article: a heretic nitpicks Maine Sail

Maine Sail, writing at marinehowto and various forums, is one of the best resources on the ‘net on matters related to batteries and their charging. He has real experience and performs valuable and well-designed experiments on our behalf. I will take my reputation in my own hands and push back on one of his statements.

heads up: 2x Battle Born giveaway

Mortons on the Move are giving away 2 heated BB lithium batts and a Victron monitor they used for promotion/testing. The heating element appears to be similar to heated pipe tape like people use to keep their plumbing from freezing. Many DIYers have been doing this already so it’s good to see some confirmation in

RVwiki: added Georgia to list of places with vandweller ban

Added this entry: It shall be unlawful for any person or persons to lodge in, on or about any automobile, truck, trailer, RV, camper, or similar vehicle in any County street, right-of-way, at any County owned or operated parks, boat ramps, grounds, recreational facilities, county owned parking lot, or other public property of Chatham County.”

solar yield in overcast conditions

Over the past few years I’d estimated that my system puts out about 25-33% of normal max in bright overcast 20% in overcast 10% in dark overcast It was guesswork, but then I saw this article that gave lux for various sky conditions. I plugged the values into a spreadsheet to convert the lux into theoretical max

backchannel: Solar Systems Charged and Challenged

from this article in Truck Camper magazine. What these folks don’t realize is that many RVers don’t need a solar panel system and would be better advised to upgrade their battery banks. No warning bells, but wakes me wonder how he’s proposing to fully charge lead batts offgrid without solar. Is a solar panel system a

on the state of affairs

i made some slight adjustments to tucker carlson’s monologue about protesters pic.twitter.com/qo0ca08gse — John Kerr (@JohnnyHeatWave) June 3, 2020

article: RV Boondocking and Dry Camping

my thoughts on this article. from a vandweller’s point of view.  Some of my objections are technical, some are financial. > With many campgrounds closed, full-time RVers that aren’t prepared to dry camp or boondock might find themselves in a pickle. Agreed.  Luckily for me, I never had the budget to become dependent on rv

Article: Preparing for Coronavirus to Strike the U.S.

This article in on the Scientific American website denigrates preppers then tells people to take the same steps that preppers espouse.  I suspect there’s a bit of psychological distancing (so to speak) going on here;  we should have been prepared like preppers but we are not like those lowlifes! “As the new human coronavirus spreads around the

[edited] article: staggering hypocrisy of sit/lie laws

Update:  I misunderstood the scope of the LV ordinance.  It appears to be limited to public rights of way and not all public property like parks, benches, under bridges, etc.  If this (pdf) is the accepted text it is associated with posted cleaning hours, which is even less egregious. There are two positions here that seem opposed but are

“working from starbucks”

Every once in a while a reddit post illustrates how vandwellers can live.  Here’s one called Is this what they meant when they said “You’ll be working from Starbucks all the time”? The popular image, of course, is someone using Starbucks as an informal workspace.  Our worker here is using the Starbucks parking lot as