It’s Monday morning at 7:54 and the sun has just hit the solar panels, it’s a mild 48 or 9 degrees this morning, and while we are discharging at a rate of 16 amps this should start to turn around over the next hour or so. The forecast for the day while in the mid 70’s will be cloudy as a new storm is hitting the Pacific coast, while there is no precipitation in the forecast, high cloud will temper our solar harvest.

We will be adding to our solar array, with the addition of two more panels, Matt at Continues Resources has 210 watt panels on at the show for $190 and this will bring our total array to 1.1 kilowatts which is the maximum that our controllers can handle, so this week will see us adding some new panels. I just need to track down a couple of tilt mounts, and some wire connectors, and a battery cut off switch.

Well the high cloud turned into just heavy cloud, so while the solar started to carry the load of the coach, we were not replenishing our barrel bank, so it turned into a generator day, and the forecast now has a cloudy day for Tuesday with rain as well. So I have started to upgrade the puck lamps in the coach, Miss Laurie has never been a fan of the brass / gold trimmed lighting so now we have frosted glass, and I have to admit it is an improvement to the appearance as well as the lighting. The original lamps had halogen bulbs which I switched out to leds, which reduced both the draw and the lumens, so these are a much nicer lamp both on and off.

The original puck lights with the led installed.

The new lamps with the frosted glass covers.

You can even see in the daylight how much more light is hitting the window valence, and the puck lamps in the ceiling almost disappear into the headliner. We are pretty much captured from visiting, or getting out, until the windows are reinstalled, hopefully Wednesday morning then we will go and visit with friends at La Possa south, and head back to the tent for a few items.

Quartzsite Big Tent Day!

We had the last group breakfast with the other members of the rally, this morning was kind of a combination of some of the leftovers from the other mornings…with French toast, scrambled eggs, ham, sausage, and fruit. Pretty good spread for the last day, at least the two plates I had were good, we have met a lot of great people, and I think this is an event that we would take in again.

Today at 9 o’clock the big tent opens to the public, and today will be the craziest of the whole nine or ten days, I hope to get there but it will be late afternoon after the masses have left. We are going to the last breakfast of the rally, this will be the left over day, as I suspect the excess of each day will be warmed and served. Hoping for some more ham this morning personally, but I’m sure there will be plenty.

We had a failure of a 350 amp battery switch on Thursday, I was able to remove it from the circuit and get us back up and running, the connections seemed to be tight so I’m not sure what caused the failure. But with a rating of a continuous 350 amps and a 1000 amp monetary rating I’m definitely not pleased. The failure took place after a generator run time of a little over an hour to recharge batteries, but the amperage was only running around the 125 amp range. This is one of the reasons for a trip to the big tent today, tomorrow we will go over to the LTVA to dump before our pass expires, but I expect to stay in the Roadrunner BLM area for the upcoming week, there will be lots of the Beaver Group sticking around for a while.

The big tent will hold some deals, it will also hold a lot of junk, knowing your prices before making any purchases is a necessity. I have dealt with a number of the companies that will be represented at the tent so it won’t be as overwhelming as it was two years ago, but I’m sure there will be lots of pain management, and slice and dice hawkers there as well.

This has been our first rally, and we have enjoyed it, it has been educational, very informative, as you get a chance to learn from other owners problems over the years, many here have had their coaches for years some since new, so the depth of knowledge is great. I can see us trying to fit this into our schedule in the upcoming years.