So I drove north out of L.A. on a back road today, headed for the CA Poppy Preserve. I thought it would make a splendid backdrop for awning photographs. Along the way near Lake Elizabeth I spy a random group of people frolicking in a small patch of blooms and I think 'silly persons, the glory of the Preserve is right on the other side of the ridge.' I get up there and there's nothing. I mean nothing, none of the usually abundant floral carpet. Young ranger Bob says, 'never really happened [here] this year'. Balls, I say.
On the way out of the mountain pass / Green Valley, I'd spied a far off low butte in orange, well across this west end of the Antelope Valley. So I decide to head for that. Much meandering later I discover it's a patch of oxides, not flowers. So I head off west to an alternate site, the massive fields of solar panels and giant wind turbines. They'll serve as a backdrop.
So I get out there, there's such a large expanse of the things there's no real fencing, just close in to the towers, so I turn off the black top and down a graveled access road weaving thru the shrubbery. Wind's a little brisk and variable, so it's a bit of a hassle rigging these lightweight sails. And the hardpan around the tower is like rip-rap / crushed asphalt. Ridiculous trying to drive plastic stakes into it. I get a couple pictures done and decide to relocate a few hundred yards south, into the desert proper, so I can at least drive my crappy stakes into the ground.
I set up a few more configurations for photographing. I'm already having some technical trouble, gross flaws in my metal grommet setting. I've inadvertently crush-cut several of the grommet mountings, cut clean thru the fabric while trying to thoroughly set the grommet(s). Doubleplusungood.
I press on. At times handling all three panels attached together becomes ridiculous. Roughly 210sq', 23 square yards of sail weighing less than 3 pounds, in a 10-15mph wind. I get thru a couple larger configurations and then decide to cut things short. I go for a couple more trapezoid arrangements, a Bat-wing sort of thing. I get thru that with a bit of hassle. And then 'authority' in the form of a utility co. supervisor in his company truck drives up and tells me to GTFO of their property. So I do. Took less time to pack it up than to rig the three panel setup. Three cheers for stuff sacks.
Anyway, I'll call it a qualified success of the Mk1 design. The concept worked. It worked in (light) wind. It worked great in the desert, although I'm a bit sunburnt from spending too much time OUT of the shade I was erecting.
Now the few pictures I managed. I did go with a 'storyboard' of 18 configurations I wanted to photograph, didn't get to much of it.
Vehicle shaded, with orange panel up
Same panel, flipped out to the side, brown side up. At rest and belling in the wind
After relocation, the rectangle panel out to the side, with a trapezoid outboard of that. But my vehicle orientation is now facing NW in westering sun, so the rectangle panel shade is wholly on the side of my black vehicle, pretty much unnoticeable.
The same two-panel arrangement, spun 180deg, narrow edge of the trapezoid to the vehicle rack, and the rectangle as a wall / windbreak.
I seemed to have forgotten completely to take a picture of the whole 3-panel 'Octagonal' config. I did try the stitching together idea, with a guyline running along an entire long join between rectangle and trapezoid wide base, poles at each end and guyline staked at both ends. It worked well enough, but 2' intervals between those grommets is too much. And the loss of few grommets' integrity by my faulty installs hampered the result as well. There were gaps. With properly set grommets and either edge reinforcement or reducing the grommet spacing to every 1', this would have worked better.
Lastly, the 'L' or 'batwing' sort of config. 2 trapezoids. Quite the gap, owing to the diagonals on the trapezoids being much less than 45deg. Those edges will never meet in my design as is. With a larger panel length / size, 45deg angles would be workable, and would allow an L config where the two panels totally meet on the diagonal edge. And share a corner pole.
In this arrangement, I could have canted the hatch-end awning to close the open corner, the hatch itself would have shaded the resulting 'gap'.
Lessons & Observations.
1. I should have gone forward with the edge and corner reinforcement webbing I mentioned early in the topic. The grommeted corners worked fine on the poles, but the reinforced edge loops would have made more and sturdier mountings possible.
2. The metal grommets are a No Go. Not with the mallet, and not thru just the thin material. Different plastic grommets, or metal thru a woven / web strap, would be better. Particularly at the corners.
3. The individual panels are too small for a Suburban land yacht. The were max length 14'. Something like 20'-22' long would be better. And allow a greater width, as well. 7' wide side panels were also far too narrow when used alone, especially without the vehicle positioned 'just so' and at high noon. Vehicle positioning is / was important to maximize shade. Probably would have been better to use the awnings to extend the shade on the shaded side of the vehicle, but I was thinking more about photography than practical shading.
4. Get better stakes. The cheap common plastic stakes are crap. But need something like them for sandy soils. But straight up rebar would have been better for where I was today.
5. All my stitchwork held up just fine, under both guyline tensions and some light to moderate gusts.
6. Explore more attachment methods. Rudimentary 16" pieces of paracord while simple and cheap was slow and cumbersome and difficult when bucking the wind. A strap and plastic buckle arrangement would have been much better if it can be done inexpensively.
7. Bring help next time.
Now the MkII design cycle begins. Same panels. Better plastic grommets adjacent to those that cut thru. Leaving the other metal grommets in place, for durability testing. Use of 1" webbing straps as corner reinforcements and possible the longest edges entirely, for support of the 'stitching panels together' idea. Finding a better place to lay things out and fully photograph all the options.
[I'll add the configuration 'storyboards' later, so folks can see all the many ways these three awnings can be arranged.
couple gratuitous windmill photos
10,550 - 4/7/2016
11,837 - 5/6/2016
