Fairbanks, AK

Welcome to Fairbanks! At least it was warm enough that my truck started and ran even though it still has summer fuel in the tank. I put in 8 oz of anti-gel and drove to the nearest diesel station and filled the tank about half way. I later added another 8 oz of anti-gel before driving back home. I don’t think that there was very much fuel in the tank but hopefully it’s mixed up enough with the winter blend fuel.

I barely got out of the driveway this morning as there was over a foot of snow. This evening, after having dinner with my youngest son, I dug out the snowblower and tackled the driveway. It had a hard time with all the heavy snow and you really had to muscle it up the driveway.

But got everything done that was on today’s list. Tomorrow’s list is shorter. 

Day 53 - Fort Nelson, BC

Today was a relatively short driving day but it was another stressful driving day. There were several hours of driving through snow flurries with air temperatures fluctuating from slightly above to slightly below freezing. We stopped at a gas station about 180 km south of here and asked about the road conditions. She said that it was about the same as we were driving through and would get worse once we passed Fort Nelson.

We decided to stop at the Triple G campground at the north end of Fort Nelson so we would be able to run the electric heater plus have access to more propane. The water isn’t running yet within the campground. Between Fort Nelson and Watson Lake, there are very few stops of any kind. Probably most if not all of the Provincial Parks, with the exception of Liard Hot Springs, are closed like the Provincial Parks that we passed over the last couple of days. The  first picture is from a highway webcam about 80km north of here. An RV returned after heading that way this morning as everyone was pulled over putting on their tire chains. I have a pair of chains for the rear wheels but I would rather just wait here for better weather.

It’s 5:45 now and the snow is really starting to come down. I think we will be here for a bit... We only have 1184 miles to go.

Winter Weather...

Yesterday morning (Thursday), it was a relatively moderate -2°F. By yesterday evening, it was -20°F. The trend continued today and by noon it was down to -24°F. I had an AARC (radio club) board meeting that evening and was originally planning to ride the Ural. That didn't happen. Not a good time to be in Fairbanks. The weather reports from Arizona have not been very uplifting either with lows below freezing and snow in Tucson. Fortunately, I do have my snow scraper and brush in the truck. I never expected to really need it in Arizona.

From the first picture, you may be able to tell that I replaced my Apple Watch. The display on the last one, known as Series 0, had almost completely died. I was kind of disappointed at its relatively short life but was intrigued by some of the new features of the new Series 4 such as heart monitoring, the electrocardiogram, and fall detection. And the new watch face with way too many options to keep one "informed". Plus, the simplistic fitness challenges were usually enough to keep me motivated. The screenshot on the right is showing activity with completed circles being the goal. As you can see, I have been keeping up even with my head cold.

I just picked up a burner phone for my middle son who is apparently moving to Los Angeles tomorrow. He asked for a ride to the airport tomorrow morning and was supposed to cancel his GCI phone today. I couldn't believe all of the steps needed to activate this phone. I don't see how they expect the average person to accomplish it. The ATT activation site wouldn't run on Chrome or Safari but did work on Edge. Handy to have this Windows 10 machine around I guess. Then you had to type in the SIM number, the IME number, and the service zip code. Then the site wouldn't accept the ATT prepaid number on the website but would accept it on the phone. What a pain. Anyway, he now has a phone with a Long Beach, CA, phone number and a few hundred minutes.

It's -29°F right now. Heading south is sounding pretty like a good idea...

Just a Few More Days...

It's almost that time of year when the daylight stops getting shorter. This graphic is from the site gaisma.com where you pick your location and they show you infographics such as this. Right now, we are the very light grey line on the right side just above the Roman numeral XII or twelve for December. The orangish color is dawn and the purplish area is dusk. The yellow is sun above the horizon. In about a week our slide to the shortest day is over and we start to pick up daylight again. Today, we have 3:48 of “daylight” and the shortest day wi be 3:42.

Many folks up here have commented that it barely feels like winter as the temperatures have been pretty mild. It looks like next week that trend may change as the forecast is full of negative numbers. But all were happy that the days will be starting to get longer soon with Spring right around the corner. I mentioned in my last post that I don't seem to be enjoying the Fairbanks winters too much. Maybe I need to start doing some outdoor activities again.

No riding on Friday due to the temperature. A few days ago it was a couple of degrees below 0°F but today it was getting into double digits. I'll pass.

Another "impulse" trip to Costco. I went in for butter for baking and left with a few more things including a new printer. The last PhotoSmart Printer was dumping ink all over the place. It's another HP inkjet printer but only has 2 cartridges instead of 5 so I'm hoping that the cost per page is lower. Plus, it was $90 off so the new printer plus another spare set of ink cartridges was less than one set of 5 cartridges for the old printer.

Swanson?

Thursday Afternoon - First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all those in the U.S. It’s getting to that time of year when the sun really contributes very little to the temperature. The daily fluctuations are pretty minimal. This was a pretty relaxing Thanksgiving. At least for me. The day began early. The roads were very icy today so I opted to not ride the Ural. I had volunteered to help cook breakfast for a community meal at University Presbyterian Church on College Road. I'm not sure of the number of meals but they seemed satisfied with the turnout.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing as we opted to go out to dinner instead of cooking the normal Thanksgiving spread. When Bridget had asked me earlier what I was planning to cook for Thanksgiving dinner, I would just say Swanson. And I'd get the evil eye. Instead, we went to Pike's Landing for their Thanksgiving buffet. Probably a much better choice and the senior discount was 33%. They had all of the normal stuff plus unexpected things like seafood crepes. Honestly, the price of the fabulous buffet for three adults and one old guy was about the same as purchasing all of the normal groceries. The downside is, no leftovers. But that's probably fine since Bridget and I are flying out in less than a week. But not back to AZ.

Friday Morning - Another couple inches of snow. A good opportunity to try out the additional studs in the tires. The conclusion, the smaller studs are much less effective the #1200 ones that I have been using for years. Braking was slightly improved. It was +15°F this morning and by noon, it hadn't changed. The driving conditions today would be in the horrible category. Fresh snow on top of a thin layer of ice. 2WD was used to get out of the driveway and the return trip up the subdivision road. 

Getting Ready for Winter Riding

A few more tasks done to get the Ural ready for cold weather riding. Added the gauntlets which cover the handlebar ends. They do a great job of blocking the wind from your hands and dramatically improve the effectiveness of the heated grips and/or heated gloves. The gauntlets do prevent you from seeing any of the handlebar controls so you do have to do everything from memory. The wiring for the left heated grip had come loose sometime this summer. Probably when I installed the horn as that involved running wires under the tank. It was a simple task to lift up the tank, locate the connector and plug things back together. Since I just replaced the battery last April, I'm going to try relying on that battery instead of installing the group 24 battery that I've used for the last couple of winter.

I swapped the two rear tires (and wheels) so the tire with the almost new tread from the sidecar is now the pusher. The last time I removed the rear wheel was to replace the rubber boot on the driveshaft. At that time, I noticed that one of the brake springs was broken again. In the picture, it's the spring on the lower right. The entire assembly was replaced under warranty about 25k km ago and that included the brakes.

Raceway didn't have any springs in stock when I was in Oregon so I ordered a couple from Ural Northwest. The shipping was almost as much as the parts and they were sitting on the counter when we arrived back in Fairbanks. I used the nice brake adjustment tool that I picked up from an independent Ural mechanic in Maryland who goes by Gobium on the Soviet Steeds Ural forum. This homemade tool made it a snap to adjust both shoes to provide even braking. BTW, the way Raceway had the brake shoes adjusted, one of the pusher brake shoes wasn't even touching the drum. It still looks brand new. Maybe Ural needs to add this tool to their tool roll.

I'm still debating whether to replace the front tire. I still have another brand new tire on the shelf. But the front tire still has some life left so, for now, I’ll leave it as is.

I think the last couple of months have made me feel the cold. I used to be able to work in the garage for hours at a time. Not any more. What should have taken one afternoon has taken me several days...

Travel Planning And Too Much Snow

This was the view from the deck at the West Ridge B&B in Elizabethtown, PA. A very nice place with wonderful, tasty breakfasts. This evening (Saturday), we head back home so with the four hour time difference, it’s going to be a long day. Fortunately, only two legs on the trip but it’ll still be over eight hours in the air.

We are starting to plan our travel for the next year. We have been coming to PA two times per year for the last couple of years. Having the Alaska Airlines companion fares help make the trips a little more affordable. With Bridget retiring, we will no longer be constrained by the school district calendar. There are some other constraints but they are not as rigid. We are both bound by the in-state requirement of the Division of Retirement and Benefits for the state if we want to receive the cost of living allowance. We can not be out of the state for more than eighty-nine consecutive days. If we want to continue to receive the Permanent Fund Dividend, we can not be out of the state for more than 180 days and have to explain being out for more than 90 days. Both of these constraints are there to avoid abuse and problems are not unreasonable. We are not planning to be full-time RVers or anything like that but trips a couple of months like my maybe a couple of times per year sounds about right to me.

The RV storage place called this afternoon and asked if I would like them to remove the bulk of the snow from the roof of the trailer. They mentioned that it was still snowing today. Under normal conditions, it is not needed but they were thinking that this was a little more snow than normal. Maybe I need to consider getting some of the snow off of the roof at home (as Bridget has suggested…).

Sigh...

It was yet another one of those days. Not only did we lose an hour of sleep due to this archaic practice called daylight savings time but there was this temperature to greet us in the morning. Not that I was planning on doing much of anything today anyway. In fact, I ended up just not feeling very well and taking some ibuprofen. I don't think the temperature had anything to do with it but it certainly didn't help.

I started to get ready for the morse code class which is going to be taught using Skype. I installed a ⅛” audio jack on the keyer so I can feed the output into a two channel mixer. The second audio input is a microphone so I can talk. The mixer is USB connected to the computer and the audio input is set to USB. I’ll need to test the set-up as the class begins around the beginning of April. This is the same setup that I used to record the session at the Internet2 meeting last October. The question is how well it works with that wonderful Microsoft product, Skype.

More Snow...

The weather is looking grim again. This is the view just outside of where my office is at the university. BTW, the reason that I'm at the university today is that the truck was dropped off at the local dealer this morning for some recall work. Multiple recalls. The oldest one was from 2009. Two of them are automatic and the other two are dependant on their assessment. We'll see if any are done by the end of the day. It was convenient for the dealer shuttle to drop me off here than at home. Plus, I could still walk to coffee.

It turns out that they were able to do the two airbag recalls, parts had to be ordered for the steering linkage recall and the fourth one didn’t need to be done. After picking up the truck, I went to the Airhead get together at the Roundup Steakhouse. The best thing about this location is that it has a salad bar and very good service. It had stopped snowing by the time I headed home. More snow is forecast for later in the week...

More Snow in the Forecast

Sunrise this morning was at 8:38am. This picture was taken about ten minutes before that. The clouds moved in and blocked the actual sunrise. The temperature was still in the mid-teens (°F) but warmed up to about 20°F by the middle of the day. Several days ago, the sunshine seemed very bright. Almost too bright.

Snow is forecast again for the next week or so so the plow went back onto the truck. But snow generally means that it'll be warm, at least according to Weather Underground, for the next couple of days. I've been watching the Olympics using the over-the-air antenna that I picked up from Amazon a few months ago. The antenna is working pretty well even though it's just sitting on a table in front of the tv.

Still Feels Like Winter

In spite of NWS forecasts stating that it was going to be warming up, the days have continued being on the cold side. I was thinking that it was going to be Ural weather this week but now it looks like maybe not until next week.

Monday Morning - Still -20°F (-29°C). I'm guessing that I won't be riding to the Airhead get together this evening. But it's 9:10 am and the sky is all lit up on the south-eastern horizon as sunrise is in about 10 minutes. Pretty nice. Plus the daily high temperature is matching the sunshine again. In December and January, the high temperature for the day could occur just about anytime as there isn't significant warmth from the sun due to the low elevation in the sky.

Tuesday Afternoon - I finally got the correct resisters to finish the keyer to practice sending morse code. It works stand-alone but will also work with a radio. This type of key is required by the Skype class that I had signed up for starting in April. Most use mechanical switches connected to paddles. The green circuit boards sticking out are touch sensitive with the left pad a "dah" and the right pad a "di" so a very light touch is needed. The configuration is set by entering commands using morse code. Kind of an interesting way. The three of the four buttons on the front are for storing things in non-volatile memory such as your call sign. The red button is to enter command or configuration mode. The knob on top is to set the word-per-minute rate. The 9-volt battery is the box zip-tied to the right side and has the power switch. I'm glad to finally get it working.

Potpourri

I borrowed the title from Coop's last post as it seems to fit this hodgepodge of subjects though the “pourri” apparently means “rotten” or “putrid”. Sunlit trees and a dark sky is still my preferred winter picture. This was taken around 11:30 am when the sun is still at a pretty low angle and lighting thing up from below the clouds. The location is Creamer's Field behind the Fish & Game offices on College Road. We stopped so my mom can get some more snow pictures but she didn't bring her camera.

This afternoon (Saturday), was spent fabricating a rear rack on the Ural. There are four holes in the fender for either installing a rack or a second tractor seat. The seat would also have an additional steel that attaches to on top of the rear fender essentially doubling the thickness. For my home-made rack, I added two vertical supports which attach to the rear frame and provide most of the vertical support. I still need to pick up some rubber spacers for the front two fender bolts. And some longer bolts. I will probably disassemble the whole rack one more time to use blue Loctite on all of the screws. The hardware store didn't carry stainless nyloc nuts. There is about 22mm between the front of the rack and the fender. The fender bolts are mostly providing side-to-side and front-to-back support.

The Saturday evening project was this PaddleStick keyer. It came as a simple kit though the all of the components didn't match the instructions. Kind of a pain. The company (individual) is sending the right ones. Fortunately, they provided a schematic simplifying the task. Now, I just need to dig up a 9V battery and connector before I can test it. Maybe I can dig up some 2.2k resistors from my small stash of Arduino pieces. I’ve run into several code decoders based on Arduino boards. Hmmm, that seems like cheating.

On Sunday afternoon, I added the spacers and longer bolts between the rack and the fender. I ground the spacer to match the curve of the fender and bolted everything in place. The rack is incredibly solid. You could probably pick the bike using the rack. I Just drilled some holes in the box and the rack to fasten them together. I’m thinking of permanently attaching bolts to the rack and use some threaded knobs inside the box. This would allow me to remove the box with no tools. My son suggested making another small box or platform to attach to the rack when the box isn't attached. I like it when projects just work...

End of the Week Update

The temperature has been bouncing around all over the place from -22°F to +34°F and the forecast for next week is down in the -33°F range again. It has been turning the local roads into skating rinks with lots of accidents and cars in ditches. Kind of an odd January. The Apple Watch screen capture is the Carrot Weather app. It makes snide remarks whenever you ask for an update. I have since uninstalled it from the watch as battery life seems to be a bit short. It's only a couple of years old but seems to be better once I removed a pile of unused apps from it.

The warm weather and heavy snow have given much of Fairbanks the snow-encrusted look with many trees bent over from the additional snow load. And it has lead to many power outages and blinks (very short outage). Last winter, I enabled a temporary way to power the furnace and zone valves off external power but it may be time to plan and install a transfer switch and move some selected circuits into a subpanel.

Not much going on these days. It's supposed to be below -20°F for most of the week so I don't expect much to be going on. I figure that I better go ahead and post this now that the "end of the week" has already passed...

Winter Solstice

According to WeatherUnderground, the sun was "up" for 3 hours and 40 minutes today. In reality, we had snow coming down and dark clouds during our daytime. For the next six months, the days will be getting longer now that it is officially winter. Today's snow was heavy and wet and I almost needed to chain up just to plow our driveway. The most challenging part was just connecting the plow as the truck wanted to slide sideways. And this was just in our driveway. We need some real winter temperatures. It was an almost tropical 29°F today.

Things are pretty quiet around here. Still going to the gym a couple of times per week even if it's just to use the treadmill. I picked up the programming cable for the dual-band HT radio and using a free software package called Chirp, I set up the local repeaters plus the NOAA weather channels. There isn't a lot of activity during the day but enough for me to play around with. Still trying to get familiar with the repeater guidelines. Such as announcing that you're tuned in and listening or how to answer. There is another active ham in the area that has a call sign really similar to mine so I always need to use the phonetic alphabet for the last two letters of my call sign. I'm also starting to learn CW aka morse code as it is still used as the requirements are much more achievable here in Alaska.

I finally got around to installing the cables for the four golf cart batteries from the trailer. I then used the "smart charger" to do an equalization. With the garage temperature at about 40°F, that meant a charging voltage of around 15.6 VDC. The "smart charger" is designed for a 60 amp-hour battery and not the 430 amp-hour bank. But it eventually got it done though it took a few days. I then topped up the water in all of the cells again. None of the cells were very low (i.e. no plates showing) but between all four batteries, I added around 48oz of distilled water.

I'm finally done with the IPv6 video and it is now uploading to YouTube. I have it embedded below though I should warn you that the production value is modest, the target audience is pretty small, and it's almost 3 hours long.

Fall's Almost Over

"Fall" is almost done as we rush towards the winter solstice. Total daylight these days is around four hours or so. In a couple of weeks, the days will start getting longer again. I've shown the images from this site before as I like how they show the data. We are on the orange line at the bottom of the figure with extended dawn and dusk due to the shallow angle of the sun. You can also see from the figure, that the sun doesn't get more than a couple of degrees above the horizon.

Weather is on everyone's mind these days due to the unseasonably warm temperatures. Yesterday, around rush hour, it was raining which lead to a lot of radio traffic on the Ester Dome radio repeater. Traffic had slowed to a crawl and we really had bumper to bumper traffic for a change. People weren't very happy. Today was significantly better though the roads were still icy from yesterdays rain.

No riding and the only thing even remotely related to motorcycles was the monthly Airhead get together last Monday at the Roundup on South Cushman. No pictures...

Turkey Day

The NWS forecast was for maybe 2” of snow, we got a little bit more than that. This picture from our living room window was taken this morning. There is now a couple more inches. I did get the driveway plowed last night and again this afternoon so getting out of our driveway wasn’t an issue. I did get asked at coffee this morning why I wasn’t having my mom ride in the sidecar. After all, it was above 0°F. I had no real excuse except laziness on my part. Especially now that the grader came through our subdivision.

Thursday started out early as I volunteered to cook breakfast at a local church. Then came home and started making side dishes for dinner. A good friend is bringing the turkey, gravy and cranberry sauce. Other than that, not much going on.

Tasks Mostly Completed

Let’s see how I did with my tasks…

• Remove RV house batteries 
• Remove anything that has a battery 
• Disperse de-humidfying buckets
• Empty cabinets and leave all cabinet and refrigerator doors open
• Cover RV
• Install wooden frame for ballast
• Move snowplow clean garage 
• Park Ural in front of the Prius
• Remove 5th wheel hitch
• Place ballast in the bed of the truck
• Remove generators and prep for storage

Oh well, eight out of eleven isn’t too bad. Plus the truck is now parked in the garage again for the first time in a while. Getting the RV covered was no small task. Warm snow on a rubber roof is kind of slippery. It’s not lined up perfectly but I was getting very wet crawling around on the roof. Arctic RV completed the grim task of replacing all three of the dump valves. They also replaced all of the insulation as they said it was in pretty bad shape from mice. The RV is being stored in their lot. 

I finally found out what my Call sign is. KL4PD. They originally said that it’ll be a week before it showed up in the FCC database. But it actually took around three weeks. And I’m now studying for the General and the Extra license. I’m amazed at how much electronics I still remember as there is a lot of it in the review materials. I’ll be taking those exams in the beginning of December. Still not sure what to do with the license…

Welcome Back to Fairbanks

You leave town for a bit and look what happens. Winter arrives. This was the temperature on Saturday morning. One of the regulars at coffee mentioned that it was -12°F at his place a few miles west of Fairbanks. Of course, it didn't stay this cold all day and by late afternoon it was up to 20°F again.

This week I need to get the trailer straightened out as in storage, cover, batteries removed, dehumidifying containers, cupboards emptied, etc. The original plan was to store the trailer next to the garage but due to the delays in getting it repaired, it will probably winter over at the RV storage lot. Not my preference but I don't want to try getting it into our driveway with the snow. As it was, I needed 4WD to get it out of the driveway at the end of August. The other task for this week is getting the truck set up to plow snow again. This means removing the fifth wheel hitch and reinstalling the wooden frame to hold the bags of gravel in place near the tailgate. I should probably remove the generators and add some Stabil to the gas left in the generators. I already added it to the gasoline left in the gas cans, the lawn mower, and the snow blower. I may even rearrange things in the garage sufficiently to park the truck in the garage again. We'll see how it goes this week.

A Short Update

The last several days in Utqiaġvik have been very busy time. I haven't been there since September (I think) and there were a lot of tasks piled up. It's looking like IT support is finally going to be transferred to the science logistics provider this coming year. This isn't a surprise as we have been working towards this goal for quite a while. Also, due to an overall decrease in project funding, everything is being scaled back including IT support. I needed to move from the office space that I have been using here in the BARC as there is little need for dedicated office space. I claimed some space in one of the smaller labs and put in a couple of locking cabinets. But it's still a hassle to move. I've accumulated a lot of junk over the past nine+ years.

I think I'm getting too old to put in these 10-12 hour days as I arrived home pretty exhausted. Or possibly it's the long days combined with the cold. On Monday, someone mentioned that with wind chill it was around -60°F. A good day not to be outside. One of the logistics managers took the picture of the sunrise/sunset yesterday. I was so busy that I missed out.

I came back to Fairbanks on the noon flight. No problems with the flight and I even got upgraded.

Cold Weather! (Updated)

The -32°F (-35°C) is considered cold by just about anyone. But take a look at the forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday. I guess that winter has finally arrived. After we get that over with then we can get on to Spring. Today we got a little more snow. Maybe 4-5". Enough to make it worthwhile to run the plow again.

I'm starting to run out of places to push snow. This is the down hill area next to our house and the pile is starting to get pretty high. While it was snowing, it got relatively warm -13°F (-25°C) so it seemed like an opportune time. Mechanical things tend to break when it's really cold. After being plugged in for only an hour, the truck fired right up now that it's nice and warm...

The plowing is done. I must admit that the plow is kinda overkill for just our driveway but I also use it on the road in front of our house and I do the church parking lot when needed. I was originally thinking about plowing as a small business but haven't been able to find definitive answers about plowing as a business. Just about everyone I've asked just sort of shrugged their shoulders and said "well I've never gotten a ticket". I guess I'm looking for better info than that.

Right after I finished plowing, the mail carrier showed up and dropped off my Amazon order. These stainless steel, cushioned wire clamps were ridiculously expensive locally. I was originally just going to use wire ties but I thought that these would work better in the long run. Plus, I could easily remove and reuse them when needed.

Tuesday Evening Update - Look at the low for Wednesday...