Saturday, January 12, 2019

Day 4 - Benson, AZ - TT

Feeling better today, especially after seeing the -40° temperature back in Fairbanks. I’m glad to not be there. It did get down to freezing last night but between the electric ceramic heater and the propane furnace, no problems. I am amazed that the electric heater puts out enough heat to keep the trailer warm until it drops below about the mid-40s (°F). Then the propane furnace kicks in. This morning, there was breakfast at the RV park clubhouse. I was a late arrival as most of the others there were finished and just about ready to leave when I arrived.

This morning, I went into town to pick up another cable to lock the bike replacing the one that was cut somehow. The one I found at Tractor Supply wasn’t quite as heavy as the old cable but it is longer making it easier to lock. BTW, Tractor Supply is a great store to wander around in. I found all sorts of stuff for projects.

I also picked up 10 awg wire, connectors and fuses to hook up the Icom radio. The wire gauge is slightly overkill for the 50 watt VHF/UHF rig but not for a 100 watt HF rig. The red and black connectors are Anderson Powerpoles. I had not used them before but had picked up a pack of 30 amp connectors and the crimp tool from Amazon. They are sort of a standard among the radio community. I followed the recommended norm of running both positive and ground directly to the battery terminals with a fuse installed in both the positive and negative leads. I’m not sure why they recommend two fuses.

This is the head unit for the gifted (thank you Andrew!) Icom 2800 dual-band (2m and 70cm) radio. I’m still reading the manual but I believe that I have it configured for the 2M repeater here in Benson. I can key the mic and get the morse code identifier from the repeater but no one answers. I’m not sure if that is due to a misconfiguration of the radio or just no traffic on the repeater. This project kept me busy all afternoon. To relax, I then hit the jacuzzi. There were four others there, one couple from southern MN recognized me from back in November when they first arrived.

13 comments:

  1. I'm glad you're feeling better. I'm glad I'm not in Fairbanks too! Brrr. It was 31º here this morning, but clear and sunny. I'll take it.

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    1. Thank you. I was feeling pretty miserable for a while...

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  2. Kinda fixated on Fairbanks temps, hmmm. Didn't stay -40 for long.
    I see a friend request from you on FB, is that real?
    We leave for Loma Linda on the 19th. Finally.

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    1. Yep, kinda fixated on the temperature. I think that I was just getting really tired of it by the time we left.

      And, yes, I set FB up as it seems to be the best way to communicate with the son in CA. I figured that I may as well use it since it’s set up.

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  3. Good to hear you are on the mend. We have gotten extreme thawing last night, and all the white stuff is gone, temps are expected to jump from 30 to 50°F today... feels like the chinook wind hitting back when in Calgary.

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    1. Is it the same very localized warming like a chinook wind?

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    2. Indeed, we call these warm fall winds Föhn.

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  4. Day 4? I missed days 1-3. So far behind. Glad you two and hit safe to Arizona.

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    1. That whole “work” thing getting in the way? Yep, safe, warmer and not a lot going on...

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  5. Glad you're feeling better! One more day of loading the coach and we head south too! Yay!

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  6. Good to hear you’re better, rain tonight and tomorrow here, so it’s proba going to be where you are in 3-4 days

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    1. Minimal rain. Just sprinkles. I think all of the rain happened in western AZ.

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