My second trip is for 2 nights at Sandalwood Van & Leisure Park and here I am using a gas lamp to see because I took a powerless site. Will post more when the outing has finished but this time I was better prepared and am looking to see how my prepareations will hold out this time.
Can't touch type so it is a bit difficult to hit the right keys but I wanted to actually post whilst on a trip. Will post a photo later.
So where is Sandalwood Van & Leisure Park? if you want to learn to touch type, use coloured stickers on your fingers and the corresponding keys - left hand a s d f - right hand l k j h -you just go up and down fromj these central letters i.e. l p -a q - I taught my brother to type this way and he still equates the letters to type with the colours -
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jules "Love is good for the human being!!" (Ben, aged 10)
Sandalwood Park is near to Wardell just south of Ballina, close enough to Wardell for me to bike it there as I did mid day today where there is a fine home made pie shop. 2 pies later I rode back to the park.
My wife painted the van for me, she is very artistic and we are still good friends.
The deep cycle battery is holding out well after fueling the fridge all day, just keeping ahead of the solar panels.
Will be bailing out tomorrow morning and returning home, will post photos and more info then.
The amount of typing I will be doing from now on is limited to posting on the forum here, thanks for the info but it is unlikely I will try to improve. Also I have been looking into LED lighting for the van and it is so economical to run the gas lighter may be put to rest. The small fluoros cost 14 watts to run with 2 tubes and the 24 LED lights cost .14 or so the cataloque from Whitworth's says. Apparently my van will look like a Christmas tree if I have 2 of them running.
Having 2 charged laptop batteries has prevented the need for the inverter and this time I am ahead of the battery usage.
John
-- Edited by yeoeleven on Saturday 14th of May 2011 04:44:35 PM
The deep cycle battery showed 12.4 volts when I started out for the two days camp and upon returning home it showed 11.8 volts and after an hour using the 120 watt solar panels was back up to 12.4 volts. The battery is new and 105 amp hours.
The fridge was working all the time exept at night when the solar panels were not in use. It dropped down from 4 degrees to 11 degrees overnight and picked up within half an hour in the morning.
So I learned that I can survive without 240 volts for a couple sunny days and that the weather forcast is vital when planning to use unpowered locations. The gas light working in the annex helped also having 2 fully charged laptop batteries saved the use of the inverter so the third day probably would have caused problems.
The one disapointment was that I was unable to get sufficient signal to watch TV on my laptop, I have a HDTV dongle and a Saturn fringe area antenna but I could not get any bars indicting signal.
All went well and the van is booked in next week for a new radiator and the welsh plugs renewing. The following week it needs work on the brakes and an engine mount replacement. That was my biggest worry what the safety check would reveal and the check came out without too much cost.
So far as I can see all the camping side of the van is now complete and in a couple of weeks the mechanicals will also be fixed so all that will be stopping me from starting out on my trip will be saving up some more funds to allow a cushion if things go unexpectedly wrong.
John, I'm pleased that your practice run went well. You must be so pleased with yourself that all of the work and effort that you have put into the van has paid off.
Won't be long now until you are off and living the dream.
Thanks for the information on your power requirements/setup! I've just purchased a Hi-Ace campervan and will need to add solar for extended stays away from 240V power (it only has an extra battery in parallel with the engine battery at the moment, 12V only fridge and fluorescent or halogen lights). Whitworths was my first port of call for LED lights and Jaycar my second: There will be many more before it is set up.
I only drove the van home last night, so today am going thru it thoroughly (I concentrated on the mechanical condition, as the price was such I can afford to change the configuration of the living quarters), but suspect the house battery is an ordinary wet cell and I'm sure I won't be finding an isolator switch, let alone an auto switch device that preserves the power of the engine battery - my learning curve looks pretty steep but it will be in interesting challenge!
Happy travels
Anton
PS I'm new to the Forum & still have to learn how to post a Peronal Message
