Going Solar

  In September we were living off the grid most days. We were campground hosts at a campground with no hookups. We had to use solar for our power. Below are the solar powered things we used.

When I say we were off the grid, I mean we were really off the grid. The campsite was just a place to park the RV with a tent pad and a fire ring. No power, no cell service, the Park Service gave us a walkie-talkie, but even that was hit or miss on whether or not you'd get a signal. There was water available, but it was on the other end of the campground. There was a water fountain with a spigot on the side that you could fill a container, no hose hookup. 

The Park Service gave us the solar powered radio (weather radio) and the solar generator to use. Mostly we used the generator to charge our phones and power our TV. When we were where we had cell service we'd download shows to our phones and then stream them to the TV to watch in the evenings.

 The campsite was surrounded by trees so I spent a lot of time chasing sunlight to charge the solar generator. The light and radio I just put next to the window to charge. I tried moving the solar panels on the roof around, but gave up on trying to find a good position for sunlight.

The closest place to get a cell signal was the Au Sable Lighthouse a mile and a half hike down the trail. Otherwise it was 5-6 miles down the road towards town. One day we took a drive to the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point and Nancy's phone kept alternating between "Welcome to Canada and Welcome to US". Whitefish Point is close enough to Canada that you can see it across the lake.

Solar powered light 

Solar powered radio 

Solar generator 

Solar panels on roof 

     
                      I started this post while we were still camping, but had trouble getting the photos from my phone to blogger. Recently I finally was able to do a work-around and got the photos on the post.                                              

I Got a Warning Label on a Post from 9 Years Ago

 While checking my email today I got a message from blogger that one of my posts now had a warning label. I found the offending post and looked at the video. I couldn't figure out why it got put behind a warning label. If you're interested check out the link.

http://mannikko.blogspot.com/2014/01/christies-top-five-excuses.html?m=0&zx=2c1916b975a5bc88

It's Done

 Got the truck put back together today. Temp in the low teens with a Northwest wind blowing snow around.

Ran into several problems while working on the truck. Got everything put back together and put the wheel on and discovered the new lugs were coarse threads and the old lug nuts were fine threads. Luckily I have a wrecked 2001 F150 and it had coarse thread lug nuts so I was able to get 8 lug nuts to put the wheel on. Just have to remember that 1 wheel has different lug nuts. Then when I lowered the jack I couldn't get it out. The ground must have started to heave with the cold weather.

Everything is fine now, maybe tomorrow I'll take it for a test drive.

Working on Old Vehicles is Fun

Old Bearing Assembly Removed 

Broken Stud Removal Tool 

The truck has had noise at highway speeds that led me to think it had a bad wheel bearing. Recently I checked the front brakes because I'd had to replace the rear brakes and thought I'd better check the front ones. While the wheel was off I tried moving the hub. I could move it up and down and side to side. Yesterday the weather was barely above freezing so I started working on the truck. Got the assembly removed and 1 of the studs that attach it to the front end. Today I tried removing the rest of the studs. Had trouble holding the assembly while trying to remove the studs. When I was able to hold it and using my longest breaker bar I broke the stud removal tool. Tomorrow I'll see if I can buy new studs. 
 

Naming Stuff

Our RVs have names and how they get names is different for each one. The motorhome was The Guppy, the travel trailer was The Bobber, and now the 5th wheel is Magee. 

My older brother had a class A motorhome and The Old Lady said it was a leviathan, so when we got a class C she said it's smaller so it's The Guppy.

When we brought the travel trailer home it was bob, bobbing along so it became The Bobber.

When we got the 5th wheel it was the new one (new to us) or the newbie as in Tim Magee on NCIS ( he was the newbie for 5-6 or more seasons). The Old Lady started calling it Tim, finally I said if we going to name it according to a character on NCIS, we should call it Magee as that is what he is called most of the time.

Magee 

The Bobber

This post was done entirely on my phone. Trying to learn how to do the things I've been using my confuser for.

Twitter-Bots are Fucking Ignorant

 Last month I did a tweet that got me locked out. After almost a month without being able to contact a human, I gave in and deleted the tweet to unlock my account.

The tweet that got me locked out was:

@thegoodgodabove It's not that politicians love guns, they love the money they get from the NRA and ammosexuals. They are just whores who do it for the money, cheap whores at that!

I immediately did another tweet with a couple of minor changes.

Ray Männikkö

@YooperKulkuri

·

Aug 3

It's not that politicians love guns, they love the money they get from the NRA and Ammo-sexuals. They are whores that do it for the money, cheap whores at that!

Can you boys and girls see what is different?

No Humans At Twitter

 

Post I did on Facebook after my Twitter account got locked out.

Been trying for over a week to get Twitter to tell me what about this tweet is against their rules. I guess there are no humans at Twitter, just bots. As near as I can tell the bot can't tell the difference between Ammosexual and Homosexual. I have appealed and been denied. I have responded to the email denying my appeal to no avail. Have yet to receive any response to my question of what exactly is against their rules about my tweet. 

Was about to add my phone number to get a code to get back into my account, but this morning saw a post about Twitter being down, something about maybe Elon Musk and Jewish Space Lasers knocking it out?

Hopefully This Experiment Will Work Out Better

Two years ago I tried an AT&T plan with unlimited data, talk, and text. That didn't work out like I would have hoped. When AT&T didn't work out (couldn't figure out how to connect the phone to my confuser and/or TV without doing a hotspot) I went back to TracFone. For me TracFone works OK, but The Old Lady kept running out of minutes.

http://mannikko.blogspot.com/2020/11/well-that-experiment-didnt-go-as.html 

 Kept seeing ads for T-Mobile's geezer plan (2 lines, unlimited data, talk, and text for $70 a month), but there isn't a store within 200 miles. Did my research and figured out T-Mobile has coverage where we live, so when we were in Hot Springs in April I signed us up. It is actually about $80 a month as my phone is $4 something a month for 24 months and T-Mobile pays half the Netflix bill and I pay the other half. We've been home for a couple months and the phones have been working fine. Had a couple of outages, but so did Verizon last week.

The reason I gave up on AT&T was not being able to connect the phone to my confuser and/or TV. I spent the last couple months trying to figure out how to connect my new phone to the confuser and/or TV and all the apps required WiFi and an internet connection. I'm trying to get rid of the DSL for internet because it sucks. We experience "rain fade", whenever there is rain or melting snow or a kid walks by the phone box with a juicebox, we have problems with the internet. Then a week or so ago we had a thunderstorm so we unplugged the phone line so the modem wouldn't get fried. She used her old TracFone phone to mirror to the Firestick a show that was downloaded to the phone. The phone had a built-in app for mirroring. Decided to check my phone and discovered it had the same app built-in.

The phone already had apps for Prime and Netflix. I installed Kodi and an add-on just like on the Firestick to watch the shows we like that aren't on Prime or Netflix. Now all I have to do is figure out how to livestream NASCAR and football in the fall.

The phone I have, a Samsung A53 5G.

Nice Day To Work On The Plowtruck

 The temp got above freezing if you call 32.9F above freezing. Sun was shining and I was able to work bare handed. 

A step I built several years ago to overcome
an eye problem, they are too close to the ground.

When I opened the hood on the plowtruck I discovered a problem that I hadn't noticed before. The vacuum line going to the power brake booster looked like it was dry rotted or cracked.

When I pushed the line back, this is what it looked like.

The first thing I had to do was replace the vacuum line. It had been running a little erratically lately and this may be the reason why. I happened to have a hose that would slip on the the fittings. It was labeled as transmission coolant line, but I figure it'll work as a vacuum hose, it shouldn't collapse.

New distributor cap and new sparkplug wires.

  

After getting the new cap on and the wires in place I fired it up. I could tell right away the I had some wires crossed. Dug out the repair manual, looked up the firing order and checked the wire locations. I did have some in the wrong place even tho I tried to be careful replacing one wire at a time. Would look at the old cap when I pulled a wire off and put the new one on the new cap in the same place. Anywho, it is running good now, which is a good thing because they are predicting snow for tomorrow.