Recent content by fourfa

Thanks for the links folks! OTTE look nice, and the variety of camo patterns will suit a lot of people here. Me, I’m increasingly worried about setting something down outside or at night, and leaving it behind. So I’m trying to convert over to all orange and blue and dayglo colors Mystery...

I used sat messagoing on iOS last night and had a new experience - after starting the sat interface, it geolocated itself, thought for a while, then said ”satellite available in 5 minutes.” Longest “5 minutes” ever, because it was more like 10. Then once in range, it switches to a...

Those look about right, thank you.

I have a set of Eagle Creek “packing cubes” that I got from REI decades ago. They’re reasonably sturdy, ~300 denier nylon, and I’ve used them for years to fit random stuff in odd spaces around my truck and camper. They’re finally wearing thru, but I’m having a hard time finding similar...

Camped out in the Black Rock Desert, on a secluded side playa. Got the ham antenna up, taking advantage of the low QRM. I really need to move some heavy stuff from the very back corners to midships, to hopefully even out the rear squat.

Great question. In addition to the possibility of flying projectiles in a bad failure - consider a tree strap of sufficient rating for any recovery, and sufficient width to not damage a tree. You'll find the loops on the end of the tree strap are so thick that it's a huge PITA to get both ends...

I thought this was interesting, hadn't seen anyone testing soft shackles to destruction before. Pretty logical conclusions: they're likely to break where the loop goes around the knot (as that's where it's single-strand, and likely to be the minimum bend radius). And if you're looping around...

https://cubeseries.com/camper/ ? "Depending on the option you select, it will have a dry weight between 1206 to 1750 lbs."

In practice, you’ll find that 50V nominal voltage to be too much for many MPPT converters. If you building a fully discrete system, I’m sure there’s a Victron etc that will handle it, but all-in-one and Renogy grade things will likely choke on it. (Recall that nominal solar specs are quoted at...

Great pics. No luck getting a permit for The Wave?

I’m extremely happy with the used H1 jack I got from some military surplus seller on eBay. These used to be appealingly cheap, but the word has been out for years now so they’re pricy enough now to make you think twice. Anyway, the advantages of wide base plate that won’t sink in soft sand...

So far we've only learned that 2-way comm will come to all older phones (14 and later) that support satellite. Very basic SMS, no photos, very low bandwidth. You can send to any number, but receiving is more complex (details in this doc below). Sounds like the other party has to be in your...

+1 Anderson connectors. I also have and really like the Powerwerx crimping set. These have become standard in the ham radio world and for good reason.

Eternabond tape? That seems to be the traditional RV roof sealant. I used it over my roof solar wiring (Alu Cab in my case) and it’s worked great

four year old necro there... Reusable metal-mesh filters are like $5, less than a new pack of disposable filters. I've used mine every day for over ten years so the ROI can be quite good. Just to be fair - one nice thing about paper is you basically don't touch anything, dry grounds + filter...