Freddin' It - Maiden Voyage

We’ve already done some camping in Fred.

A couple of times.

It was really bare bones though … cots and sleeping pads rolled out on the floor.

Fred, in real Fred-Time, really took its maiden voyage this weekend though.

We were in desperate need of a quiet weekend getaway. Things have been pretty hectic the past several weeks. We also had a little repair project that we needed to complete on a historic structure that was vandalized in the recent past. With Shirli’s appointment to get her second bionic knee coming up quick … and with this ideal weather … we made the best of it that we possibly could.

One of the major touches that needed to be added to Fred was the in-house power supply. We bought the 100 watt Renogy package last summer. It came with the 100 watt panel, charge controller, and the necessary cables to hook it up. Thinking about the small amount of power that we need, we settled on a 400-watt inverter to convert DC to AC, ordered a Wagan Pure Sine Wave Inverter, and it arrived Tuesday. A 122-amp hour deep cycle battery came from the automotive department at our neighborhood Walmart.

Sure.

There’s a lot of “discussion” about batteries and some batteries are “better” than others. You pay a lot more for the better ones for this purpose and even more for the best ones. If we get a couple years out of this battery, I figure it will have been well worth the price we paid. I feel reasonably certain that it will last at least that long. I had really good service from one with less amp-hour capacity that I used with my electric trolling motor. I bought that battery in ’07 and it still holds a charge.

This solar thing?

It’s really an interesting concept. I’ve read about it for decades and have always thought it was an idea that makes good sense. It took some smart folks to figure out how to convert light to electricity. The neat thing about solar is that I don’t have to understand how those components do what they do. It’s enough to know that they do and it doesn’t take a library of knowledge to hook up a small system that will accomplish all that you need for it to accomplish. Red to red and black to black end to end.

Plug your AC thing into the inverter and voobaa. The dang thing works.

One of the primary things about it has to do with the inverter.

Modified sine wave or pure sine wave?

All that I’ve read and listened to insists that powering sensitive electronic devices is best accomplished using pure sine wave. A pure sine wave inverter costs more than a modified sine wave inverter but the additional cost is well worth it when considering the cost of replacing sensitive electronic devices that are ruined by using modified sine wave. Delicate circuitry doesn’t like the rough edges of the modified sine wave.

We didn’t do the whole solar thing this weekend. 

The panel stayed home. 

I put the battery on the charger to insure that it was fully charged and we used it with the inverter all weekend to charge our electronic devices and power Shirli’s CPAP. We don’t have a meter to monitor the battery yet so there’s no way to know for sure how many amps we pulled from the battery. A little simple arithmetic could figure it out though. The inverter has a built in protection system that will shut it down if the power supply to it is low. It never shut down.

Having good clean AC on board without parking by an AC outlet was a real treat!

It’s been a couple of years since we last did an easy camp. That was with one of our modern tents. We’ve done quite a lot of outdoor stuff though. Quite a lot of the stuff has been teaching outdoor skills to youth and a few adults. We’ve done quite a lot of open-fire cast iron cooking. But to just go and honestly smooth it after a modern fashion? Cook on a propane burner and sleep on a real bed? It’s been a while. Too long a while. That was the last time we pulled our vintage Sprite camper up to Little River State Park.

With our Where’s Fred Now? direction taking shape and fast coming together … with Fred equipped as it is at this point … we needed a good weekend for a test run to see what tweaks are needed and to enjoy what we have accomplished so far in getting Fred ready to roll out for this long FRED adventure that’s been in the thinking and planning stages for so long now.

Our good friend Beau and his sidekick Trooper pulled in Friday evening and spiked camp for the weekend. Saturday morning we did the repair work … a little paying it forward project … on a gazebo built by the CCC during the Dirty Thirties. Saturday afternoon we were joined by one of the founding members of the Alabama Hiking Trail Society and talked about the trails and trail work at the Little River State Park and elsewhere in Alabama. That was quite informative. There was even a fortuitous meeting with the local Scout Troop and the opportunity to introduce them to a representative of the Trail Society. 

A lot of good can potentially develop where that sort of working relationship is concerned.

It was a great weekend Freddin’ it.

Now for a little tweaking and then get on down the road.