Fix Leak in Air Hawk 2 at Valve Stem

 My Air Hawk 2 started to leak. so I stuck it in water and found the leak was where the 

filling stem was attached to the bag. I tried just about every kind of sealer I could think of

to seal the leak. Nothing seemed to work and peeled right off. After contacting the company for 

a patch kit, they said nothing could be done because there is not enought surface area at the stem

to make good contact with a patch. Somebody, maybe the company said the Air Hawk 2 was made of  

PVC. Right away, I knew I had the cure. I had a box of that two part PVC Glue, the purple primer and 

clear glue. Put a dab of primer around the valve stem, then a dab of glue around the stem. Let it dry.

15000 miles later and no leak.

Costco Type 10x20 Canopy/ Picnic Shelter/ Garage/ Carport/ Tarps --- Replacement Panels

Background:
Have been very happy with my Costco Canopy/Shelter. Bought it a number of years ago...five, I think, anyway, all the panels and roof finally needed replacing except the ones on the East and North sides (East; the long side with no door and one zip up garage door end type) so I called Costco and got the number for the company that makes replacement panels and roof. Gave them the model number of the shelter and they sent me the long side with self supporting overhead door (what I wanted), a generic end panel(which was fine) and a roof (perfect fit). I Forget how much it all was...reasonable. Anyway, The roof was the only thing that fit. The two side panels missed by a mile. I called the replacement parts company and they said I could send the panels back but that I would have to pay for shipping. Forget that! I was out enough money as it was. The new replacements panels were thinner than the original panels and smaller. They were so much smaller that I could not overlap the Velcro edges. They missed by a couple inches, and imagine after a summer in the sun, the panels would shrink even more. I tried bridging the gap with wider strips of Velcro and that held until it got windy. It was ridiculous, always coming apart. Besides, the one smaller end panel was cracking/splitting all along the creases. Duct tape to the rescue. Was plain to see that this panel wasn't going to make it through the Winter. I'm holding my breath on the replacement roof, as there are holes in it from the factory.

The Fix: 
There was a guy here in town who used to make tarps for commercial trailers, so I called him and he suggested I get in touch with the local SHARPS TARPS, in Vancouver, WA. The head office is in Grants Pass, Oregon. They immediately knew what I was talking about and said they had made lots of replacement panels for these Canopy/Shelters. They showed me the material. It was light enough and flexible. I thought it would be a good idea to have them make me a new panel to replace the cracked one. Went home and measured the cracked panel and brought my measurements and drawing back to Sharps. The guy gave me some pointers and after a bit of editing of my awful drawing, we came up with a good design. After a week and a half, I have my new panel and have installed it. The upper ball end bungee chords need replacing with stronger ones. As one can see from the picture (below) they allow the panel to droop a bit. It's not that bad. These tarps are covered with a vinyl coating so should last quite a while. The material is quite flexible and does not seem to hold a crease from being folded during shipping. Along the edges there is a fold and sewing, and, backing material is used in the folds to give support to the sewing. Grommets are brass, large and look sturdy. I'm pretty happy with this. Next summer, the guy who took my order (wish I knew his name...I know it's not "guy". LOL) will come to the house and take measurements for the new roof and other side panels.

Alternatives: 
The wife and I discussed all kinds of alternatives to replacing our canopy. We have a couple steel carports, but getting another would require pouring concrete runners over the septic tank drain field...both concrete and steel carport = $$$. Also, we discussed an aluminum patio covering, but because we have a one story house, and the patio itself is raised flush with the patio door, a roof over the patio would have to be attached to the roof of the house to give enough slope for drainage. The roof of the house house would have to be replaced at the same time, as it needs replacing anyway. New Roof and Patio Cover = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Thought about a Tuff Shed, but getting all the extra things I want would be expensive too, and they are not rated very high for fixing their mistakes.

Conclusion: 
The frame on our old Shelter is fine. From my experience, I'm afraid to spend more money on a whole new Costco canopy because the parts may still not fit. Having this shelter cover tailor made of a durable fabric, for the frame, the way it is assembled, seems, in the long run, to be the least hassle.

2012 Casita Liberty Deluxe Travel Trailer Toilet Cleaning Danco Shower Blaster

Well, here's another problem that most everybody deals with while trailering and I'm sure there are plenty of solutions but this one works for us, so thought I'd "pass it" along. LOL 

Problem: Keeping the toilet clean after making a deposit, or going #2, is an age old problem. The trick is to do it without using a lot of paper, water and/or making a bigger mess, especially if one is dry camping and water is a precious commodity. Repeated or prolonged flushing is not a good thing. At first, I used toilet paper in the shape of a cone to cover the inside of the toilet in our boat and that worked. Continued to use this method in the trailer, but this method just added a lot of paper to the holding tank.

Solution: Then it dawned on me, as I was perusing my local DYI store, Grovers Electrical and Plumbing store, I noticed they had a shower blaster/cleaner with quick disconnect fittings. The blaster is made by Danco and comes with six or so feet hose (not really needed) a male fitting for trailer's shower hose and two female fittings...one for the original shower hand wand and one for the blaster. This is all predicated on the idea that you have a shower hose w/hand wand connected to a wash basin with a diverter...which our bathroom (head) has. If you are not busy using the blaster, as pictured, you can swap it out and plug in the shower wand. So Simple. The quality of the Danco blaster and connectors is excellent and blaster does a good job increasing the pressure of the water, for cleaning. Be sure to take your shower wand and/or complete hose assembly to plumbing store to make sure it all fits. No sense in wasting a trip.

Conclusion: I find this blaster does the trick with a minimum of water useage and doesn't fill the black water holding tank with unnecessary amounts of toilet paper.

Happy Camping - "Wichita"

2012 Casita 17' Liberty Deluxe Travel Trailer Screen Door Slider

Think I have a solution to a cracked/broken screen slider. Have looked on line and even ordered two sliders from RVPlus.com that said their slider would fit the Casita odd size 12"x11-7/8". They were only $7.50 so I ordered two. They were made of recycled milk bottle material, so were very sturdy. They were the dimensions that they said...12"x11-7/8", but they were not flat, so they have a big gap that allows bugs in. I guess they might fit some screens but not our Casita.

Problem. The orginal clear acrylic slider was very brittle and cracked the first time the wind caught the door. The manufacturer couldn't keep up with replacing them or didn't try or changed the design, so I think lots of people out there either have cracked sliders or are making something else "do".

Solution: Went to my local plastics store in Portland, Or., that sells plastic by the sheet...Tap Plastics Inc, on Sandy Blvd. Tap Plastics stores are located throughout Washington, Oregon, and California. They cut me a piece of black ABS plastic (they also have white) 12"x11-7/8"x1/16. Had to square it off a tiny bit with a rasp, but it only cost me $1.85. Well, actually, there was a bit of extra cost, as I put a round wood drawer knob on the inside and used a piece of 1/2"x6"x1/2" "seaboard" I had left over from another project, as a stiffener on the inside...and 3 screws and fender washers. Oh, don't forget the cost of gas to/from...1 or 2 gallons. So, maybe I have $11.50 into it...and it works...and it's
durable.
After two years of "Happy Camping", this is the only thing on the trailer that has given us a problem. Loving my Casita.
Happy Trailering - Wichita

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Takemi Jade Melody 11000 Comfort Masseuse

In the top photo, notice how much beefier the new part on the right is, than the original part on the left.

It's been a long time since I added anything to my blog, but here I go and we are in a new area here. LOL I hope that some owners of the above named massage chair contact me. It's a shame to have these potentially great chairs in-operative.

In May of '07, I bought a Jade Melody 11000 and had it shipped to my house. All was well, real well, until one of the parts inside overheated and broke/melted. I both called and emailed the Florida Takemi company and was met with a lot of resistance until I told them all I wanted was the part that broke and told them what I thought was wrong with it that made it break in the first place. They sent me a new part. The only tool I needed for the repair that wasn't in my tool box was a small bearing puller, easily available at my local NAPA car parts store. I think the new part lasted about 2 years and then it finally succumbed to over-heating and fatigue/tearing, then failed.

One day, I was perusing my email and saw a story about 3-D engineering that took old broken or no longer available parts and with the aide of lasers made a whole new part out of plastic. I contacted a plastic engineering company near my home and we had a very nice talk. The engineer's child's day car was close to my home, so he stopped by to see the broken part and how it worked in the chair. I told him there were probably several thousand of these chairs around the country that suffered from the same problem as my chair. His interest grew.

The fellow took the part with him and called a few days later with a quote. It was understandably high, a couple hundred bucks, as it was one off and he was including all the nooks and crannies that the original part had. I asked him if he made the part out of one solid block with all the holes in the right places, if that would actually make it much stronger, and if it would be cheaper?...his reply was, "MUCH stronger, and, less expensive". Also, the piece would be made out of much better material. I think the part that I finally got was something close to delrin, a very high load capable and heat resistant material. Delrin ball bearings are used in non-lubricated situations such as roller reefing rigs for sailboats. The pressures are serious in that situation and there is no lubricant. Anyway, there are other materials that are equally fit for this application. I think what I got was something that was a useful bit left over from another job. The material was more than adequate, as the part is still working just fine.

The reason I wanted to finally discuss this is that I am thinking there are others out there with the same problem and just need a simple part to get their chair operating again. After an exhausting/exhaustive search of the internet I could find no trace of the original Takemi company or the manufacturers of the chair. There are, by the way, hundreds of Chinese manufacturers of massage chairs...or, at least there were when I last did a google search. By the way, the chair has done wonders for my back. But when it was in-operable, I was in a lot of pain. Paid for itself the second year, in terms of savings on massages.

I have attached pictures of the broken part and where it is located, as well as a side-by-side photo of the old part and the new. Everything was working just fine and then all of a sudden one of the smaller nylon rollers, I believe the right one (from a sitting position in the chair) went all floppy. It is such a simple fix that anyone with basic fix-it abilities and regular screw drivers, wrench, small bearing puller and the new part, can get this going again in about an hour or two or even less, depending on how many times one has had the back off of the chair. There are four joint nylon parts inside that operate the massage rollers...two large and two small...that could be cause for failure. In my chair it was the smaller right one that kept failing.

Edited 12/6/15
The company I had make my part has grown to such a large size they cannot take the time to make small batches of these parts. They made several sets of 20 and sold them off slowly over five or six years. They did find another shop that offered to make the parts. Two different people ordered a good number of parts and upon notice of shipping, both canceled their orders. Folks, that just isn't a nice thing to do to a company that is simply trying to help people out. The shop owner got mad and threw the parts in the garbage and is no longer interested in making this part.

Have a great new year and hope you can get your massage chair working better than new.

CD Volume 4

Song List
1. Come Monday Morning
2. 1982
3. Could I have This Dance
4. Bye-Bye Love
5. White Sport Coat
6. I Fall To Pieces
7. Houston
8. Statue Of A Fool
9. Roll Over Beethoven
10. Blue Spanish Eyes
11. Hello Mary Lou
12. She Thinks I Still Care
13. From A Jack To A Queen
14. Keeper Of The Stars
15. Oh, Lonesome Me

Album 4 is also a party mix of most requested songs over the years. I hope you enjoy all these fine songs and will think about purchasing these CDs, not only for yourself, but for others you think might enjoy them.

Think about giving these CDs as gifts, especially for the older people in your life. We purchase gifts that are consumable or are gag gifts, often, for more than the cost of one or more of these CDs. A gift of one or even all four volumes will keep on giving day in and day out, for years to come. Wichita wants to “bringing good music to good people”.

Please visit my site at www.wichitacountry.com and have a look around.

Volume 3

Song List
1. Be My Baby Tonight
2. On The Other Hand
3. Tennessee Waltz
4. Don’t Rock The Jukebox
5. Family Tradition
6. Here’s A Quarter Call Someone Who Cares
7. The Whiskey Ain’t Workin’ Any More
8. Welcome To My World
9. Go Johnny Go (AKA Johnny B. Goode)
10. Neon Moon
11. Country Club
12. He’ll Have To Go
13. Dumas Walker
14. Unchained Melody
15. Chattahoochee

Here we go with Album Three. This album was created from requests to put together a party collection of dance tunes in the order one might hear at a club where I am playing. There is a good mix of dance and vocal styles. All of the songs I have recorded are songs that have been requested over the years. There is a good mix of swing, country cha-cha, waltz, ballad, and rock-a-billy styles. Please check out samples of songs at my website www.wichitacountry.com (Listen).

These songs bring back such great memories. Performing these songs has been such a priviledge. Every Wednesday night for 12 years ole Wichita sang for a singles dance at the Vancouver, Wa. Eagles Lodge...the house was always packed. Seems like that's the way it was for thirty of the last forty years. Most of these fine folks were around retirement age, or older, and to watch them dance every song for four hours was something. I'm still not quite at that age, but hope that I can keep up that kind of activity level when I get there. Also, I played at many of the other "Critter" clubs (Eagles, Moose, and Elks Lodges) and public bars/lounges up and down the West Coast for almost 40 years. I know, the math doesn't add up to my age, but started playing clubs when I was young. Had to stay in the kitchen on breaks until I was old enough to grow a beard. Then nobody asked my age. Times change and people coming up have other tastes in music and what they call dancing. It's time to let others have their turn at the stage, but I'm not giving up. "I will find a stage somewhere in the local area to perform". Love you all, thanks for your support over the years and hope you continue to enjoy Wichita's CDs.

Song List
1. Crazy Arms
2. Blue Eyes Cryin’ In The Rain
3. Faded Love
4. Always On My Mind
5. Luckenbach Texas
6. My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys
7. Seven Spanish Angels
8. Good Hearted Woman
9. Forgiving You Was Easy
10. Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys
11. Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground
12. Poncho And Lefty
13. Stardust
14. On The Road Again
15. The Party’s Over

Somewhere along the line, I think in the late ‘70s, people started telling me I sounded a lot like Willie Nelson…at least on some of his songs. In the mid-'80s I entered a Willie sound alike contest at Jubitz Truck Stop in Portland, Oregon. KWJJ also sponsoring a birthday party for Willie, there. Several people got up on the stage and sang, but none really sounded like Willie. Then it was my turn. I started singing and everybody stopped talking and the dancers stopped dancing. I thought they were going to kick me out of the place, but the show’s MC said; “I think they want you to sing some more.”… sooo I did. I got a lot of nice prizes and a boost to the ego. Anyway, over the years, I’ve sung most of Willie’s songs. The above listed, on the album, are most requested. Again, check out the Samples...www.wichitacountry.com. Thanks.

Something about my Albums

Volume I includes some of my all time favorite songs. It is what I call “Industrial Strength” Country Music. There are, of course, other great country songs and they follow in the other Volumes. This particular collection was my first “live” recording so I’m particularly partial to it. Hope you enjoy these great songs as much as I do. I went a little overboard with 19 songs, and the licensing is expensive, but I wanted a CD that expressed my thoughts on Honky Tonk music and took one back to a time when country music artists were anything but generic. “Enjoy”

PS. I’ve put samples in my website http://www.wichitacountry.com/ (Listen) to give you a taste of the CDs.

PSS. Wanted to mention that Wichita had the privilege performing some of these songs as part of opening act for Tammy Wynette, at the Clark Country Fair one summer. The bleachers and infield were pacted....12 - 15 thousand people. Anyway, we started up on Six Days On The Road, doing a sort of Country Rock arrangement of mine and the crowd went nuts. We feared a stampeed for the stage, but kept playing. Tammy Wynette's band came out from the mainstage dressing room and stood in front of the stage and watched. We did an extra verse and instrumental and ended. Wichita's ex-wife was in the audience and said the crowd really liked the song. The applause went on and on. Two of the people in that band are no longer with us, the drummer and the pedal steel player...huge loss to the music community. Our band also performed many of the songs on this CD at the 4th of July Fireworks show at the Vancouver, Wa., main stage, in the early '80s. Crowds at that time averaged between 40 - 50 thousand people. The Vancouver Fireworks have been the largest 4th of July display, West of the Mississippi River, for decades. What a thrill to play for a sea of enthusiastic faces.

Have been teaching and/or performing many instruments and genre for fifty-two years. That's a bunch when you start at four or five years old. Following a successful classical music career, I moved back home and found myself starving. Teaching helped fill the time void, but Country Music put me back on my financial feet.

At some point, I guess wanting to rebel from a musical family, I wanted to be a Mechanic. Worked with an Alfa Romeo team mechanic for a while and opened my own sports car shop...."Maestro's". Mechanic's knowledge came in handy later delivering boats. Nothing like breaking down on the ocean at 3:00 AM with clogged fuel lines or hydraulic fluid leak.

Somewhere in there, I took a fancy to motorcycles, with the help of a good friend, I learned to ride and not kill myself. Put 80, 000 miles on a Honda 350 Scrambler and 20,000 miles on a Gold Wing. This brings me to a point, in the early '80s, where my motorcycle riding friend brought his Goldwing and new homemade sidecar by for a test drive. It was raining, but we went anyway. As we were heading for a major intersection, we realized that the unit was not going to stop. It was raining and it just wasn't possible to grip the front brake hard enough to displace the water and cause enough friction to bring the extra weight of the side car, to a halt. We went through the red light, unscathed.

As sometimes happens, necessity, adreinaline, and/or fear of death are/is the mother of invention, so I suggested that my friend drill some holes in the rotors to give the water someplace to drain to, plus the edges of the holes would scrape the pads dry. Being a machinist, my friend did this and the bike stopped on cue. Being a good friend, my friend said he would give me 50% of the profits from the patent and any money that was made from this idea. Unfortunately, my friend said that sometime afterward, before he could get anything off the ground with the idea, a BMW motorcycle shipment to his motorcycle shop included disc brake rotors with holes in them. So much for retiring to Hawaii. If anybody knows how BMW developed the idea of putting holes in their brake rotors or where they got the idea from, I'd be interested in knowing. This brings me back to selling my CDs.

Advancements in computers helped me to be able to record many songs that were continually requested over the years. In 2002, I recorded my first CD, Echoes Of A Honky Tonk Vol. I. Sales, one at a time quickly paid for all the costs of production and Licensing, so I recorded Vol. 2, a "Tribute To Willie Nelson" a year later. That album had similar success, and so on, until I had four CD Albums recorded Licensed and paid for.

There isn't much market for playing country swing in the NW, where I live, so I've been judging Karaoke contests (will save Karaoke in Hawaii for another entry). First prize has been really huge with 1st place prizes ranging from $500-1000 dollars. The finals have been really great. Getting to listen to so many wonderfully talented people has been a real pleasure.

That's about it for today, My Eyes feel like two friend eggs.
Cheers,
Wichita