Slow Build in Oz

[MickinOz]

Rail attachment starboard side. Short bolts through bottom face of tube.

Rail attachment port side.
This side also has the bracket that came with the awning. Refer drawing three a couple posts back.
Since this required through bolting, I cut "anti-crush" tubes to go inside the tube. With these in place, the nuts can be tightened with a spanner without crushing the square tube.

 

[MickinOz]

Port Side showing the bracket bolted to the trailer wall, and the awning bracket mounted on top of the crossbar.

 

[MickinOz]

Got the crossbars finished and mounted the awning. Pretty happy with how it all panned out.
I took the opportunity to touch up a few spots on the paint where there is a surprising amount of wear and tear for about 2 years use.
I took a look at my monster solar panel (250 watts) and decided I'd use the MC4 connectors, so I needed to fabricate a cable to come from the regulator to the fly leads on the panel.
Off to the wholesalers. MC4 connectors, when they recognise you from all your visits with your contractor son, are very cheap.
Then, they threw in some 4mm square (12 AWG) cable. They had some they can no longer sell for solar installations on houses, as new rules rendered the labelling on the cable obsolete.

 

[MickinOz]

Progress is fragmented.
Today's timeline:
Rise, shower, clean teeth.
Make pizza dough.
Join old work mates for morning coffee at local eatery.
Receive call from my son to go trim a kitchen benchtop.
People who need a new electric cooktop are finding that the new cooktops don't quite fill the old holes, typically by about 15 to 20mm.
If the budget doesn't run to a new countertop, they are in a little strife.
He offers them a solution whereby I insert a filler piece and seal it with the appropriately coloured caulk.
Typically it's an original kitchen in a say a 30 year old house, where it's worn but still presentable, and they are trying to keep it going for a few more years.
Cheers 'em up big time when I turn up with a filler piece, glue and screws, and do a half presentable job of reducing the size of the hole.

It has been a bit of a saga getting the panel connected.
Damned 12 gauge wire is hard to get to go around corners.
But tonight after dinner I got into it and got her done.
Itching to see if it worked. I had previously put my workshop floodlights on the panel and it generated enough voltage to check polarity.
So, with the +ve connected to the +ve and the -ve connected to the -ve, I hoisted the floods up into the rafters and shone 'em on the panel.
Only 70mA, but I actually got a charge happening.
So here's a sight to warm the cockles of me ol' heart.

 

[MickinOz]

So I wheeled the finished install out into what passes for a summer sun today.

View attachment 3

Got 7 amps from that gloomy low ceiling. At 14V, so under this very overcast sky still charging 98 watts.

View attachment 2

 

[MickinOz]

So I've got a power station currently cranking in boost mode at nearly 7 amps on a very overcast day.
Short circuit current from this panel is 8.55 amps. So the MPPT controller seems to be doing its job, extracting nearly 100 watts from a 250 watt panel on a day like today is pretty impressive.

 

[MickinOz]

So I woke this morning in the block behind the Flinders Rest Hotel at Warnertown, South Australia.
The pub was chosen as a convenient central meeting point for a bunch of retired, or soon to be retired, Sinter Plant veterans to meet for what we hope will be a regular "let's not forget our comrades from the trenches" get together.
It's 10 miles from home for me, and was certainly one event where I had no interest in counting drinks, etc, to avoid a DUI arrest.
So I asked the little sweetheart tending bar where I could park the trailer.
Hence being parked up behind the pub, a mere 50 yard stroll from the very clean public BBQ area and toilets.
i.e. Ol #1 was employed for the purposes for which she was originally conceived and constructed.
First light about 5:30, dawn about 6 am.
The overcast sky pretty much obscured the sun's location, but the big 250W panel and MPPT controller were putting in 2.5 amps by 7 am.
I made coffee and cereal and ate a leisurely breakfast with barely a hint of a hangover, and was home by 08:30. By then the sky was clearer, and the controller was occasionally showing a charge current north of 8 amps.
MPPT controllers are absolutely the duck's nuts for extracting the best from a panel in lower light conditions.
I backed the trailer in the shed about 9:30 am or so, by which time the controller said I had pushed in 10 amp hours against a usage of 8 AH.
Very pleased.
Next little project is to actually install the latches, catches, hooks that came with my doors that are used to hold the door in the open position.
I want these so it is more convenient to split the door, latch the glass leaf in the open position and sleep with just the security screen closed.

 

[friz-TNT]

You have to love the way a teardrop camper elevates public intoxication and vagrancy to enjoying a few cocktails with your friends and camping. A truly transformative device. Enjoy your season down under. We are looking at highs in the teens (Fahrenheit) next week.

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

 

[MickinOz]

The forecast is for 97F today. Should be cosy.
Funny thing - I didn't drink anymore than usual.
5 pints of mid strength beer over about 4 hours.
But yeah, very relaxing not worrying about potential aftermath.
I was a bit seedy in the morning, but I think its because I didn't sleep as well as usual.
The trailer was a little bit head down. I left it attached to the truck, and it's a bit of a rule over here that the draw bar should point down a little when hitched up, Definitely not supposed to be above horizontal. I think it is to do with the dynamic forces applied when braking.
Most places I camp I can just park to allow for it.
On rare occasions I disconnect it and level it with the wind down jockey wheel, but I thought I'd be lazy last night.
The tow ball is on a removable tounge, I'm going to see whether I can turn it over and get it closer to level.

Forecast is for only 94F for Christmas Day, should be quite comfortable.

 

[MickinOz]

You have to love the way a teardrop camper elevates public intoxication and vagrancy to enjoying a few cocktails with your friends and camping. A truly transformative device. Enjoy your season down under. We are looking at highs in the teens (Fahrenheit) next week.

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

It is a wonderful thing, how vagrancy and intoxication becomes cocktails and sophisticated camping when you have a teardrop.
We are mid summer here, and it should be boiling hot as I type, but its only about 85F, with a forecast low of 53F at my intended sleeping spot.
The missus has been really busy at work covering for her absent manager, and is in no mood to do anything except grab a bite and an early night.
So tonight I'm leaving her to it, and heading to Mundoora, a very small country town about 30 miles away.
It has a small community owned sports club that is open for 5 hours tonight, serving fish and chips and cold drinks.
The free RV park is about 50 metres away from the clubrooms, so I'm off for a relaxed evening filling up on fish and chips and hopefully making new friends.

 

[MickinOz]

I had a great overnight camping trip.
Several Southwark beers (AKA Green Death), fish and chips on the bar.

The RV park at Mundoora South Australia is a little gem.
These are scattered around rural areas, generally aimed at getting people to stay a while and maybe spend a little.

In typical country RV park fashion it has:
A small toilet block, complete with drop point for RV sewage tanks.
BBQ hut - free electric BBQ
Shelter areas with table and seats
Take one / leave one street library.
Donation box - nobody's checking to see, but I do $1 for every time I use the toilets or run the BBQ, so it usually comes out about $4-5 per night.

This little park is about a 2 minute walk from the community run "sports club".
A sort of country tavern/pub where the beers were $5-6 depending on brand and whether happy hour was still running, and the fish and chips were $12.
By South Australia standards, that is incredibly cheap.

Retired to the trailer just after 9pm, watched about 1.5 Star Wars movies and settled into a nice snooze.
Up at dawn for coffee, fruit and cereal, home by 10:30 am.
As soon as the sun came over the horizon, my monster over-sized solar panel started cranking in the amps. I'm very pleased with the system.
I weighed the trailer on the way to Mundoora. Fully loaded, with water, spare beers I ended up not needing, snacks, breakfast, ice, everything, she ran 572 kg.
Fully loaded.
I'm happy, except she's now 72 kg on the hitch. Perfectly legal, within all tolerances and specifications, but more than I want to lift.
But I have been cogitating on a small modification that should trim that nicely.

 

[MickinOz]

Sadly the donation box sounded suspiciously empty when I was feeding my gold coins in.
Could it be my fellow Aussies don't fully appreciate how good we have it?
I can only hope the other three RV's in the park were planning to make a contribution before they left.

 

[MickinOz]

Took a beach trip. Overnight stay not far from Port Germein, South Australia.
High tide was at midnight, my instructions from various keen fishermen I know was "Give it a go and let us know how you get on."
So I set up camp in a light misting rain that managed to just get everything wet, sticky and uncomfortable without noticeably reducing the temperature, cooked boerewors over my portable firepit for dinner, and settled in to watch House of Dragons until the tide came in.
No regrets fitting the little 2m x 2m awning - enough space to sit out of the rain while the sausage was grilling over the coals.
One thing I noticed - at 7:00 pm under an overcast sky with misting rain, the panel was still pushing 0.75 amps into the battery.
No fish came to the celebration, so about 1 am I hit the sack for the night. I took my mate's advice and put the awning away before I turned in.
Glad I did, it was fairly breezy when I awoke at 7.30 am.
On my list of things to buy are some of those screw in sand anchor pegs.
Being quite breezy, I towed the outfit back into Pt. Germein and found somewhere more sheltered to park up for coffee and breakfast.
It was signposted "no camping" but was right alongside a picnic shelter and BBQ area.
Port Germein is another of those areas where the council provides free BBQs.
Local cop must have known I hadn't been there all night, she just gave me a smile and a wave.

 

[featherliteCT1]

Looking good! Did the wet sand stick to your shoes?

 

[MickinOz]

Looking good! Did the wet sand stick to your shoes?

Shoes? What is this thing you call shoes?


Despite my best efforts, the cabin has far more sand in it than I am happy with.
I will have to take out the mattress sheets and pillows soon, possibly even fire up the vacuum cleaner.

 

[edgeau]

Looking good! Did the wet sand stick to your shoes?

Shoes? What is this thing you call shoes?


Despite my best efforts, the cabin has far more sand in it than I am happy with.
I will have to take out the mattress sheets and pillows soon, possibly even fire up the vacuum cleaner.

That sounds serious [emoji6]

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[rjgimp]

View attachment 1

Sadly the donation box sounded suspiciously empty when I was feeding my gold coins in.
Could it be my fellow Aussies don't fully appreciate how good we have it?
I can only hope the other three RV's in the park were planning to make a contribution before they left.

That’s some fine looking accommodations there, mate. Do the pages in those books turn right to left or left to right down there…?

 

[MickinOz]

View attachment 1

Sadly the donation box sounded suspiciously empty when I was feeding my gold coins in.
Could it be my fellow Aussies don't fully appreciate how good we have it?
I can only hope the other three RV's in the park were planning to make a contribution before they left.

That’s some fine looking accommodations there, mate. Do the pages in those books turn right to left or left to right down there…?

Left to right, but we be holding it upside down. That's the trouble with down under we have to study for years to be able to read the books upside down.

 

[featherliteCT1]

I have been trying to clean up my language for years after I heard a guy define "vulgarity" as the feeble attempt of a feeble mind to make a feeble point. I relapse too often.

 

[MickinOz]

We define vulgarity as "Speaking Australian".
There is no doubt about it, most spoken Aussie adjectives start with the letters F or B.

I'm off to nail a bucket list item. Well, I really have a "might do that one day" list rather than a full-on bucket list.
There is a ghost town up bush called Farina.
As in, the Italian word for flour.
When it was surveyed in 1878, it was envisioned that the district would become the "granary of the north".
The rains never came, so that dream fell away, but for a while the town was the rail head for the old narrow gauge line.
When the new standard gauge line was laid to Marree, that fell away too.
So now it is ruins being restored by a volunteer society.
One of the first things they restored is the underground bakery, with its woodfired scotch oven.
Its open for business 2 months of the year.

So that's the goal. I'm about to tow the teardrop 500 miles to buy a pie and a sausage roll, and photograph an old oven in the Outback.
We are loaded with food, clothes, tools and firewood. Still debating whether to throw in a hunting rifle.
The campgrounds are $10 per person per night, and are luxurious. Apparently, if you light the donkey, you can even have a hot shower; and the toilets flush.
This picture from the restoration society website.