Two brains equal one?

 8:14 am - Saturday - January 11th - TWW - 26° F, humidity 23%, wind 5 mph out of the north....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 49° F.  On this date in 2019 we left Quincy, FL and ended the day in Louisiana.....4 states in one day.....

Mobile tunnel under Mobile Bay, AL

.....in all we covered 333 miles that day....a very long day for us, but the driving conditions were idyllic.....flat roads, with a tail wind, and the sun at our backs most of the day.

Friday was another cold one, but there was no wind, so even though it only reached 48° F, it felt much warmer with clear, blue skies, and all of that direct sunlight.  Even though the overnight lows were in the mid 20's, our Bluetti battery bank only got down to 67%, and our house batteries only dropped to 79%.  I decided not to turn on the Predator 5000 generator, and just wait for the rising sun to tilt the solar array, and begin recharging the Bluetti AC200MAX and its two expansion batteries (B200's).  The panels tilted at exactly 8:20 am, and by 12:30 pm they were back to 100%.

I finally turned on the Predator for about 30 minutes at 10:30 am to give the house batteries a boost before the sun finally hit our four roof panels in full.....there is a large juniper tree which blocks two of the four panels from getting sun until around 10:40 am each day.  I turned it off at 11 am when we left to drive into town.  By the time we returned at 12:30 pm the house batteries were also back to 100%.  In all, we only ran the Predator for 30 minutes in the morning, and 30 minutes Friday night just before we went to bed to top off both sets of batteries.....just 60 minutes of run time....that is a record for us!

On the topic of the house batteries I pulled the trigger and ordered a Victron Energy Smart Solar MPPT 100 I 30 with Bluetooth to replace the aging Blue Sky solar boost charge controller, which will give us the ability to program parameters for our soon to be installed Cloud Energy lithium 600 amp hour battery bank.  It will be here late next week, so we hope to begin the conversion from flooded cell to lithium by next weekend.

After returning from town I helped Charles move his Starlink Gen 3 satellite dish from the wood deck to a pole on the southeast corner of the house....actually about 10 feet east of the house.  It took our two brains to equal a whole brain for this installation.  While most of the installation was very intuitive, the actual installation of the pole into the ground screw was anything but intuitive.  There were three possible options, but only one would work.  We finally prevailed, solved the riddle, and here is the finished product....

......after putting my tools away, and fiddling around in the trailer for 40 minutes until it was time for dinner (3:30 pm). I then headed indoors to change out of my work clothes, and head into the house where TLE and Phyllis were preparing spaghetti and meatballs with side of coleslaw.  As always, the dinner and conversation were delicious and enjoyable, in that order!

We retired back to the Newell around 5 pm where we watched the 2nd semi final NCAA football playoff game on successive days.....University of Texas Longhorns versus the Ohio State Buckeyes.  It was a close game (21-14) in favor of Ohio with 4 minutes to play.  Texas got to the 1 yard line of Ohio attempting to tie the game with a touchdown before turning the ball over on a quarterback fumble, which Ohio returned for a 90 yard touchdown to ice the game at 28-14.  At least it was a close game, right?  Ohio really had the edge over Texas most of the night, but offensive mistakes on their part, and great Texas defense kept the game closer than it should have been.

Thanks for stopping by!