Thanks for the compliments Dave!
Linda, thank you so much for meeting up with us and grabbing the spot on the mountain. I'm sure you and your Tiger will enjoy that new light. We will see you again soon! :sombrero:
I have lots of updates, but not much time lately. It was a mad dash to get things finalized on the Tiger before leaving Phoenix. We are now on the road, leaving today to head north up the coast. I'll do my best to update you all here.
As some of you may know, Josh and I are quite the gadget geeks, and all of our vehicles have had some fun electronics in them. The Tiger is no exception to this rule! One of our first missions was to pick out a new stereo/gps unit; we chose the Kenwood DNX9980HD. With a large screen, amazing backup camera, Garmin GPS, video, HD radio, bluetooth and other capabilities its a great all-in-one unit. One set back was that it is a double-din and the Chevy Astro is a din and a half. We are very lucky to have a friend who works for Diamond Audio and also does quality stereo installs, so he set up our cockpit beautifully with a custom cut-out for the stereo, mounting of our HAM unit and giant speaker, along with new stereo speakers.
Also in that picture is the monitoring unit for our mobile weather station from Ambient Weather. Nothing super fancy here but, so far it seems to work well and we are able to monitor up to 3 channels via remote sensors around the vehicle. We placed one in the fridge, one in the back of the cabin and one in the outside battery box.
Our HAM radio was transferred over from the FJ and is the Kenwood TM-D710A with APRS capabilities. This is just another great way for friends and family to keep track of us on the road at aprs.fi, callsign KE7PQW. Our radio is paired with the Comet CSB-790A antenna mounted to the rear ladder:
Our friend from Diamond Audio also hooked us up with a nice 8inch sub and amp located behind the drivers seat. This Tiger can bump! :elkgrin: Unfortunately, this meant we had to re-do the latch on the fridge to something that would work around the sub, and also re-locate the fire extinguisher - it is now permanently mounted to the kitchen counter, which I think is probably a better place for it anyway:
We had the backup camera mounted up high in the rear, which works perfectly. This thing has a crazy fish-eye on it and by the time you see the vehicle leave in the camera view its already in your peripheral view. We also have it on a switch so we can turn it on while driving to see how close someone is following, or how much traffic we are holding up going up a mountain pass. We can also keep an eye on the bikes, mounted to our new Yakima hitch mount:
I have much more to update, but its time for breakfast and loading up to head north and continue our trip up the coast. We are currently in Orange County, at the beginning of a three week trip up the PCH, down the Sierras and into Yosemite. I'm doing my best to update our blog occasionally from the road, which you can read at
www.twolibras.net. There you will also find a link to our SPOT tracking, along with the APRS. If you see us out on the road, be sure to stop by and say hello!!
unk03:
