APRIL 11 - APRIL 27: Little House Service Work

Little House has been stationary for the last couple of weeks. We arrived at the Cruising America RV Service Company in Celina, OH on Wednesday, April 11 with several issues to be addressed. Kevin Mallory, the owner, is a former American Coach engineer and his shop is our preferred repair facility. Unfortunately, he doesn't do chassis or motor work.  While 16 days is a long time to stay for repairs, we had the time to spare in our schedule, and Kevin was able to work on our problems as his busy schedule permitted.



Our problems and repairs included:

Washer/dryer combo unit not drying due to restricted air flow inside the cabinet.  The unit was pulled out of it's cabinet, lint blockage was removed and unit was reinstalled.

Front roof A/c unit has had a tendency to freeze up.  The fan evaporator fan was suspect but inspection did not find any problem so the condenser coils were cleaned in both rooftop units with no other problems found.

For several months now the DC input breaker on our inverter as been occasionally tripping even though there was no heavy load on the inverter.  The input breaker was found to be weak and a new 30 amp breaker was installed.

Recently we have been getting faulty electrical system readouts on our AC PCS (Power Control System).  The PCS is designed to manage the electrical loads by shutting off loads when needed to prevent overloading the incoming power provided by the campground.   Our PCS was showing 70 amps current draw even when we were actually drawing less than 20 amps.  This causes the PCS to start shutting circuits off in an attempt to lessen the load.- doing exactly what  it is designed to do.  The only impact to us was that it caused refrigerator to run on our propane instead of the electricity provided by campgrounds.  The problem was traced to a faulty PCS control board that monitors current on the back of  our breaker box.  The circuit control board was replaced and now all is well..

During our stay, we had a 50 amp electrical hookup, and we made a visit to the dump station at the nearby Mercer County Fairgrounds to empty our tanks. The weather has been abnormally cold here for springtime, very windy, and twice we had snow and sleet falling.   Tomorrow, we're pulling up the jacks and heading to Goshen, IN.  We'll be there for almost two weeks preparing for, and attending, an RV rally. Maybe spring will finally come to stay!

MARCH 26 - APRIL 11: Friends, Hamfest, and Travel

After settling in at the NC State Fairgrounds campground on Sunday, March 25, we thought we'd have a few days to just take it easy before the busy weekend ahead.  But the week was full of meetings, both business and with friends. Hank spent half of Thursday at the hamfest site as the venue was set up for the hamfest. Friday we were both busy with preparations topped off by a dinner for the vendors. RARSFEST took place on Saturday so our day was spent helping where we could.



There was space for vendors and space for the "flea market" in the 90,000 square foot Jim Graham Building.





This was followed by a celebratory dinner at Outback with some of the hamfest committee.



Easter Sunday was a quiet, peaceful day for us.

Monday, April 2 we drove to Cummins Coach Care Center in Greensboro, NC to have an engine code read. A yellow "check engine"  light has come on twice over the last several months, but all dashboard engine readouts are normal.  No code was found to be read and we were advised to just continue on our travels.

April 2 - April 4: We had some relaxation time at the Mayberry Campground in Mt. Airy, NC. Our Maryland friends, Debbie and Tom were parked next to us. It was great having the time to get reaquainted with them. We had originally planned on leaving on April 3, but high wind warnings in the Virgina mountains ahead of us made us decide to stay put for another day. Wednesday, we had a black tank valve replaced at Tar Heels Mobile RV Service in nearby Pilot Mountain.



 Thursday, April 5 we headed north through the Virginia and West Virginia mountains to our destination - the Barboursville, WV Walmart.  We met up with more friends, Garry and Nancy, for dinner and conversation.

Friday April 6 was another travel day as we headed to Decatur, IN and the REV Technical Center - home to Fleetwood RVs.  Hank said it was the worst RV driving day he ever had since once again the winds were high, and hitting Little House broadside most of the way. We signed in as drop-ins with no promise of getting service. In contrast to previous visits, the parking lot with electric hookups was only half full. This was to be our home for the next 5 nights.

Sunday was laundry day.  The facility has a great, and free, laundry room for the use of customers, since there are no water or sewer hookups in the camping area.   The weather turned colder with lows around 20 and included snow showers Sunday night into Monday morning.

Monday, we used the dump station on the property to empy black and gray tanks and fill up the water tank.

Today is Wednesday, April 11 and we've had no service. We're leaving this afternoon for Celina, OH, about 30 miles away, for a service appointment.  Once again, Hank will have to battle the winds on our journey, but at least it's only 31 miles!