Good morning everyone, temps a bit over normal, but still a pleasant 83. The rain in the forecast is diminishing as we speak, gone from 30% to 10% at best, 0% most likely.

Heading out to Flat Iron Mountain with my two sons this morning. Just a bit of target shooting, I just hope there's not too many newbies out there. Weekends can be a bit unnerving sometimes. There always seems to be at least one group that looks like they're set up to stay a while and someone there is showing another how to hold a gun and where to point it. The few times I went shooting with a newbie, I always started off with a discussion on gun safety. Lots of people buying what little ammo is available. I'm not sure, but I'm betting that there are some buying ammo that don't even own a gun. I remember the days when there was a line at Walmart hours before the sports dep't opened. Then, some of the first in line would go out in the parking lot and resell what they just bought for at least double what they paid.

Got a mask controversy here as well. Our governor believes in local control so no state-wide mandates. Most cities and counties already have mandates as do most stores, offices and other public places.

Got a Zoom chat scheduled for 8:00 PM EST on Tuesday, let me know if you plan on attending.

Greetings, gang.

Clear and 22 headed for sunny and 45. Rain/snow mix for Sunday night.

Relatively easy day yesterday. Went for a walk. As I passed the Eagles Club they were having a rummage sale. Bought 4 books for a dollar. Two of the books were in a series of science fiction books I've been reading since the 70s. Then stopped at the grocery store for a loaf of bread and a pizza. Pretty much goofed of for the rest of the day. I did get out a train late yesterday afternoon after repairing the broken wire. Ran the train about an hour and a half and had a nice fire in the pit. Adult beverages may have been harmed in the making of the fire and running of the train.

This morning I need to clean up a last small batch of leaves from all the wind earlier in the week. Football at 11 and maybe another train and fire late this afternoon.

I ordered an item on line that was supposed to be shipped from Minneapolis via Fedex. Normally Fedex delivers directly to Fort Dodge from Minneapolis. My package has surfaced in Memphis for some reason. Looks Like I'll have to get in touch with someone.

All stay safe.

Tom

Sunny and 59 degrees. Nice out. Wifey still making me do restrictions. Actually 3 days up this afternoon. She is off again to her Dad's house to hopefully finish up things. SisterIL [bad one] from VA was to come and get rest of her stuff today. Now tomorrow. We'll see.


Tom, didn't know I had  a club. 

Close friend of ours having birthday party this afternoon late. Just her kids, grandkids and us. Her kids all got tested so they feel OK about gathering. Since I have been around the lady who is the birthday girl, I feel OK about attending.

Our Thanksgiving is us, the kids, their spouses, Grandson and one Granddaughter. Been around them too. No SisterIL, hubby, their kids and their spouses as previously planned. Got changed. undefined

Have a good day.

Hello Blue
Cloudy this morning, 55 for the day, rain tomorrow.
I like collage football and glad teams are playing but hope no one gets sick.
We did grocery shopping this week, she had a list so long we missed getting coffee.
They are getting smarter this time by putting limits on certain items. 
S.J.

Shot this AM across the road from my woods.  One less "raider" of deer feeders.  

Greetings, gang.

Clear skies and 35 at the moment with a predicted high near 50.

Not a good day watching football yesterday. I gave up before half time and went outside and raked the yard. This afternoon I plan to start the artwork on the toyboxes. If the weather cooperates I may get a train out late this afternoon.

All stay safe.

Tom

Morning. 57 and windy. Rained a little this AM before daylight. Loaded and ready to go east. Beef up stand steps like I did at the deep woods stand. May or may not hunt. May end up being a strong wind day east.


Enjoy the day.

Greetings, gang.

Sunny at the moment but clouds are moving in and rain is supposed to occur starting tonight and lasting through Wed. morning.

Artwork did not go well yesterday. Finally gave up and went for a walk instead. Will try again today using a different technique. Also need to go to Hobby Lobby for some craft paint. Also on the agenda will be a trip to the gym.

That's a pretty good sized bear, Frank.

All stay safe.

Tom

Good morning blue. 

I have been working on installing a booster for the layout for 4 days now and I finally have it working. Am I happy? No for the short answer.

I have 12-14 sound equipped units on the layout ready to run with a flip of a switch and no problems using 1156 light bulbs to protect the 
districts (4). Everything worked as it should but I noticed I did not have enough current to run several 3-4 engine consist trains and they 
were slowing down when running, but still running as they should.  I thought the answer would be the MRC 1521 8 amp booster and more districts.

        I bought 10 Voltscooters and just to get things going again I stayed with the 4 districts but instead of the bulbs I placed the 
voltscooters in their place. Next were the test trips. This is when the fun began. I tripped one and everything went down.  (I had left them set 
at the 3 amp out of the package.) The layout would not reset and I lost the command line too. I guessed the original PA2 had tripped causing the 
booster to trip out too.

         I began searching for solutions. I knew I had to protect the command station from a trip because the command station tripping causes 
the command line to the booster to go down shutting down everything which defeats the idea of districts.  The fix, reduce the voltscooter to 
that district to the 1.1 amp setting by removing all the jumpers and retest.  Same thing.

        The original PA2 supplies track power to one isolated district where the booster currently supplies the other 3. The only connection 
between the PA2 base and the booster is the CAT cable which also carries the command buss.

         So now I am thinking a short in the first voltscooter so I replace it and still the same results. So after trying and tripping each 
track and everything continues to go down I think what is happening is the booster is tripping from an onrush of current trying to refill all 
the capacitors of the decoders on the powered tracks. (I have yard tracks with switches so they are dead). Strange to me is with the 2.5 
amp original station, 4 light bulbs for district protection and many sound locomotives on active track I never had any problems with the PA2 
tripping at the base and when one district shorted the others were fine. I could turn on a switch and the layout would power without a trip. Now 
with a booster I could start the layout without a problem even with a lot of locomotives but with a test trip everything went down and stayed 
down until power was removed from the track.  After removing 5 locomotives from the track everything works the way it should, but the 
reason for the booster was to run more trains, not less. The problem seems to be the booster unit is tripping at too low a current at a much 
faster rate than the voltscooters.

       I somewhat fixed the PA2 base district problem by replacing the voltscooter with a 1156 light bulb and it remains up and the command 
buss remains unaffected by a short.  Now what started as a neatly wired batch of districts and breakers looks like a real mess.

     I finally decided last night to go back to the beginning and usr the PA2 base unit and reset the voltscooters to 1.1 amp each. Without the booster in the mix everything works as it should. At the suggestion of a member on the MRC DCC group I am going to place the booster on one district with no additional circuit protection and see how many locomotives it will handle before tripping. He tells me I should be able to leave at least 30 on the layout ready to power up with out tripping.  That sounds logical because I have had as many as 16 with just the 3 amp PA squared. 

      In other news, we have been trying to locate a male dog as a companion to our female Bonnie. She is still grieving over the death of Beck September 25.
There are not many rescues to be had if you take Pit Bulls off the list.  I am not afraid of Pitties but my insurance company doesn't rate them as a good risk, and I don't think our vet would be as kind as a friends vet was 10 years ago when he adopted a pure black and white spotted pit female. She was really a sweetheart and his vet listed her as a Dalmation mix  .  

       We have snow flurries here but it is to warm slighty so just a little more rain. 

        I will be putting locomotives on track to do a test and then more than likely boxing a unit up and sending for warranty repair or replacement. 

Cheers and smiles
Charlie

Good morning all, the only "flurries" we have here are particles of the sun falling upon us. Temps are in the normal to slightly higher range through at least next week, and now they've taken all rain out of their forecasts for now. Even AccuWeather with their 1 and 2% chances, are at 0%. I did however, get the truck washed this morning, so all bets are off.

Got gas at Costco this morning, still at $1.92, no lines at 7:00 AM, same goes for the car wash. Easy in, easy out.

Might actually have time today to work on part of my layout. Been trying to clean it up, lots of bits and chunks of things all over. Gentle use of a vacuum got a lot of it. Too much and you start sucking up details you wish you didn't....

Good afternoon folks

It is 46 with some wind. High is supposed to be 57. We will see.

Getting a late start today. Feeling a little under the weather. I did not get a good night’s sleep. My back and knee were bothering me most of the night. This morning I woke with my wife and made breakfast for both of us. Afterwards I laid down on the couch for a couple of hours. Still felt a little woozy. Took blood sugars, oxygen saturation, pulse, blood pressure. Everything was fine except blood pressure which was a little high and my pulse was low. Going to retake blood pressure in a few minutes.

Wife, daughter, and son are home. Wife is doing in service training. Her school is closed this week for parent teacher zoom conferences. My daughter’s school is in lockdown for at least the next two weeks due to multiple cases of COVID in the all the schools. Since the election is over my son is now unemployed as his contract ended. He is applying for unemployment and deciding what is next. He is debating on going back to school to finish his masters. He has one more semester remaining, however, he does not want to go to campus during the pandemic as his school is a current hotspot. He may wait until the spring or next fall. Right now he is taking some time off and I don’t blame him as since mid-September he was working 10 to 12 hours, 7 days a week.

On Sunday I got the garage cleaned out and the outdoor furniture stored. That is why my back and knee were bothering me last night. Saturday the wife and I went to the local Hallmark store and CVS. I helped the wife go through winter and summer clothing, sorting what we keep and what goes for donation.

I did not get any modeling done. I did, however, re-enter about a hundred records into the new version of my database for my rolling stock over the weekend.

Today I need to drop off several bags of towels, blankets, sheets, and pillows at the local animal shelter. Then I have to run to Petsmart to pick up some cat food and the produce store.

I hope everybody has a good day.

Good morning all, the holiday season is upon us. Lots of folks in our neighborhood already have their outdoor displays up. Stores, of course, have had their Christmas stuff up well before Halloween. It's been an unusual year, I guess we're entitled to start celebrating a bit early. I'm sticking to tradition, nothing goes up until the day after Thanksgiving. Don't have a whole lot to put up anyway, gave most of our decorations away during one of our downsizing moves.

Surprised myself, got gas yesterday at Costco, got the truck washed and even got to Walmart for an oil change. There was only one vehicle in front of me, she said about an hour, it was ready before I finished shopping (20 minutes). Full synthetic for $40, let's see if that lasts longer since getting an oil change is almost as bad as going to the dentist. Go there for a simple cleaning and you wind up with a new set of teeth. Go for an oil change and they try to get you for a complete engine makeover. Hard to sell me this time, less than 6,000 miles on the odometer, just change the oil please.....

Have a great day.....

Greetings, gang.

Soggy and 35 at the moment. The high for today will be a soggy 43. Yep, rain predicted for all day today.

Successful trip to the gym yesterday. I was able to swim the entire half mile with no problems. After that I did some shopping. Drove by the local OfficeMax only to discover that it appears they have closed up. After that I went to Hobby Lobby and wandered around for a while. Stumbled upon exactly what I wanted. 2 inch high wooden letters. They are all painted and ready to be attached to the toyboxes. That will occur today along with stencils for dinosaurs, sport, elephants, and whatever else I can dream up. Also on the to-do list for today will be a trip to the gym for resistance work. I may go for a walk in the rain this afternoon.

Don - that's not a bad price for an oil change. I spend $30 for the oil and filter and do the work myself. Of course it depends and what brand of oil they put in too. Gas price was down to $1.74 yesterday.

All stay sfae.

Tom

Morning. Near freezing earlier. 49 now. Errands to run today. Lots of driving. Unload truck of power tools in front passenger floor. Recharge batteries.

Unload 2X6's not used.

Bear, 20 lbs. light of state record.  Another was killed right behind that one that weighed 300 lbs. 

Virus setting records in NC. Gov not backing down on phase but issuing orders on mask mandate. Businesses and etc. have to require all customers to wear or get fined. If don't comply, shut down for three days in a row. This is especially for private schools. Some private schools have defied the mask and social distance rules.

Have a great and safe day.

(11-24-2020, 07:30 AM)FiatFan Wrote: [ -> ]Don - that's not a bad price for an oil change.  I spend $30 for the oil and filter and do the work myself.  Of course it depends and what brand of oil they put in too.  Gas price was down to $1.74 yesterday.

All stay sfae.

Tom

That was for Mobil 1, full synthetic. Regular run of the mill oil change was $20 and who knows what they put in for that price.

Just a bit of trivia, but one would think that "full synthetic", meant that there was no real oil in the oil. Not so, it's all real oil, just that it's been reworked and altered by humans. I think, to make it slicker and last longer, and of course, to be able to charge more for it. The last vehicle I had required it, this one says any 0W20 is OK.