Our RV Adventures

Turns out our Drill Rig has feet.

And it just walks from hole to hole.

The last drill rig gate with multiple holes we worked was back in July-August of 2012, our very first year gate guarding, We were following a Marathon-H&P rig for most of the 4 months while we were down in south Texas, and our very last site was a two-holer,

But when they got ready to move to the next hole, about 25 feet away, it was a 2-3 day process. And we got those days off.

With pay.

Just as with rigging up and rigging down, we don’t do any logging with the moving either.

As far as the procedure, like here the rig was built up on large flat metal plates, and when they got ready to move the rig, they first oiled up the plates to make them slippery. Then they brought in two big 100 ton cranes and positioned them side by side in the direction they wanted to move the rig.

Then, with the cranes pulling, they slowly moved the rig over the new hole, steering the 100+ ton rig by the cranes tugging more on one side than the other.

But on this Nabors rig, there are hydraulic pistons in the 4 pillars that support the rig and they just walk it into place, steering it with a joystick, I’ve seen photos of walking rigs online, but they all had their ‘feet out to the sides of the rig and you could see them walking. But with this rig, it’s all internal.

What I’m not clear on is how the rig actually moves. And nobody I’ve asked seems to know. I mean, the pistons lift the rig, but what propels it in any certain direction. I can think of several ways, but I’ll find out for sure and let you know.

Anyway, with this setup they can move the rig in just a few hours.

And we don’t get any time off.

I mentioned before about the sucky Verizon Internet here, but it turns out it’s only 3G part that’s sucky. 4G is fine, with 8-10 Mbps down, and around 1Mbps up.

I noticed that when I did something datawise on my Galaxy S5 phone, it moved right along. But anything through our Verizon AirCard (circa 2007) pretty much ground to a halt.

The reason I’m still using a 9 year old 3G AirCard is that it’s grandfathered in with unlimited data. With all the Internet stuff I do, I use 25 to 30 GB a month. And that’s not streaming any movies, or the like.

And if I upgrade to a 4G MiFi, I lose my unlimited data. I keep hearing about people getting special upgrade deals at RV shows or other places, but they never seem to apply to me. But I’ll keep looking.

I mentioned last night about the loss of Guide data that I was getting on my DirecTV system, and how I was going to swap out my new ‘dumpster diving acquired’ Winegard dome with my old original one that I’ve had since 2010.

I figured that the problem was either with my DirecTV HD receiver, or something on their end not sending the guide data, but I was going to swap out my dome and then my cables to eliminate them before I called DirecTV.

But I may have been wrong.

When I changed out domes early this morning the problem went away, and has stayed away for almost 24 hours. I’ll wait another day or so and then swap them back. And if the problem reappears I’ll know for sure.

And if the dome IS the problem, I’m even more confused about what’s happening. The data stream coming down from the satellite is just 1’s and 0’s, with the guide info riding on a subcarrier along with the video information, If the receiver gets the video, it should get the guide data also. And the satellite dome shouldn’t be able to strip it out. It just doesn’t work that way.

And the other thing is that the guide data loss is intermittent, with the problem coming and going, because it does get data sometimes, otherwise it wouldn’t work at all.

Of course, in the back of my mind, there’s always the thought that this problem was why the dome ended up being dumpster-dumped in the first place. But then why did it work fine for several months before the problem reappeared.

Just another question to keep me wondering.

Today was Blue Moon BBQ day, our first visit, and it won’t be our last. And even better, it’s only about a quarter mile back up the road.

Jan got their Stuffed Potato, filled with chopped brisket, sauce, and covered in cheese.

She said it was really good and she’ll have it again next time.

I went with a combo of their Cowboy Cornbread and the Bean Pot beans.

The Cowboy Cornbread has chopped brisket, tomatoes, chilies, and onions mixed into the batter, and then it’s all baked in a cast iron skillet, and then covered in cheese. And what you end up with is almost more fixin’s than you do cornbread.

And it’s delicious.

The Bean Pot is about half and half beans and brisket, mixed with their BBQ sauce and then covered in cheese. I’m sensing a theme here.

I really like their BBQ sauce, very tasty and it’s very hot. Even hotter than Famous Dave’s Devil Spit, or Rudy’s Hot Sauce.

We’ll be going back very soon, in fact probably this Saturday. Because Saturday is the only day that they have Hotshots. Hotshots are large fresh jalapenos, stuffed with 3 cheeses and chopped brisket, then wrapped in bacon and cooked on the pit.

Really looking forward to Saturday now.

There’s always one more idiot than you counted on.

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I’d been trying to figure out how to have packages delivered to us here at the rig. First I checked to see if Amazon had a locker available in the Bryan/College Station area, but they didn’t.

Amazon Lockers are facilities around the country, kind of like those private mailbox places, that Amazon has set up so you can have packages delivered there to pick up. But no luck with that.

So my next idea was to call the Hearne, TX Post Office to see if we have an actual address here. And it turns out we do, and I didn’t need to call the PO after all.

Tony, our landowner, came by a few minutes ago and I flagged him down to ask if this road has an address. The road to his house goes straight, while our pad is a left turn about 75 feet off the highway, In fact you can easily see both our rig and the drill rig from the road.

He gave me the address, and said he gets UPS and Fedex packages all the time, and that there shouldn’t be any problem with USPS stuff either,

Life is Good!

I don’t know if I mentioned it earlier, but we’ve been having a lot of problems with our DirecTV satellite feed. We get regular messages on the screen saying that we have not received any guide information in 1, 5, or 10 hours.

And the guide information tells your receiver what channels you are supposed to be getting. So if you don’t get any guide info for a long enough period, you suddenly have NO channels available.

We had seen this problem occasionally before, but now it’s getting to be much more frequent, and much more annoying. I suspect it’s my HD receiver, because twice in the last week, I’ve looked up to see it rebooting all on its own. I’ve sometimes seen this happen before, with they send down a software update for the receiver, but never this often.

But before I call DirecTV I want to eliminate everything else on my end. So tonight I’m swapping out my new Winegard Satellite Dome with my old one. Regular blog readers will remember that several months ago while we were staying at the Lake Conroe Thousand Trails, I found a Winegard Dome sitting on the ground by  the dumpster as we were throwing away our trash. So I quickly scooped it up, thinking maybe I could possible use it for parts if I had a problem with mine.

As usual, Jan just rolled her eyes, thinking he’s dumpster diving again. I told her it wasn’t really ‘diving’ since I didn’t have to crawl in the dumpster to get it.

Well, since it didn’t have a power cord with it, I used mine to power it up and check it out. And, amazingly it worked fine. So rather than swap it back, I just left it working and stowed away my old one. So I’ll change out the domes and see if it makes any difference.

If I then still have the problem, next I’ll swap out the cables from the dome to the receiver. At that point, if I still have the problem, I’ll know it’s the receiver, and then I’ll call DirecTV.

I find it best to not give them too many choices of things that can be wrong.

There’s also a possibility that this is a problem on their end, not sending me the correct data, so I’ll ask about that too. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Friend and blog reader Carol Burt had a couple of questions about yesterday’s gate guarding blog that I’ll answer here for everyone.

Can that rolling septic tank back flow like normal sewers can without backflow protection? I see a hose going in at the top, which kinda’ makes sense….but still, I wonder could it back flow through your black tank and up into your house?

Carol, if you follow that green hose from the top of the big tank, it leads to a smaller green tank. That tank is what we connect to with a standard RV sewer hose connection.

Inside that small tank is a FloJet Macerator, operated by a float valve, that pumps the sewage up into the big tank, and then turns off. So the macerator itself acts as a backflow preventer, with the sewage not able to flow back through the pump.

Is the Ginny (generator)  loud? Seems awfully close to y’all?

It is a little closer than usual, due to the confines of our wooden pad, but with the TV on, you can’t hear it. And back in the bedroom, you can just barely hear it, but since we use a White Noise Generator when we’re sleeping, we can’t hear it at all.

We’ve pretty much settled down into the routine now. In fact both today and yesterday we had the same number of vehicles, 78. So not bad at all.

Tomorrow it’s Blue Moon BBQ for lunch. YUMM!

Thought for the Day:

The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

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