As I reported last week, our Verizon air card has been giving us a lot of grief lately. We had frequent periods when service was very slow, and we were getting knocked offline over and over again. The problem happened at any time of the day or night, but more frequently in the evening, from about 6:30 p.m. until after midnight. As I wrote then, I’m sure part of the problem is just the sheer numbers of people using the cell towers, both for telephone and internet access.

I tried several fixes that I read about online, or that other Verizon users recommended, but nothing really helped. So yesterday I went to the local Verizon store to see if they had any ideas.

I was eligible for an upgrade under Verizon’s New Every Two plan, and the young lady who waited on me suggested that I swap out my USB 720 air card (which is actually a modem) for a newer model. I bought my air card before they had any restrictions on usage, and was concerned about losing my grandfathered status, with no five gigabyte monthly limit, even though I have only gone over four gigs once in two years. My customer service rep checked, and assured me that my unlimited status would remain in effect.

Since we travel all over the country as fulltime RVers, I also wanted a card that would still accept an external antenna. I had heard somewhere that no new Verizon air cards have an external antenna port. That was apparently not true, because she set me up with a USB 760 air card that does have the external antenna port, and she even threw in the adaptor cable that matches up with my Wilson Trucker antenna and amp. Total cost, after $50 mail in rebate, was $10.

The new air card is about half the size of the previous one, as shown in this picture. It also did not come with a separate CD to install the updated VZ Access Manager software. The software is apparently built into the modem.

I came home, plugged the new unit unto my desktop computer, it automatically installed its software, and I was good to go. I then plugged it into my Cradlepoint MBR 1000 router, which recognized it immediately.

So far, it works fine. Speeds are still not as high as I have had in the past, but faster than with my old air card. The young lady at the Verizon store did say that here in Apache Junction/Mesa, and other places where they have a lot of users, we can expect slower service in the evening, which is when our problems have been the worst.

From about 6:30 p.m. until after midnight, my service slowed down, though not as bad as it was before. Terry and I both got knocked offline a time or two, but we were able to get right back on. Overall, it was a significant improvement over what we’ve been dealing with. Once I’ve used the new air card for a while, I’ll update you on its performance in a future blog.

Before I close this blog, I need to send a message to one of our Canadian blog readers named Andy who wrote me asking if we have subscriptions available to the Gypsy Journal for Canadian addresses. I tried to respond three times, but the e-mail bounced every time. Yes, we have many Canadian subscribers. Cost is $25 for one year, or $45 for two years. You can send us a check payable in U.S. funds, or click this Subscription Link and scroll to the bottom of the page to subscribe online.

Thought For The Day – Life is sexually transmitted.

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Our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel call me Gadget Boy, because I always want to check out the newest electronic gizmos. But I have an excuse; I want to be able to tell all of our great readers about them, both the good and the bad. At least that’s what I tell Miss Terry when she rolls her eyes at me when I start salivating over some new toy.

I write about the things when I try them out, but I get a lot of questions from readers asking how I feel about something down the line, after I’ve used it for a while. So here we go, we’ll call this the Gadget Boy Report.

Blackberry Storm – I’ve been using this “smart phone” since last summer, and I have a love-hate relationship with it. Being able to access my e-mail anywhere I am during the day, and respond if necessary, is wonderful. The phone saves me a lot of time and trouble with just that feature alone. The text display and keypad are both large enough to read and use easily, unlike many cell phones I have seen. It has features and applications that can do a number of great things that I could appreciate, if I only had the time to learn how to do them.

The biggest downside for me is that the darned phone is almost worthless anytime I’m any distance from a cell tower. The signal is just too weak. At the Escapees RV park in Summerdale, Alabama, we were maybe four or five miles from town, at most. Terry’s cell phone, and the old LG that we use for business calls, both worked fine, but the Blackberry constantly dropped calls and cut out. I also have problems with the display. If you are making a call, you have to jump through a couple of hoops to get the keypad back on the screen in case you need to “Press 1 for English.” Another problem is that, during a call, it is very easy to move the phone in such a way that your cheek presses the Mute button, and all of a sudden, the person on the other end cannot hear you.    

Amazon Kindle – I absolutely love the concept of the Kindle, the Sony e-book reader, and the similar devices on the market. They make great sense for RVers, where weight is an important consideration. They are lightweight, easy to read, and you can store a ton of books on them.

That being said, I sold my Kindle a while back. I found that I just wasn’t using it enough. I love prowling through bookstores, I love the feel of a real book in my hands, and I gravitate to used book stores like a duck to water. Most fiction paperbacks for the Kindle cost about $10, but I can’t sell or trade them after I read them. I can buy the same book for $7.50 to $10 at Wal-Mart, then get ¼ the cover price in trade when I take it to a used book store, or I can pass it on to a friend when I’m finished with it. I also read a lot of non-fiction books, and the quality of photographs, charts and illustrations on the Kindle was very poor.

Silverleaf VMSpc Engine Monitor – This is one addition to our motorhome that I would not be without. Besides providing more accurate information than my dashboard gauges, it monitors our diesel engine’s performance, computes fuel mileage, explains any error codes that might show up, and a lot more. One RVer told me that when his engine was giving him an error code, a shop wanted $3,000 to fix the problem, and the Silverleaf revealed that it was a quick and easy (and cheap) fix. It more than paid for itself right there!

Verizon Air Card – Air cards have pretty much killed the satellite internet industry for RVers. Ours has provided excellent service coast to coast, and there were more times we couldn’t get online with our Hughes dish than there have been with the air card. Coupled with a Wilson Trucker antenna, Wilson amplifier, and a Cradlepoint wireless router, we can both be online on our own computers. It is a hard combination to beat.

Progressive Industries EMS System – The EMS system in our bus conversion saved us from damage a couple of times, and getting another installed in the Winnebago was the first order of business when we bought it. If you don’t have an EMS system, you are playing Russian Roulette every time you plug into a campground’s electrical pedestal.

PressurePro – If you have read more than a few of my blog posts, you already know how much I rely on our PressurePro tire monitoring system. It’s another “must have” for every RV, in my opinion. It can save your tires, your RV, and even your life!

We have a couple of other items that we haven’t installed yet that we want to get to, if the weather will ever cooperate. One is an automatic engine bay fire suppression system from Mac McCoy, and the other is an automatic fire extinguisher for the refrigerator compartment. Both are easy installations, and both can save your RV from becoming a total loss in a fire. We want to get them installed very soon.

Thought For The Day – Happiness is an inner emotion; it is being at peace with who you are.

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We hit the ground running yesterday! The techs at Duncan RV Repair were supposed to start working on our motorhome at 9 a.m., so Miss Terry had the alarm clock set for 7:30 so we’d have time to get our morning routine done and have the Winnebago unplugged from shore power, the slides in, and the jacks up when they came for it.

Terry was up before me, and when I rolled out of bed, I glanced at my cell phone and it said the time was 8:41 a.m. I asked Terry why she had let me sleep so late, and then we realized that while we had adjusted the clocks on our microwave, computers, and in the van back to Eastern Time, we had forgotten the alarm clock!

What followed was a mad rush to brush teeth, get dressed, store things away inside the motorhome, run outside to unplug the electrical cord, and get the slides in and the jacks up, but we were done at exactly 9 a.m. Whew! What a way to start the day! But we were right on schedule.

Of course, then we waited. And waited. Finally about 9:30 I went inside and was told that the employees were in a meeting and should be done soon. A tech broke free and came out to get our keys, and when we left a little before 10, they still had not moved the RV inside. Hurry up and wait, just like in the Army. Oh well, at least I got an extra hour or so of sleep!

We drove over to Phoenix Commercial Paint and spent the day piddling around the bus, charging the batteries to compensate for the time the bus has been sitting unused, and then starting it up to warm up the engine.

We took a break about 1 p.m. for lunch with our friend Michele Henry, owner of Phoenix Commercial Paint, and when we came out of the restaurant it was snowing! Being anywhere it is snowing goes completely against the very carefully laid out plan I have for my life. I was supposed to be on a houseboat in Key West right now!

Back at Duncan RV Repair, late in the day, they did not have everything finished on the motorhome, which I had expected, since we needed several things done.  That was one reason we got to town early, so they could have two days to work on it, if needed. They had repaired the water heater, so that it now works on both gas and electric, and had completed the engine oil change, lube job, and fuel filter replacement.

They were closing for the day, so our service tech moved the motorhome back out to their campground, and today it will go back into the shop to have the Wilson Trucker antenna installed and the Onan generator serviced.

Today is going to be another busy day for us. We have to pick up a new order of our Just A Gypsy T-shirts from our screen printer here in Elkhart, and then touch base with Al Hesselbart from the RV Hall of Fame Museum. We had arranged for our mail forwarding service to send our mail to us, care of the museum. Then we have to unload our bicycles and kayaks from the van to have room for passengers, and at 4:46 p.m. we have to be at the airport in South Bend, Indiana to met Rich Perry, who is flying in from California with a friend to pick up the bus.

We’re going to be sorry to see that old gal go, she sure has been good to us!    

Thought For The Day – Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don’t want to have to restart my collection all over again.

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After our marathon drive to Elkhart, we slept soundly in spite of the fact that Duncan RV Repair is located just a block or so from a major railroad switching yard, and day and night you can hear the screeching of steel wheels on steel rails, and the banging and clanking of railroad cars being shuffled around.

While Miss Terry was having her morning coffee and checking e-mail, I went to the office and checked in, letting them know which site we were in, though that probably wasn’t necessary, since the only RVs in Duncan’s camping area are our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage and an Alpha motorhome.

We went over the things I needed done that I had listed when I made our appointment (fix water heater, which works on gas but not electric, and install our Wilson Trucker antenna on the roof of the motorhome for better reception with our Verizon air card), and then, when I discovered that Duncan is an authorized Onan service and repair facility, I added a couple of other tasks (oil and filter change, lube job, and new fuel filter on the motorhome, and service our Onan diesel generator). As long as we’re here, we’ll get everything done we can.

Later on, a service tech named Marco came out to the motorhome to go over our job list again, and since it was noon by then and he would not be able to start on our rig until about 2 p.m., he suggested that we wait until today, and he’d pull it in first thing and have the whole day to get things done, rather than start, then have to button everything back up at closing time and move the motorhome out so we could sleep in it overnight, and then do the same thing this morning all over again. We agreed, and promised we’d have the motorhome ready to go at 9 a.m. today.

With that all arranged, we drove to Phoenix Commercial Paint, where we have had our bus stored since we left the area. Owner Michele Henry greeted us, and we checked out the full body paint job she was finishing up on a Fleetwood diesel pusher. That lady does great work and is a stickler for getting every detail perfect!

We checked the bus out to be sure it was ready for its new owner on Friday, then made a quick stop at RV Surplus to say hello to our friend Trina Ambris. By then it was late in the afternoon and we were ready for dinner.

The storm that has been moving across the country began with sprinkles as we were driving back to our motorhome, and we wondered how bad it was going to get. We have snow showers predicted for the next several days, and temperatures in the 20s. Not exactly perfect RVing weather. We look forward to getting back to the South to soak up some sunshine.

Bad Nick is no fool, he spent the day inside writing a new Bad Nick Blog post titled How Do You Put A Deadline On A War?. Check it out and leave a comment. 

Thought For The Day – Bad decisions make good stories.

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Miss Terry has been busy the last couple of days finishing a project on our MCI bus conversion.

When we started the conversion, we left the escape hatch in the roof of our bus, which was in the bedroom, accessible. When we had our tripod mounted HughesNet satellite dish, we installed a custom roof mount on the bus for it, and I would boost Terry up onto the roof and she would deploy the dish. She got so good at it that many times we could be online with both the Internet and satellite TV in less than ten minutes from the time we opened the hatch.

Now, this did make for some interesting experiences. Once we were parked here in our favorite spot at Elkhart Campground and Terry’s foot was in my cupped hands and she bounced up and down, doing our standard “One, two, three, and up” routine. Once she was up on the roof, the fellow in the motorhome parked next to us said “I’m sure glad to see you! I thought I was going nuts. I kept seeing this head popping out of the roof of your bus and then disappearing!”

We replaced the satellite dish with a Verizon air card and Cradlepoint router, assisted by a Wilson Trucker antenna and Wilson amplifier from the 3G Store a couple of years ago. Once we took the satellite dish and mount off the roof, Terry never had a reason to crawl up there again, so we decided to close in the hatch.

The last few days she has been busy staining wood and sealing around the hatch. Today we put the finished wood up and it looks great! But by the time the job was completed, Terry was more than ready to call it a day.

While Terry was busy putting a last coat of stain on the wood, I made a quick run to the post office to mail out a couple of orders, then stopped at the Verizon store to tell them to cancel the VZ Navigator option on my Blackberry Storm. It’s neat to have a fully functioning GPS in my cell phone, but we already have a GPS, and I couldn’t justify the $10 extra a month for the feature.

Our friend Al Hesselbart, historian for the RV Hall of Fame Museum, has been promising to take us out to dinner ever since I accused him of being a cheapskate a year or so ago, but the timing never seemed to work out. So yesterday just about the time we were wrapping up the bus ceiling, Al called and suggested we drive up to Lunker’s, a neat sporting goods store in nearby Edwardsburg, Michigan for dinner. Lunker’s has an excellent restaurant called the Angler’s Inn, and our dinner was wonderful. Did you ever notice that food tastes just a little bit better when somebody else is picking up the check?

Back at the bus, we returned a couple of telephone calls, and I wrote this blog post, edited the new Todays Hero Blog post, and by then it was time to start thinking about bed.     

Thought For The Day – If you have to choose between two evils, pick the one you’ve never tried before.

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