Donna and I met up with Alana, Kevin and our granddaughter Lainey Monday afternoon at North Sound Brewing Company for a couple of cold ones. It’s a little strange getting used to the idea of having an adult beverage with my granddaughter! The brewery is only about a mile from the Mount Vernon RV Park on Memorial Highway. They had plenty of outdoor seating.

Tuesday I had a project to take care of. A few weeks ago, I noticed some strange wear patterns on the cargo trailer tires. One of them looked bad. On Monday, I walked down the street from the RV park to the Les Schwab Tire Center. I ordered four new ST type trailer tires. They said they would have the tires first thing Tuesday morning.

It was a bit of a chore putting the trailer up on jack stands. I used my floor jack and placed two jack stands per side and pulled all of the wheels off. Alana and the grandkids, Lainey and Gabi, came by to go for a walk with Donna. I used Alana’s VW Atlas to transport the wheels to Les Schwab. They had the new tires and got on the job right away.

Examining the four old tires, I saw they wore very inconsistently. These were Chinese made Rainier brand tires. I always kept the tires inflated to 50psi – the maximum load pressure indicated on the sidewall. The excessive shoulder wear looked like they had been underinflated, but I know that wasn’t the case. The tire guy at Les Schwab asked about inflation of these tires and I told him I always maintained them at 50psi.

The new tires were mounted quickly and while I paid the bill, the tire guy loaded the wheels in the Atlas. Before I left, I asked him what the tire pressure was – he said he set them to 50psi, just like the old ones. Here’s the thing – the old tires had a 6-ply rating – an antiquated rating system. They were more accurately called load range “C” tires. Load range “C” tires are rated for maximum load at 50psi.

The new tires I bought were 8-ply rated or load range “D”. These tires were rated for higher maximum loads. Load range “D” trailer tires are rated for maximum load at 65psi. These tires can carry 300 lbs more load per tire than the old tires, but they have to be inflated to 65psi. I let it go – I figured I could deal with it later before we hit the road.

Before I re-installed the wheels, I checked the wheel bearings for excessive play. I thought maybe if there was too much clearance in the wheel bearings, the hubs might walk back and forth making a slight wobble in the tire, causing the shoulder wear. The wheel bearings were fine. I think the tires were just cheaply manufactured and had inconsistent wear. I had put about 28,000 miles on the old tires.

Later, Donna and I went to Alana’s place. Kevin was working – he’s an paramedic with the fire department and works 24-hour shifts. He does two 24-hour stints with 12 hours off in between, then has five days off. I cooked a salmon filet on Kevin’s Traeger and Alana added boneless chicken thighs. She also made home fried potatoes, asparagus and broccoli.

We visited on the back patio over dinner and had a black-tail doe come through the yard. Lainey had to go back to Pullman where she’s a student at Washington State University. She had to move out of her apartment by Thursday night. So, Alana, Kevin and the rest of the family went to Pullman on Wednesday to help her move. They’ll be back Saturday afternoon. It was getting a bit late by the time we left and we didn’t get back to Mount Vernon until 9pm.

I’ve been playing with my ham radio and I’m getting more comfortable with the program settings and being on the air. I found a repeater located on Mount Seymour which is north of Vancouver, British Columbia. This powerful repeater reaches well into Washington as well as covering western British Columbia and Vancouver Island, Canada.

Without getting too technical, I need to explain something about repeaters. A repeater is a remote station that receives a radio signal and re-transmits that signal at a higher output power. The thing is, it has to receive the signal on a certain frequency, then re-transmit on a different frequency. If it tried to receive and transmit on the same frequency simultaneously, garbled noise would result. The difference between the receive or input frequency and the transmit or output frequency of the reperater is called the offset.

Well, when I found the signal being transmitted by the Canadian repeater, it was transmitting a net or network of users called the Rainbow Country Net. They log in with the net operator at 9am every morning for group discussion. I listened for an hour or so, then the net operator called for anyone that hadn’t checked in to give their call sign, location and name. I keyed the microphone and called in. I was welcomed and told I had a clear, strong signal.

Later, I realized that I had just stumbled upon what I thought was the repeater transmission while I was scanning frequencies. I didn’t have the repeater information, so I hadn’t programmed an offset frequency to transmit into the repeater, I thought I was just monitoring the output. So, what happened was although I thought I was listening to the net from the repeater, I was really capturing the signal going into the repeater and when I transmitted, my signal didn’t go through the repeater – it went directly from station-to-station.

Later, I looked up the repeater online and found the offset. This morning, I joined the net again and told them of my error the day before. The net operator told me he was unaware that I transmitted a simplex station-to-station the day before, my signal was that good.

I had to come up with a way to store the new radio gear. Storage when you’re a full-time RVer is always an issue. I ordered a couple of foam-lined hard shell cases intended for camera equipment to use with my ham radio gear.

The protective cases will make it much easier to store the gear. My radio is made by a Japanese company called Yaesu. I’ve been in a quandry over how I should pronounce the name. Most native English speakers say “YAY-sue.” But that’s not how a native Japanese speaker would pronounce it. They say it with more of a three syllable sound although the second and third syllable are often slurred together. They say “YAH-eh-zu.” YAY-sue sounds kind of country bumpkin to me. Maybe I’ll say a hybrid YAY-eh-zu.

The weather forecast around here seems to change on a daily basis. We were expecting some cooler temperatures, but yesterday we hit 81 degrees and now they’re calling for 85 today. For what it’s worth, the forecast says we’ll see around 80 degrees each day through the weekend.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!