Monday, January 12, 2015

Aqua Hot Repair Pt 3 & Sky Rider Cafe

If you have been following my blog for the past month or so, you would know we've been having problems with the electric part of our Aqua Hot heater.  The Aqua Hot runs on electric or a diesel burner and provides continous hot water to the appliances & also to the furnace.  When it works, it is great.  

We returned to Tucson early to have the unit worked on and they determined it was the electric heating element, which was replaced after it was ordered, so second trip.  Nope, didn't fix it.  Then it was diagnosed as the main control board.  The board was ordered or maybe it wasn't.  When I checked, they fumbled around and said they would try and locate it locally.  That was my first clue they had forgotten to order it.  Finally, it came in and today was the day for repairing the unit.

We arrived early for our appointment and sat around for a couple hours and grew bored.  I took advantage of being at the dealer to have the Aqua Hot unit serviced as it is recommended to do this every year and we hadn't had it done in 3 years.  Hey, it still worked fine on the diesel burner.  Otherwise, we would have been out of there in an hour or so, according to our service writer. 

Normally the dealer has a free lunch for customers but the restaurant section is closed on Monday.  Note - no future service on Monday.  We at first thought we'd visit the Rodeo Museum in Tucson but decided to save that for a later day.  We had discussed having lunch at the Marana Regional Airport a number of times and decided to head out there for lunch.

 
They have a small lunch counter and also a number of tables in two sections.  We chose the larger room and made ourselves comfortable.


 The restaurant seems to be popular with motorcycle riders and there was a table full of them here today.  These are not the "Hells Angel" type of riders, but just everyday people out enjoying riding on their Harleys.  One of the bloggers I follow was at the restaurant the other day.  Retired Rod 


There was a mural painted on the wall behind me and Gerry managed to get a good picture of the mural and a goofy shot of me.  There are a number of aircraft pictures, artifacts and odds and ends on the walls of the restaurant.


 A little guy decided to drop in for lunch while we were there and arrived in an unexpected manner.


Gerry ordered a chicken bacon wrap and I had my old standby of a ham club sandwich.  I have found that it is very difficult to mess up a club sandwich and order them all the time.  The meals were filling and it was not possible to finish them off, so we left some French fries and onion rings.  We couldn't escape without ordering a huge cinnamon bun to go for eating later in the evening.  I wonder why I am so fat. 

There is some history at the airport and I didn't learn about it until after we left.  We explored down an airport road and turned around too soon.  If we would have gone another 1/4 mile we would have seen the following historical airplane.

The first Air Force One aircraft is housed at the Marana Regional Airport. The Lockheed VC-121 Constellation 48-610 was affectionately named after the columbine, state flower of Colorado, the home of first lady Mamie Eisenhower. It was used as the presidential aircraft in 1953 and replaced in 1954, when it became the backup.  Now it is rotting in the sun and heat and is being destroyed very quickly.  It is estimated that it would cost $220K to restore the plane but nobody has stepped forward with an interest in doing this.


It was time to return to the RV repair shop and wait for them to finish up with the repairs.  They work slowly and I think on more than one RV at a time.  Made for a long day for us.  The control board below was at the root of all our troubles and was replaced.  It amazes me to see all the printed circuit boards in use in computers, cars and RVs.  I can't imagine how many boards are in modern airplanes.


They finally completed the repair and service work and we were out of there just in time for rush hour.  As usual, the repair costs were enough to take your breath away.  However, we got out of there cheaply.  When we bought the RV we paid for a 5 year extended warranty and they picked up the major portion of the costs.  Nice.  Now I just hope the Aqua Hot works for the remainder of the time we have the RV.

BTW:  While we closed the bar the other night, it was an early closure.  We were out of there by 11pm and on our way back to the RV.

We took Gerry's cousin and husband to the Tucson Int'l Airport Friday morning so they could catch their flight to Las Vegas, NV.  They completed their 4 week visit to the U.S. there and left this afternoon for the long flight back to Australia.  Bon voyage you guys.  

That was our exciting day, how was yours?

1 comment:

  1. Everybody seems to be having problems with their Aqua Hots this year. And they really are expensive. Sure hope yours is fixed for good now.

    ReplyDelete