ArizonaRanch

  Stairs for the Littlehouse Porch by rdpecken on Oct.15, 2012, under Uncategorized Well, there’s not much to show for progress over the past several months.  With all of the travel and family responsibilities lately, we did not get back up to the ranch during July, August or September. We finally made it up there over October Break period. But even this was a shortened trip.  We got the main part of the stairs to the front porch built  We still need to complete the railings and the rest of the porch railings and posts. Porch Stairs Started Because we had some things to accomplish in the Valley, we did not make it up to the Ranch until 5:00pm on Monday. We spent the rest of the daylight hours setting up camp. The next morning, we got up and had breakfast, then started on the stringer design.  Our neighbors from up the road stopped by on their way out, and we visited for a while. The stringer design was very difficult for me.  I’m jus...

  Late June Visit by rdpecken on Jul.07, 2012, under Seasons So I came up to the Ranch on late June. I had three things in mind… 1. Get the satellite internet installed 2. Participate in the Ham Radio Field Day event 3. Go over to Bullhead City to visit my sister, Pam. I met Ray, from Pegasys Satellite Systems (Chino Valley, AZ) in Chino Valley, and he followed me up to the Ranch. He was very pleased with my pole installation, and especially with the conduit run with pullstring for the cable to the house. Installation was simple, and we were up and running in about an hour. He spent about another hour going over the system, and setting up my WildBlue account. I ran a speed test and it came in very comparable to my speeds with Cox Cable internet back in Mesa. That’s pretty impressive.   ViaSat Excede Service WildBlue Dish installed Once Ray had left, I began doing some basic measurements to see what kind of power drain this was going to be. I was surpri...

  Getting ready for Satellite Internet by rdpecken on Jul.07, 2012, under Security We decided that having internet available at the LittleHouse would have several advantages… 1. We could have 24×7 video surveillance of the place 2. Our cellphones (mine for sure, maybe Tara’s) can use the wireless router to connect to the cell phone network, instead of having to remote down from the mountain, as we do now. 3. Several Ham Radio possibilities, including echolink (easy) and remote HF operation (harder and more $$). 4. Remote monitoring of water levels, power generation, power usage, weather conditions. 5. Remote control of site facilities (forgot to turn off water pump? No problem!) So we ordered Satellite Internet from ViaSat (formerly WildBlue). They just launched a new satellite, and promised very good service (5 MB/sec download, 1mb/sec upload). Since we have a metal roof, I did not want any holes in it, so we decided to pole mount the dish. This requires an...

  New Ranch Truck by rdpecken on Jun.03, 2012, under Area We purchased a new truck for the Ranch in March. This was our first trip up with it. The truck is a 2012 Dodge Ram 1500, with 4×4 and a regular cab. It also has a towing package, but not much else. I’ll bet you didn’t know you could still get hand cranked windows, did you?? Anyway, this has the 5.7 Liter Hemi V8 to help pull loads up the hill.  Ranch Truck So the trip up over Memorial Day had us pulling our big trailer with the metal roof components loaded and the tools in the aluminum storage box for trailer , along with our normal supplies for 5 days or so. The mileage was a little disappointing, until I analyzed it when we got back in town. The truck has been averaging 15 – 1/2 mpg in town. That’s pretty respectable for a full size truck with a V8. After filling up in Mesa, we found that going up the hill to Chino Valley, pulling the full trailer resulted in about 14 – 1/2 mpg. OK, I understa...

  Installing Metal Roof on LittleHouse Porch by rdpecken on Jun.03, 2012, under porch Not many pictures this time, as I got a little lazy.  We went up to the Ranch over Memorial Day to install the structural steel on the porch roof. It only took a day and a half to do all the work, and the rest of the time we spent visiting/barbecuing with the neighbors.  The place where the roofers bought the panels no longer could get the exact same color, so this roof is a little darker than the house. I expect after a couple of years of fading from exposure, they will be closer. At any rate, you cannot see the roof from the ground, due to its low slope.  You have to go across the meadow to see it. Anyway, here is how it turned out.   Porch Metal Roof Panels Again, I would ask, “Why would anybody install asphalt shingles?” This roof goes on so easy, that it’s a little embarrassing that I took a day and a half to do it. Well, we did have some prep wor...

  Building Porch Railings by rdpecken on Mar.18, 2012, under porch Over Spring Break this year, Tara & I headed up to build the porch railings on our front porch. Here is how we did it… Porch Railings We started with mostly 2×4’s, as the 2×2’s that were available were all very warped and crooked. We figured we could cut down the straight 2×4’s to create our 2×2 railings. 2x4 stock The first step was to cut the 12′ boards into 4 3′ boards, using our cutoff saw… Cutoff Saw     2x4's cut to 36" lengths Next, we spit each of these into two 2×2 pieces… Splitting 2x4's into 2x2's Next, we glued and screwed the 2×2 balusters into 1×2 tops and bottoms to create panels. Baluster sections A set of 2×4’s were attached to the house and vertical posts to serve as support and top banisters. The baluster sections were then screwed and glued between the top and bottom 2×4’s to create a railing section. Railings in place The end result turned out pretty nice… P...

  December 2011 at the Ranch by rdpecken on Dec.12, 2011, under Seasons I went up to the Ranch on Dec 9th – 11th to work the ARRL 10-meter ham radio contest. I was surprised to see that after several days of near 50 degree highs, there was still a considerable amount on snow on the ground. The trip in was uneventful until the last mile before our place, then it got real messy with slippery mud (from Bullit Road North and East). Anyway, I made it in and had a great weekend with highs near 50 again each day. Here are some pictures… Wash behind the cabin    Meadow from North    Wash looking West   Meadow and Black Mountain 1 comment for this entry (from prior blog site): WB0WHO December 18th, 2011 on 12:07 pm Wow that sure makes the Place look diffrent!