I was up at 8 AM but did not make coffee as Linda was still asleep and the grinder is fairly noisy. I put the last load of laundry in the washing machine, cleaned the litter tray (which we keep in the downstairs shower), and then worked in my office. Jasper (the cat) came down to assist me but mostly ended up supervising.
All three monitors mounted in the ham shack using the ZioTek wall-mounted track system. The Dell is in the middle. There is a mount and room for one more monitor at the right end.
I mounted the fourth (last) arm on the wall-mounted rail in our ham shack. I swung it back against the wall to get it out of the way as I do not have a monitor that I want to install at that position at the moment. I cleaned up the tools and staged them by the stairs and then moved the coiled coax out of the way and cleared a few things off of the desks so I could move the desks back into position. I left them farther out from the wall than before so they were appropriately placed relative to the three wall-mounted monitors. I then put various pieces of ham radio equipment back on the desks.
Monitors obviously need computers. I removed the Dell Precision laptop from my computer desks, removed the computer from the combination docking station and monitor stand, cleaned all of the pieces, and reassembled it. I set it at the left edge of the ham desks, slid it under the left monitor, and placed our old Icom IC-706 HF transceiver on the monitor platform, just for appearance sake. We are not using thus radio at the moment but it fit nicely in that spot.
I placed the GoBox with the Icom IC-7000 HF/VHF/UHF transceiver and 12VDC power supply at the right edge of the desks, put the MFJ-998 Intelli-Tuner to its left (under the right monitor), and put the larger variable voltage DC power supply on top of it. The time we spent yesterday determining where to mount the rail on the wall was time well spent. The monitors are at a comfortable height for viewing when seated at the desk, tilted down slightly to avoid glare from the overhead down lights, and the bottom edges are high enough above the desk to permit sizeable equipment to slide under them. The desks are also far enough out from the wall to make it easy to attach and manage cables.
I rearranged my primary ASUS laptop on my computer desks and checked my e-mail accounts. I have had a discussion going on this past week with Gary at Bus Conversion Magazine about hats with the BCM logo and responded to a couple more of those communiques. Around 10:15 AM I heard footsteps and knew that Linda was finally up so I wrapped up the work in my office, transferred the laundry to the dryer, and went upstairs.
Linda was working at her desk and was not hungry but wanted coffee. She did not sleep well last night so I made a pot of Sumatra Manhelding which is NOT one of our half decaffeinated blends. I got myself a bowl of granola and had a large glass of orange juice. We spent the rest of the morning in the living room reading, writing, and menu planning.
The dinette area of our bus with the two fan-coil heat exchangers on the floor. They will go in the bases of the desk when it is installed in this corner.
I like to hear the grandfather clock strike 12. Besides the charming Westminster chimes, it serves to announce that the part of the day has arrived where I am supposed to get some of the physical work on my to-do list accomplished. Today, however, my #1 priority was to redesign the pull-out pantry so I limited my physical work to gathering up my tools from the basement and moving them to the garage, moving the bus back to its normal parking spot, and taking photos of cabinet details in the bus for Jarel. I mixed in a little e-mail, a few computer updates, some ham radio, and time for meals, but basically I worked at my drafting board most of the day and evening.
For dinner Linda made a very tasty dish that we had not had before. The base ingredient was rice and she used basmati even though the recipe called for brown. I prefer basmati rice to brown rice so it was a good substitution as far as I was concerned. The other ingredients were garlic, power greens, mushrooms, and blanched fresh green beans. She sliced and caramelized a large onion and used it as a topping. This was essentially a “1-pot” dish in that all of the ingredients ended up combined prior to serving. Linda makes a lot of dishes like this and we both like them. This particular dish had the crunch of the green beans, the chewiness of the rice, and the soft earthy character of the mushrooms held together by the garlic and olive oil and topped with sweet earthiness of the caramelized onions.
At 8 PM local (EDT) I participated in the weekly SLAARC Info Net for the first time in a couple of years and did so from the comfort of our ham shack. It was a pleasure using our new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE dual band transceiver with our Diamond X-50N 2m/70cm antenna at a height of 40 feet and connected by good coaxial cables all the way through. Club president Harvey (AC8NO) served as net control operator and did a nice job.
After the net wrapped up at 8:45 PM Steve (N8AR), Andy (N8DEV), and I chatted for another 20 minutes trying to find some rhyme or reason why our Yaesu FTM-400’s are experiencing random audio dropouts. We did not get it figured out and wrapped up our QSO so Steve and I could check into the LARK (Livingston Amateur Radio Klub) net that started at 9 PM (EDT). This was the first time I had checked in to this particular net even though LARK is based in Howell and the repeater is closer to us than the ones in South Lyon or Novi.
The LARK Net was much briefer than the SLAARC net and concluded at 9:16 EDT. Steve and I went back to the South Lyon repeater where Paul (N8BHT) heard us and joined the conversation. When we finally wrapped up our testing QSO I went back to work on my pull-out pantry drawings. I was about to shut everything down at 10:45 PM EDT when Mike (W8XH) announced his presence on the South Lyon repeater. He was mobile but full-quieting and I did not experience any dropouts during our 25 minute QSO. I took a few minutes to e-mail Jarel and then called it a night. I had a few almonds as a snack, got ready for bed, and worked on this bog post for a while.
