Back in D’Hanis, TX - SKP

Monday - We took alternative roads i.e. not Interstates from Dallas back to Hondo. It was a much more relaxing drive and, according to Google, only about ten minutes longer. We only stopped a couple of times, once for breakfast at Cracker Barrel, once to switch drivers, and once for fuel in Fredericksburg. It even felt like a shorter trip.

It is a hot, muggy day today. With the relative humidity over 90%, it feels much warmer than that! Still sorting through stuff to pack in the RV for the summer. Debating on things like the e-bikes and tools as they are on the heavy side. 

One of the things I need to is to pull apart the air compressor as the pressure shutoff switch doesn't seem to be working. The motor will keep running and the pressure relief valve on the tank will open and dump air. Maybe later today after I finish the afternoon test session.

Later - I may need to replace the pressure switch. The pressure relief valve opens at 130psi and the motor should shut off at 125psi. I filled up the front tires while the compressor motor was running and just turned off the compressor when the front tires hit 115psi. 

Wednesday - I went up on the roof this morning and re-wired the solar panels to serial again. I only have 10AWG wire from the panels to the panel disconnect switch and it’s around 40’. If the temperature could drop to near freezing, I need to split the array in half and then parallel them together. Or else the total voltage might exceed the maximum input voltage of the charge controller. It was hot & humid work even at 8 in the morning. 93% RH…

Yesterday evening, I tackled replacing the battery in my Apple Watch Series 4. I heated the front face to soften the glue then pried up the display. Everything is very small and special tools were required. For example, the screw holding the battery connector was only ½mm long. After an hour or so, the watch was reassembled and it turned on. I charged it to 100% and left it charging for two hours as recommended. The next task was using the watch until it shuts itself down due to a dead battery. This procedure is needed to calibrate the battery. It’s been at 6% for the last couple of hours. With the old battery, I usually needed to recharge the watch after half a day. So far today, it’s been on for 21 hours. I think the battery replacement was a good way to extend the useful life of the watch.

Outer Banks and a Travel Day

Sunday - We check out of the house at around 9 and headed north to the Currituck Lighthouse in Corolla. There was also a small maritime museum with local boats and history. 

The focus of the boats seemed to be more on hunting than fishing. At least in this area, waterfowl seemed to be what their markets wanted. I guess that seafood was readily available but wetlands for waterfowl was less common. 

After the lighthouse, we stopped for an early lunch at an Asian place. I had a curry rice bowl with pork katsu. It was a nice change from the norm of the last couple of months.

We then headed to Virginia Beach since there was plenty of time to catch our flight. There is a Naval Aviation Monument on the beach with a number of bronze statues. 

There is also a large bronze statue of Neptune. The Virginia Beach area is much more built-up than the Outer Banks. 

Low Country Boil

Saturday - After yesterday’s activities, today was a slow day. I even fit in a test session after heating yesterday’s leftovers for brunch. This evening, there is a low country boil as a follow up to the wedding. We are making our way south through Kitty Hawk and Nags Head (weird town names!) to the bride and groom’s rental. I expect lots of family as he seems to come from a large family. 

The view to the north from the rental house. The sand is very soft where you slip back a foot with each step. The sand isn’t bright white like we saw in Florida. These houses seemed older with cedar decks and siding instead of the newer synthetic materials like Trex. 

The driveway was going to be pretty full so we opted to park in the public beach parking lot a short walk away. We were treated to a lot of custom cars, including hot rods and low riders, cruising up and down the beach road.

The chef was making the low country boil out in the carport. Corn, kielbasa, potatoes, elephant garlic, lemons, onions, celery, and a lot of Old Bay. Possibly hot sauce though he wouldn’t admit to adding much. But the bottles were over half empty. Shrimp were added Almost to the top of the inner strainer shortly after this picture was taken. 

And, here is the result. It was delicious. Very well seasoned and the accompanying garlic butter was fabulous especially on the corn and potatoes. Dessert was the leftover cupcakes and cookies from the wedding reception. After everyone had their fill, the leftovers filled a full-size steam tray. 

Duck, NC

Thursday - A somewhat busy day for me today. I’m serving a brunch on Friday morning for about 16 people including the bride. Prepped the quiche ingredients, two crusts, and an egg/potato casserole. Other items include muffins, breads, fruit, and mimosa’s. I hope everything turns out.

Friday - It came out pretty good. The quiche was tasty and the casserole wasn’t watery like it is sometimes. Even the mango/apricot mimosas were tasty. 

The wedding is later today out on a pier in Kitty Hawk. This is the view looking south from the pier. It’s a pretty nice location. 

The surf is right below us and the temperature is dropping as the fog is moving in. Bridget volunteered to take their dog back to their house after pictures. The roads were pretty crowded. 

A tradition that I had never heard of was a “cookie table”. Guests brought a variety of cookies. I hear it’s a Pennsylvania thing. 

Congratulations Jason & Kelly!!

Kitty Hawk, NC

Tuesday - We finally made it to the Wright Brothers National Memorial. We listened to a fascinating ranger talk that began just after we are at the visitors center. 

We then walked around the grounds. This is the flight path of their first four flights with stone monuments marking the “landing” spots. The fourth flight is way out there. 

We walked up what used to be a sand dune that provided a gravity assist to their flying experiments. It was about a half mile walk out. The temperature was about ideal at 71°F with a light wind. I think that this may be the nicest weather for the week.

This metal sculpture was our last stop before hitting up Publix for lunch. It was an interesting stop that I’ve wanted to visit for a while. The last time we were in the area, there was a storm off the coast. We ended up staying inland. 

The Outer Banks covers quite a distance. This Google Earth image is just a portion from Duck in the north to the Cape Hatteras lighthouse in the south. A distance of about 70 miles. The projected driving time is about an hour and a half due to traffic. 

Wednesday - I started the day early with a sunrise from the hot tub. 

It’s not a spectacular sunrise but it looking out over the Atlantic. Something that’s unusual for me. 

Later - We had lunch with MikeM and his wife, Valerie, at the Sunset Grille in Duck. Mike is one of the VEs that I do the ham radio testing. It was the first time meeting in-person. 

The picture is a house in Duck that I thought was very photogenic. No relation to the restaurant or anything else. 

Duck, NC

Monday - This is the view from the upper deck (this suggests the existence of a lower deck) of the Atlantic. There is a walkway out to the beach and I think I’ll be venturing out there later. I may have to do a Zoom session out here…

This is looking north. Nothing negative I can say about it. Thank you to Bridget’s brothers family for the opportunity and invite! We are here for a wedding at the end of the week. 

And, I guess, streaming shouldn’t be an issue…

After picking up some groceries, we went to Duck Donuts. No pre-made donuts here! They are made-to-order. 

I couldn’t resist a maple-salted caramel with bacon topping. It was delicious! Probably way too much sugar.

I'm out of the lower deck getting ready for a test. The WiFi signal is decent here though not quite as good as in the living room. On this deck level is the unheated pool and the hot tub. I just turned up the temperature from 95°F to 102°F. It should be ready in a couple of hours.

Nice place for a Zoom call test session! It was too sunny and warm on the upper deck at least for the morning session.

Irving, TX

Saturday - Today we drove to Dallas as we fly out tomorrow morning to Virginia. We are actually headed to North Carolina but the closest airport was Norfolk, VA. The destination meant that the “best” flights were out of Dallas which was a six hour drive from Hondo. By “best” I mean direct, only one flight. If we left from San Antonio, we would’ve flown west then change planes before heading east. This was simpler. The picture is one of the really nice rest areas. This one is between Waco and Dallas. 

We will be trying out a new car rental option on this trip called Turo. Car rentals have gotten very expensive. We are renting a car from an individual rather than a company. When we were in Florida, Dave and Ginny rented their car through Turo and they have used the service multiple times. And they reported good experiences every time. 

The handy restaurant to the hotel was the Red Lobster. The standout dish, for me, was the crispy brussel sprouts. Fantastic dish. I need to figure out the recipe. 

Sunday - We are sitting in the airport with multiple weather delays. Almost two hours so far…

Thunderstorms came through in the early morning hours. At least it cooled off. Only 64°F this morning. 

Here is why the flight is delayed. This is our plane route from Austin to DFW. It needed to wait for an opening in Austin as well as the weather to clear in Dallas. This is cool website. It gives me something to do while cooling my heels in an airport.

If nothing else, the WiFi at the airport was really fast. But I still don’t care for flying…

We met some friends for dinner in Norfolk then drove to Duck, NC. This is crossing Currituck Sound on a bridge on our way to the beach house.

Back in D’Hanis - SKP

Wednesday - Muggy but not too hot, yet. It's still only 11:30am but I'm not going to complain about 75°F! The low temperature was 69°F so the rear A/C was left running. The park is emptying out so maybe the AT&T cellular bandwidth will stay reasonable. The morning test session seemed to go fine so I volunteered to lead the afternoon test session.

There were still occasional audio glitches but it seemed to work and didn’t interfere with the test. After my positive experience with Starlink, I’m tempted. 

I tried "fried chicken" in the air fryer. Less than satisfactory results. It was okay, it did have a crust, but no where near as good as pan fried chicken.

Thursday - Another warm day today after last nights low temperature of 70°F! It doesn't feel as humid today as it has on other days. I signed up for the early test session but the candidate rescheduled for next week. Oh well…

I dropped off an Amazon return at the closest UPS store which was most of the way into San Antonio. I took the Ural and it was a pretty warm ride and right around 100km round trip. Lots of traffic. But not too many Ural riding days left before we head north. The A/C in the RV felt pretty nice!

Friday - Speediest results aren't quite as fast as it was yesterday morning but good enough to participate in testing. It's another muggy day with both temperature and humidity in the upper 70s. It's overcast so not horribly hot sitting in the sun. We are packing up, getting ready to head out to the Outer Banks in NC. I have not been there before and really looking forward to visiting Kitty Hawk. 

Mustang Island SP - TXSP

Monday - We will miss our friends as they begin their summer road trips. I believe that they are roughly traveling together for a while until mid-summer. Last night, I had dinner with the Marx’s at a seafood place in Port Aransas. I was finally able to get a decent amount of oysters which is one of my favorites seafood items.

There was wind and showers this morning again. One thing to remember about the coast, it’s always windy. Since we didn’t need any more water, I went ahead and repacked the hose, regulator, filter, and water softener. We arrived with the SeeLevel fresh water level at 51%. I’m guessing that this is about 70 gallons. We are still at 20% which is around 30 gallons. We even ran a load of laundry this morning. 

By noon we had new neighbors on both sides of us. The site on our passenger side is a primo site due to all the extra space from the electrical boxes. Unfortunately, they have yappy, small dogs but we are leaving tomorrow morning heading back to Hondo.

We had dinner at Grumble’s Seafood Co., the same place I had dinner yesterday with the Marx’s. Oyster po’ boy. Delicious!!

Tuesday - Today was a travel day back to the SKP park in Hondo/D’Hanis. It was just under 200 miles. We arrived back around 1pm and within an hour we were all set back up. The RV ran great.

I went into Hondo today to pick up my birthday freebies from Starbucks and Whataburger. Not a lot but the price is right. There are still a few more freebies but they don’t need to be collected today.

Mustang Island State Park - TXSP

Saturday - Most of our group is spending at least part of the day at Sandfest, a sand sculpture event in Port Aransas, which is around 10 miles south. I opted not to go as they only had a full event ticket and no one-day option. It's windy, and sprinkling so I think I like the "stay-at-home" option. The pano is the view from the back of our RV site. These are the dunes between the RV sites and the ocean.

I signed up for the afternoon test session and just got off the phone with the candidate. This will be an easy one. (famous last words!) The Starlink connection has been consistent. 

I took advantage of the time, and bandwidth, to fix an error on the ESP32 microprocessor. It has been reporting a potential problem with my choice of GPIO input I selected a couple of years ago. I switched to GPIO4 from GPIO5 as I was using a pull-up resister on the temperature/humidity sensor. The error message no longer comes up and I'm curious if it fixes some other instabilities.

I was digging through photos and noticed that I had some from the D'Hanis brickworks. It's an interesting site with several dome-shaped kilns which are shown in the next photo. I like the contrast of the red bricks with the dark blue sky. And the blue Ural.

Sunday - A much cooler day today. It was windy all night with some occasional showers. Today's high is only 70°F. Still humid at 92% but it didn't feel muggy. The others in our group are leaving tomorrow beginning their summer travels. We will be heading back to the SKP park on Tuesday.

Mustang Island SP - TXSP

Tuesday - This was a travel day from Hondo to just past Corpus Christi. Most of the drive was hot and humid in the mid-80s (°F). We arrived here around 1:30pm and found our reserved spot with water and electricity (50amp!). It was overcast and windy for most of the afternoon.

I'm told that there was a pretty strong headwind and, I'm pleased to say, I didn't even notice it. No problem maintaining 63mph and even speeding up to pass vehicles. 

Wednesday - The highlight of the morning was going to the H-E-B+. The store was huge with a very nice produce section. The temperature and the high humidity make me want to sleep all day. Or stay inside the A/C...

The RVs on each side of us are friends. Bridget has been planning this trip with them for a while.

I tried participating in a test session and the Internet was so flaky that it was almost unusable. At one point, the upload throughput was only 20kbps. Dialup speeds. I dropped out of the session.

Thursday - RMarx let me attach to his Starlink router. I'm in the Zoom session right now and it is working much better. No freezing video, no disconnect and reconnect, and the video is nice and smooth. 

Friday - After making coffee, I finally walked to the beach. There was a nice breeze from offshore so the temperature was pretty nice. 

We then drove south to the Padre Island National Seashore. They had a visitor center so I could get a stamp in our national park book. The beach was almost deserted and was also windy. I'm finding the humidity makes me really tired...

Getting Ready - SKP

Sunday - Another warm, muggy day. We need to get the RV ready to travel again. I noticed that the air intake hose had come loose again. It is a large, flex hose from the air cleaner intake to a large air box built into the rear fiberglass cap. This allows cooler, air from outside the engine compartment to be brought into the engine. Cooler air, higher density, slightly more power. I don’t know when the hose came off as I usually don’t look up when checking the engine oil. It went back on with less hassle than the last time I needed to put it back on. 

I also put my most of my tools back into the RV. I feel more comfortable having them with me while traveling. Overall, we probably lightened the RV by at least 500 lbs due to stuff being left in the shed. We are only going to be gone for a week. Most of our basement storage is about a third full. I still have a few more chores to do before we can take off. 

Monday - More “getting ready” tasks. Added air to the front RV tires to 110psi. Disconnected the bulk propane line. Put the TPMS sensors on the Jeep. Installed a 20A/40A switch to the DC-DC charger (I’ve only run it on 20A as we rarely need charging from the engine). Brought in the two potentially problematic slides (no problems). Switched the basement freezer to run off of DC. Filled the fresh water tank about half full. Rolled up the window awnings. Removed the ladder extension from the back. Removed tire covers. Pack the folding chairs and tables. Move the dash cam to the RV. Clean and pack up the Blackstone.

All that’s left is dumping the tanks, windshield sun screen and driver side Reflectix, disconnecting water and power, and pulling in the last two slides. 

I’m sure we are forgetting something. But that’s why we are starting early.

Tour de Castroville

Friday - Actually rode the Ural a bit yesterday to pick up some stuff to support the Tour de Castroville bike ride tomorrow. I need a clipboard to hold the paperwork I'm supposed to be filling out during the event and some paper to record the bib numbers of the riders as they ride through the checkpoint. 

We had a pleasant surprise yesterday. A colleague and friend from Fairbanks stopped by. WalkerW grew up in the area and was in San Antonio for a work-related conference. The conference ended so he is visiting friends and family. We had a great visit, went to the local steak house for dinner, and he drove us around the area showing us where he grew up. It really was a surprise as I had known Walker since the mid-90s and he was one of the most technically competent IT individuals at the university. Bridget taught his kids at the elementary school so there was a lot to catch up on.

This morning, while waiting for the morning test session, I played around with APRS some more. Since the Anytone does have a GPS, I set it up to beacon my location. The radio GPS is -5 and the phone GPS is both the blue dot and the -4. The -5 location is off by about 100'. The -4 differs from the blue dot since I've been walking around and the phone is connected to the TNC via BT. 

RMarx and I traveled the bicycle route this afternoon and tested our radios making contact with the Castroville repeater. Since I only have a handheld 2M radio, they switched our locations. I’m now at rest stop #1. It’s in a much more open location and I didn’t have any problem hitting the repeater even with just the regular antenna on the handheld. 

Saturday - The event started early-ish as I was at the rest stop around 7:45. Initially, I set up on the west side where the bikes came in on their way around the loop. But I moved to the east side and recorded the bib numbers as they left the rest stop. 

There were 250 riders but I missed at least a quarter of the riders as I couldn’t read the numbers. I was out there until around 1pm. Pretty warm day but it was a fun, community service activity. The ham radio club gets community service credit. 

Afterwards, we met back at the park in Castroville for a discussion on what should be changed for next year. 

We went to Whataburger, a Texas fast food chain. Their smash burger is pretty good (in my opinion). Plus, they have sugar free lemonade which I mix with unsweetened ice tea.

Post Eclipse - SKP

Tuesday - It's kind of quiet around here today. Many of the visitors when came for the eclipse have left. BTW, it is scattered clouds with quite a bit of blue sky today. One of the other VEs took this eclipse photo in Maine yesterday. He said that they had unseasonably cloudless skies.

A new ham radio project arrived yesterday. This is something that I've been curious about ever since I got my license. I picked up a Mobilinkd TNC (terminal node controller). It is a small device that has an internal rechargeable battery and connects to my handheld radio in the audio ports with a special cable. The connector has PTT (push to talk) connections as well. And, it connects using BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) with my phone. There are two applications I'm interested in trying. Winlink and APRS.fi. Winlink is an email client and APRS.fi is a location posting and receiving app. Both give you the option to use the TNC for transport. For APRS, you just tune the radio to 144.39mHz, the North American APRS frequency, and the app will send out periodic position information over VHF.

I already tried the Winlink app using telnet as a transport and verified that my email address (al6t@winlink.org) works. The nearest Winlink stations are in San Antonio and Kerrville. A bit far for my VHF handheld. 

Wednesday - This morning, I replaced the tube in the rear of the Ural. The screw did quite a number on the old tube. Ripped a huge hole and the valve stem was pulled out. Fortunately, I have several spare tubes. 

   After replacing the tube in the pusher, I rode out to my checkpoint to see if the radio worked on the Castroville repeater. I could hear the code identifying the station but never got a response to me “radio check”. But APRS worked and I could hit the Hondo repeater easily. And the Castroville one was even closer. 

It was pretty windy on the ride. Headwind and crosswind on the way back to the RV with some pretty significant gusts. So I stopped for lunch in Hondo at my new favorite fast food place. Whataburger. Tasty smash-burgers with plenty of veggies. 

While I was having lunch, I thought about the torn out valve stem. I didn’t remember actually looking at the valve stem. After arriving back at the RV, I removed the pusher, removed one bead and the inner tube and searched for the valve stem inside the tire. I’ve had enough practice over the years that it only took about 15 minutes. 

Found it…