April 4, 2025

Author: Dave

Bus

Getting Ready to Get Ready

Daveby Dave

The project is proceeding, albeit at a measured pace. I’ve been watching many YouTube videos concerning bus conversions, closely inspecting the bus for features, and starting basic layout ideas.

As shown below, I have a scale diagram of the potential layout of basic functions within the bus. The major items, the dinette, bed, kitchen, and toilet/shower, are all drawn to scale.

Scale sketch of items to be included in the bus

The bed is queen-sized. The dinette will be big enough to convert into a bed – at least for someone under six-feet tall.

More details need to be fleshed out. For example, the oversized power solution I have planned – where does it live and how is it arranged?

Additionally, the roof utilization needs planning. Where does the rack for the solar cells belong? What about a vent fan? Save space for an RV heat pump.

When the physical work begins, I’ll create YouTube videos to track the progress.

Bus

What did I do???

Daveby Dave

2016 Starcraft Quest

Yup – I bought a bus. It’s a 2016 Starcraft Quest with dual rear wheel drive on a Chevrolet 3500 Express cutaway chassis with a 6.0l V8. Whew – that’s a mouthful.

Why?

As a volunteer emergency communications worker for our county and the state, I may be deployed during a disaster, as I was during the Oso Slide of 2014. In those times, I do not want to be a burden on the emergency infrastructure, so having my own shelter and food will allow me to be useful, available, and low maintenance.

Additionally, I hone my ham radio communications skills many times each year through multi-day events. Examples are the Bigfoot 200 Ultra-Marathon and the BikeMS Deception Pass Classic. Each event is a multi-day event with the Bigfoot 200 being in a very remote area near Mount Saint Helens.

In previous years I have tried numerous ways of supporting myself – sleeping in the passenger seat of my truck, sleeping in a tent, and even testing a small utility trailer.

N7NIP Testing the Trailer Option at the 2024 Bigfoot 200

The trailer was an interesting alternative. The biggest obstacle is reversing direction on Forest Service roads. In the end, it was obvious that a short bus would be the best solution.

What’s next?

I’ll need to do some simple steps to convert the bus’s title from Bus to RV. Afterward, the conversion starts. I won’t be building a majestic home on wheels. My conversion will be much simpler as a simple camper for week-long excursions.

I’ll be documenting my progress through blog posts and YouTube videos. I’ll be sure to include links to the YouTube videos in my blog.

Come along for the ride!

Technical

Starlink… so far…

Daveby Dave

We’ve been on Starlink for three months, as I write this post. There are some very definite upsides to having Starlink and some challenges as well.

Challenges

The biggest challenge is the cost. The equipment has an upfront charge of nearly $700, with shipping charges. That could be a huge barrier to entry for many people.

Secondly, the monthly cost is $120. The subscription rate is significantly higher than most Internet fees; if Starlink is your only option it’s reasonable.

Upsides

  • Dependability – Starlink has occasional outages but they are often less than two seconds. Compared to our local alternative, Astound Broadband (cable), Starlink has far better “uptime.”
  • Latency – Our previous cable provider, Astound Broadband, had horrendous latency, particularly for uploads. It was common to see over 100ms latency (sometimes over 1,000ms) for uploads. This challenge wreaked havoc with my streaming radio station feed for RadioDAVE.US. The music stream places very low demands on the Internet provider – typically less than 0.2Mbps of data. Starlink, even though it often is jumping from satellite to satellite as the satellites whiz past us overhead, has far lower latency. The typical, measured latency is less than 30ms – in fact, it is often less than 20ms.
  • Emergency Availability – In a recent power outage, I realized that my Internet connection was still running on the battery backup. We have Internet, via Starlink, as long as we can get emergency power – such as our generator. The local cable Internet provider loses connectivity as soon as the local electricity goes out.
  • Enough Bandwidth – We have rarely had challenges watching streaming videos, updating computers, or other higher-demand Internet events. Over the past three months, there have been just a couple of evenings when the Starlink system was so overtaxed that we noticed.

So, am I glad we switched?

Absolutely. We now have stable Internet delivery for the first time in many years. My coworkers are surprised when they learn that my Zoom calls are via Starlink. Starlink’s signal is so stable that I sometimes have a better Internet connection than people in the business offices.

Would I ever switch to something else?

Certainly, if a different, stable connection were to become available, such as fiber, I would consider changing. A local fiber connection should have much more capacity, lower latency, and would be cheaper. Until I have a cheaper, reliable option, I’ll stick with Starlink.

Church

Rebuilding Church Content

Daveby Dave

Some of the content from the previous site has been lost – at least for the near term. I’m going to be digging around to see if I can recover some of the interesting posts concerning audio adjustments.

In the meantime, I’ve reconstructed the Sound and Projection schedules.

Technical

Site Reborn

Daveby Dave

After fighting with Drupal 8 for a couple of month, on shared-hosting, I’ve decided to take a different direction: WordPress. I’ve never been super-religious about using Drupal – it was merely the system I started with many years ago, and I’d grown accustomed to its operation.

However, the latest implementations require Composer and Drush, which are tools that don’t play well with my shared-hosting provider. I’ve been trying to make it work for a while, and I’ve finally thrown-in the towel.

I’m now beginning to rebuild using WordPress. I’m still on the same shared-hosting, but WordPress is much easier to install and I’m sure that I’ll grow to enjoy it, just as I have Drupal.

Technical

VARA Protocol with WinLink

Daveby Dave

There are a growing number of encoding protocols available to be used with WinLink on HF.

WINMOR has been a long-time protocol with basic error correction and a simple implementation. WINMOR has been superseded by several other protocols. In fact, WINMOR is expected to be retired from WinLink in the near future. The newer protocols are faster, and more robust.

ARDOP (Amateur Radio Digital Open Protocol) has eclipsed WINMOR as the best open-source protocol available. Some folks prefer ARDOP, due to its open-source nature. ARDOP is definitely faster and more robust than WINMOR.

VARA is a newer, semi-open protocol. Some operators are irritated with the author’s restrictions on client speeds on unlicensed installations. The speeds are truly limited – but they maintain the robust nature of the protocol. The licensed versions approach the speeds of hardware-based PACTOR systems.

My simple field tests indicated that VARA was the superior protocol – even on my six-year-old laptop. The old laptop has no problem keeping up with the transmissions through my Kenwood TS-570s transceiver. While I haven’t seen meteoric transmission speeds, I’ve seen 1,000 bps – which seems pretty quick for a software-based protocol over HF.