I didn’t get out of bed until 7:30am this morning. We’ve been getting up a little earlier than usual to hit the pickleball courts between 8:00 and 8:30am. We played a couple of hours per morning every day Monday through Friday this week. My left knee was starting to be bothersome – it would start getting sore after an hour or so, then stiffen up and remain sore throughout the rest of the day.

I ordered a pair of knee compression sleeves from Amazon and started using one on Thursday. It seems to help, I’ll continue to wear it on my left knee whenever I play pickleball.

Donna had a great idea to get me out of bed – she suggested we head over to Crackers & Co. for breakfast. It’s only a few miles away on Greenfield north of Brown Road. They have outdoor seating on a patio and excellent coffee. The service was fast and the breakfast good – Donna had eggs Benedict while I went for the biscuit and gravy dish with two eggs and country fries. While we were out, we hit the Walmart a half mile up Greenfield before we came home.

I had a project I wanted to complete and for once, it went smooth and easy. Our coach is equipped with an HWH hydraulic system that operates the leveling jacks and also operates the slide-outs. After 17 years of use, the touchpad controller was wearing out. The flexible plastic cover of the touch pad had worn through in a few places and the copper contacts weren’t conducting very well. I had to play around with the pressure points to make contact and operate the HWH system.

I had a hard time finding a retailer that carried a replacement touch pad and printed circuit board (PCB) controller. I was getting worried about the PCB failing completely and preventing me from operating the jacks. I finally found replacement HWH parts including touchpad PCBs at Northwest RV Supply in Eugene, Oregon.

Their online catalog had several pages of HWH touchpads listed and warned customers not to order based on appearance or specifications. They said the only way to ensure the correct touchpad and PCB was ordered is to remove the old PCB and look for a part number handwritten with a sharpie-type pen on the PCB. I thought this was a little strange, but I pulled the old touchpad while we were in Buckeye and found the handwritten part number.

When I found the replacement part for AP1088, there was another warning. It said to call for lead time. Apparently HWH makes various PCBs in batches, if they are out of stock, it may be weeks or even months before they run that particular part number again. I called Northwest RV Supply and they told me it would take three to five days for the replacement part to drop ship from HWH. The replacement part cost was $181.

I ordered the part a week ago and received it yesterday. It was easy to replace – I just removed the old one and pulled the 10-pin connector. Then it was just a matter of putting the connector on the pins of the new PCB and screwing back in place.

With the ignition key in the accessory position, I powered up the HWH and tested the jack operation. All is good, job done!

I had a couple of interesting ham radio contacts this week. On Thursday afternoon, I was operating on the 20-meter band at 14.327 MHz when I heard a station calling from Japan. The 20-meter band is High Frequency (HF) which operates long distance through something called skywave propagation. What happens is the electromagnetic signal from my antenna travels at an upward angle 150 to 300 miles into the upper atmosphere where it hits the ionosphere. The electromagnetic signal is reflected (actually it’s refracted as it can come back down through more than one path) back to earth. This will usually cover anywhere from 300 to 2,500 miles, depending on the angle of travel of the original signal.

This signal can bounce off the earth and travel back to the ionosphere to be reflected back again. As it makes these “skips,” the footprint the signal covers gets progressively larger.

Anyway, I answered the call from Japan and made contact with Haruo. Haruo-san lives north of Tokyo and, from what I gathered, he lives out in the country at high elevation and has an elaborate antenna and ham rig. To reach Tokyo, my signal had to skip at least twice as Tokyo is about 5,700 miles from Mesa, Arizona. The thing about skywave propagation is the ionosphere is constantly changing and what was a good signal can suddenly fade. This happened to me shortly after I made contact with Haruo-san.

Last night, I was operating on an Ultra High Frequency (UHF) band. These frequencies don’t work like HF bands, UHF requires line-of-site contact and doesn’t skip off the ionosphere. I connected to the East Valley Repeater Group station on South Mountain about 26 miles from here. Once I established a digital connection with the EVRG repeater, I utilized their Yaesu WIRES-X node. This is a link through a computer that sends the digital signal over the Internet through a program called voice over Internet protocol (VOIP).

The WIRES-X system links around the world through “rooms.” Once I was into the EVRG WIRES-X node, I selected a room called Texas-Nexus and coincidentally, heard a guy talking from Japan. I made contact with Masaaki Miyomoto (JA1WLQ) in Tokyo, Japan. Masaaki-san has been a ham operator since his junior high school days – he’s 69 years old now.

He was a little surprised when I told him about talking to Haruo-san the day before on HF. Then he found out Haruo-san was located on a rural mountain. Masaaki-san lives in the city and he told me it was nearly impossible to get a good HF antenna mounted anywhere within Tokyo. He really embraces the new technology and loves to make contacts in the USA with WIRES-X VOIP. He also talks to hams in Italy and France – he’s multi-lingual.

We had a long discussion about cultural differences between our two countries. We also talked about the RV lifestyle which he found very interesting – it’s something that rarely happens in Japan. Our session was suddenly cut off. I re-connected and asked Masaaki-san what happened. He reminded me that most repeaters will “time out” if connected to a room for more than 30 minutes. I lost track of how long we had been talking.

The thing about digital VOIP contact is the clarity. You don’t have to rely on electromagnetic signals subjected to the whims of the atmosphere. If you can connect to a local repeater that supports linked VOIP systems like WIRES-X or Winsystem, the signal is so solid it’s like you’re talking to someone across the table from you, not across the Pacific Ocean! Enough radio talk.

Donna whipped up a really tasty dish for dinner on Thursday. She made jerk shrimp with mango salsa and served it with asparagus and forbidden rice. It’s a fairly quick and easy dish – I think the mango salsa is probably the hardest part.

I bought a rack of babyback ribs at Walmart this morning. I think I’ll set up the Traeger and smoke them tomorrow.

We’ve had warm weather with mostly clear skies – only a few high, thin clouds – and daily temperatures with a high of about 90 degrees. Today’s forecast calls for a high of 83 and the same for tomorrow before it cools to the lower 70s starting on Monday. That sounds about perfect.

*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!