Category Archives: park model

Fourth and Final Housesit

We had our fourth and final housesit of the season at the end of August. I mentioned in my last post the construction work on our home, adding a half-bathroom and laundry nook. The work started a bit late on Monday, August 26th. There was some confusion on the expectation and what the construction crew thought they were doing. Donna had met with the contractor and had a fairly long discussion going over what she had in mind and how it should lay out. Ron, the owner of Paragon Home Services, said it looked straightforward and easy.

He sent me the job quote while Donna was away in Vermont. I looked it over, but I wasn’t there when they discussed the project. I wish he would have included a drawing of the layout instead of just a written description which was a little vague in my mind.

We had a meeting with Ron and his foreman, David. Once we were on the same page, they went to work. We thought we would be heading to our housesit in Alpine, California the next morning, but that was also a case of mis-communication. We actually had to arrive on Wednesday, August 28th. This was good as it allowed us to see how the home project was shaping up. Tuesday afternoon, as they were finishing up for the day, I asked David when he thought they would be finished. He said he thought it would take “a few more days” and he would send photos to my phone.

We left Mesa around 9am on Wednesday and made the familiar drive west on I-8. We’ve done this countless times over the years in cars, motorcycles and the motorhome. We made the usual stops – Dateland for a date shake, Yuma for gasoline before we hit California gas prices and El Centro for lunch at Las Palmitas Taco Shop. It’s a pretty authentic Mexican restaurant – my phone even said “Welcome to Mexico!”

We made good time and left I-8 at Japatul Valley Road east of Alpine. It was a little too early to show up at the ranch, so we did a drive-by to find the private road to the ranch, then went into Alpine. Donna bought a new charger for her phone – she forgot her charger at home and wanted a back-up anyway.

It was a 15-20 minute drive back to the ranch from town. After we arrived and had a tour of the house, a custom built ranch home with exquisite woodwork, we went out to the barn to see how things would be done. There were 13 sheep, five Border collies and a cat to take care of. The ranch is on 10 acres of land. The set up was impressive and included an on-demand back-up LP powered generator. If the power went out or dropped below a specified voltage, the generator would automatically start and the electrical power for the entire ranch would continue nearly seamlessly.

The number of animals seemed a bit overwhelming at first, but Donna adapted quickly and the Border collies were so well behaved they took very little care. On the first night, Marcy the home owner, had dinner for us and two other guests – one is a boarder that rents a small studio apartment attached to the barn. The other fellow was a friend from Great Britain, the Isle of Man specifically. It turned out that Sean and Jim were motorcycle enthusiasts and we had a lot of interesting conversations.

I didn’t take many photos – many missed opportunities. Here are a few landscape views of various points from the ranch house.

View northwest toward town
View west toward San Diego
View south west – terrain is steeper than it looks

I found a suitable spot to set up my telescope and equipment. The preferred portion of the night sky would be in the northeast. This had the fewest obstructions and pointed away from the San Diego light dome, over the sparsely populated Cuyamaca National Forest, Laguna Mountains and desert to the east. We were about 2400 feet above sea level.

The days were warmer than normal with the high temperature exceeding 90 degrees. This was still about 20 degrees cooler than home. The nights were pleasant in the upper 60s.

Friday morning we drove to San Diego, about 40 miles away. I dropped Donna off at her sister, Sheila’s house in Point Loma. I went to Shelter Island to take some photos but made a stop for a quick lunch. Once I was out of the car at Shelter Island, I didn’t find any good photo opportunities for birds and wildlife. I took too long for lunch and was pressed for time. I saw one interesting thing – an amphibious vehicle, a duck tour bus.

We saw similar tour buses in Branson, Missouri but I had never seen one in San Diego before. I saw two of them at the boat ramp on Shelter Island.

Donna helped Sheila plan on the furniture layout for Donna’s mom. She is relocating to San Diego and will live in Sheila’s vacant Point Loma home with some help from a caregiver.

With my astrophotography effort limited to a northeast target, I was at a loss to find an interesting subject given the time of year. I decided on IC 1396, a star forming gas and space dust region in the northeast sky. This is a huge target and if I had known that was going to be the target, I would have brought my William Optics GT71 for its wide field of view. But, without knowing which direction I would be pointing, I brought the AT115EDT as I thought this was my best compromise, since it’s the mid-range of my telescopes. Not ideal.

I had issues the first two nights – it’s been months since I last tried to capture a deep sky object. I figured out the problems – there were a few settings on my laptop software that needed to be corrected. This happens sometimes when the good people at Microsoft automatically apply updates and they choose default settings for me. Grrr.

I ended up shooting two-minute exposures over four nights. I used a new-to-me filter setup. First I used an Askar Colormagic Ha+OIII filter. This brings out the red hydrogen component and bluish oxygen gas. The filters don’t add anything. On the contrary, they block unwanted bands of the light spectrum. This eliminates some effects of light pollution, in essence enhancing the desired color spectrum. Then I used an Askar Colormagic SII+OIII filter, This should allow more of the greenish and bluish light through. I did two nights of imaging with each filter.

IC 1396 is such a dim target that I couldn’t see what I was capturing with a single two-minute exposure, so I was shooting blind. When we came home, I went through the images and stacked 206 of the two-minute exposures for a total integrated time of six hours and 52 minutes. I was a little disappointed in the result, but here it is.

Speaking of coming home, we were in for a surprise. David never sent me photos of the finished construction. We found out why – it wasn’t finished when we came home 10 days later.

Unfinished laundry nook
Unfinished bathroom

To be fair, there was a long weekend over Labor Day included. But here’s the thing. Ron never told us he was retiring on Friday, August 30, four days after the job started. David was taking over the company. David still didn’t have the full picture of job – note the lack of ceiling in the photos above. To compound the issue, when we were back, I noted that different workers showed up to do a part of the job each day and it seemed each worker only knew his or her small part of the job. No one seemed to know what the finished product was supposed to be. This goes back to Ron only doing a written description with no floorplan. He had the whole thing in his head and he was gone.

One of the workers, Brenda, also told me that excessive heat had them knocking off by 2pm on a few days. Well, it was finally finished on Tuesday, September 10th. Everything was straightened out and we were happy with the finished product. These are quick cell phone snap shots.

Washer/dryer tower in laundry nook
Half bathroom

I also had them install a stainless steel restaurant style sink in the shed where the old washer/dryer was. This will be my knife sharpening and razor honing station. I need to do some finish work and clean out the shed too.

All of the boxes under the sink contain various whetstones for sharpening/ honing. That reminds me of another quick story. Before we left for Alpine, we met up with our friend, Marcia, for happy hour at Fat Willy’s. While we were there, Donna had to excuse herself to take an important phone call. While she was away, Marcia asked me what I was up to lately. She knows I dabble in a number of hobbies. I reluctantly brought up straight razor shaving and razor honing. I say reluctantly because eyes usually glaze over if I start talking about this topic.

Marcia asked me if I used whetstones. This surprised me. I was more surprised when she said she threw one out that very day! What? She said she had an old one in a box, but the box was broken and she didn’t have any use for it. Then she said it was just in her kitchen trash and she could retrieve it if I was interested in it. I told her I would like to look at it. I envisioned a coarse hardware store offering in a plastic box.

The next day she brought me this.

I could see under the gunk what appeared to be a translucent Arkansas stone in a wooden box! The top of the box was broken, but she had all four pieces. I asked her what she wanted for the stone and she said I could have it – she’d thrown it out.

A little Titebond glue and a couple of clamps was all it took to repair the wooden box top. I soaked the stone in Simple Green and gave it a good scrubbing. The stone is a butterscotch translucent Arkansas stone suitable for razor honing. It appears to be at least 70 years old – the stone itself is obviously millions of years old, I ‘m talking about when it was mined, cut and marketed. Without any stamps or labels, it’s impossible to accurately date the manufacturing era of this stone, but the box style and joinery seems to indicate a Pike-Norton from 1930s or 1940s. I’m not clear on whether this stone came from Marcia’s father or her grandfather.

Cleaned up and ready for use

Now I have two translucent Arkansas stones and both are old stones that were gifted to me. Makes me a happy guy.

A week from Thursday, we’ll board Hawaiian airlines for our trip to Japan. We’re excited about it and I have no idea what to expect. It’s been nearly 60 years since I’ve set foot there – I was just a little kid. Donna has a few ideas, but we mainly want to see the countryside and visit some smaller towns and villages to get a glimpse of the culture and lifestyle of the average person. We’ll see some of the tourist spots, but for me that’s not the main attraction.

We’ll be mostly offline for our two weeks in Japan, so I’ll try to catch up on our adventure after we return.

Hot Times

July was mostly uneventful as the weather warmed up in the Valley of the Sun. As expected, it became downright hot in the metro-Phoenix area. Of course, the media sensationalized the hot weather, claiming a record number of days over 110 degrees. The Weather Channel almanac recorded a total of 20 days of highs of 110 or higher in Mesa for the month of July, including a stretch of 17 consecutive days starting on the 13th of July.

I don’t know where they record the official metro temperature for recordkeeping, but I imagine it’s somewhere in the concrete jungle near the Phoenix city center. There was also a lot of talk about the nighttime lows staying the 90s. I think some of this has to be attributed to the amount of desert that’s been paved over and the amount of concrete poured for various buildings over the last couple of years. This retains a lot of heat – more than the open desert.

With all of that in mind, a look at the almanac also shows that these high temperatures aren’t that unusual – it’s always hot here in July and August. The “record” number of consecutive days over 110 were set because we didn’t have “breaks” where the thermometer only hit 108 or 109.

The most unusual thing I’ve observed this summer is the lack of monsoon activity by this time of year. The southwest has a monsoon season the begins mid-June and extends through the end of September. The monsoon is characterized by intense thunderstorms, higher humidity and high winds. This weather pattern comes from moisture brought up from the west coast of Mexico and is strongest in Arizona although it also affects southern California, parts of Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.

Thunderheads and lightning have been visible over the Superstition Mountains from our place in Mesa, Arizona, but we’ve had very little rainfall and only a few windstorms with blowing dust. Much less activity than we normally see.

The hot weather curtailed much of the acitivity around here. In July, Donna continued to play tennis, starting at 6:30am to beat the heat and she also golfed early. I’ve given up pickleball for this stretch. Astrophotography is out of the question until temperatures cool or when we do our next housesit in a cooler climate.

In previous posts, I mentioned trouble with the swamp cooler in our Arizona room. The pump quit working and I replaced it. The drive belt for the squirrel cage fan also needed to be replaced. The new belt didn’t last – it quickly slipped and burned up. The guy at the Weather Shack told me I had the belt set too tight – it needs a certain amount of slack to work properly. I replaced it again and set it how he had instructed. Then the cooler quit working and I found the root cause of the drive belt troubles. The shaft bearings in the fan were shot and finally seized.

I thought about replacing the swamp cooler with a new one as it had served us well. There were drawbacks though. The main issue is high humidity in the monsoon season. Swamp coolers are most effective with dry air and lose their effectiveness as humidity rises. A replacement cooler would run about $2,500 plus installation.

I went to the Weather Shack and looked at alternatives. Specifically I was interested in looking at a ductless mini-split heat pump. Another alternative would be to add ducting from our existing heat pump to the Arizona room, but that had drawbacks as well. It would mean running ducting through the crawlspace and putting in floor vents. Additionally it would also require a return duct to circulate the air back though the evaporator housing. This would reduce our limited floor space. It would also cost about $2,500.

A mini-split ductless system splits the air conditioning unit or heat pump into two separate elements. You have the compressor and condenser unit that is situated outside of the house. From there copper tubes carry the refrigerant into the house to the evaporator and interior fan unit. This splits the cooling (or heating) unit from the blower assembly with only a couple of hoses joining the two with no need for ducting.

I wasn’t sure of what size unit I would need for our 400-square-foot Arizona room and I was also skeptical of making it a do-it-yourself project. It would require a few special tools and equipment to do it properly. The guy at Weather Shack gave me contact information for a guy he recommended for installation, Dan Shroeder. I called him right away and he stopped by later that afternoon.

He looked the Arizona room over and checked how much heat was coming from the ceiling. The metal roof over the Arizona room was surprisingly cool, due to the Cool Foam installation I had done last year. Although it was 114 degrees outside with full sun on the roof, inside we could place our hands on the ceiling and it wasn’t hot. He said a one-ton unit was all I needed. He said if I bought the mini-split heat pump from the Weather Shack, he could do the installation the following day, Friday, July 14th.

The Weather Shack had a stack of Hessaire mini-split heat pumps on sale. I bought the one-ton heat pump kit for $532 including tax. This was an unbelievable deal – Home Depot wanted nearly $900 for the same unit. Dan showed up with a helper the following morning and did an excellent job. He had it up and running shortly after noon.

He told me the main failure point on mini-split systems is the connectors of the refrigerant tubing. He cut the ends off of the copper tubing and made new flares as he didn’t trust the factory flares. They could easily be damaged during shipping. He also replaced the foam insulation sleeves over the copper tubing with another type that he said was more UV resistant and durable. He wired a dedicated power circuit from the household electrical service panel. He had the proper equipment to evacuate the system to eliminate any moisture before he charged it with refrigerant. Altogether he did a fine job and charged $500 which I thought was more than fair.

Hessaire mini-split heat pump outdoor unit
Refrigerant tubing is under this cover and enters the room at the top
Mini-split indoor evaporator and blower interior assembly

Now I needed to have the swamp cooler removed and the hole in the wall for the swamp cooler duct filled in. I called Paragon Home Services and they came out and removed the swamp cooler.

Covering and sealing the hole for the swamp cooler duct – siding was added later

They did a good job filling the hole in the wall and repairing the interior drywall. The worker commented on the 2×4 framing of the Arizona room. He said it was solid and better than what he usually sees in these type of room additions. They charged $375 for the job and hauled the swamp cooler away.

We are very happy with the outcome. Our Arizona room is comfortable and we’ll be able to utilize the mini-split system for heat in the winter so that’s a plus.

I dropped Donna off at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport at dark-thirty on Sunday morning, July 23rd. She had a flight to Cincinnati, Ohio for band camp. I know, band camp jokes, right? She had a busy week with classes, seminars and practices that entailed about five hours of playing the clarinet daily. The camp finished on Friday and she then flew to Tampa, Florida to visit her sister, Linda. She came back Monday evening, the last day of July.

Meanwhile, I was holding the fort down and trying to keep Ozark the cat company. It was getting a bit boring. To break things up, I went to RJ’s cigar shop one afternoon. This shop has a large walk-in humidor and a two-room cigar lounge. To enjoy a fine cigar in the air-conditioned lounge, you have to buy a cigar there. My previous experience with these types of lounges found high prices on the cigars they sold. I was pleasantly surprised to find RJ’s prices were very reasonable – within a buck or two of online pricing.

I figured that I would splurge on a cigar I wouldn’t normally buy for my home humidor. I went for a Padron Serie 1926 – it was a $23 cigar. And it was worth every penny. I read my Kindle and enjoyed puffing for about 90 minutes. I saw three guys come in together with a cooler. They bought cigars and sat around a table in the lounge and proceeded to pull beers out of the cooler while they talked and puffed. Hmm, is this legal?

I came back a few days later and bought another Padron, a 1964 this time. I think this may be my all-time favorite cigar. It lasted two hours while I read again. I asked the shop owner about bringing your own drinks into the lounge. He said it was fine and if I wanted to bring liquor he had an ice machine, cups and mixers in the back room. Who knew?

My diet suffered while Donna was away – nothing new there. Here are a few of the dishes she prepared before she left. I don’t cook like that, although I do have a few specialties for the grill and smoker and I make killer grilled cheese sandwiches, omelets and Japanese fried rice.

The first plate is a Mediterranean chicken skewer with cilantro lime rice and Mexican corn on the side. Delicious! (We bought four prepared skewers for under $10 from Costco – a great find.)

The next dinner plate is shoyu chicken over rice with grilled bok choy. A favorite for sure.

I couldn’t pass up USDA Prime beef tender loin steaks (filet mignon) at Costco. I grilled the steaks medium rare and Donna made sides of green beans with bacon and roasted baby potatoes.

That’s about it for dinner examples. This afternoon, we’ll be meeting Mike and Jodi Hall at RJ’s Cigars. Mike and I will puff stogies and solve world problems while the girls catch up. I’ll bring a cooler this time.

Not much to report weatherwise. It will continue to be hot for the next couple of weeks. Monsoon rain should arrive sooner or later. I don’t see any sign of rain in the 10-day forecast.

Beating the Heat

I know I said my last post would probably be the end, but old habits die hard. So, I’ll add a quick update. We’ve really settled in to the Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort lifestyle. The summer months can be a bit tough in central Arizona, but we’re adapting. The pickleballers here play very early in the morning to beat the heat.

I don’t like playing pickleball before 6am. By the time I’ve loosened up and feel like I’m starting to play well, they’re quitting for the day. Donna found indoor pickleball a couple of miles away from us at the Red Mountain Multigenerational Center. It’s air-conditioned! We paid the $4 daily fee and played a few times to try it out. Then I found out that my Medicare Part G supplemental medical policy through Untied Health has a provision called Renew Active. The Multigenerational Center participates in this program, so I get a free membership and can go there anytime for free! This will be our summertime pickleball place – Donna and I have been a successful team winning most of our matches there.

Another way we’ve embraced the Viewpoint lifestyle is through another purchase we made. We’ve joined the majority of residents here by buying a golf car for convenient travel inside the park. They’re especially useful in the summer – it’s too hot to walk or bike in the afternoons and a regular car isn’t convenient. I’ve always called them golf carts, but now I’m told they are referred to as “golf cars,” I think this is because many are street legal low speed vehicles – most people here don’t use them for golf! We bought a Yamaha G19 electric golf car. It is a pre-owned unit that was always stored indoors by only one previous owner up in Fountain Hills.

It’s well-equipped with full lights including turn signals, brake lights and flashers. It has the optional horn. It also has a folding, two-piece windshield. It’s powered with a 48-volt electric motor powered by six 8-cell, deep cycle Trojan batteries. Batteries for these things are a big deal – they’re expensive to replace and are something to consider when shopping for a used golf car.

Yamaha G19 Golf Car

The first time I charged the batteries, I monitored the voltage. Typically these are charged with “smart chargers” that use a three-stage charging algorithm. They start with a high, constant current charge and build voltage as it charges – this is called the bulk charging stage. At a pre-determined voltage point, it switches to a constant voltage as current slowly drops as the internal resistance of the battery goes up – this is the absorption stage. Finally it reaches a point of nearly 100% charge and goes into the finish stage which is low current and lower voltage than the second stage.

I found the original charger that came with the golf car had a problem. It wouldn’t complete the second charging stage – it would set an error and quit charging with the batteries at about a 90% state of charge.

Original Yamaha charger – old technology

The original Yamaha charger is built with an old-school design with heavy components – it weighs about 35 pounds. I shopped online and decided to replace it with a 48-volt charger from a company based in Minnesota called Formcharge.

Formcharge 48-volt charger – newer technology

The Formcharge charger is built with more modern components and technology. It weighs about seven pounds and charges the battery bank perfectly. It further refines the three-stage charging with a seven-step algorithm. Trojan battery says a 100% charge of a 48-volt battery bank should show an open circuit voltage of 50.93 volts when resting at full charge. My volt-meter doesn’t read in hundredths of a volt, only tenths, but it bounces between 50.9 and 51 volts after charging with the Formcharge. Just right.

We don’t have room in the carport with our Nissan Frontier and MG Midget already in there, so we have to store the golf car out front. I bought a cover for it to avoid sun damage as well as water damage from rain.

Golf car under cover

Yesterday we beat the heat by going to a matinee at the AMC Superstition East movie theater. This facility features 12 small theaters which seat about 44 people each. The seats are roomy electric recliners – a very comfortable experience. We saw Top Gun Maverick. It was entertaining, but there were too many holes in the storyline for me.

Our granddaughter Gabi up in Washington injured her knee playing volleyball and had surgery to replace her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). This is a major surgery and the recovery time is long. On Monday, Donna will be celebrating Independence Day by flying up to Everett, Washington to keep Gabi company until the 15th. I’ll be here keeping Ozark the cat company.

I haven’t taken many dinner plate pictures lately, but there’s one I’d like to mention. A couple of weeks ago, Donna grilled salmon. We had about half of the filet left over. Donna often makes salmon patties, but she usually makes them from canned salmon. This time, she flaked the left over salmon and mixed it with red onion, celery, capers and few other ingredients before coating it with wheat panko bread crumbs. It was excellent, definitely superior to making it from canned salmon.

Salmon patties and broccoli

We’ve had triple-digit heat for several weeks now. The swamp cooler has been effective and it’s keeping the Arizona room about 25 degrees cooler than the outside ambient temperature. This morning, I replaced the batting in the cooler to increase its efficiency. The long-range forecast calls for daily highs between 100 and 109 degrees. We’re in the monsoon season here, so high winds, heavy thundershowers and flash flooding are possibilities at any time.

Nine Years After

A week ago Wednesday, I drove Donna to the Cortez Munipal Airport as planned. She was flying out to San Diego for a long weekend with her sisters to attend her nephew’s high school graduation commencement. Her flight out of Cortez was on a regional airline, Boutique Air, in a Pilatus PC12 aircraft. These are small, single-engine turbo-prop planes built in Switzerland. They have an excellent reputation and safety record. Boutique Air configures the planes to carry eight passengers and two crew – pilot and co-pilot. The co-pilot doubles as a flight attendant.

They have two filghts between Cortez and Phoenix daily as well as four flights between Cortez and Denver.

Pilatus PC12 arrived from Phoenix and will turn around and go back to Phoenix

In the photo above, the plane arrived from Phoenix and is being made ready for the flight back to Phoenix. The Cortez Municipal Airport has one runway (3/21) that’s oriented roughly northeast/southwest – 30 degrees northeast and 210 degrees southwest. The prevailing winds are from the southwest so most takeoffs and landings are on the 210 degree heading.

The airport was made famous in 1959 when a USAF Lockheed U2 reconnaissance plane made a forced landing there after its engine flamed out at an altitude of 70,000 feet above sea level. The pilot was a Chinese (ROC Taiwan) Air Force Major on a night training flight from Laughlin AFB in Texas. He flew to Salt Lake City and turned back on a secret flight path. The U2 was a highly classified secret aircraft at the time. When his engine quit, he didn’t have much of a plan.

He glided to a lower alitude and attempted to restart, unsucessfully. It was dark and he didn’t know his precise location, just a general idea. He knew the area was mountainous and didn’t know of any airports in the area. By a stroke of luck or the grace of God, he ended up gliding between mountains in the high desert valley and spotted runway lights. His glide path and speed coordinated perfectly to line up a landing at the Cortez airport! If he had been a few miles east or west of the valley he would have slammed into a mountain in the dark night. It’s quite a story.

I had an uneventful four nights as a bachelor while Donna was away. I played pickleball, read books and took care of Ozark the cat. Donna had a nice time with her sisters – she hadn’t spent time with the three of them together in years.

Sunday afternoon Donna flew back to Cortez, backtracking her flights to San Diego. The Boutique Air flight from Phoenix landed at 3:36pm. She said she enjoyed the small aircraft – she hadn’t flown in a Pilatus before.

Donna in the doorway exiting the Pilatus PC12

In the photo above you can see Donna in the doorway exiting the aircraft and get a sense of scale for the small airplane.

Sunday evening we went to J Fargo’s Family Dining and Micro-Brewery on Main Street. We had dinner and a couple of brews and discussed our future plans. The water leak situation is only a minor leak, but fixing it is problematic. Our friend and fellow Alpine Coach owner Lynda Campbell told me she found an access panel in the back of the cabinet in the kitchen behind the shower wall.

I hadn’t seen this panel because it’s behind a wire rack where we store canned goods. I emptied the cabinet and removed four screws and pulled the panel out. This wasn’t going to help much. First of all, the guys that built this coach covered half of the access point with lauan plywood. This could be cut away without too much trouble, but there were still two concerns. It wouldn’t access the shower valve if that’s where the leak is. If the leak is at the shower head, I would need arms about a foot longer than I have to reach through the cabinet to fix it.

The leak is really small, but over time it will create water damage. Water damage is an RVer’s worst fear. We’ve been minimizing the leakage by only using the onboard water supply and turning on the water pump as needed. When we turn the pump off, we leave a tap open to relieve the water pressure and stop any subsequent leakage. This had been a tedious process and uses a lot more water than we normally use.

We need to get the coach into a shop where they can create a better way to access the shower plumbing. If we continued on to New Mexico as planned, we could probably find a competent shop. But we would need to have an open-ended stay at a motel while the work was being done and would have to bring Ozark into a motel room. Been there, done that and it wasn’t good.

We decided to leave Cortez a week ahead of schedule and go back to Mesa, Arizona. Here we have our own home and I can research repair shops to see who would be the best fit for this work.

At that point we agreed that moving forward, once repaired, we would sell the motorhome. Donna always said we would know when our time on the road was done. We’re done. Our future travel plans will probably involve B&B stays around the country in the summer months and we’ll stay in our park model home at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort the rest of the year.

When I started this blog nine years ago, the stated purpose was to keep my family and friends informed of our whereabouts and our activities. With the RV lifestyle in the rearview mirror, this may be the last installment of this blog.

Making It a Keeper

I got busy last Friday. As I mentioned in my last post, Gleeson Mechanical was scheduled to replace our air conditioner/electric heater with a Day and Night heat pump. Things started off slowly as they didn’t show until nearly 10am, then they had to return to the shop because they forgot some necessary item. They didn’t really get started until nearly 11am.

The two guys they sent out were efficient and the installation was completed by 2:30pm. They did a good job and hauled the old unit, including all of the underfloor ducting away. We have a new heat pump, new ducting, new return box and a new thermostat. It works really well. The only gripe I have is this – I told them to be aware of the property line. Our lot is narrow – all of the Viewpoint lots are narrow. They placed the unit carefully, but they ran the evaporator drain line over the property line, creating a trip hazard for my neighbor when they walk the path to their back deck.

New A/C and condensation drain line on our neighbor’s walkway

Our neighbors, Steve and Deena said they weren’t concerned about the drain line.

Meanwhile I received a delivery. A few weeks ago, I ordered a set of hand wound pickups for my Stratocaster guitar from Adam Asmus (Tone Hatch Pickups). His site showed a two-week wait for the pickups to be wound and he shipped them exactly two weeks later from Norfolk, Nebraska. However, it took the USPS a week to get them past Omaha, Nebraska.

I went to work on it right away. I removed the pickguard and old pickups, then installed the new ones and soldered it all together.

Pickguard with original machine wound pickups
Tone Hatch pickups hand wound by Adam Asmus

I’m still tweaking the pickup heights, but these are very smooth sounding pickups with what I can only describe as a richer tone. I thought I would lose some output with these, but I don’t really notice a change in volume.

If you know me or have followed this blog, you know I like to build and play vacuum tube guitar amplifiers. The warm tone of vintage-type guitar amplifiers and the feel when you drive them hard can’t be duplicated in my opinion. Recently I started looking at vacuum tube stereo amplification.

Stereo amplification is much different than instrument amplification. In a guitar amplifier, a certain amount of distortion is desirable – you want the ability to increase the sound level of the guitar and create everything from a clean sound to an over-driven distorted, fat tone.

In stereo hifi amplification, you’re aiming for a transparent gain in sound levels while faithfully reproducing the original tones. I became intrigued by the idea of low-power, single-ended, class A amplification. I learned a lot from Steve Deckert’s website for his Decware amplifiers. I would love to have one of his Decware Zen Triode amps, but the cost of an entry-level Decware is about $1,000 and there’s a long waiting list to buy one – it could take eight months or more before I could have one built. He hand builds everything. This is only a 2.3 watt amplifier. If you wonder how 2.3 watts could drive a speaker, check out his website.

I did some looking around and found affordable alternatives made in China. These obviously don’t have the same build quality, but there are people who have documented the shortcomings and how to fix them and come up with a reasonably good sounding amplifier. After researching a bit, I decided to try an amp made in China by Douk Audio and sold in the US under the brand name, Nobsound.

There are two reasons I decided to try this amp – first, it’s affordable at $315 on Amazon. Then, most of the issues on this amp are documented and fixes are easy. It’s a hand-wired, point-to-point (PTP) chassis that’s easy to modify. I figured this would get me in the door of stereo hifi amplification without breaking the bank.

Nobsound 6P1 integrated stereo amp – photo from Amazon listing

They list this amp as a 6.8 watt amplifier, but I think that’s wishful thinking. It may be able to generate 6.8 watts of power, but the distortion level would be unbearable way before you got there. It’s really a 2 or 3 watt usable power amp.

Amazon delivered the amp on Friday and also delivered another product I needed for this amp. Douk Audio made a few questionable choices in components for this amp. Many of the early adopters of this amplifier complained of tubes burning out and if the rectifier tube burned out, they didn’t know how to diagnose and replace it – they just wrote it off as a cheap Chinese throwaway amplifier.

There are a couple of reasons this happened. First of all, Douk Audio sends these amps to North America for Nobsound with the same power transformer used in China. The thing is, China household voltage is nominally 110 volts. In North America 120 volts is the norm and it’s not unusual to see 122 or 124 volts at the wall outlet. The power transformer at 120 to 124 volts was supplying higher than specified voltages throughout the amplifier, killing vacuum tubes.

To counter this, I ordered an APC Line-R 1200-watt regulated power supply. It has three settings for the output voltages and can handle up to four devices connected to the output totaling 1200 watts. One of the settings is 110 volts. I measured an actual 108 volts with the 110 preset on mine. This should be fine. This unit costs about $60, so now I’m $375 into the project.

Power regulator

I connected the amplifier through the APC unit and connected my Celestion Bookshelf 8-ohm speakers. These aren’t the highest efficiency speakers and I hoped I would get enough volume out of them. Speaker efficiency is rated with a specification called sensitivity. A one watt, 1kHz signal is applied and the sound pressure level (SPL) is measured one meter from the center of the speaker. My speakers are rated at 89db – the minimum sensitivity recommended by Steve Deckert for low-watt use.

I was surprised! The amp sounded decent and had no problem driving the speakers. But, there was more to do. The vacuum tubes supplied with the amp were mostly good quality Russian military grade surplus tubes. This included the rectifier tube – I think Douk Audio figured they could address the rectifier failures by upgrading to the Russian tube instead of the cheap Chinese tube originally used and I hear is still in use in the China market. This would get them past the warranty period.

The power tubes are very cheap Chinese tubes. The Chinese tube is designated 6P1 and is a copy of the Russian 6P1P (6П1П in cyrillic). The tubes supplied with the amp are poorly made with a dirt-like contaminate visible inside the glass tube envelope. It’s like looking through a very dirty window. I tried scrubbing the glass with steel wool to see if it was on the outside – it’s the inside of the tube! I ordered two matched pairs of 6P1P – EV (6П1П-EB in cyrillic). Although this is a single-ended tetrode amp, it’s unusual in that two tubes are wired in parallel for the output of each channel – thus the need for matched pairs. This cost $60, so now I’m $435 into it.

Russian military grade 6P1P tube

I bought these tubes from an outfit called Riverstone in California. They are new old stock Russian military surplus made in 1985 and 1987 at the Svetlana factory in Saint Petersburg, Russia. This plant was built by RCA in 1937. The EV or EB suffix indicates an extended-life, ruggedized tube and these have the OTK quality control codes.

Cheap, contaminated Chinese tube on the left, NOS Svetlana tube on the right

No major tube manufacturer makes these tubes anymore, just a couple of small Chinese companies do. Luckily, there are large stockpiles of the NOS Russian high quality tubes still available. The change in output tubes made a huge difference in sound quality. The frequency range was extended, reproducing higher highs and lower lows, the difference was dramatic.

But wait, there’s more. Douk Audio has another design flaw. In the power supply, they used two 150uF electrolytic capacitors – one after the rectifier tube and one following the choke. For the rectifier tube, this is bad news. I’m guessing they did this to simplify inventory and cut costs by stocking a boatload of capacitors of the same value. The thing is that larger, higher capacitance filter capacitors to smooth ripple in DC current can be a good thing. But, there is a limit and too much isn’t necessarily better. The rectifier tube is a Russian 5U4C tube which is equivalent to the RCA 5Z4. RCA’s datasheet specifies no more than 40uF – the Brimar datasheet for this tube is more conservative and specifies 33uF maximum. Well, 150uF is too much and places undue stress on the rectifier tube.

So, I ordered a Vishay Beyschlag 22uF 450 volt electrolytic capacitor made in Austria from Digi-key to replace the 150uF Chinese one. I also ordered four high-quality Solen 0.22uF (220nF) 650 volt capacitors made in France to replace the no-name brand Chinese coupling capacitors. With tax and shipping, it was another $30 – making this project cost a total of $465.

Weird colorshift in this photo – this is the original circuit and the power transformer is clearly marked 110V
Correct color temperature – new capacitors installed – 22uF filter cap is the blue one on the center/right – coupling caps are the black ones

The wiring and solder connections inside the amp are tidy and impressive. I expected to reflow bad solder joints, but I didn’t find any bad ones. The cap replacements took me a lot longer than I anticipated. I told Donna this was because, in my usual fashion, I spend extra time looking for a part or tool I had in my hand a few minutes before. This can add 10-15 minutes to the job. Then I spend time looking for a small fastener or item I dropped and spend another five or 10 minutes on my hands and knees looking for it.

At the end of the day, I have a very delightful little single-ended class A vaccum tube amp for under $500. Can’t beat that! Last night I was listening to an acoustic guitar piece by Ronnie Earl and the sound reproduction was so clear, I realized I could hear his fingers sliding along the strings on chord changes! It was like he was sitting in front of me playing his guitar. Now that I know this amp is a keeper, I’ve ordered back-up vacuum tubes to have on hand, although these Russian military grade tubes should be long-life items.

Tubes and VU meters on the Nobsound glowing in the dark

On Sunday, our friend Sini flew in from San Diego. Donna picked her up at the airport and they had fun plans for the next few days. They made it into a girls retreat by renting a room at the Westgate Painted Mountain Resort and planned hiking and horseback riding activities. Last night, we all went to Baja Joe’s for a Mexican seafood dinner – Sini’s treat. Thanks, Sini!

Dinner at Baja Joe’s

Donna took Sini back to the airport this morning. I’ll add some photos of the hike and horseback ride in my next post as this is getting too long already.

Speaking of seafood – as I stated above, Friday was a busy day, but Donna topped it off with a dinner of walnut crusted tilapia with broccoli on the side.

Walnut crusted tilapia

The weather has remained pleasant with daily highs around 70 degrees and overnight lows in the upper 40s to 50 degrees. The mornings have had some high clouds that burn off before noon, but yesterday, we had some sprinkles of rain. It wasn’t much – I was on the pickleball court giving my coaching clinic and we managed to play through the short, light shower. The week ahead doesn’t show any significant changes.

*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

Cool Foam Roof

We finished October with a few days in the low 90s here in Mesa, Arizona. It cooled down a bit on Sunday with a high of 88 and today we expect a high of 82 degrees. The golf course is open and golfers have come out in force. We’ve had a few golf balls strike our roof.

Yesterday, while Donna and I were walking to the pickleball courts, we saw an unusual cactus in a neighbor’s yard that’s bearing fruit. I think it’s a variety of senita cactus called totem pole. It’s not native to the Arizona desert, but it’s often planted as a landscape feature. It does well here, but is originally found in the Baja California peninsula. It’s not frost tolerant.

Cactus bearing fruit

Some cactus fruit is edible and there are many recipes for prickly pear fruit – it’s commonly harvested. Others, such as saguaro, are edible but cannot be picked in the desert, only from cultivated plants. Cholla fruit is also edible, but you’d have to be pretty brave to pick it – I won’t go near a cholla.

We’re having our roof coated with Cool Foam today. Bill Hansen, the owner of Sun Limited Foam is here with a helper. They’ll put a foam coating over the shingle roof of our park model home and the Arizona room metal roof and they’ll lay down OSB over the corrugated metal roof on the shop/shed/ham shack and foam it. The foam dries instantly and is then coated with a reflective white elastomer coating.

The total thickness of the coating is about one inch. It will reflect heat from the sun and provide an additional insulation barrier against heat and cold. It also effectively seals the roof against water intrusion. It isn’t cheap, but I think it’s a worthwhile investment in our home.

I skipped pickleball this morning to go over the job with Bill and be available as they started work. At noon, I’ll head over to the pickleball courts to give my first lesson of the season. I’m accepting four participants at a time for a 90-minute coaching session which entails about 20 minutes of oral presentation clarifying rules that are often misinterpreted and common strategies and then we drill on a few shots before scrimmaging games where we critique each point played. It’s fun and this format was well-received last year. It also helps my game as coaching this stuff reinforces in my mind the things I should be doing on the court.

I’ve been playing my Dumble-style OSD guitar amp daily. I had an issue at first that took me a couple of days to figure out. Many guitar amplifiers have a circuit called negative feedback and a potentiometer to control it. This potentiometer is usually labeled “Presence”. It boosts high frequencies and colors the sound. Regular tone controls usually labeled bass – middle – treble, cut unwanted frequencies to shape the tone. They are subtractive, they can’t add, they only cut frequencies. Presence on the other hand adds to the original high frequencies.

In a push-pull amplifier with two or four power tubes, one half amplifies the upper part of the sine wave (positive voltage) and the other amplifies the lower part of the sine wave (negative voltage). For the feedback circuit to work, you have to apply only the negative signal. If you have positive feedback, bad sounds usually result. I had a unique problem. My bass response went all wonky only when I played the fifth fret of the sixth string ( “A” note on the low E string). It turned out I had positive feedback, not negative. I had a hard time figuring this out because I never heard of positive feedback making bad things happen on one note only – usually guys complain of squealing or horrible sounds all the time. Anyway, it’s straightened out now and I love the amp.

With Donna back from her trip to Florida, I’m back to fine dining. She made a new pork tenderloin dish called best baked pork tenderloin which is seasoned with Italian seasoning and served it with shredded Brussel sprouts – another first. We loved it.

Italian seasoned pork tenderloin with shredded Brussel sprouts

Last week I needed to retrieve some stuff from our coach at 202 RV Valet. They have great security there, but we have 24/7 access through a coded entry gate. It records the unique code used whenever anyone enters, so they have records of who came in and when. Many of the enclosed spaces hold high-end boats and a few are in the covered spaces where we keep our coach. I noticed a guy was visiting his boat and snapped a photo of his ride. He parked his Ferrari next to his boat.

Ferrari and Centurion wake boarding boat

We’re expecting another week of fine weather with highs in the low 80s and overnight lows in the mid 50s. The last half of the month should be cooler with daily temperatures in the 70s and overnight lows dipping into the 40s. No complaints here.

*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!