Last week’s weather here in Coeur d’Alene stayed true to the forecast I mentioned in my last post. We had daily highs in the low to mid 80s from Tuesday to Friday. It rained a little on Wednesday morning – enough to clear the skies of the smoke from wildfires.

We had a fairly quiet week for the most part. Donna’s been practicing clarinet and had a visit from a neighbor while she was playing. Our neighbor to the left of us stopped by to compliment Donna’s playing. It turns out she was a former clarinet player. She left the following morning so we never found out why she no longer plays.

A couple of days later, I had a similar experience while playing guitar. The door was open and my sound must have carried – a guy stopped and knocked and I thought, “Oh no, I must be disturbing someone.” No, he just wanted to say he enjoyed the music!

I’ve been setting up my ham radio in the afternoons when I have some shade next to the coach. My Buddipole Versatee vertical antenna has been tuning up on the 20-meter band nicely. I made contact with Lou (EA7JE) in Barcelona, Spain a couple more times. I also had a strange phenomenom occur. On Thursday while I was surfing the band, I heard a guy transmitting from Athol, Idaho only about 15 miles away! His name was Gene (K7TXO). Theoretically we shouldn’t be able to make contact on the high frequency 20-meter band at that distance. Our signals should shoot over each other’s antennas with a take-off angle that sends the signal to the upper atmosphere. But we talked like we were sitting across from each other.

A little while later, I made contact with Mark (N9FAL). He was operating portable on the north side of the Coeur d’Alene airport, maybe five or six miles away! The conditions obviously favored a ground wave that allowed close proximity contact. I’ve had this happen a few times before, once in Mesa and twice when we were at Lake Pleasant. It didn’t happen on Friday or Saturday here – radio wave propagation can be unpredictable at times.

On Thursday and Friday, there was a lot of noise on the band and I could see some kind of strong interference across the band every 40 kilohertz or so. I saw a video on YouTube made by Josh Nass (KI6NAZ). He used a Software Defined Radio (SDR) program to show the interference on the 40-meter band. It looked very much like what I was seeing on 20-meters. Josh used the SDR to triangulate the origin of the noise on 40-meters. It was a series of powerful signals that obliterated all other signals near their frequency. The triangulation alogorithm placed the sources west of Havana, Cuba and also off of the southern coast of Cuba – probably from a ship.

These are presumably being created by the Cuban government to hinder communication to and from the island. The operators responsible for the jamming noise are actively monitoring the band and the noise signals move across the band to stop specific communications. Most of the ham community think the Cuban government is only jamming on 40-meters, but I find it strange that the 20-meter band had noise that looked very similar.

The noise disapeared yesterday and I had several contacts including long conversations with David (KE5MXF) in Newalla, Oklahoma and Jimmie (KA5DOB) in Alamogordo, New Mexico. While I was outside on the radio, a fellow ham stopped his truck in front of our site. He was Scott (KA6SUY) from Chico, California. He’s here at the Elk’s Lodge in a fifth-wheel trailer with his wife. He only has a two-band (VHF-UHF) radio with him though. There are active repeaters here on those bands and a net is held every evening at 6:30pm. I’m able to join the net with my handheld Yaesu FT3D transceiver.

Last year, we found something new in the area. There’s a parking lot about half a mile east of the lodge that became home to a number of food trucks. We went there on Thursday and I went for the Korean truck and ordered Bi Bim Bap – a rice bowl with stir fried meat and veggies topped with a fried egg and spiced with kim chee. Good stuff, but the spice had my head sweating! Donna didn’t find anything she wanted there, so she made herself a salad back at the RV park.

For the first week we were here, the Elk’s RV park was full. Everyday a few people would leave and their sites would quickly be re-occupied. RVers were turned away every afternoon. Early last week it changed. It was as if someone flipped a switch. Suddenly there were a dozen open sites. My theory is that many people scheduled vacation time to coincide with the Fourth of July holiday and now they’ve gone home.

I knew we were probably going to have an issue on Thursday when three campers took up residence behind and adjacent to our site. There was a small class C motorhome, a small teardrop trailer and a truck camper. They were all traveling together and when they set out a portable fire pit, put up a few canopies, tables and chairs it looked like party central. Sure enough, when we went to bed at 10:30pm, they were sitting around the campfire talking loudly. I don’t know what they were thinking – it was like they thought they were at a campfire secluded in the woods. In reality, they were at an Elk’s Lodge in a residential neighborhood with RVs within 20 feet of their party. The Elk’s RV park has quiet hours from 10pm to 7am. We had to ask them to tone it down. They lowered their volume, but still kept Donna up until well past midnight. Thankfully they pulled out yesterday.

Friday morning we secured everything in the coach. I removed the window covers and disconnected the power cord. I left our table, my antenna, the grill, the truck and a few odds and ends in the site while we drove the coach to the dumpstation on Dalton next to the Kootenai County Fairgrounds RV park. It had been 11 days since we last dumped our holding tanks in Moscow. We should be set until we’re leaving Coeur d’Alene now.

We found pickleball! On Thursday we went to Cherry Hill Park and found temporary courts set up. We didn’t get there until 10am and most of the players had already called it a day. We were able to join in and get a couple of games with people still there. They told us that most of the play at that park is organized in advance. What we came across was a group of 4.0 level players on one set of courts and beginner lessons on the other courts. They told us about open play at Memorial Park.

Yesterday we went to Memorial Park and found eight courts with open play. There were probably about 40 players there but the courts opened quickly with a four-off and four-on format. We each played seven games with less than five minutes between games. It was fun and we’ll go back.

Donna served a few delicious and interesting meals since my last post. First up is a grilled chicken thigh with an Asian inspired marinade. She served it with roasted sweet potato and grilled bok choy.

After pickleball on Thursday, we made a stop at Costco. Donna found fresh wild Alaskan sockeye salmon. I looked for a case of bottled water, but couldn’t find any. I asked a store employee and he told us they were out of water! Then he told us why – he said members of a fire fighting crew came in that morning and loaded up all of the water. I don’t mind them taking all the water they could get their hands on – they’re battling a lot of wildfires in the forests around here.

Donna grilled the salmon with the same Asian marinade she used on the chicken thighs and it was excellent. She served it with white rice and french-cut green beans topped with everything bagel seasoning.

At Costco, we also bought a two-pack of whole chickens. I broke them down and Donna brined two chicken breasts Saturday before she grilled them. She made a Moroccan spice topping and served it with the leftover rice and French-cut green beans. I don’t think chicken breast gets much better than this.

The temperature warmed up yesterday and we’ll see 90 degrees again today. The forecast for the coming week is mid-90s and close to 100 next weekend. Our plan is to pull out of here on Saturday. We’ll spend the night at a casino northwest of Spokane near the airport, then continue on to Twisp, Washington on Sunday. We’ll be in Mount Vernon on the west side of Washington on Monday.

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