When we were in Springerville, we had to be careful about shopping online. The RV park didn’t receive mail deliveries from the USPS – they had to pick up mail at the post office. If we ordered from Amazon, we couldn’t be sure how it would be delivered and the RV park address was undeliverable if the package was handed off to USPS. I had a few deliveries there where I could specify UPS delivery and that was fine.

We had our mail forwarded from our service in South Dakota – we had them send it to General Delivery Springerville. This usually works fine, especially in small town post offices where things rarely get lost in the shuffle. Even though the package was sent Priority Mail, it took over a week to arrive in Springerville – it got there two days after we moved to Cortez, Colorado. Fortunately, Donna talked to the woman at the post office and arranged to have it forwarded to General Delivery, Cortez, Colorado. The post office in Springerville called Donna last Monday and said they received our package and would forward it.

It still hadn’t arrived in Cortez yesterday, so I found the tracking number and checked it out. The mail went from Springerville to Phoenix where the trail ended on June 3rd – it said “Processing Exception.” I made a phone call to the USPS service center this morning – I had to leave a message and they called me back about an hour later. It turned out our mail arrived in Cortez this morning. Yay!

Here at La Mesa RV Park in Cortez, we can get mail delivered to our site as well as UPS and FedEx deliveries. I had a few things I needed and placed some orders. UPS is working well – delivery times are as expected. The USPS is not so good – as I mentioned, Priority Mail can take over a week instead of the two to three days normally expected.

One of the things I ordered was a new controller for the Traeger wood-pellet fired smoker-grill. The smoker-grill is electronically controlled. Pellets are fed from the hopper through an auger into the fire box. When you start the grill, a heating element in the fire box ignites the pellets and a fan blows fresh air through the fire box to keep them burning.

There’s a temperature sensor inside the smoker grill that sends a signal to the controller. When the temperature is below the desired setting, the auger feeds pellets continuously until the temperature exceeds the desired setting. Then it goes into the “cook mode idle feed” program. This mode feeds pellets in a duty cycle – in other words, it starts then pauses the auger at a pre-determined feed rate. For example, if the auger feeds pellets for 15 seconds, then pauses for 45 seconds, that is a 25% duty cycle. Pellets are fed for 25% of the time elapsed.

The last two times I made smoked jerky on the Traeger, I couldn’t keep the temperature within a reasonable range. I had it set to 180 degrees and would normally expect to see the temperature swing from about 170 degrees to nearly 200 degrees as pellets burned. What I got instead was normal operation for 10 minutes or so, then a sudden increase to 250 degrees or more. Not good.

I ordered a new controller from a company called Ortech – I got their TR-100 digital controller. I read that Ortech is the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for Traeger. But, the TR-100 controller is an upgrade from the OEM unit.

The cook mode idle feed duty cycle can be adjusted. This is true for the Traeger OEM part and the TR-100. The difference is, Traeger really doesn’t want the consumer to mess with the adjustment. This adjustment is called the “P” setting, which varies the duty cycle. On the OEM controller, there’s a small hole next to the digital read out that has a button inside that will change the “P” setting. But, Traeger covers this hole with a sticker that says “Call Service.” It’s easy enough to just remove the sticker, but there’s another problem. The OEM controller doesn’t display a number associated with the “P” setting, so you don’t know what you are setting.

The Ortech TR-100 controller has a rotary dial next to the digital read out that has 16 positions for adjusting the “P” setting. When you first start the grill or adjust the knob, the digital read out will flash three times with the “P” setting displayed. It can be adjusted from P0 – 25% duty cycle all the way to P-15 which is a 8.3% duty cycle. Higher “P” numbers reduce the amount of feed and lower the cook mode idle pellet feed rate.

After I removed the OEM controller, I campared the two circuits. In the photo below, you can see the components and circuits are different.

The TR-100 also came with a new temperature sensor. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the old one, but I replaced it anyway. The new sensor is shorter than the old one, so it’s different, but the instructions said replacement was optional.

The default factory setting of the Ortech is P2 – an 18.8% duty cycle. I test fired the Traeger set at 180 degrees. It overshot and went over 230 degrees. I adjusted the “P” setting and found that P7 held the temperature between 175 degrees and 190 degrees. Just right. This setting has a duty cycle of 11.5%. The nice thing is, if weather conditions cause temperature fluctuations, I can easily compensate by adjusting the “P” setting.

I had another simple project this week. When you drive an old British car, sometimes parts inexplicably fall off. This happened on Midget-San. The right front side marker lens disappeared.

I ordered a replacement lens from Northwest Import Parts in Portland, Oregon. They had the correct Lucas lens. But, they shipped it without the mounting screw. Not a big deal, right? The thing is, old British cars use fasteners that are threaded British Standard Wentworth (BSW). I was pretty sure the True Value Hardware in town wouldn’t have British Standard Wentworth screws on hand. I measured the screw from the left side marker lens and saw it was 5/32″ in diameter. This was good because a 5/32 BSW screw has 32 threads per inch and is nearly the same diameter as a standard #6 screw. I picked up a 6-32 screw at the hardware store and it worked fine!

The outdoor pickleball courts at Centennial Park in town opened for doubles play this week. They are restricting players to only play against three other couples, so a total of eight people interact on the court during a session. Donna and I played on Thursday and Friday. It was fun – I was a bit rusty after not being on the courts since mid-March but it didn’t take long to get back into the swing of it. Most of my lob attempts flew long, but I’m attributing that to the thin air at our 6,200 foot elevation.

Donna is scheduled to appear on a Facebook live webinar on the Escapees Facebook page on Wednesday, June 10th at 6pm Central time. The topic is “Unclutter Your RV.” You don’t have to be an Escapees member to join in.

This week, Donna experimented with meals grilled in foil packs. The first recipe was for lemon chicken and asparagus.

She also made a foil-wrapped entree with Cajun-seasoned Andouille sausage, potatoes, onions, mushrooms and green beans.

The temperatures have been warmer than usual this week, topping out around 90 degrees. Yesterday that changed. It was hot, but around 4pm a thunderstorm arrived bringing gusty winds, rain and cooler air. The winds brought down several tree limbs and Donna saw a guy sitting at a table in the RV park get hit in the arm by a chunk of wood that fell from a tree.

The rain continued off and on overnight and through this morning. The forecast calls for sunny skies by the afternoon, but the wind will continue to be gusty with sustained winds over 20mph. The cooler temperatures with highs ranging from low 60s to mid 70s are supposed to continue for several days.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!