Quartzsite, AZ - BLM

Saturday - It was much faster leaving the Los Angeles basin than coming in. Traffic flowed smoothly and we arrived in Quartzsite around 2:30 MST after a four-hour drive. We filled up after crossing into AZ. $3.14/gal versus $4.959 in CA. Fortunately, we didn’t need to get diesel while we were in CA.

We are set up for several days so I went ahead and tilted the solar panels. We’ll see how much power we can get out of them. 

Monday - Yesterday was a quiet, relaxing day. I sous vided a port loin roast with garlic and rosemary. It was alright, not a standout but I didn't have any fresh garlic or rosemary. The grocery stores here in Quartzsite could be better stocked but, then again, it's Quartzsite so low expectations. 

Tuesday - It was a cool night with a low of 36°F. But it was clear and sunny all day. I ran the generator until the SoC was up to 88% and I hoped that the solar would be able to top off the batteries. 

Even with the panels tilted to the south, we max power was about 520 watts. But the angle wasn’t steep enough to match the low sun angle. 

It has been wonderful to visit with @blazeourway (on Instagram). Thank you for making your way down from northern AZ!

Quartzsite, AZ - BLM

Monday - Another 300 mile travel day to western Arizona. We are staying at the Roadrunner BLM area which is free dry camping for up to 14 days. We are only staying overnight but it is nice and quiet even though we are only ¼ mile from the highway. And, free is good!

Tomorrow’s drive is only a couple of hours and we’ll be there for five days. Long enough to relax. It’s been around 1,200 miles since we left Bay Landing RV park. A fair amount of driving.

I was hoping to get a chip in the windshield fixed while we were here but the shop we used before from Junction City doesn’t seem to be here. 

Tyson Wash LTVA - BLM

Sunday - It only went down to 43°F last night. It really did feel warmer. The batteries were at 38% at 7:30 when we started the generator. I adjusted the Magnum inverter/charger for just under 90amp output with about 75amps going into the batteries. As the sun rose higher and solar charging kicked in. I lowered the Magnum output to keep the current into the batteries <80 amps as recommended by SOK. Max is 50 amps charging per battery but 40 amps is the recommended charge rate. 

I dusted off the solar panels as they were pretty dirty. They hadn’t been cleaned in several months so maybe I'll pick up a few watts.

Monday - It's really nice weather again today. About 72°F, sunny, with no wind, and not a cloud in the sky. I did participate in a test session this afternoon from outside. No awning or mat due to the frequent winds around here. It is so quiet out here. Wonderful!

Tuesday - The no-wind weather may be ending today. The forecast is for wind with major gusts so anything outside will be put away this afternoon. 

Another test session this morning. It went pretty quick as the candidate was well prepared. A candidate showed up at the last minute for the afternoon session so I jumped on into Zoom. 

The sun is getting higher as we move towards Spring. A couple of months ago, we were barely peaking at 300 watts. Over 400 watts is a little bit better but we have seen over 500 watts last week. We still end up running our generator for several hours every morning to get the battery SOC to about 88%. The solar will then top them off by about 2:30 or so. To avoid running the generator, we will need to double the solar as the first 15-20 amps are just keeping things running. Actual charging of the batteries is currently around 15 amps from our current peak of 30 amps. We’ll see how much it improves in a month or two. 

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.

Tyson Wash LTVA - BLM

Wednesday - This morning, we moved north to Quartzsite again. This time, we are in the Tyson Wash LTVA area. Pretty empty. We are still camping with Diary of a Family and are now next to Life is a Joy. Both have or had YouTube channels. 

This is our view to the southwest. Much less crowded here than Imperial Dam but the low temperature is forecast to be near freezing. I filled up with diesel in Quartzsite as the fuel gauge said under ¼ tank but only it only took 61 gallons. Plus the tach was reading about 600rpm low for most of the trip. After filling up and restarting the engine, the tach read fine and the fuel gauge read full. Instrument problem?

Speaking of problems, the windshield is starting to pop out again along the top. Now, I need to find an RV windshield company. It should be easier here in Quartzsite. 

Imperial Dam LTVA - BLM

Sunday - I started the generator around 7:30am as our batteries were down to SOC of 17%. This is the lowest we’ve ever run them. It’s going to take hours to recharge them even though they are getting 84amps between the Magnum inverter/charger and solar. 

Not feeling very well today. I seemed to have picked up a sore throat so I didn’t sleep very well last night. 

Monday - Still not feeling very well. It’s hard to sleep with an intermittent cough. It rained last night which was unexpected as it wasn’t in the forecast. 

Tuesday - High winds are forecasted for this afternoon so most of the outside stuff was packed away last night. So far, it's pretty breezy but it's only 1pm. The wind advisory was or 2pm to 11pm. Since it as kind of scattered clouds today, I ran the generator for several hours to get the SOC from 45% to 94%. Solar actually did manage to top the batteries up and go into "float" for a short period. I have the solar controller set to absoprtion time of 30minutes to allow the batteries to top balance and it seems to do a good job. On both of the SOK batteries, the individual cells are within 0.001V. I can't ask for better than that. To do that, the BMS is actually shutting down charging while distributing current between the individual cells. Then turning charging back on for a little bit then repeats. At first, I couldn't figure out why the BMS kept disconnecting the battery. 

I participated in the afternoon test session though AT&T has been a bit flaky. I was told that my audio was dropping occasionally. This usually means that I just need to disable my video to preserve upload bandwidth. According to SpeedTest, I had plenty of download but upload was a bit constrained. (9mbps down, 1.2mbps up) 

Imperial Dam LTVA - BLM

Thursday - We were initially planning to move today but postponed until tomorrow. Our friends had things to get done and others are in an Encore park until tomorrow. I have no problem with changing plans.

Friday - We are moved to another LTVA (Long Term Visitor Area) just a short distance north of Yuma. This is a new boondocking location for us and since we paid for two weeks at the last LTVA, we are still good and don't need to re-register. There are dump stations, trash, and freshwater as part of the LTVA fee. Our tanks were far from full but the plan is to stay here for almost a week so we may as well start our empty and with a full fresh water tank. 

We are at the Imperial Dam LTVA and is managed by the BLM. It is a very pleasant 73°F right now (mid-afternoon) and the forecasted lows are in the mid-40s. We are camping with the same friends from Quartzsite and this place seems to be more crowded. Or at least that’s what it feels like. AT&T didn’t work near the entrance but we are quite a ways in and service has improved. 

Saturday - I signed up to lead a testing session this morning and it's nice to sit outside again for the test. I'm using my phone via USB for the Internet as it seems to work much better than WiFi to the hotspot… sometimes. I was told that the audio was kind of choppy during the test so the tower may have gotten crowded by the middle of the day. 

The batteries were down to 32% by morning. I turned on the generator and had the charge rate cranked up to 90amps and after several hours, the inverter/charger cut off due to high internal temperatures (145°F). By this time, the batteries were up to 75%. The inverter/charger bay as well as my insulated battery box need some powered, temperature control. Sounds like another project. Tomorrow morning, I’ll just open the inverter/charger bay door. The batteries had heated up to 106°F.