Tyson Wash LTVA - BLM

Thursday - Last night it dipped down to just below freezing. But, since our large slide is going to be left in until we get to Tucson, it was warm enough. The problem with the slide is that it was designed to slide on the carpet when being brought in/out and without the thickness of the carpet, it was sliding on a metal guide which was wearing through the thin fiberglass mesh on the ends of the slide. I have some plastic protectors meant to protect the floor from the rollers that some slide mechanisms have, but our slides don't have rollers. They make slide-out skis, which I plan to order once we are stationary in Tucson. So between the slide issue and the windshield, more RV issues to deal with.

Just a quick picture showing how much the windshield had moved. The windshield glass is being used to stabilize the front cap structure. Without it, just floppy thin fiberglass. I’m told that most class-A motor homes have this problem and it is aggravated by the curved glass on the sides of the windshield.

This morning we ran the heat pump while the batteries were charging up as the heat pump does a better job heating the front half of the RV. It took several hours to charge from 30% SOC to about 89% SOC. We were down around 290AH. If we were still running on the flooded golf cart batteries, we would have run out of power around 3am. The SOK batteries enable us to camp out here. During this time, the front of the RV readily warmed up from 59°F to 68°F.  

N.B. I do not make any claim about “living cheaper” as some do when referring to boondocking but it is so quiet and peaceful out here. And almost preferred. You do need to be conscious about how much water and electricity you are using as well as how much is going down the drains. After tonight, it looks like it’ll be a bit warmer. Hopefully, there won’t be any significant wind. 

BTW, we got 2.7Kwh from the solar today which was just enough to get our batteries to 100%. I do have to manually “tweak” the settings on the Magnum to ensure we don’t charge with more than 100amps total. Magnum plus solar. E.g. Around 9, I reduced the Magnum output current from 90amps as solar was starting to exceed 10amps. Remember, that ~5-20 amps of that total are powering the 12V loads in the RV.

Friday - It's kind of overcast today so there probably won't be much sun. Around 8am, I turned on the generator to charge the batteries (35% SOC) and to run the heat pump. We turn the front thermostat down to 62°F to reduce the propane consumption by the front furnace. The screen capture is from the Victron app showing current (blue) and voltage (red) as the battery is charging from the Magnum inverter/charger. You'll notice near the end, the voltage curve is starting to get steeper i.e. the voltage is starting to climb more rapidly. This is a sure sign that the batteries are nearly charged. From this point on, the charging from the solar panels will continue albeit at a much lower current. 

I volunteered to lead a session this morning as using my phone as a hotspot seems to work pretty well. Last night, I even tried joining another ham testing group and participated in two tests. No problem beyond some significant lag when the applicant was screen sharing. This group does things a little differently with multiple recordings, screen sharing, and no chat back channel for the VEs. I'm not sure I like it as much but it's nice to see how other groups work.