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| A Geminid Meteor (And an Airplane) |
I sat outside for a couple of hours watching the Geminid meteor shower. A bit chilly for my taste (49°F) but I bundled up. While I saw many more meteors than I photographed, the one here was the best. If you look at today's LakeshoreImage page there are more, plus the new tilted solar panel (same old panel, just a new tilt!) For the meteors, you may need to look at the large version of the image to see some of them. Most were very dim streaks.
After breakfast (A Jimmy Dean Egg, Cheese, Sausage Biscuit) I started in on tipping the rear solar panel. I drilled out the rivets that Escape used to hold the panel to the brackets & replaced one of them with a 1/4" bolt & nylon lock nut. I also made the 2 15" aluminum brackets. I started on the other side & the battery powered drill ran out of battery. It is now charging. The wind is picking up, so I don't know if I'll be able to finish the job before it gets strong enough to worry about standing on a ladder. The eastern mountains are just about vanished in the dust, while the western ones are fading.
Well, the wind kept up, but the drill battery recharged, so I decided to finish the job. I now have a panel tilted at 50° to the vertical aimed mostly south. Since the batteries are already near full, the solar controller is in the float mode so the any additional panel output isn't making through the controller. We will see how it does in the morning.
The plan is to be able to get away without the portable panel in the winter. With just the roof top panels this morning, I was getting 3 amps. Plugging in the portable aimed at the sun, and it went up to 12. If I could do that with the roof top panels alone, the portable panel could stay in the truck until I parked the trailer in the shade (won't be happening here in Quartzsite, or Imperial Dam for that matter).
Dinner was spaghetti & meatballs with chicken sausage.
Until Tomorrow -
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