I put off playing with the tent this weekend, since it was blowing 55mph and snowing. Quite apart from the risk of it turning into an expensive kite, getting it wet would give me another job - trying to get it dry. So, we invoked Plan B - put the waffle boards on the roofrack and sort out the new solar panel.
I bought the boards from a local who'd retired from the offroad scene and had a lot of stuff to get rid of. Luckily I spotted his Gumtree ad before anyone else and got 2 sets of boards - lightweight and heavy - for half the cost of one, and they've not been used. Despite the extra weight, we'll carry the thicker versions to Morocco as they're strong enough to act as bridges as well as sand ladders. They fit perfectly on the rack and give me somewhere safe to stand while I'm leaping about like a gibbon up there. Not only that, and to satisfy our rule that "everything must have at least two uses", I can use one board to provide a stabiliser for the Hi-Lift jack:
The black paint on the upper board gives the locations for the Hi-Lift stabiliser kit:
which consists of 2 ratchet straps and 2 locking bars. The pin and clip are for securing the jack adapter.
The ratchet straps are used to brace the jack against the stiffness of the board and stop it from tipping left or right, which is a real hazard when using these things.
When we had our puncture last year, the bottle jack wouldn't work on the stony ground - too unstable - so we used the Hi-Lift and a wooden footboard similar to this, but it only did that job and was otherwise Dead Weight. This new arrangement is more useful and the boards can be used as seats if we have guests....which we anticipate might be pretty often!
The cover for the jack mechanism was made from an old inner tube, cut to shape and held together with press studs. I know it's not as good as a full cover, but it'll keep most of the crud off and it was free.
...and on with the Solar panel:
OK, so it looks like a bit of armour plate, but what you see has taken weeks of trial runs and wasted effort. The first effort was, in fact, more like a bit of side armour and way too heavy. The solar panel itself weighs next-to-nothing so I was determined to try to keep the whole set-up equally light. Eventually I made a cover from thin plywood, braced with battens around the edges. It won't last forever but is good enough for now. This is the panel in "transport" mode. It can be opened in situ....
and this is about the angle you'd want it to catch any energy just here at the moment. The sun does, despite rumours to the contrary, actually get above our horizon for an hour or two each day. Clearly, this wouldn't be an ideal angle for use anywhere south of the Arctic Circle (here - nearly) so it has to be a bit more flexible...
There's 5 metres of cable connecting it to the charge controller :
so we can pretty much put it anywhere - on the roof if necessary. Having the panel lets us keep the main (starter) and auxilliary batteries charged when we're parked up, so we are now completely free of the need to use campsites and external electricity. This was necessary last year. If we wanted to run the fridge and other things while wild camping, the battery would last just over a day and then need a charge from Daphne's alternator. This isn't a problem if we move every day but it's not the plan this year.
Sue has finally finished her work on her Forensics course, for now anyway, so is getting her head around the phrasebook. I'm concentrating on the social niceties and she's "doing the shopping", which means,among other things, learning how to argue over the price. If we learn a phrase a day, we should be pretty well sorted by the time we land at Tangier.
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