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Lou Schneider

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Everything posted by Lou Schneider

  1. You really don't need a fuse between the solar panels and the charge controller. Unlike a battery or a conventional power supply that sends humongous amounts of current into a short, solar panels will NEVER produce more current than their rated Short Circuit Current (Isc). This is only a few percent above the Maximum Power Point current so if your wiring can handle normal current it can also handle the slightly higher current the panels will send into a short. Likewise, if a fuse is sized to handle the solar panel's normal output the current will stay low enough to keep it from blowing if the wires are shorted. Where you DO need fuses are on the battery side of things to interrupt the huge rush of current if something shorts there.
  2. Try opening the story with a browser that isn't subscribed to the service.
  3. At least part of the reason for the 6 month policy is while you can file a change of address to instantly start sending your mail TO a mail forwarder, you cannot issue a similar change of address AWAY from a mail forwarding service. The post office won't pre-sort the mail going to the forwarder to look for your mail. When you leave the forwarder you have to notify everyone of your new address and mail will continue going to the forwarder until the senders make the changes.
  4. It's not just tornados or earthquakes that can interrupt natural gas service. When I moved up to WA my new bride told me when they lose electricity in the winter they shelter in place using blankets to block off the room with the gas fireplace and cook on the outdoor gas grill. The year before I got there they got a major snowstorm which cut the electricity for about a week. The town's natural gas storage tank ran out the third day stopping the flow through the gas lines.
  5. Are you absolutely sure the DC output is connected with the correct polarity? Reverse polarity will blow electrolytic capacitors.
  6. I carry enough cash to buy gas and groceries to get home. Once when I was in my 30s while on a trip to Colorado a malfunctioning ATM machine ate my debit card. Not having any credit cards at that time, I had to go to the bank's branch the next day where the teller intercepted the ATM courier and retrieved my card before he had a chance to shred it.
  7. Once I bought new tires for my Ford F-350 and the shop inflated them to the full sidewall pressure which was 50% above the pressure on the truck's placard. It was a 60 mile drive home (unloaded) and the truck felt very unstable, like it was sliding and fishtailing. I almost brought them back the next day but I caught the error and setting them to the correct pressures solved the problem.
  8. I'm surprised no one has marketed ABC (brand) DEF.
  9. Do you participate at places like iRV2.com, Campground Reviews or any one of a number of manufacturer specific forums? These are owned by Social Knowledge LLC, the parent company of RVLIFE and your information could have been gleaned there. https://www.socialknowledge.com/our-communities/ When Social Knowledge purchases a Forum they encourage members to sign up for free access to their other RVLIFE sites like Campground Reviews and Trip Wizard. The recent mailing is a pitch to upgrade these free membership to paid status and IMO was a major PR blunder. You don't have to upgrade if you don't want to use those sites.
  10. No need, any tow truck large enough to tow the motorhome will have their own air supply. When I was maintaining large diesel generators at transmitter sites, we'd "polish" the fuel every year or two. Essentially it's passing the dirty fuel through a series of filters decreasing in size to remove water, sediment and microbial contaminates. When you're done you have essentially new and fresh diesel. We used a commercial service for our 5000 gallon storage tank but you can DIY for smaller quantities. Google "diesel fuel polishing" for several articles and videos.
  11. With Visible (owned by Verizon and using the same towers) offering unlimited data for $25 a month it kind of limits the value of a grandfathered Verizon account in many cases. If you can live with it's conditions (one device at a time using a cell phone hotspot, occasionally having lower data priority on a crowded tower) it's a great deal.
  12. These fools made their own bad luck. I wish SFGate had a comments section. They couldn't even follow Google's directions, the pin on the map shows them well off of the intended route. Had they glanced at their phone before they turned off the highway they would have seen they were going down the wrong "road". They were supposed to take Sandy Valley Rd, 20 miles of 20 ft wide, graded and maintained road with a sign that says "Sandy Valley." I call it a "45 MPH road." If you go 45 MPH or faster all of the bumps disappear. From Sandy Valley it's another 20 miles on narrow two lane paved roads to I-15 at Jean. Instead, they took off down an unmarked, unmapped dirt track. Had they glanced at the phone before they left the highway they would have seen they were in the wrong place. What's really hilarious are the lemmings who blindly followed behind them. Or they could have looked at the suggested detour and said, "Hmmm. This will add an hour and a half on slow roads to our trip. Maybe we should just chill here until the freeway re-opens." Or take US 95 to I-40, it's only 30 minutes longer than taking I-15. At least they had fairly pleasant weather, not the 110 degree summer heat.
  13. When I was traveling via air and motels for work I would stop in a Wendy's, either at the departing airport or as soon as I landed and have a meal. While I was there I would grab several of their forks, knives and spoons from the condiment counter. One set would live in my carry-on luggage as a reserve set. Wendy's utensils are high quality plastic individually wrapped and they last for quite a while.
  14. Highway 190 through Death Valley still has extensive damage from Hurricane Hilary's rains a couple of months ago. They just re-opened it last week. Expect to encounter construction delays and one way traffic control at several places along the route including a 12 mile stretch west of Panamint Springs where the wait can be a half hour or more. Most of the park is closed due to roads being washed out but you can drive down to Badwater Basin and see the temporary lake that is currently there. RV camping is available in Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells. If you aren't interested in seeing the limited areas open in Death Valley I'd take Hwy 395 down to Barstow and then take 58 and I-15 to Las Vegas.
  15. Just a quick addendum - when I was working in Los Angeles 8 years ago I stayed in Hollywood RV Park in Van Nuys (San Fernando Valley), one of only two RV parks in the area. It's a very nice park but spaces are tight (it was laid out for officer's housing during WWII). Monthly rates were $895 a month, and daily rates were around $50, now it's $79 a night and $1400-1600 a month depending on the size of your RV (some spaces are longer than others) and last time I was there the owner had a foot tall stack of applications on his desk from people wanting to get in. I was working in San Francisco Bay Area before I moved to LA and I stayed at Marin RV Park in Greenbrae. Rates then were in the same range as Hollywood RV Park, today they're $99-115 a night or $595 a week during the winter months (weekly rate only available November 1-March 30).
  16. NPS is now saying Death Valley will re-open on October 15, with Hwy 190 allowing access to Furnace Creek from both the east and west entrances. Previously they said only the west entrance over Towne Pass would re-open then. Most other roads in the park will remain closed. https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/routes-into-death-valley-from-highway-190.htm @homelesshartshorns The Travel Logs section doesn't allow replies, so I'll answer the question you asked here. Death Valley's west entrance over Towne Pass has a very steep grade (something like 27%). Going eastbound it was the only time my Safari Trek was forced into first gear to climb it. Then there's a continuous 20+ mile downgrade from the summit at 4970 ft. to below sea level at Stovepipe Wells. Fortunately the east entrance at Death Valley Junction will also re-open on October 15 and it's much easier - mostly level as it follows a usually dry riverbed into the Valley. Only the areas in and around Hwy 190 (Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells) will open in October, the rest of the roads and trails in the park will remain closed. Unfortunately, the same floods washed out a lengthy section of CA 127 where it crosses the (also normally dry) Armagosa River between Baker and Shoshone. I haven't heard of a re-opening date for this stretch, my guess is Caltrans prioritized re-opening Hwy 190 instead. If you're approaching from the south you'll have to detour via Las Vegas "up and over the hump" to Pahrump, take NV 372/CA 178 to Shoshone and then go north to Death Valley Junction. Or take Bell Vista Ave on the north side of Pahrump, a more direct route to Death Valley Junction.. The Beatty entrance from US 95 is closed but you can take NV 373 through the Amargosa Valley to DVJ.
  17. Starlink needing to see the "northern" sky is false. Their satellites can be anywhere overhead. Dishy orients itself to the north so it's uplink (which is less directional than the receive side) doesn't interfere with geosynchronous satellites over the equator.
  18. The sticking point for entering the US market is the federal automotive safety standards. Will this vehicle meet them or will it be limited to being a glorified golf cart in the US, unable to use public roads?
  19. If I may add a different perspective from what has been discussed so far. I retired 6 years ago with the intention of going fulltime. About 6 months before I retired I got on the waiting list for one of the Escapees co-op parks. These give you a fixed address and an economical lifetime lease on a space in a community of like minded people that you can use as much or as little as you want. These waiting lists are usually several years long and I planned to use South Dakota and one of their mail forwarding companies as my home base while I waited for a space to open up in the co-op. But due to a couple of factors including a real estate slump that forced others to delay their plans my name came to the top of the list before I retired. I jumped on the opportunity and signed up so when I retired I was able make the park my domicile for vehicle registrations, voting, health care, etc. My plan was (and still is) to use the park as a home base, returning for short visits a couple of times a year to take care of (so far routine) medical appointments, renewing vehicle registrations, etc. But when the "two weeks to limit the surge" Covid lockdown shut everything down for several months including tourist related places like public and private campgrounds many fulltimers found themselves with literally nowhere to go. Hopefully this never happens again, but it was a godsend to have a place where I could return and ride out the lockdown. As well as a place where I can stay if/when medical needs force me off the road. https://escapees.com/benefits/rv-parking/skp-co-op-parks/
  20. Valley Electric's service area extends about 150 miles along the lightly populated Nevada-California border. The original proposal was to use the fiber line they installed to monitor their transmission equipment to provide high speed Internet to the very isolated ranches and communities along the way. They figured they would need 4000 subscribers in Pahrump to cover the investment and it would take a couple of years to build that up. They got 4000 commitments within a week of the initial offering (Pahrump doesn't have DSL or cable TV to provide similar service and wasn't even connected to the electric grid until 1960). This prompted the initial WiMax rollout until they could extend fiber to everyone.
  21. Here in Pahrump (an isolated community of about 40,000 people) our local electric co-op floated the idea of providing high speed internet about 6 years ago. Based on overwhelming initial interest they set up an interim WiMax network by placing nodes on extended utility poles on a 1 mile square grid and giving subscribers over the air routers and external antennas. Originally they used Dish network style dishes with their offset feedhorns whick makes them look like they're pointing at the ground. Later subscribers got panel antennas. Speed is 40-50 Mbps up and down. As of now they've extended fiber to about half of the town and will be shutting down the WiMax network once everyone is switched over. The problem is there are about a dozen people here in the park subscribed to the WiMax service and we don't know how we can extend last mile fiber into the park. Our electrical service is all underground, and at 35+ years old any conduits are likely clogged with mud and debris meaning getting fiber to individual sites will require lots of new trenching ($$$). Here's a good video on how Valley Electric is building out the fiber network. https://fb.watch/mVNP_e5x5v/
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