Hanging Around the Park

Saturday - There was a mid-day test session, and while monitoring the test, I continued to make FT8 contacts. So far, the only DX (outside the U.S.) contacts have been Canada and a couple from the Canary Islands. I think I need to get my antenna a bit higher, maybe on top of the shed. So far, 35 completed contacts.

There was more Meshtastic activity this morning on the open channel long_fast, and there were 146 nodes on the list this morning, but most of them were “sleeping” to conserve battery. I still haven’t figured out a use case for the devices yet. There is a way to integrate Meshtastic with HomeAssistant, but it sounds complicated since Meshtastic only deals with text strings.  Something to look into…

Monday - While waiting for the test session to start, I played around with FT8 a bit on 15m and 10m. I made a couple of contacts on 10m, but nothing on 15m. My contact count is up to 50 now, with 5 countries outside of the U.S. I attempted to get the WSJT-X software running on the Mac, but there are still bugs with their software. I get shared memory errors.

Tuesday - We went into town for an almost-free Whataburger breakfast, followed by Walmart to pick up a few grocery items for Thanksgiving dinner here at the park. While playing on FT8, I made a contact with a DXpedition in Vanuatu, according to the software, it's 6899 miles in the middle of the South Pacific. Furthest contact for me!

Thursday - Happy Thanksgiving! A couple in the park hosted Thanksgiving dinner in the clubhouse. They supplied the ten turkeys, fifty pounds of potatoes, plus related items to get them prepared. We served about a hundred here plus a dozen or so to-go meals. The sides and desserts were provided by everyone else. It was a fantastic dinner. 

Radio Stuff

Tuesday - Another quiet day. I played with FT8 but could only see others on 20m. Nothing at all on 40m.I'm not sure if it is really that quiet or I just couldn't get the antenna tuned. I'm using the ATAS-120 which is a Yaesu screwdriver antenna made for Yaesu radios such as my FT-710. This evening, I made a contact with someone on the Canary Islands. Almost 5k miles. 

Wednesday - Our neighbor asked for help debugging a problem with is RV battery system. He is running an all Victron 24VDC system with four 100AH, 12V BattleBorn LiFePO₄ batteries. A “Cadillac” system. Three of the batteries had, essentially, no charge even after being charged with a Victron Lithium specific charger until they registered a fully charged state. When a load was applied, the voltage dropped almost immediately. He was sent a large document of test procedures to go through for the batteries before they would even talk about warranty. So much for their “legendary” customer support. 

There are advantages to a 24V system but also some drawbacks. This highlights one of the drawbacks. Each battery has its own BMS (Battery Management System) and they don’t communicate with each other. 

We then headed into San Antonio for an appointment. We stopped in Castroville for Bridget’s new glasses and at Costco for her hearing aids. Costco was pretty crowded. 

I ordered a waterproof box to hold the Meshtastic radio and it came with a waterproof gland for the wires. It’s mounted upside down in the box so the antenna and power cables exit from the bottom. The plastic box will still allow the Bluetooth LE communication to the phone. 

Thursday - This morning, I installed another program called GridTracker which ties into WSJT-X, the FT8 program, and shows activity on a map. What shows on the map are the decoded transmissions that receive. 

Dump Run & FT-8

Saturday - This morning was the “dump run”. An opportunity to get some larger, bulkier items hauled to the transfer station. There were quite a few willing to walk along side the trailer and help load. We picked up stuff from 20 sites. After securing the load four of us went to the transfer station to unload the trailer. The total cost was $170 which came out to $8.50/site. Not bad especially since we dumped our old combo washer/dryer. 

The afternoon was spent trying to get the Windows 11 computer to connect to the FT-710 via a USB cable. 

Monday - Success! I gave up on the built-in Windows 11 time synchronization tool and downloaded NetTime, a free, open source program that works. Once the time synced, the data started to be decoded along the left side of the window. I just need to learn how to use the software. This is for an amateur radio digital mode called FT8. It supposedly works with very low signal levels. 

I’m also trying another Meshtastic antenna. This one is a mag mount with supposedly higher gain. I have it stuck to the roof of our shed near the peak. It is tuned fairly well as evidenced by the NanoVNA SWR graph. The range is 902 mHz to 928 mHz which is the frequency range used by the radio in the U.S. The default channel, called long-fast, uses slot 20 which is 906.875 mHz. This, BTW, is not in the amateur frequency band so no license required. 

Later - First QSO on FT8. From San Jose. It took quite a while to figure out how to import the log file into my logbook on QRZ. I had set up the logbook in 2018 with my original call sign before I picked up my current one. It took quite a bit of fiddling to figure it out. But, now it’s done. 

Tasks

Monday - The slide topper over the kitchen slide had started to rip where it attaches to the RV several years ago. I had called the vendor, ShadePro, and they sent a replacement. After carrying it around for quite a while, it finally got installed. Thanks to Richard for helping as it’s almost impossible to do it by yourself. The task got slowed down by a broken screw during the last replacement. After a trip to the hardware store for a center punch and a drill bit, I was able to remove enough of the screw to get the old topper removed. I was guessing that the project should’ve taken about an hour or so. Five hours later, we finished. 

Tuesday - Another slow day. There was a Veterans Day event here at the park followed by coffee and cupcakes. 

I picked up a couple of Meshtastic node “kits” on Amazon. They are based on the ESP32 microprocessor, the same one that I’m using with HomeAssistant. After assembly, they needed to be flashed with the Meshtastic firmware. The Mac driver would never complete the install so I used Windows to install the firmware. There is a learning curve with this but basically, it’s an off-grid communications platform. 

Thursday - I made a loaf of Hawaiian banana bread today for some sort of fund raiser. I must admit that I wasn’t really thrilled making something that I couldn’t even sample. But, it’s done. 

Uvalde Homecoming

Thursday - Yesterday afternoon and evening, I volunteered to help distribute free snow cones in Uvalde during their homecoming festivities. I believe we distributed around 700-800 free snow cones. It got pretty hectic at times. 

There was a bonfire set up. The fire department had several trucks in attendance keeping an eye on the fire. It’s interesting that there is a burn ban in place but I guess they must get some sort of waiver plus all of the fire trucks nearby .

No pictures of the parade as things were getting pretty hectic at that time. But there were quite a few entries in the parade.We were pretty busy from around 5:30 to 7:30. After cleanup, I had dinner at Whataburger with friends before heading back to the RV. IMHO one of the best burgers around is Whataburger. They are as good as In-N-Out. The fries at In-N-Out are better but they don’t offer gravy on the side…

Misc…

Monday - I made a batch of furikake Chex mix for the Monday social hour here at the park. It’s just like the regular Chex mix except for the addition of furikake and soy sauce and deletion of Worcestershire sauce. Other than that, it’s about the same. 

Tuesday - We went to an optometrist in Castroville, and it was great. Nice office, friendly staff. All in all, a wonderful experience. It’s been a slow process finding routine appointments on the road. Since 2020, many locations haven’t been accepting new patients. 

As usual, my prescription changed only slightly, so I opted to not replace my glasses. They work fine, and I currently have sunglasses that attach with magnets to the lenses. Very convenient.

I installed a security light on our shed with LED lights that only draw 12watts. Quite a difference from the non-motion-sensing halogen lights they replaced. I still need to bypass the switch that controls power to the light. Maybe, tomorrow’s project…

Wednesday - It's a very pleasant 68°F mid-morning. I wish it were like this every day...

I bypassed the switch for the security light, and now it is powered whenever the shed is powered. The next "project" was a minor hack on the Victron Lynx Distributer on the class C. There are LED lights that indicate power and an LED for each fuse to indicate a blown fuse. These only work if you opt for the Lynx Shunt, which costs more. To enable the circuit board, I picked up small buck converters that output 5VDC from 12VDC and wired them into the provided cable and, what I believe, an RJ9 plug. I need to pick up some ring connectors for the 24AWG wire to the 8mm screw terminals on the Lynx Distributer. 

Success! The green light indicates no blown fuses. 

I had indicated that I would help serve snow cones in Uvalde this afternoon/evening. 

 

Playing With Solar

Friday - I had to renew my passport as it was expiring in around five months. A couple of weeks ago, I used the online renewal process and the site indicated that I should receive the new passport book by 12/1/2025. I assumed that the current government shutdown could push that date out even more. The replacement showed up in today’s mail. I guess that part of the government is still working and, it’s working well! 

Saturday - This morning, I tilted the solar panels roughly south to see if it makes much of a difference. While up on the roof, I checked the output of each panel. Open circuit voltage on both panels were 22.5V, so good. The short circuit current was not as good. One panel was 7.6amps and the other was 6.3amps. When they are wired in series, the lower current kind of determines the max current of the string. On both the class A and class C, I’ve noticed that the max current rarely goes above about 7amps. 

Sunday - This graph was generated today (with the panels tilted to the south at about the optimal angle. I would’ve expected something closer to 10amps. Though I may need to have the inverter/charger disabled so it would stay in bulk.