Wanderings of the RVButterfly

   
The Solar system on our rig consisted of two 130 watt panels, a 25 amp charge controller putting charge from the sun into four 6 volt deep cycle golf cart type batteries.  Then it feeds our 12vdc systems and a 2KW inverter.  The inverter takes the 12vdc from the batteries and makes household 110 vac that runs appliances like microwave, toaster, coffee maker and TV sets plus a lot of other things in our case.

Up to this point we have been pretty much independent of “the grid” electric wise but when we were not plugged in we had to be pretty conservative.  We were deficient in two aspects.  One was not enough panel power to get a great charge into the batteries.  If it was cloudy or I didn’t tilt the panels directly into the sun we just didn’t get quite enough charge.  The other area is not quite enough batteries to support our loads. 

 
This weekend I purchased our third panel and got it mounted on the roof.  It’s the bigger one in the middle of these photos.  The two on the outside are 130 watts each.  The middle is 135 watts.  The boost in power is amazing.  That’s over 30% more so it’s significant. 

Before I would charge around 12 to 14 amps in non tilted mode, now I am making 20 amps in non tilted mode.  Tilting them directly at the sun gives an additional 30%.  I’m gonna need a bigger controller.  This one is only 25 amps capable.  Once I get that, I’m gonna need more batteries and then and then…  Geeze does it never end? 

This is my spiffy 4 way tilt mount.  There is an L bracket screwed into the roof and amply water proofed.  This is bolted to a hinge and the hinge is screwed into the panel mounting piece.  Nifty way to be able to tilt the panel in each of 4 directions.  I’ll show more if you are interested.

Saturday Bill Beck and I went to the airshow at the model field.  We were there with about 1500 residents of the area.  The show was great.  There was continuous action and some darn good flying.

This was a small segment of the flight line.  Notice the 49% scale clipped wing cub and the 50% Christian Eagle.  They are owned and flown as a family thing.  The dad builds them and the son flies them.

This video is just a glimpse at the flight routine they did with this monster.  Wow.

This is the Christian Eagle on the ground.  Notice that it’s taller than waist high on those guys!  cool.

This helicopter never flew but look at that camera. Would that be fun?

I know this is hard to see but these little four prop things called “Quads” are really neat little electric flying machines.  There are 4 motors with props pointed straight up.  The motors work in pairs to control flight angle and direction and etc.  I can’t figure it out but I saw it.  Not sure…

When the Big cub  goes by you gotta realize that the engine in there is bigger than most snow mobile engines.  Power to spare. 

Another 39% model doing it’s show thing.  Full scale planes haven’t quite gotten to this power to weight ratio plus it’s easier if the pilot is standing on the ground, not having his life on the line inside the plane.

I took more video and more photos.  some day I’ll process them all.  It was a great day.  Don’t you love all this sunshine and warm if February.