other dog

I'm back at square one with the antenna. I put the truck back under the carport because we have to have our dog in VA. Beach for eye surgery in the morning, and we're leaving today, as soon as Zina finishes work. It hits the ceiling now in the carport, so I'm going to move it down to the lower arm. I just took the speaker out and left it in the floor for the time being, so I could release the brake.

That's the same model Connex that I used to run. It was a good radio, I used it since the old 2006 Peterbilt says. But when I tried to cram it into the space that was supposedly made for a CB something on the back of it shorted out on something in the hole and smoked it. It was substantially bigger than the Cobra 29 I had in there at first. That's the main reason I bought the Stryker, I saw an ad for it in some trucking magazine and it said it was made smaller just so it would fit in those overhead compartments. It's a nice little radio too, it used to "walk the dog" in the other truck. It's been on the shelf since I retired. I like that it displays the SWR every time you key the mike too.

Yeah, that wouldn't work in this truck. The steel dash is only about 3 inches wide.

Yep, as you can see that one spot was about the only place all the way across the dash that was open. I said "oh, here's a good spot for the speaker". Never thought about the hand brake. It was pulled back when I put the speaker there. Oh well, I'll find somewhere to put it.

Yessir, it sure was.

I checked the battery with my little multi-meter device today, that I really don't know how to use, and it showed exactly 12 volts. So there was a terminal block on the fender well under the hood that looked like the wires going to it came from the starter. The Big wire was hot all the time and it tested at 12 volts exactly too, so I connected the radio to it. But I will have to be careful about leaving it on, even a tiny draw will drain a battery if it's on long enough. Then I mounted the radio and an external speaker, and the standing wave was much better than the last time. I had to raise the antenna to get it right, but I had left it bottomed out when I put it back in the shed last week. Tightening the mirror bracket and running the extra ground wire must have done the trick. I didn't get it perfect, but I got it down to 1.3. I was going for a ride around the block to test the radio, but some dumbass mounted an external speaker in the way so I couldn't release the parking brake. I'll fix it tomorrow, it's Miller time now.

I took this night shot last night when the solar lights on the carport came on. I liked the way it looked in the light, so I grabbed a couple of pics with my phone. I had backed it out because I was putting a CB radio in it. Haven't finished yet, it takes me 2 days to put a radio in nowadays. I put my Stryker radio in it last week, but my SWR was up around 5. I raised the whip up as high as it would go and it was still over 3.0. I had shortened the top piece to get it right in the T800, so I ordered a new whip from Wilson. Yesterday I tightened all the mirror bracket bolts and ran a ground wire from the antenna bracket inside to a bolt under the dash. Now I just need to find a good hotwire to hook it up to. Stryker says to go straight to the battery, but I don't know about all that. I might just find a hot wire in the fuse box to hook it to.

Pretty interesting picture I saw on the interwebs today. Those are some very nice pumpkins.

Oh yes, she was absolutely pissed!

I should have posted the pictures in reverse order on flickr, they're kind of backwards, but oh well.

Here's a link to the channel 6 news story about the Truckers Parade Against Cancer- https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/truckers-against-cancer-oct-16-2024

Here's a lot of pictures of the big green International that runs now. I know most everybody has seen it on the "Odds and Ends" page, since back when it was the "big green International that doesn't run". It should have been here at first, but I didn't know at first that it would be such a long drawn out story. Anyhow...

I would blow mine towards the woods on one side in the front yard and into the woods behind the house. By the time they were all gone I would have a wall of leaves almost chest deep.

Same as Virginia, northern VA, and the Richmond and tidewater area control the rest of the state. 😡

I used to blow mine towards western Pennsylvania until green dash traced the serial number on one of them and threatened to sue me. Then I started blowing them towards Australia.

I don't have too many leaves to deal with here, But when I lived in Gladys I was covered up with leaves!

I don't know why that Dodge pickup in the snow is still there, I thought I removed it twice. I took some of these with a camera, some with a phone, and some Zina sent me, so it was hard to get them all organized.

thank you, thank you very much.

Not many trucks, just a lot of pictures of the same trucks.

Chester cheeta was at the parade too- Channel 6 news out of Richmond was there. We can't get Richmond from here, just Lynchburg and Roanoke, but I saw no mention of the parade on their website. And this truck came all the way from Canada to be in the parade. I was wondering if they drove it all the way from Canada with that open cab, but when Zina was coming back up 460 from the Kroger store yesterday evening she said it passed her, and it was on a trailer. I have a few more pictures, I think i'll put them on flickr and post a link.

Keystone's E9 powered unit.

We took all three around the loop this morning. They did so good we went around for a second pass.

Yes. At first I was going to get a hard bill chauffer's cap, but decided to get this one instead.

Zina noticed right away, like as soon as I took them out of the envelope they were in. I said "well, i'm not taking them back now".