Our RV Adventures

After getting some coffee in me this morning, I got to work on fixing my satellite problem. Yesterday when I got everything set up, I found I only had one tuner active. My first thought was maybe this was the original problem with my ‘found’ Winegard Satellite Dome, and was the reason it was discarded.

But a quick swap of the cables at the dish told me it was a cable problem, since the problem followed the cable. So now I went along, checking each connector for bent center pins, etc., but finding no obvious problems.

Deciding to put aside further troubleshooting until later, and just get things working again. So I got out my 60 foot extension cables and ran them directly from the dish, in through the driver’s window, and to the receiver. And that got everything working again. I’ll ring out the cables a little later and figure out what’s wrong.

Well, our power problems are back once again, and now I think I’ve finally got a handle on what’s causing them. And the culprit is . . .

Low voltage.

To recap, every time we park in this inner ‘A’ circle, we have problems with the power popping off in the afternoons, especially when Jan is cooking, and running both the microwave and the toaster oven. But the problem only occurs in this area. Not at any other park, not in areas ‘C’ and ‘D’ here, not even right across the road (it’s on a different circuit).

But this afternoon when the power popped off, nothing extra was running, just the TV, computer, and both AC’s. In the past it took something like starting the microwave while all this was also running.

But Serendipity revealed what was going on this time. As the power went off, I was walking toward the front of the coach and looking right at the voltmeter located over the driver’s seat. This shows the rig AC voltage, whether from shore power or the genset.

Normally this meter is kind of blocked by the satellite cables running to the back of the receiver, but since I had temporarily moved the wires around this morning, I could see the meter as the power came back on.

Now my Progressive EMS (Electrical Management System) will drop out at 108 volts to protect things like AC compressors from damage from low voltage. Most other things in the rig would not be adversely affected.

So I turned the AC’s off and then going outside I flicked the switch that put my EMS in bypass mode, which meant that it was no longer monitoring the voltage.

A little bit later I saw this.

As the afternoon wore on, the voltage gradually started to rise, ending up about 113 volts by sundown. And at 1 am it now shows this.

The only kind of weird thing about this my Progressive EMS normally shows when it drops out due to a problem, and it did this time. But when I checked it after the first occurrence a month or so ago, it didn’t show an error, so I never checked it again. And that kind of confused things as I looked at the problem.

Tomorrow I’ll take my photos down to the office and get them on the problem.

Thought for the Day:

I’ve finally decide that there’s nothing wrong with me. It’s the world that has issues.

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I was up about 6:30, with Jan following about 7 to get ready to roll this morning. We didn’t have breakfast or coffee because we planned on grabbing something at the Flying J.

We hoped to pull out by 8:30, but beat that by 15 minutes, and were out on I-45 by a little after 8:30. And about 30 minutes later we were pulling into the RV lanes at the Flying J on I-45. And although it was faster than last time, it still wasn’t exactly speedy.

Last time, the first pump I used was flowing about a gallon every 30 seconds, so it would take about an hour for 120 gallons. This time it was twice as fast, at 4 gallons a minute, but still that’s slow. I’ve often seen pumps flowing a gallon every 4 or 5 seconds. Here’s what happened that time.

https://ourrvadventures.com/2016/01/rv-checklists/

Normally this is a clogged filter on the pump, so I told them about it while I was inside getting our coffee, as well as a couple of very tasty Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Biscuits.

We were back on the road a little before 10 for our trip down to Brandi’s in Katy. After taking the Beltway around, rather go out I-10 and take the winding FM 1463 to Brandi’s, we went straight across I-10 and down to the Westpark Tollway and took that out to the Shell station at the corner of 1093 and 1463 where we were going to park for the afternoon.

We got there a little before 11, and as I was leaving the rig, Brandi and Landon pulled up next to us. I told her that was perfect timing, since I had planned to call and have them pick us up.

She said she was on her way back from the grocery story and just happened to see us pull in. But even more coincidental, as I was walking over to the convenience store to ask permission to park for a few hours, we saw Chris, Linda and Piper there picking up something for our dinner.

Getting to Brandi’s we had a great meal and an even better family get-together.

Chris got a Cheeseburger Ice Cream Birthday Cake with Star Wars characters on it.

And of course, here’s the obligatory family portrait.

Is that a great looking family, or what?

We were back on the road by a little before 3pm, head for the Colorado River Thousand Trails about an hour away. Coming down from Brandi’s we’d just been running the fans, since as forecast, the weather was very overcast and about 75 degrees. And it was supposed to be the same this afternoon.

But as we got back to the rig, the sun was coming out and temps were rising. So we turned off the fans, closed the windows, and cranked up the generator to run the AC’s.

The generator was being a little cantankerous, however, at least at the start. The first time it ran for about 5 minutes and quit. The second time it ran about 10 minutes and shut down. But the third time it ran all the rest of the way. I’ll have to check the generator error codes to see if it shows anything.

We were checked in and set up at Colorado River by a little after 4pm, after a busy, fun day.

Thought for the Day:

If you can never remember your password, just change it to ‘Incorrect’. That way if you forget it, the system will remind you.

“Your Password is Incorrect”

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