Day 46, 47 - Acton, CA - TT

Thursday (46) - A much shorter driving day than yesterday. Only 150 miles. We went on the north side of the San Gabriel Mtns. through Victorville and Palmdale into a TT park in Acton, CA. The reviews said that it was a horrible TT park. I disagree. It’s not that bad. The sites are a bit tighter than some but the Las Vegas one is much more cramped. The WiFi is $15/week but there is barely any Verizon signal so there isn’t a lot of choice. I haven’t checked out the pool yet. It was 90°F this afternoon so I simply stayed inside the RV. 

Friday (47) - We got the third solar panel installed today. I still need to Dicor the screw heads as I used four screws in addition to the Sikaflex. Call me paranoid. After wiring things up, I checked the voltage from the panels at the switch and got 67VDC which is about what I was expecting. I switched the panels on and checked things out on the charge controller through the Raspberry Pi. Since the battery is already fully charged from earlier in the morning, the charge controller was already in absorption mode. Now, it's in float. For some reason, I can't connect to the charge controller over BT. 

I tugged on the other panels and they are still very solidly stuck to the roof. So this upgrade project is almost done. :-)

I did the morning test session while sitting outside but by 11am, it was 86°F already. Needless to say, I'm doing the afternoon session inside the RV. It's now 88°F. I think I may need to visit the pool this afternoon...

Day 44, 45 - Benson, AZ - TT

Tuesday (44) - I turned off the battery charger last night to see how the additional solar panel helps. This morning, we were down to 92% on our batteries as we didn't really use that much power overnight. But, even with a lot of cloud cover, we were back up to 100% by 9am. The upper blue line on the graph is the battery state-of-charge (soc). Pink-ish is DC consumption and orange-ish is solar. This screen clip is from the Victron portal. 

This is a screen capture from the touch screen. It is showing max power and current. This is better info than I was getting from the Raspberry Pi setup on the 5th wheel. And, I’m able to access the local screen through the portal. Pretty slick. I can see why the Victron stuff is so popular. 

Tomorrow, we leave this park and plan on dry camping on our way to the next park north of Los Angeles. 

Oh, now I’m officially “senior citizen”. Social Security called to let me know that I’m all signed up effective April 1, 2021. Oh joy…

Wednesday (45) - A long driving day today. Benson, AZ, to Twentynine Palms, CA. Google says 436 miles but I took the Phoenix bypass which adds a few more miles. To me, it’s worth the detour. We are lot-docking at Tortoise Rock Casino, a small casino that we found on the AllStays app. Free parking for up to 72 hours. Nice to just go inside and order food after a long day on the road. The parking lot is slightly tilted but it’ll be fine for one night. We had the generator running while driving for about five hours with both of the roof A/Cs running. It got warmer as we dropped in elevation to a high of over 90°F. 

The RV ran fine. Even on the long grades with 90°+ air temperatures, the engine temperature never exceeded 206°F. So that was a win. We are near the northern entrance to Joshua Tree National Park but we aren’t planning to visit. Tomorrow is another travel day. 

Day 41, 42, 43 - Benson, AZ - TT

Saturday (41) - We got our second Covid shot in Sierra Vista, AZ. We went there through Tombstone along a nice scenic, winding road. They were less organized than where we got our first shot in Tucson but eventually, we got through the paperwork. No problems (so far) from the shot beyond a sore arm. 

After the shot, we headed further into Sierra Vista to get the oil changed in the Prius. It’s hard for me to believe but we put almost 25k miles on this car since I drove it out of AK back in August 2019. This doesn’t include towed miles. Completely reliable. 

No update on the other two solar panels. The status hasn’t changed since Thursday afternoon where the package was listed as “Amarillo, TX, In transit”. 

Sunday (42) - Last night around 2am, I had a reaction to the shot. Fever, headache, sore muscles, and very thirsty. But by morning I was feeling better except for being tired. We went to a birthday party, had blackberry ice cream at the Benson ice cream parlor, then sat in the pool and jacuzzi until late afternoon. All in all, a good day. Still kinda sore but nothing like last night. 

I finally got an update on the solar panel shipment. The FedEx site now shows that it left Phoenix this afternoon. Who knows where it’s headed next. They say that delivery is expected on Tuesday. Hopefully, since we plan on leaving on Wednesday. 

Monday (43) - A long-ish testing session this morning as the candidate had DSL internet issues. But we eventually finished. The second two solar panels arrived in the early afternoon. There were enough calm periods (less wind) for me to get a second panel installed. Now, the panel voltage is 44 volts so the voltage drop in the 10AWG wire of 0.8VDC is less significant. Still, 2% which is right on the edge of reasonable. With the third panel, the loss will be 1.2% which is a good number. Any higher and I should go to larger cable. 

Since rain is in the forecast, I applied Dicor to all of the screw heads and fastened down the cable with cable ties. At our next stop, I’ll see how things are holding up. I used the remaining Dicor around the Eternabond tape on the roof vents. 

Right now, I’m relaxing at the jacuzzi. It looks like it shouldn’t rain until tomorrow afternoon. By the time I got the second panel connected, we were already getting clouds. I ran out of screws so I can't get the brackets mounted to the panel. Maybe tomorrow morning I'll work on the brackets.

Day 39, 40 - Benson, AZ - TT

Thursday (39) - It's a windy morning so I'm doing the ham radio testing thing from inside the RV. By windy, there are gusts into the mid-30s (mph). This generally means that I can't have the awning out so it gets a bit warm in addition to the wind noise over the Zoom session. It turns out that there is only one candidate but 8 VEs. A bit overkill but it's still nice to be able to visit with the others.

This may be defined as the point of no return. That is a ¾" hole in the roof. I then fed the photovoltaic wires through the hole and ran them through a bulkhead fitting with two gland connectors. I filled the hole with expanding foam before glueing the bulkhead fitting down. 

Rubber inside the connectors compress around the wire when tightened. To ensure a tight fit, I filled the gland fitting with silicone caulk before tightening down on the wires. I will go over the edges and the screw heads with self-leveling Dicor after installing the panels. 

Another Apple virtual award for Earth Day. I thought the design looked kind of cool. 

Friday (40) - One of the panels arrived on Thursday afternoon. It seems huge. I screwed in the ABS mounts on the four corners of the panel and the middle of the long dimension. I applied Sikaflex 252 after scuffing the mount with 80 grit sandpaper and cleaning the roof with acetone. They seem pretty solid but in addition, I used a stud sensor to locate the aluminum roof “beams”. I put one screw through each bracket into a beam to hold while the glue dries. 

Here is panel one of three. After the Sikaflex cures for a few days, I’ll cover the screws with Dicor. I went ahead and terminated the photovoltaic cable with MC4 connectors and added the 15amp fuse to the positive side. I then verified polarity at the switch before feeding the charge controller. 

This is the screen on the Victron phone app showing panel and battery voltage and current. With only one panel, the resistive loss in the 82’ of cable from the roof to the charge controller is significant. With two more panels in series, the resistive loss will be less significant.