back to 2025.01.25 Winter Field Day Camp Ingawanis

5 solar and power:




I've developed a fairly standard load-out for solar and power, and with the longer run-time (30 hrs) for this
event I decided to bring four frames of solar. We were expecting three lithium batteries but only two showed up,
but we decided to run on lithium anyway and just keep the ~4 lead acid batteries in reserve. Digital stations are
usually by far the biggest consumers of battery, and so the two lithium were more than sufficient for the event
since we didn't run any digital. Four frames of solar was probably overkill as well, but we couldn't have known
that in advance.

The sun was good throughout the event, but the wind was a problem on Saturday. Gusts from the West were peeling
frames down off the South side of the cabin, and so they had to be laid down flat on the ground. It's not optimal,
but we didn't have a large power draw so it got the job done, keeping the batteries charged until sundown.

The solar had been running for awhile before I realized I didn't have a watt-hour meter inline, so the power total
is going to read a bit low for the event since some of it wasn't counted.

In the morning I noticed there was no good place on the cabin to move the frames, since the East side is smaller
and consisted of the grill, the door with ramp, and the wood box. I decided to get out the long transmission
lines and run them to various trees to the East, leaning single frames against trees. This wouldn't have been
possible if there was even the slightest wind, but fortunately it remained calm throughout the morning. Not much
power was collectable though, as the batteries quickly returned to full charge since no radios had been run
overnight.

There was also a bit of frost on the panels and panel combiner boxes, though that dissipated pretty quickly once
the sun came out.

After lunch I decided to start packing up the solar, and took down a frame every hour or so, to speed up tear-down
later. As usual, the panels were much quicker to disassemble and pack up than they were to set up. It's just not
practical to transport the frames with the panels already installed on them though, so this is how it has to be.

I did end up moving the last two frames off trees and back onto the South side of the cabin near the end of the
event, but at that point almost no power was being collected and the frames were floating at over 80 volts.

2025.01.25 08.56.03	2025.01.25 09.04.15	2025.01.25 09.04.24	2025.01.25 13.59.40	2025.01.25 13.59.48	2025.01.25 14.00.32
2025.01.25 14.00.56	2025.01.25 14.01.10	2025.01.25 14.01.20	2025.01.25 14.01.44	2025.01.25 14.02.12	2025.01.26 08.22.16
2025.01.26 08.22.34	2025.01.26 08.22.39	2025.01.26 08.22.51	2025.01.26 11.39.14	2025.01.26 11.39.17	2025.01.26 11.39.30
2025.01.26 11.39.35	2025.01.26 11.40.12	540Wh plus about another 100	another one needs re-gluing

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