interface our Icom IC-7000 and/or IC-706 to, and control them from, a computer using something like Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) software.

I also got to meet and talk to Norm, from Norm’s Fabrication in Adrian, and his wife, who is president of the Adrian Amateur Radio Club.  Norm is a welder, and his side business is fabricating tower parts out of steel and aluminum for fellow hams.  If I cannot get what I need from Heights Tower Systems, Norm may hold the key to getting our used tower erected.

A very classy portable ham radio station (go box).

A very classy portable ham radio station (go box).

A number of other hams from the South Lyon, Novi, Livingston, and SEMDXA radio clubs were there.  I brought my camera and tried to get photos of our club members for the club website.  None of us won anything from the hourly drawings (must be present to win) and we left shortly after noon to meet up at the local Steak-n-Shake for lunch.  I had not eaten breakfast so I enjoyed my garden salad and French fries.  I had a good chat with Dave (K8ESQ), the current president of SEMDXA, and Don (N8CAK) from SLAARC.

We had a good chat on the drive back, stopping briefly at the Michigan Welcome Center on US-23 northbound shortly after entering Michigan from Ohio.  We dropped Steve off at the Lee Road Park-n-Ride and helped him unload the Heathkit equipment.  When we got back to Mike’s I moved my purchases and personal gear to my car and then spent some time examining his Heights tower, especially the fold-over mount.  After studying the parts and the geometry of the design I had a much better understanding of how it works and what we need to get our tower erected and fully operational.

On the way back to my house I got a call from Darryll letting me know he would be out in the morning as long as someone would be home.  Back home I unloaded everything and moved Linda’s car to the side parking pad to make space for Darryll’s truck in the morning.  It was nice to have a day away from our house and property projects.

I spent a little time checking e-mail and websites and off-loading digital photos until Linda called me to dinner.  We had leftover kale salad, quinoa with pineapple and nuts, fresh steamed broccoli, and corn-on-the-cob.  After dinner I recorded the events of the last few days in rough drafts of separate blog posts.  By 10:15 PM the early start and long day finally caught up with me and I turned the lights out and drifted off to sleep.

 

2014/09/06 (S) Deliveries

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We were up early and off to our SLAARC ham radio club breakfast in South Lyon.  There was a good turnout and good conversation, some of which had to do with our future tower project.  Mike (W8XH) was driving to the Findlay (Ohio) Hamfest tomorrow morning and had room for one more in his car so I decided to go.

Back home we broke down cardboard, loaded it into my car with the rest of our recyclables, and headed over to Recycle Livingston.  Afterwards we stopped at the Howell Bank of America branch so I could get some cash for the Findlay OH Amateur Radio Club Hamfest tomorrow.  A little farther up the road we stopped at Lowe’s for grass seed and bought three plastic tubs to replace the cardboard boxes we have been using on the floor of the kitchen pantry for recyclables.  Lowe’s is at Latson Road and Grand River Road so we hopped on I-96 East over to US-23 and headed south towards Ann Arbor to drop off the window air-conditioner and visit with our son, daughter-in-law, and grand-daughter.

When we exited US-23 at Washtenaw Avenue the traffic was worse than usual, and it is usually pretty bad.  Ann Arbor got hit a lot harder by the storms last night than we did and two of the three traffic signals between the highway and Stadium Boulevard were not working.  Drivers were being courteous, and everyone was taking turns, but the traffic volume through this stretch of road exceeds its capacity even when the signals are working.

We got the window air-conditioner unloaded and moved to the second floor of the garage.  We had a nice visit that included reading stories to Madeline.

Madeline and Grandma Linda read a favorite story.

Madeline and Grandma Linda read a favorite story.

We were going to stop at the Whole Foods Market on our way home but decided to avoid the traffic jam and worked our way through a subdivision up to Geddes Road and back to US-23.  Back home we had a light/late lunch of leftover rice seitan and mashed cauliflower and then worked for a couple of hours getting things out of the storage pod and organized in the garage.  We moved the shelves away from the northeast wall so Darryll could work on the gas pipe when he returns.  We knew when we put the shelves there that we were taking a small gamble that we might have to move them.  Fortunately they slid easily without being unloaded.  We must have the storage container empty by the time we go to bed on Thursday evening as it is scheduled for pickup on Friday.

For dinner we had a nice salad, roasted Brussels sprouts, and sautéed potatoes with onions, garlic, and bell peppers. We finished the no-bake (frozen) double-chocolate torte for dessert. After dinner Linda played Scrabble and Words With Friends while I researched Acme screws, nuts, and related components that we need to get the ham radio tower fold-over mount operational.

I turned in earlier than usual as I needed to be up at 5 AM in order to be at Mike’s (W8XH) QTH by 6 AM to leave for the Findlay Hamfest.

2014/09/01 (M) A Day To Labor

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One of the odd things about being “retired” is that holidays, like weekends, do not have the same significance they had when we were employed full time.  We no longer have “3-day weekends.”  We also do not have a tradition in our family of gathering on the summer holidays, so those days tend to blend into the days around them.  If not for our Saturday morning ham radio breakfast and the Sunday morning Howell Farmers Market we probably would not know what day of the week it was.

Knowing that today was Labor Day, Linda prepared vegan cinnamon rolls yesterday and baked them first thing this morning.  This was the first time she has made these and they were a real treat. Vegan, yes; whole plant-based food, not exactly.  These will be a rare treat for us.

As has been my pattern for the last few weeks, I sanded and touched up drywall first thing after breakfast.  Most of the drywall compound was finally smooth enough that I felt it was ready to prime.  I discovered that I was out of primer, so I went to Lowe’s to get some and picked up a few other things while I was there.  It was very humid today, which tends to slow the drying of paint, but primer is thinner than paint and gets absorbed into the paper drywall covering   I was hopeful that I might get a first coat of paint applied this evening.

Mike (W8XH) sent an e-mail Saturday evening to the members of the SLAARC announcing the availability of the new WordPress website and indicating that they would each be receiving a unique username and password from me in the next few days.  I wanted to wait at least 24 hours before I started creating users.  That waiting period had passed, so today I parked myself in front of my computer and registered users.

Part of the registration process required me to create a username.  That was easy for a ham radio club as (almost) everyone has an FCC call sign.  It also required a valid/unique e-mail address.  When I created an account an e-mail, with their username and a randomly generated password, got sent to the e-mail address I entered.  The e-mail also contained instructions on how to get to the website, how to login, and how to change their password.  I finished creating the last user account around 9 PM, but I did not work on this between 5 PM and 8 PM.

The vegan cinnamon rolls made for a filing and somewhat higher calorie breakfast, so we skipped lunch today and had an early dinner.  I had requested a picnic type of meal to celebrate the end of the summer tourist season, and Linda fixed a nice one.  We had vegan potato salad, corn-on-the-cob, and pan-grilled tofu slices with BBQ sauce and caramelized onions served open-faced on some of the Italian bread she made for dinner on Saturday.  Dessert was watermelon balls.  And the wonderful thing is that I am maintaining a good weight.  Eating well and eating healthy are not mutually exclusive.  However, like low-fat and fat-free foods, and then gluten-free foods, the processed food industry has discovered a “market” for foods that are free of animal products.  That, however, does not mean they are free of unpronounceable chemicals or excessive amounts of sugar and salt.  There is a growing amount of vegan junk food available in the marketplace.

We spent a little time after dinner on the back deck watching wildlife as a storm front approached from the west.  As the wind kicked up we lost our AT&T DSL connection and then our phone went out, exhibiting the same behavior we have had throughout most of August.  I shut down my computer and changed back into my work clothes to do some painting.  I put a coat of paint on the east wall of the garage and both the inside and outside of the utility closet.  It started raining really hard so I had to close the garage door, which cut down on my light, but eventually the rain let up and I was able to open the garage doors again.  The inside of the utility closet may need another coat, but I think that most of the outside of the closet, and the east wall of the garage, may be done.  That means I can finally mount the thermostat for the garage furnace and put cover plates back on switches and outlets.

I am still working on the outside of the south wall of the utility closet (with the door).  I am using drywall compound to create a smooth transition at the hinge edge of the door to correct for a carpentry error I made when installing the door much earlier in the project.  The transition will make it possible for me to install trim around the door, but I have to build up the transition in thin, tapered layers, allow it to dry, sand it smooth, and repeat the process over, and over, and over.  Ditto for the west wall of the library, which is the other side of the east wall of the garage, where I am building up a slightly recessed area where the opening was for the old window A-C unit so it will blend in with the surrounding wall surface.

2014/08/30 (S) By All Accounts

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We went to the weekly SLAARC breakfast this morning.  We stopped on the way back to the house to get a food processor.  I shut down my ASUS laptop PC, packed it for travel, and headed for Mike’s (W8XH) QTH; the first time it has been out of the house since I bought it at the end of April.

I worked with Mike on the new SLAARC WordPress website, walking him back through the process of creating photo galleries.  He then uploaded pictures from the 2014 Field Day event, added captions to some of them, and created photo galleries.

I was going to create user accounts, but that turned out to still be a bit premature.  In showing Mike around the site we discovered that the home page login widget for the WP-Members plug-in was not working correctly.  It was last night, but that was before I installed the Global Hide Admin Toolbar plug-in.  Suspecting a minor incompatibility (although the site did not crash, thank goodness) I had to engineer a work-around.  The problem and solution turned out to be multifaceted.

One aspect of the problem was that we needed to remove the WP-Members widget from the Home screen, but it was the only place where a logged in user could log out.  Another aspect of the problem was the realization that users would have to click on one of the pages in the Member Only Area to get a login screen that would actually log them into the site and allow them to navigate wherever they wanted.

One facet of the solution was to create a new page that would appear at the right hand end of the main menu bar and place the WP-Members widget on that page.  It was not immediately obvious to me how to do this, or if we even could, but I eventually figured it out.  That provided something on the main menu bar, which remains visible at all times, where users can go to logout.  (They should also be able to log in there, but it’s the same widget that didn’t work correctly on the Home page.)

The other facets of the solution involved editing the e-mail that gets sent to a new user when their account is created and editing the User’s Guide, both of which describe the login and logout procedure.  As long as I had to create and upload a new version of the User’s a Guide, I decided to put the link on its own page so it would show up in the menu structure and be easier for members to find.  I did the same thing with the links to the official club roster documents.  Adding those two page then required me to edit two pages to remove the old links.  As the saying goes “it’s a process.”

Mike was still creating photo galleries so I drafted a notification e-mail for him to send to the members and sent it to him.  He had to leave to run an errand right after I left and planned to deal with sending the e-mail later that evening.  I will wait at least 24 hours after he sends it before I start creating user accounts.

I was back home in time to relax and work on this post before John and Diane arrived around 5 PM to visit and have dinner.  They brought a salad that Diane made and two bottles of wine; a sweet Shiraz that was unusual but delightful, and a more traditional Cabernet Sauvignon.  Linda made a penne pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and mushrooms, and made Italian bread from scratch.  She also made the chilled no-bake double chocolate torte for dessert.  It was so good everyone had a second piece.

Diane now has an iPad Mini and Linda spent time with her after dinner helping her configure some things.  They also managed to get connected through the iMessage feature.  Storms rolled in around 9 PM and we had brief periods of heavy rain and diffuse lightning all around.  There was a lull in the weather just before 11 PM so they gathered up their things and hit the road.  I cleared the table and Linda loaded the dishwasher.  She started it and then we were off to bed, tired from a long but very satisfying day.

 

2014/08/29 (F) Sand Mud Press

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Before breakfast this morning I tried to start the Aqua-Hot (hydronic heating system) in our converted coach, but the burner would not ignite.  We had the same problem back on June 9th when Darin Hathaway of Hydronic Heating Specialists serviced the unit while we were at Elkhart Campground waiting to go to the GLAMARAMA rally in Goshen.  Darin suspected a bad coil but managed to jiggle a few wires and got it to work.  It started several times in a row, so we decided not to spend the money for a new coil at that time.  I hoped then the decision wasn’t a mistake, but it looks like perhaps it was.  I will try to find some time over the next few days to jiggle some more wires and see if anything comes of it.  I recall Darin saying the ignition coils were expensive, so I don’t want to replace ours if it is not actually broken.

For breakfast we had some of the vegan muffins that Linda made yesterday.  They were yummy.  We took a little time to revisit our options for a white, free-standing, double oven, 5-burner, gas range with a convection feature in at least one of the ovens but did not come to any decision regarding purchasing a new one.  Linda made a grocery list and then went to the Howell library to see what Consumer’s Reports had to say about gas ranges before stopping at Meijer’s.

While Linda was gone I placed follow-up calls to Heights Tower Systems and Bratcher Electric to check on the status of their pending quotes and then e-mailed Darin about the Aqua-Hot.  I then got to work in the garage and library working on the drywall.  I sanded all the drywall compound (mud) I had applied yesterday and added the next layer to the places that needed it.  Patching the library side of the opening where the window A-C was installed has proven to be particularly challenging, or at least tedious.  The new piece of drywall is recessed slightly compared to the original wall surface surrounding it, so I have been building up layers of drywall compound to “fill the hole.”  It has taken many passes so far and it is going to take quite a few more before it’s done.

I finished up for the day, cleaned up the tools, and changed out of my work clothes.  Rather than spend a lot of time at the library, Linda photographed the relevant pages of recent issues of Consumer’s Reports with her iPad so we could study them at home.  What we got from the reviews was that LG, GE, Electrolux, and Samsung are making good gas ranges while Kitchen Aide, and Jenn-Air are best avoided.  Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Best Buy all carry LG, GE, and Samsung appliances, so we have a choice of local dealers.  While we were pondering all of this over lunch a group of wild turkeys came through the back yard several times foraging for food.  There were three large adults and three much smaller birds, obviously this year’s brood.

I spent most of the rest of the day working at my desk getting the SLAARC WordPress website to the point where I was comfortable creating user accounts.  I had hoped to have user accounts set up by August 13th, but that did not happen.  One reason for the delay was that I was trying to find a way to automatically e-mail each user as I created their account.  It took me a while, but I figured out how to do this with the WP-Members plug-in.  I also found a plug-in that hides the WordPress Toolbar from users based on their WordPress user role.  In this case I was only concerned about users with the Subscriber role but the plug-in allows me to control all defined user roles.  I did a final edit of the User’s Guide, uploaded it to the private Members Only Area of the website, and e-mailed Mike (W8XH) and Larry (K8UT) that the site was ready to go.  Our DSL connection was pretty good most of the day but got flaky for a while during the evening.  The phone continued to be unusable with loud noise masking weak audio.  So far AT&T’s response to our MPSC complaint has been a phone call and e-mail from someone in the “Office of the President.”  Impressed?  I’m not.

 

2014/08/25 (M) AT&T and the MPSC

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I was scheduled to participate in a meeting of the FMCA Education Committee at 4 PM today but it got rescheduled to Monday, September 8, same time.  That was a welcomed change of plans which allowed me to concentrate on our construction project.

Roese Construction, the contractor for Consumer’s Energy, is still working along our street.  The main gas lines are run.  They are now digging the connection trenches, fusing the sections of pipe together, and filling the trenches back in.  We heard them working at the west end of our property and walked down to see what they were doing and take a few photographs.  A large backhoe was just starting to fill a trench at the northwest corner of our yard where two pieces of main line were joined with a branch line going to the cul-du-sac to the west.  There was a lot of water in that trench and it looked like a (muddy) lap pool.  The surface of the water was only about two feet below the surface of the ground.  I asked the backhoe operator if that was ground water and he said it was.  The northwest corner of our property is a low spot that forms small ponds around many of the trees when it rains, and stays wet for a very long time even after the surface water disappears.

We spent the morning and afternoon sanding drywall compound and touching up a few spots.  While the compound was drying I worked on electrical tasks and Linda worked in the kitchen and did some weeding in the beds around the house.  Somewhere in the middle of all that we put all of the sections of the ham radio tower back on the middle deck, had lunch, and made a trip to Lowe’s for a light switch and various cover plates.  I also picked up an 18″ x 28″ sheet of 1/4″ thick Plexiglas to use as a temporary replacement for the fogged window in the bus when I finally get around to removing it to have it repaired.

Our AT&T phone and DSL service is worse than useless at the moment.  After three un-returned phone calls to both the technician (who gave us his number and said to call him directly if the problem re-occurred within 30 days) and the infrastructure manager for this area (whose name and number we got from the technician) we were fed up, so we filed a complaint with the Michigan Public Service Commission.  About four hours later we got a call from a women who claimed to be from the Office of the President of AT&T letting me know that she was in receipt of our commission filing and that she would be coordinating the “investigation and service repair process.”  The audio level was low and the noise on the line was high, so I could barely hear her and said so.  Apparently she heard the noise too, so at least she knew we were not making this up.  She e-mailed us shortly thereafter with her name and contact information.  That’s a start, but what we really want is the clean, reliable signal that we pay for.

There are things I can do, and need to do, at my computer that do not require me to be online, such as editing the rough drafts of blog posts and selecting/post-processing photographs.  The last post I uploaded to our blog was for August 1st, so I am once again almost four weeks behind.  I needed to finish processing the tree photos from last Thursday, put them in a Dropbox folder, and e-mail the link to Paul at Detroit Tree Recycling, but I did not get that done either.  When I wasn’t eating or driving back and forth to Lowe’s I was working in the garage.

Speaking of food, Linda made stuffed mushrooms for dinner and served them with a side of grilled asparagus.  Both were very tasty.  After dinner I gave the east wall of the garage a final sanding and then worked on the utility closet wall while Linda vacuumed up the dust.  I wiped down the wall with a barely damp sponge and applied a coat of Zinzer primer.  It should be dry enough to paint in the morning.

I drove back to Lowe’s to return a couple of incorrect cover plates I had purchased earlier in the day and get the correct ones.  I picked up another gallon of paint while I was there to make sure I had enough on hand for tomorrow.  On the way home I had a nice QSO (ham radio contact or chat) with Mike (W8XH).  Ham radio is fun and we have yet to get involved in making long distance (DX) contacts with folks all over the world on the HF (high frequency) bands.  Getting our tower up with some HF antennas on it will help a lot.

 

2014/08/23 (S) Square Waves

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We have so much to do at home and on the bus that we might have skipped the SLAARC (ham radio club) breakfast in South Lyon this morning, but I had agreed to meet Chuck at his shop (bus garage) at 10 AM in Novi and to bring Mike (W8XH) along with his oscilloscope to look at the tachometer signal, or lack thereof.  We had a nice chat with our ham radio friends, discussed having dinner in a week or so with Bruce and Linda, and then headed to Chuck’s shop.

We had two different opinions as to what signal we might find, if any, at the end of the wires that connect to Chuck’s tachometer.  Matt, from Bob’s Speedometer, told me that the signal to both the VDO tachometer and speedometer were variable frequency square waves at 3 to 5 volts peak and that the electronics in the gauge moved the needle in proportion to the frequency.  Mike (W8XH) had talked to Jim (N8KUE), who works in the research lab at Ford Motor Company, and Jim was of the opinion that the input to these gauges was a pulse width modulated signal.  With pulse-width modulation the frequency and amplitude of the waveform are constant but the width of the “pulse” (the “on time” of non-zero voltage) varies from zero to some maximum percentage of the half cycle, up to 100%.  If it is on for the entire half cycle it becomes a square wave.  The longer the pulse (on time percentage) the more energy is transmitted.  The gauge electronics can convert that to a needle position or run a motor faster or slower, such as might drive an odometer.

So which was it?  Well…neither.  What we saw was an alternating current signal that appeared to simply be an impulse (sudden spike in the voltage), one positive and one negative per cycle, with the frequency responding in direct proportion to the engine RPM.  The impulse had a rapid but noticeable decay time that appeared to me to exponential, but we did not have the wires connected to a load and that may have affected the signal. The voltage we were seeing appeared to be in 300 mV range, a far cry from the 3 – 5 volts we expected.

We loaded the cardboard in my car before going to breakfast, so when we were done at Chuck’s we headed directly to Recycle Livingston.  From there we went to pet Supplies Plus for some cat litter and then to Lowe’s for four more sheets of drywall (Sheetrock) and a large tub of better drywall compound.  After fighting with the back wall of the garage recently and having trouble with using the patching and repair compound yesterday, I wanted a drywall compound that would go on easier and smoother.  It could just be my technique, of course; I wasn’t that good at dry-walling 32 years ago, and feel like I have lost what little technique I once had.

Back home we unloaded everything, changed into our work clothes, and had lunch; grilled “cheese” sandwiches with tomatoes and dark leafy greens and fresh peaches, ripened to perfection.

While Linda sanded the drywall compound I applied yesterday I removed the panel from the library side of the opening for the old window A-C unit.  I insulated the cavity, cut and installed a new piece of drywall, and re-taped the seams.  I helped Linda finish the sanding, wiped off the dust with a wrung out sponge, and then applied another coat of drywall compound.  I then applied a first cost of “mud,” as drywall compound is commonly called, to the filler panel in the library.

In preparation for dry-walling the new utility closet we had to do some carpentry to box around the flue and gas pipe where they pass through the west wall.  We also had to box around the supply air duct where it passes above the utility closet door.  Finally, we added some backer boards along the edge of the platform by the west wall.  The purpose of all of this carpentry was to provide backing along all drywall edges so it will be supported and can be secured.  Our final task for the day was to trim a piece of 2×4 to block off the top of the wall cavity where the return air duct is connected next to the door between the library and the garage.

For dinner we had leftovers from Thursday:  Koshary and pita bread with vegan garlic “butter.”  Linda read somewhere recently that drier white wines are generally considered (by someone) to go better with Middle Eastern food, but we thought our 2009 Egri Merlot went quite well with dinner.  Of course, Koshary is an Egyptian dish, and so perhaps more Mediterranean than Middle Eastern.  All of that reminded me that there really are no rules about these things; drink what you like and enjoy life.

 

2014/08/22 (F) Radio Flyer

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Today was mostly about drywall.  Most of the drywall on the lower half of the east garage wall was removed by the previous owners to access and repair baseboard heating pipes that had frozen (they used water in the system instead of coolant).  We also have a 19″ h by 29″ w opening higher up in that same wall where the window air-conditioner was installed.  (It cooled the breezeway by dumping heat into the garage.)  We needed to replace the lower drywall and patch the A-C opening before Darryll returned next week as he will be running supply air ducts down the wall at two locations to feed through the wall into the library just above the hot water baseboard heat radiator.  Before installing the drywall, however, we had some prep work to do.  When Linda wasn’t helping me she broke down cardboard boxes and got them ready to go to the recycling center tomorrow.

On the lower part of wall I drilled through the corners of the two register locations Darryll had marked on the library side.  We then added horizontal wood 2×4 blocking above and below the locations of the two registers.  We also added blocking around the inside of the old A-C opening to provide backing and attachment surfaces for the drywall.

With the carpentry done we removed some old insulation that was not in good shape and insulated the lower section of the wall.  I marked the locations of all the studs on the floor and on the upper half of the wall.  I also marked the locations of the horizontal blocking, the hot water heating pipes, and the capped off gas pipe that supplied the wall-mounted propane heater in the library.  Finally, we were able to install the drywall.  It took two pieces, 48″ x 87″, to cover the lower half along with lots of screws.  By the time we finished it was time for lunch.

We needed another sheet of drywall to cut the two pieces for the A-C opening, so after lunch we drove to Lowe’s and bought a 4′ x 8′ sheet.  When we got back we cut the two pieces and installed them.  Linda then helped me apply self-adhesive fiberglass tape to all of the seams.

The next step was applying drywall compound.  While I “mudded” the drywall seams and screw head dimples Linda started assembling a Radio Flyer configurable tricycle.  She ordered it for our grand-daughter a couple of days ago (Amazon Prime) and it arrived late yesterday.

I finished the first coat of drywall compound at 6 PM and cleaned up my tools.  While Linda pulled together leftovers for dinner (potato lentil curry, sautéed green beans with garlic, and naan bread) I measured the tow bar on the back of the bus to see how long of a cable we needed for the EZ*Connector system.  24″ + 34″ = 58″, about 5 feet, so their standard 6′ cable should be a good length.  Although it was only 3 PM in California, I decided to wait until Monday to place an order as I still needed to determine some circuit details.

After dinner I tried to check my e-mail and discovered that our DSL connection was not working, again, even though the AT&T gateway said it was.  The phone (POTS) had gone out earlier in the day and was out again.  I called Ken, the AT&T technician, and left a message and then called Steve, the AT&T infrastructure manager for the Howell and Lansing areas, and left a message.  I had called both of them twice this week already without getting a return call from either one.  My message this time indicated that I expected a return call with some information as to what they are doing to try and resolve the problem.

I called Chuck (on my marginal connection Verizon cell phone) to get a status update on his bus tachometer, then called Mike to firm up arrangements for him to bring his oscilloscope to breakfast tomorrow so we can go to Chuck’s shop and investigate the signal feeding his tachometer.  I texted Chuck back to confirm that we would be there by 10 AM.

I helped Linda finish assembling the Radio Flyer tricycle.  It is very spiffy and, of course, very red.  We spent the rest of the evening reading.  As I was typing this post I realized that I forgot to insulate the wall cavity where the window A-C unit was installed.  That meant I would have to remove the piece of drywall on the library side, insulate the cavity, and then cut and install a new piece of drywall.  I had already applied the seam tape and initial coat of drywall compound, so it will be a messy task.  Fortunately, I do not make those kinds of mistakes very often.

 

2014/08/10 (N) Kathi Comes To Visit

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Kathi Slater is a long-time friend, the mother of three girls who went through middle and high school at the same time as our children.  Her oldest daughter, Emily (who is now an MD) was one of our son’s best friends in high school.  Kathi ended up working at Metropolitan Bakery with Linda and is still there.  We have been trying to find a mutually agreeable time for her to come see our new house and today was finally the day.

Kathi arrived around 10:30 AM.  As with all first time guests we gave her a tour of the house and then, being another gorgeous summer day, we walked the property.  After the tours we settled in at the table on the deck under the shade of the umbrella and had a nice long chat.  Linda made her wonderful chickpea salad and served it sandwich style for lunch with sourdough pretzel nibblers, fresh grapes, and sweet cherries.  She left to return home around 2 PM.

I worked at my desk on website usernames and passwords until 5:30 PM.  For dinner Linda made sautéed green beans and a dish with whole grain macaroni, cannellini beans, kale, other ingredients, and spices.  Both dishes had a hint of garlic and red pepper flakes; just enough to elevate the dish but not so much as to dominate or overwhelm the primary flavors.

We finished eating a little after 6 PM and I had to leave for the 6:30 PM meeting of our ham radio club.  The meeting was well attended with several of our newest club members there.  After a short business meeting we had a brief introduction by Mike (W8XH) to ham radio projects that can be done with the Arduino (and similar) micro-controllers.  Mike and Steve (N8AR) then led a discussion on the subject of antennas; specifically simple ones that can be built fairly easily.

I got home rafter 9 PM and had a piece of watermelon.  We stayed up a little later than usual and decided to turn in without watching an episode any of the TV programs we are currently following.

 

2014/05/22 (R) Still Resting

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I called Mike (W8XH) last night and we agreed that it would be better for him to wait until I was better to come over and help us with our computer issues.  I finally got up around 8 AM, having spent 11 hours in bed.  I took a nice, warm shower and felt almost human.  Not well by any means, but enough better to have some granola for breakfast and catch up on the blogs I follow in Feedly.  It was a spectacularly beautiful morning and I opened all of the doorwalls and some of the windows.

I planned to take it easy today and maybe just sit on the rear deck and enjoy the weather, the view, and the sounds of the birds.  It got cloudy as the morning wore on and never got as warm as I had hoped so I closed up the house.  I worked at my desk for a while and got badly chilled and started shivering uncontrollably.  I had forgotten to turn the basement furnace zone back on and the temperature had dropped to 65 degrees.  I made some hot tea and some hot soup for lunch, which helped a little, and finally wrapped myself in an afghan and lay down on the couch.  Around 3:00 PM I called Henry Ford Health System Columbus Center in Novi, Michigan to see if I could get an appointment with our internal medicine doctor.  She was off tomorrow and it was too late to book an appointment with anyone else.  I was told to call back at 6:30 AM tomorrow for a same-day appointment.  Duly noted.  I went back to sleep on the couch.  The chills and shakes had left me completely drained to the point where I could not sit up or read.

I was finally tired of lying down, so I examined the printer drivers for our HP CLJ 3600n network printer on Linda’s Samsung laptop to see what was installed.  There were 40 files listed!  Someone has got to be kidding.  A notice popped up on her screen that Windows 8.1 was available as a free download.  I checked with Linda (it’s her machine, after all) and she gave me the green light.  I let it install and then restarted the machine.  I sent a test MS Word document to the printer and it printed just fine.  Great, so the printer can be installed under Windows 8 and then the machine updated to Windows 8.1, put it cannot be installed directly into Windows 8.1.  Microsoft “blames” HP stating that printer manufacturers are solely responsible for their drivers.  Even if true it’s still lame, very lame and there’s plenty of shame to spread over both companies.  It’s a “business class printer” designed for high volume use.  Since our volume is not high, our (expected) use is obviously long.  It’s enough to make my next computer a Linux box or a Mac and my next printer anything but an HP.

Speaking of which, I signed up for a free Intro to Linux course from The Linux Foundation offered through edX.  It starts August 1st.  My friend Steve has been trying to get me interested in Linux for a long time.  My problem has never been a lack of interest but a lack of a good, organized approach into the subject.  There are books on the subject, but I am unlikely to just sit down and read one as an academic exercise.  I have Linux running on one of my old computers (a dual processor Dell Precision Workstation) and Steve has been helping me set it up as a local web-server that I can use to test my WordPress sites, so that provides the needed sense of purpose.

I spent a little time in the evening uploading blog posts and then went to bed.  I can’t remember the last time I felt this bad.

 

2014/05/20 (T) Software Redemption

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Linda was off to the bakery again this morning, but not as early as yesterday.  She had a mid-afternoon meeting which put her return trip at the worst of the evening rush hour.  She is still under the weather, so the last two days have definitely been more work then fun.

I was disgusted enough with my experience yesterday trying to download and install the Adobe Creative Cloud  Desktop app (ACCD) that I decided not to work on my computers this morning.  I had, however, left my new ASUS laptop on all night in the hope that the ACCD app would finish downloading and install correctly.  Sometimes you have to just step away so I started a load of laundry and made a list errands.  Sometimes the best way to step away is to literally get out of the house (or bus) and since errands have a purpose, and provide a sense of accomplishment, they are always good therapy.  I got the laundry out of the dryer and left just after noon.  I got back around 4 PM with bags full of essential but inexpensive stuff; think “TP” and you will have the right idea.

While I was out I got Mike (W8XH) on the S. Lyon 2 meter ham radio repeater and arranged for him to help me with my e-mail issues on my new laptop.  I started another load of laundry when I got home and then checked on my computer.  ACCD had finished installing correctly!  I have no idea how long it took; the progress bar did not move when I sat and watched it.  I started up my old laptop to check e-mail and discovered that we appeared to have a very slow Internet connection.  All of my online programs worked fine yesterday (except the ACCD installation), and they were all working today, but not very fast.  The difficulty I had installing ACCD may have been an Internet connection issue rather than an Adobe issue, but I will never know.  We have an AT&T High Speed Internet (HSI) landline.  The only thing slower is dial-up.

ACCD was open and showed me a list of apps.  Most of the apps had a “Try” button, which is an attempt on Adobe’s part to inflate our monthly bill to gigantic proportions.  Lightroom (Lr) and Photoshop (Ps), however, had “Install” buttons, a good sign that Adobe had the correct details for our ACC account.  I clicked the Install button for Lightroom and went upstairs.  I was feeling progressively worse through the day and after Linda called with her ETA I decided to take a nap.

Linda reheated the leftover pasta from Sunday’s dinner.  After dinner I checked on the progress of the Lightroom download/install.  It was done and showed the status as “Up To Date”.  Today was turning out to be a good day, so I clicked Install for Photoshop, finished editing some blog posts, answered a few e-mails, and turned off my old computer.  With no other devices trying to use our Internet connection I was optimistic that I will find it downloaded and installed in the morning.  Linda tried to install Microsoft Security Essentials on her laptop earlier today and suddenly had programs she did ask for or authorize as best she was aware.  Thanks Microsoft.  Attempting to remove them brought up additional vendor dialog boxes so we let it be for now.  We were both too tired and feeling to poorly to think carefully or do online research to figure out what was going on.  With any luck Mike can help us with this on Thursday.

 

2015/05/19 (M) Software Frustrations

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Linda had to go into the bakery today and left early this morning before I even woke up.  I wasn’t all that hungry when I got up, which us unusual for me, so I started a load of laundry and got to work at my desk.  I have had my new ASUS laptop for a couple of weeks now, but I do not yet have it set up for use.  I’ve lost track of the exact count of updates, but it was somewhere between 70 and 80 when we left for the Escapade and 25 more got installed yesterday.  The only software I have added so far is Microsoft Office 2013, but the computer came with quite a few “apps” already installed.  The salesman at Best Buy had alerted me to expect quite a few updates initially so this has not come as a big surprise.

At one of the Geeks On Tour seminars we attended at Escapade they suggested that laptop computers may eventually disappear.  I doubt that desktop or laptop computers will ever completely disappear from the market, but we know from recent experience that the selection is narrowing and there are fewer companies making them.  Perhaps someday I will be creating documents (text and spreadsheet) and editing photos on a tablet, but if so, it will be with a large external monitor, full-size keyboard, and a mouse.  It’s not that I am “old fashioned” or resistant to change, it’s that some tasks are more easily accomplished in certain ways.

On the other hand, I write most of these blog posts on my iPad2.  It’s small and light and I can work on the couch, the deck, outside our motorhome, at Panera, in bed, or pretty much anywhere, and I have worked in all those places and more.  Before they go into WordPress, however, I e-mail them to myself, copy and paste them into Word, edit them, and insert captions as markers for the photographs.  I select and process all of the photographs on my computer.  The post is copied from Word and pasted into the WordPress editor where I make some final changes and then upload and insert the images.  I often review the post on my iPad to make sure it formats OK and if I find a typo I will log into our site from my iPad2 and make the correction.

This morning I purchased, downloaded, and installed the password program we use on our other devices.  The process was easy and it sync’d up with our Cloud account as soon as I activated it.  This is one of those cases where the Cloud really makes a lot of sense to me as the amount of data that gets moved around is small.  We now have this same app on three laptops and two iPads.  The original password program was on my Palm Tungsten T-3 and was sync’d only to my old laptop via a USB cable.  We were able to install the new version of the program on that laptop, capture all of the existing password information, and store it in the Cloud account that was included in the price of the app/program.  From there it was a simple matter to put the app on other Windows laptops and install the iOS version on our iPads.  We can add/change the information on any device and it updates the Cloud database (if we are connected to the Internet) and then updates all of the other devices the next time they are online.

I still have a lot of contact information and my main calendar on my Palm, and it is still sync’d with my old WinXP laptop via a USB cable.  I plan to “move” that information to Outlook on my new computer, but in this case “move” may mean “manually enter.”  If so, I am not looking forward to that process.

Prevost’s U. S. parts center in Elgin, Illinois operates from 7 AM to 7 PM Central Time, Monday through Friday.  I called them a little after 8 AM EDT and talked to Aeleen.  They had the mirror assembly in stock in New Jersey so I ordered it.  It should be here on Wednesday or Thursday; 2-day shipping is almost always included in the price.  She is also going to have the home office in Quebec mail me an updated CD with the CatBase Viewer program/database to install on my new laptop.  This program/database has diagrams and parts lists for almost everything in the bus for all models back to the early 70’s.  It filters the diagrams and parts lists to our VIN numbers and I have found it enormously helpful in figuring out what part I need before calling the Elgin parts center to place an order.  Prevost also has an online ordering system and using it would save us 3%, but I often find that I am not quite clear on the part I need, or the part has been superseded by a new one that is not shown in (my version of) the CatBase Viewer.  The telephone order desk folks are usually very helpful.

I had sent a text message to Chuck earlier and got a return phone call.  We talked at length about bus projects, pole barns, and recent travels.  Having gotten the bus mirror ordered and my password app installed/operating I was feeling like it was going to be a fairly productive day.  As an “expert” on data I was aware that two data points do not establish a trend, and so it was that my winning streak came to a halt when I tried to install our HP LaserJet 3600n network printer and the Adobe CC Desktop App.

I had my laptop search for network printers and it found the 3600n.  I downloaded and installed the Win 7/8/8.1 printer installation wizard and ran it.  When I tried to install it I was taken to the list of manufacturers and models to select the appropriate driver.  Alas, the LaserJet 3600n was not on the list and the wizard told me that our printer was not currently supported by the wizard.  It seems that the printer wizard has something in common with the Wizard of Oz.

I tried Windows Update, but no luck there either.  I went to the Win 8.1 “metro” screen and searched for “install printer” and “install network printer” which led me to various web pages on Microsoft’s and Hewlett-Packard’s websites.  I eventually found a driver for Windows 8.1 USB, but I am not trying to connect to the printer through a USB cable, I am trying to use it through our Ethernet LAN.  The odd thing is that Linda’s Windows 8.1 Samsung laptop prints to the LaserJet 3600n over our LAN just fine.  Unfortunately I have no recollection of how we got her machine to do that at year ago.  This took up at least an hour of my morning, without success, for what should have been a 3-minute task.  Being retired does not make this waste of time any less frustrating.

In late December (2013) I subscribed to Adobe’s Creative Cloud (CC) Photography Program.  For $10/month we get to download and use Lightroom (Lr) and Photoshop (Ps) on two computers, with updates whenever they are available, and access to training materials and forums.  We can also add other Adobe products (apps/programs) to our subscription for an additional monthly cost.  We installed Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop, Lightroom, and Photoshop on Linda’s Samsung laptop right away to make sure the subscription was set up correctly, but could not install these programs on my old 32-bit Win XP Pro machine (even though I specifically asked the pre-sale consultant if it would run on Windows XP and was told “yes”.)  One of my main reasons for getting a new laptop (besides the end of support for Windows XP), and for selecting the one I did, was to be able to run these two programs.  Alas, I was able to download the Adobe CC Desktop installer, but the installer was unable to install the Adobe CC Desktop App.  The Desktop App is used to install and update the other programs, so my Adobe installation efforts ended for the day shortly after they started.  Or should have; I plugged away at this several times before giving up.  I did notice in a news feed that Adobe had a 24-hour outage recently, and on one attempt to download I got a screen saying the site was down for maintenance, so I am hopeful (but not optimistic) that the next time I try this it will work correctly.  If not, I will find out how helpful Adobe Customer Service really is.

Linda got home around 5 PM, having spent almost 1.5 hours in rush hour traffic.  She was tired from a long day and the effects of a cold and/or allergy, so dinner was a simple salad and vegan brats on a hotdog bun with the rest of the fresh fruit from last night.  She headed off to bed and I returned to my ham shack/office where I responded to e-mails and updated three of my four WordPress sites.  I then configured my e-mail accounts in Outlook on my new computer.  I sent test messages for each account and got them all working after correcting a couple of typos.

To set up the e-mail accounts I copied all of the “.pst” files from my WinXP machine to a folder on our NAS.  I copied the folder from the NAS to the ASUS in a place where I could find it easily.  I then configured and tested each e-mail account using the corresponding pst file.  Everything appeared to work except I did not have my address book.  One of the pst files was named Outlook.pst, and that file was associated with the Personal Folders entry on my WinXP machine.  That folder was moved to Outlook from Outlook Express where I only had one e-mail account, and that account went away last May after we moved.  Since I was not setting up an e-mail account to go with this pst file, I decided to import it into Outlook.  It showed up in my list of e-mail accounts and I appeared to have all of my contacts when I clicked on People at the bottom of the screen but I was not able to select them as recipients for a new e-mail.  Ugh.  So close and yet not right.  I e-mailed Mike (W8XH) to see if he could assist me with this as he has in the past, and then went to bed.

 

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.

 

2014/05/04 (N) Northwest Winds

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The weather yesterday was mostly cloudy with occasional light rain and the winds came up strong starting in the afternoon.  They tapered off by bedtime but resumed a hard blow this morning with low, puffy, white clouds streaming in from the northwest and making the trees dance.  It was a brighter morning than we have had most of the week as the sun played hide-n-seek with the clouds.  The temperature remained cool, making for a brisk day, but it was a nice change from the cool, overcast dreariness of the past week.  Except for Thursday, when the high temperature is supposed to hit 80, the daily high temps will be around 60 all week.

Linda made her scrumptious blueberry pancakes for breakfast and then went for a walk.  She had barely left the house when she returned, very excited, to tell me she had just seen a young albino deer running through our yard.  By the time I got outside it had moved on to the woods west of our property.  We often see the same deer day-after-day as they travel their circuit, so I also hope to see this one someday.

After checking in on the blogs I follow using the Feedly app on my iPad2 I made a couple of corrections to a recent blog post, approved a comment from our daughter-in-law (the first one has to be approved), and deleted the 59 spam comments that the Akismet plug-in/service trapped since last night.  I put a load of laundry in the washer and then spent some time looking online for a padded case for my new laptop computer and a replacement for one of our APC SmartUPS units that has failed.

With the move to tablet computers, the choice of laptops is diminishing, especially those with larger screens, and along with that fewer choices for accessories such as cases.  In the past 14 years I have always purchased larger roller cases, with separate cases for the computer that fit inside, as my laptop traveled with me every day everywhere I went.  I had the most recent of these cases with us in Florida and, after getting the computer/case and accessories out of it, I stored it in a closet (where it tended to be in the way).  The next time I touched it was when I unloaded it from the bus to bring back into the house.

It was clear from that experience that I do not need another roller case.  I do, however, want something that will protect my new laptop computer.  I think I have narrowed the choice down to the Everki Advanced or the Everki Lunar, both available through Amazon Prime.  The Advanced is very reasonably priced at under $40 and has generally favorable reviews, mentioning the ASUS “Republic of Gamers” (ROG) models in particular.  The Lunar has more storage space, and also has generally favorable reviews, but is over three times the price at just under $130.  Posts on the ASUS ROG Forum seem to favor one of the Everki backpack models, but I do not want a backpack style case.

Our failed APC uninterruptible power supply is a Smart-UPS SUA1000.  By trading it in on a SMT1000 we can save $75 off the retail price.  I need to confirm that the discounted price includes return shipping; the SUA1000 weighs 48 pounds.

I revised the RVillage Quick Start doc I created for the GLCC, CCO, and FTH RV clubs, making it generic for use by Bus Conversion Magazine or anyone else.  I then uploaded it to a new RVillage page on our website and revised a couple of other pages to link to the new one.  I then uploaded blog posts for the last three days.  I set up my new laptop in my office and installed seven more updates.

At breakfast yesterday I got a tip from Paul (N8BHT) on a used tower.  He e-mailed me the owner’s contact information later.  I called the owner, Wayne (KD8H), this afternoon and got a little more information about the tower.  It is an aluminum Heights Tower, 80 feet, with Fold-Over Kit (FOK) including the drive motor, a rotator and antenna mounting plate.  It is already on the ground and disassembled into sections.  Wayne is retired and I will likely go look at the tower tomorrow afternoon.  I e-mailed Paul (N8BHT), Mike (W8XH), and Steve (N8AR) to see if they were available to go with me.

Linda made lentil loaf for dinner with baked yams and fresh asparagus.  After dinner I drove to South Lyon for the May meeting of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club.  SLAARC usually meets on the 2nd Sunday of the month but pulls the May meetings forward a week to avoid Mother’s Day.  Our topic of discussion this evening was the upcoming ARRL Field Day operating event, which takes place the last full weekend in June.  We had a couple of new hams at the meeting and afterwards several of the guys helped Christine, KD8VEA, get the PL tone set correctly on her radio so she was able to participate in a group QSO with Steve (N8AR), Mike (W8XH), Fred (AC8VL), and myself on the drive home.  In spite of what many people think, including some older/former hams, amateur radio is alive and well in the North America and all over the world.

 

2013_09_09 (M) More WordPress Please

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Today was babysitting Monday for Linda and WordPress day for me.  Mike (W8XH), the current president of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC), wants to create a new website for the club and I have offered to help.  We settled fairly quickly on using WordPress to do the work, based in part on the recommendation of Larry (K8UT), and in part on the fact that I am already using it for our website and this blog.  Larry offered to help us learn how to build and maintain the site, but did have the personal capacity to actually do the work as he is already the webmaster for a large number of websites.

Today was our first in-depth technical session.  We worked for over two hours and left with our heads spinning a bit, but that was OK.  Our main focus was a lot of the “back end” stuff.  We walked through some basic domain and web-host management issues including the use of subdomains, downloading and installing WordPress, configuring the site for easy/safe backup and new version development/testing, selecting an appropriate theme and navigation structure, selecting/installing plug-ins to add functions such as subscription, member login, and a member directory, and issues related to managing images.  We left with “homework” to complete before we meet with Larry again.

Not only do I want to help create a more responsive, attractive, and useful web presence for our ham radio club, I would like to improve our website/blog and have offered to do something similar for two other organizations related to our RVing interests.  The functionality I need to incorporate into those two websites will be very similar to what we need to do with our SLAARC website, so this was a very relevant learning opportunity for me.  I am also the current vice-president of the SLAARC, and as we all know, VPs don’t usually do much, so this was an opportunity for me to do more than just be prepared to fill in for Mike if needed.