Misc. Projects

Wednesday - I still seem to prefer playing with the digital modes on the ham radio. Mostly FT8, FT4, and now Winlink. Possibly, since I can have it running on the MS Surface while participating in tests on the Mac. 

Thursday - We ran a few errands in San Antonio today, including a stop at Costco. I picked up a new Apple Watch to replace my last one, where the face fell off. The new one is the series 11 with GPS but no cellular. The last one was a Series 3 with a 38mm face. The new one has a 46mm face, and it feels huge. There wasn’t a whole lot of choice at Costco. But I'm happy with the purchase. 

Friday - I moved the class C in front of our lot to continue some projects. It'll probably be here until we leave for the summer. The first minor project is a better location for the Garmin RV GPS. I have been using a cup holder mount with a flexible arm. It was designed for a phone, and the arm was too flexible. Plus, the location wasn't optimal.

I removed the little cubbie and coin holder, as it just snaps in place, and drilled a couple of holes to mount a plastic phone mount piece to the bottom of the cubbie. It seems pretty solid, and it's a much better location for the GPS. I also installed a mag-mount phone charger since the aux audio input now works on the in-dash radio. The console was a real mess last summer with all of the cords lying around.

Here is some data from my A/C on battery power "test" today. It seems that we should be able to run the A/C for at least 4½ hours on just battery power with some solar. I'm not going to complain, as we couldn't run the old Coleman A/C on battery power at all.

10:30am A/C on, 75° outside, A/C set at 74°, at 100%, no shore power, SoC 100%

1:04pm 84°F outside, SoC 75%, 100Ah used

3:00pm 88°F outside, SoC 36%, 249Ah used

3:02pm low battery alert, plugged in to shore power. Max current in 13.5A

A bit less time than the Victron claimed. I haven't replaced the cables from the battery to the inverter, and the draw from the battery was around 125A. I had added around 10' of 2/0 cable when I relocated the batteries to the passenger side of the RV. I was planning to upgrade the cables to 4/0, but never got around to it. I also need to extend the battery voltage monitor cable to the new battery location.

A Few Busy-ish Day

Saturday - An earlier start this morning. I helped cook breakfast here at the park. Just pancakes, sausage, and bacon. I haven’t had pancakes in quite a while. They were good.

The rear A/C stopped cooling in the middle of the night. This morning, I changed the compressor overload switch, and it seems to have fixed it. 

I had added some bleach to the fresh water tank on the class C yesterday to sanitize the tank. Each faucet was run to clear out the pink RV antifreeze and run the bleach/water into the lines. After 24 hours, the tank was emptied. Two fills, flush lines, and emptying the tank were done. That should eliminate the bleach/water from the water system. The tank was filled with fresh water. N.B. The specs for the RV say 40 gallons of fresh water, but the tank only holds 30 gallons. 

I switched the water heater bypass off and used the pump to fill the 6-gallon tank, and ran all the faucets to clear the air out of the lines. 

I pulled the dash out a little to see if I could find out why the aux input to the in-dash stereo wasn’t working. It turns out that a cable was unplugged. Easy fix! While working on this, I was running the roof A/C. It was nice and cool. Even when working on the dashboard. 

I turned on the propane at the tank and lit the stove, water heater, and refrigerator (on propane). All three are running, but the refrigerator will take a while to cool down. Once the water heater shuts off, I’ll check for hot, running water. 

Later - Hot water works. No propane leaks! I cleaned the refrigerator using hot water. I will let the refrigerator run tonight and see if it’s cold tomorrow morning. 

Tuesday - Soldered another PL259 connector onto the length of RG8X coax that I had cut 50' off of. It turns out that I want to have the antenna further from our shed than 50'. I just need to wait for the barrel connectors to arrive today. I'm also going to try the JPC-12 antenna to see if it performs any better on 40m. For both of my antennae, 40m is the limit.

I know that most people could care less about this but I finally got Winlink running over HF. Specifically, 40m. I switched to the JPC-12 antenna instead of the ATAS-120 as it performs better on 40m. But is more hassle. I used two different station one 207 miles away and one 376 miles. Just to make sure that it wasn’t a fluke. This is a method of sending/receiving email via radio. 

More Projects

Wednesday - My Apple Watch bit the dust today. A mechanical failure. The display fell off while walking between the shed and the RV. And, with the display hanging by the cables, the connectors broke. 

Friday - I got an early start this morning at 7:30. That's early for me. I picked up the class C and moved it in front of our lot. A couple of days ago, I pulled another solar panel from the class A and proceeded to reinstall it on the class C, like last summer. I should just pick up some other panels for the class C instead of moving them back and forth. The class C once again has 630 watts of solar.

I then started to sanitize the water tank. Water would back up the fill hose after a couple of seconds, indicating a blockage in the tank vent line. I removed the line from the tank and poked a 10 awg wire down the vent, and a whole bunch of debris came out. I need to find a plug for the vent.

You can clearly see where the ceiling supports are. I wanted one more screw for the passenger-side unistrut, so this was just what I needed. I checked all the unistrut on the roof, and they are all firmly attached and solid.

We had picked this up at the Tabasco factory store. It is spicy ketchup sold in Japan. It is very tasty. I usually add Tabasco to my ketchup for fries. This isn't as spicy but has a nice smoked jalapeno flavor. 

I still haven't decided if I want to replace the Apple Watch. It is really useful, but I'm not sure its $399 useful…

Just Hanging Around - SKP

Wednesday - Another hot and muggy day. 

Thursday - NOT another hot and muggy day. It's actually in the mid-60s today. Overcast and a little windy, but nice enough to try and get stuff done outside.

Friday - As you can tell by the abbreviated posts, there isn't much going on around here. I've continued doing the test sessions and dinking around with the RVs. As an update, the issue with the AC power shutting off briefly has been resolved. It hasn't happened for a couple of weeks after changing the absorption voltage setting on the Magnum inverter/charger. I regenerated the water softener again yesterday using the new setup. So much easier.

A non-RV task that was finally done was replacing the zipper slides on the Aerostich RC. When we were in Duluth, I mentioned that the main zipper needed to be replaced for the second time. They told me that the slides wear out, not the zipper. And they had replacement slides in the store. Ten months later, I finally replaced them. 

Saturday - I was planning on riding to Castroville this morning for the monthly radio club meeting, but it was pouring rain this morning. By the time I was halfway to Castroville, the rain stopped. Oh well. I guess it would’ve made a good test for the zippers. 

I picked up a new door lock set for our bathroom door in the class A. It was worn out internally. I needed a chisel to install it, and I borrowed one from Brad. One more project done.

Sunday - It was a stormy evening! Lots of lightning, wind, rain, and small hail as several bands of storms passed through the area. And the temperature dropped quickly. 

Monday - We drove into San Antonio for an appointment and stopped at Home Depot on the way back for a couple of items. After arriving back at the RV, I climbed onto the roof to check out the compressor overheat sensor. The Internet claims that this is a component that fails and causes the A/C unit to stop cooling. This morning, continuity through the sensor was fine, and the A/C unit was cooling. The next time it stops cooling, I'll test it again.

Tuesday - I claimed a corner of the shed and started to set. up my radio. It has been a convenient location for the test sessions. There is a ½" schedule 40 PVC wall penetration right below the table in the corner. I plan to run an antenna cable out, but need to cut the PL259 connectors off of one of my existing cables to fit through the pipe, so I'll need to solder on a new connector (yet another Amazon delivery).

Ride to Uvalde

Sunday - It was a nice morning, and I rode the Ural into Uvalde. This is the rest area along 90 between D’Hanis and Sabinal. When I took off the helmet, the chin bar and visor fell off. I think I may need a new helmet. This was the Ski-Doo modular helmet that I used to use in the winter. The Nolan helmet is disintegrating inside, so it is also on its last leg. The Ski-Doo helmet is 10 years old, and the Nolan is 12 years old. So both are well past the 5-year rule. I finished the ride using the SkiDoo helmet like an open-face helmet with no visor. Not optimal. 

Monday - I had my annual medical visit this morning to get my prescription medications renewed for the year. I had switched from the clinic in Fairbanks to the clinic here in Hondo for convenience. Plus, my primary care physician in Fairbanks retired a few years back so it seemed to be a good opportunity. I arrived back in time to participate in the mid-day test session, which is always something that I enjoy doing. 

I needed to go into Hondo again to pick up my prescriptions and I took the Ural. On my way back, maybe a quarter mile from the SKP park, the driver side muffler decided to jump ship. I turned around and slid the escapee back onto the bike. Since it was only a short distance away, I figured that it’ll stay in place for at least that long. 

Finishing Projects…

Wednesday - Back in the shed. I really need to straighten out the back room, as it became quite a mess as I tried to find tools. There are still some that I haven't found, such as my small hand saw. I ended up using the Sawzall to make small cuts in the flooring. Not the right tool for the job.

The task of the day is the water softener. I backflushed it for the first time for several minutes, then I'm trying out a new water softener regeneration method/device. The blue filter housing has the filter removed and is filled with salt pellets instead of table salt. The salt dissolve slower and is in contact with the resin in the softener for longer. The claim is for better regeneration. After the regeneration process is completed, the housing is cleaned, and a filter can be installed.

Friday - It has been much cooler after a cold front moved through the area yesterday. In fact, it was only 54°F this morning. Quite a change from just one day earlier. It's been raining off and on since last night. I guess we'll see how watertight this shed is. 

Saturday - This morning, with the help of Richard and Brad, I installed a new A/C unit on the roof of the class C. The Furion Chill Cube is an 18K unit with a variable speed blower and a variable speed compressor. 

I removed the internal parts and the wiring last night to simplify things but I had left the backup camera turned on which drained the chassis battery. We used the “extension ladder” method to get the old unit off the roof and the new one up. The class C has a really thin roof at only 2¼” thick so I used a foam spacer between the roof and the new unit. 

I just centered the new unit over the opening making sure that the wires weren’t pinched. From the bottom, I trimmed about half an inch from the air distribution foam and positioned the inside mounting plate and inserted the four legs no bolts to sandwich the roof. 

The last step was connecting the 115VAC wires and connect the control box to the upper part of the A/C unit. And fasten the vents and controls. Then test…

Success! The new unit starts and runs easily from our 2000W inverter from our two batteries! In the screenshot, the unit is only drawing about 600watts. At this time, the fan was on “Auto” and, according to the shunt, we could run for over 12 hours. Not that I think that’s realistic. 

Very happy with this installation.