Ironically, as I sit down to write up this blog which is eventually going to discuss solar energy, the weather here in Tucson is astonishingly wintry.  Three Pacific storms are blowing by this week, each one bringing more rain and wind than the previous one.  Last night we heard the unfamiliar sound of heavy rain pounding our flat house roof in the desert, and this morning we woke to crystal clear air, sidewalks and driveways scrubbed clean of dust, a few downed palm fronds, and beautiful views of snow in the Catalinas above 6,000 feet.

Webcam image courtesy of UA Computer Science Dept.

Even when our forecast looks like this, it’s usually sunny most of the day in Tucson.  They get excited about rain here, for obvious reasons, and a “winter storm” has an entirely different meaning than it does in the rest of the country.  Here, it means wind, a little rain, and maybe a thunderstorm.  “100% chance of showers” doesn’t mean rain all day; it means definite rain at some point in the day.  Freezes are rare except in the mountains.

Normally after a big snow we’d go sledding in the mountains, but Emma has one foot in a cast that can’t get wet, and she can’t climb snowy hills anyway.  Broken fifth metatarsal, nothing serious. And we’ve got carnies in the driveway, and I’m afraid to leave the house unguarded while they’re here.  (Just kidding, they’ve been good courtesy parkers).

So instead of karate, hiking, biking, and sledding, we’re forced to some sedentary activities like cheap Tuesday night movies and Tucson Roller Derby.  The ladies of TRD put on a good show Saturday and now Emma is sporting a cast covered with the autographs of roller derby queens, which is just extremely cool.  Not everyone has the autograph of Bev Rage, Furious Oxide, Pinky McLovin, Hellbent Betty, Zippy’s Takeout, Dirty Duchess, Blanka Trohl, and others on their foot.

The breaking of the metatarsal also means we’re staying home for a little while.  So, it’s time to clean up the inbox and respond to various inquiries.  Yesterday, blog reader Vernon wrote to me about solar panels:

Rich,
It seems that I get more real world data from your blog than most ‘data’ sources… Have you ever logged hour-by-hour amp output from your 230 W solar system under ideal conditions? I see your daily totals and they seem well below the system theoreticals …  Thanks!

I often watch real-time amp-hour output from the panels and I’ve found that theoretical output is not very useful in the real world.  There is huge variation depending on sun angle, time of year, time of day, cloudiness, dust on the panels, and shading from trees.  There’s also some loss inherent in the wiring.  As a result, on a sunny day at noon we might generate as little as 8 amps, and as much as 12 amps.

The rest of the day the output will be considerably less.  In December, even on a clear day, output will generally run less than 3 amps until 9 a.m., and after 3 p.m.  Thus, on a clear winter day we might generate just 25 amp-hours per day.  On a partly-cloudy day, that can be cut to as little as 15-20 amp-hours, which is not much at all.

But under “ideal conditions,” we can generate quite a lot more.  In late June or early July with full sun and 16-hour northern daylight, we could certainly produce more than 60 amp-hours per day.

We’ve never been able to measure our true total potential capability because, ironically, you generally need the least power in summer when it is most easily generated.  Thus, our batteries are always full by 2 or 3 p.m. in the summer.  Once the batteries begin to reach full charge, the system stops absorbing power and we have no way to determine accurately how much more power we might have been able to store.

Winter is the relevant challenge.  That’s when you have short days, low sun angle, and much higher power consumption due to increased furnace and light requirements.  It takes a powerful solar charging system and good weather conditions, to generate and store enough power to make up a typical day’s use.

It is for this reason that I recommend serious boondockers go for much more panel capability than the standard 55-watt installed as part of the Airstream “solar package.”  You want to have the power to get through a couple of partly-cloudy winter days if you camp during that season.  Having tilting capability on the panels will also boost power production considerably, but this is difficult to implement on an Airstream.  The best way to look at it is that solar generally just makes your batteries seem bigger.

The other piece of the solar equation is the capability of your solar panel controller.  Most solar controller incorporate good charging, so that when you have sun the batteries can enjoy the maximum capacity available. However, when you go plug in (whether to campground power or a generator) your factory-installed power converter kicks in, and those are often pathetically bad at recharging batteries.  Read about our experience here.  It makes sense to replace the factory converter/charger with a better 3-stage charger if you are going to use a generator to top off your batteries in addition to solar.

One things leads to another in a most interesting way, if you care to think of things that way.

Follow me on this, if you can.  It all started a week ago, when I fixed up my old beater bicycle so that I could go for rides around Tucson.  Yesterday I hopped on that bike and took my first substantial bike ride in many years.  Tucson has a very nice multi-use paved trail along the Rillito River, 11 miles in each direction, which I happily rode to the very end.

The trail ends abruptly at railroad tracks.  I stopped to rest and drink water, while watching the long freight trains scream by.  An older man was walking along the tracks with his dog, and we started talking. He’s retired, but volunteers extensively and writes Christian novels.  I heard about the time his dog was bitten by a rattlesnake (a distinctive fang scar still on his snout), and the places they walked together.

He pointed out a grove of pecan trees across the tracks, on the east side of Interstate 10, in which he often walked.  The pecan grove is owned by a local gravel company, but as long as he stayed clear of the gravel pits and helped keep the orchard clean of trash, they let him walk his dog there.  “The pecans are ripe now,” he told me.  “You may as well go pick them before they all rot.”

So this morning Emma and I drove over and found the trees.  We had never been in a pecan grove before, so it was mostly for the novelty of picking pecans that we went.  With Emma on my shoulders, it was easy to pick a partial bag of pecans in fat green husks.  We took just enough to have a small batch to eat, since at the time we weren’t sure of the proper procedure for cleaning or roasting them.

Pecan husks split nicely along a natural segmentation into quarters.  We proudly took our bag home and demonstrated for Eleanor how to husk them. And then we realized something:  pecan husks stain your fingers dark brown.  Permanently.

I have probably the worst-looking fingers in the family because I shucked more pecans than anyone, but all of us have degrees of stained fingers now.  Nothing removes the stain because it penetrates the skin, like a henna tattoo.

Normally I would find this amusing and nothing more, but it just happens that next week I am scheduled to attend a major RV industry conference.  I’m going to shake hands with our current and future clients — or at least, I would if they would want to touch me.  I may have to walk around with my hands behind my back, like Prince Charles, although body language experts say this is viewed as untrustworthy.  Well, is it better to look like I haven’t washed my hands since I mucked out the stalls?

I suppose I could have a t-shirt imprinted that says, “Pecan Farmer.”  Or I could look on the bright side of this:  now I’m less likely to catch a cold while I’m up in the frozen north on the business trip. Or I could wear gloves and pretend I’m afraid of germs — or just unfathomably fashionable.

Apparently abrasive cleaners can have some effect, eventually.  So, having fixed up my bicycle last week means that I’ll be scrubbing the skin off my fingers every day this week.   And that’s how one thing led to another.

In the southwest, the dead are very much with us, as they reputedly are in southeastern cities like Savannah and New Orleans.  Influence from south of the border brings the dead close to us, particularly at this time of year, when the Mexicans observe El Día de los Muertos, or The Day Of The Dead.

The dead are not scary here.  They are remembered as loved ones who have moved on, and even in their skeletal form they are looked upon fondly.  It can be a little startling to a northerner to see altars in shops and homes featuring little skeletons dressed in their best clothes, alongside incense and gifts and remembrances.  But to many people here, the dead are still family and their graves are places to visit.

Between October 31 and November 2, Mexican families in southern Arizona will go to their relatives’ gravesites and honor them.  They’ll sweep the site and decorate it with gifts and flowers.  They’ll repaint the name of the deceased on the cross, and perhaps spend the entire day visiting.  The dead are remembered well, and their final resting places are not neglected.

So it is not surprising that Tucson (along with some other western cities) has several cultural events around this time. The biggest is the All Souls Procession, a 20-year tradition that looks like a mashup of Mardi Gras and Halloween, with a touch of Burning Man thrown in.  At first impression it is a parade, with a route starting in Tucson’s funky Fourth Avenue district and winding through downtown Tucson past the historic Congress Hotel and Rialto Theater, for a mile and half.

But the All Souls Procession is more than a parade for many people.  Those who walk in the route run the gamut.  There are artistic displays, actors on stilts and unicycles, fantastic costumes, and even a “dead” array of marching bagpipers.  There are also individuals waving photos of dear friends now gone and shouting out a description of their good character, and people waving posters of their dearly-departed cats.  There are families pushing strollers, with even the children wearing skeletal face paint, and slackers slouching along with clove cigarettes in their street clothes.

Good wishes to the dead can be written on a form provided by the organizers, and burned in an altar at the end of the procession, but there is no formality at all to the proceedings.  Whatever sort of remembrance or mourning you wish to do is generally accepted, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the other people.

When we arrived at the parade route along Congress Street we were reminded of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but then the differences began to appear.  The streets are not littered with drunk celebrants. There’s no screams of “throw me something, Mister!” or people flashing their body parts for trinkets.  All Souls is a subdued celebration, and a family event.  Anyone can participate.  Dozens of people walked the parade route pushing baby strollers. There are signs of respect for the dead, and respectful protest (”Iraqi war dead,” “Death of the Pima County Library,” “Men, Women, and Children Killed By AIDS”).  And just when it starts to feel like a carnival, somebody walks by with a somber look carrying a photo of a friend mounted on posterboard, with a list of that person’s wonderful attributes.

In this culture, people die three deaths. The first death is when bodies cease to function, the second death comes when the body is lowered into the ground and disappears from sight, and the third death is when there is no one left alive to remember.

I think there’s something in that.  It is habitual for some to forget the dead and never speak of them again.  But when you forget someone, all the lessons and experiences that person brought to your life are just as easily forgotten.  El Día de los Muertos reminds everyone, especially the children, that the dead are more than markers in a graveyard; they are the people who made us who we are.  I can see why the Latin American culture respects them every year.

More photos here.

Traveling via Airstream is great, but I also love being able to park at an event and spend the night.  At the end of a day at the fair, jam, balloon fest or rally it’s really nice to just retire to your home rather than getting in the car to drive away.  When you’re camped at the event, you’re usually away from the general parking crowd and close to the action, too.  That’s why we took the Airstream to the Copperstate Fly-In rather than just making a long daytrip out of it (80 miles from our home in Tucson).

The Copperstate Fly-In is not so large that access is a problem even for casual visitors, but still it was nice to be camped just a few feet from the flight line.  The RV camping area is just a dusty parking lot with white chalk lines to delineate sites — nothing fancy at all.  No hookups, just blue porta-potties and trash cans.  For $10 a night it was a decent value because of the proximity.  We could see the aircraft taking off without even leaving our site, and easily hear when some warbirds were starting up for some formation flying.

The only downside for us was the generators.  Quiet hours were posted for nighttime, but during the day several RV’ers left their generators running up to six hours.  We were unlucky enough to be parked near several of them, and the fumes were constant.  I’ve seen many cases where people did this in hot weather because they (or their pets) needed air conditioning.  Dealing with heavy generator use seems to be a regular factor when we attend these sorts of events.

Being October in the Sonoran desert, we could have gotten any kind of weather.  We were lucky enough to get near-perfect weather for a fly-in: highs in the low 80s, clear skies, and not much wind to kick up dust.  Visibility was typical for this area, about 20-30 miles.  Like most fly-ins, access to the airplanes and the owners was excellent, so we could walk up and talk to anyone about anything we saw on the field.  I spent a lot of time with the Cirrus guys and sat in the SR-22 G3 Turbo X (fantasizing), and also chatted with owners of powered paragliders, warbirds, biplanes, helicopters, and light sport aircraft.  There were also amphibious aircraft, homebuilts, and a gyrocopter.

By the way, Emma was very comfortable in the Cirrus’ back seat, and it looks pretty easy to fly.  Does anyone want to make a donation?  I just need another $600,000 to buy it.

If you want to see more pictures from Copperstate, check out my Flickr album.  I uploaded 156 photos there, enough to satisfy all the airplane buffs in my audience, I hope.
We spent three nights camped at Casa Grande Municipal Airport, so there was plenty of time for side trips to the area around Phoenix.  One stop we made was to the Queen Creek Olive Mill, to take the $5 tour.  It’s a relatively brief one, involving an informative talk about olives, olive oil, and the pressing process, and then a quick look at the room where the extra-virgin oil is pressed out.  The pressing machine itself is the least interesting thing.  It’s basically a large box from which oil and “pomace” (leftover olive bits after pressing) come out.  But the guide and informative signs all around are educational, and the gift shop/restaurant are well done. I recommend the gelato.

This trip is one of the very few times we’ve done an “out and back” short trip from our winter home base. The nature of these trips changes a lot of our assumptions about how we travel and what we do.  Most people do only these sorts of trips, but for us it is the exception, and we are still getting used to it.  Some aspects are really great, like the low fuel consumption.  In four days we used only 1/2 a tank of fuel including 140 miles of towing and about 150 additional miles not towing.  Other aspects are not so great, like the day we spent re-packing the Airstream.

If there were more multi-day events available in the area with RV parking, I think we’d do more … something for event organizers to consider.  I certainly intend to take my own advice.  Here’s a sneak preview.  Next year, Airstream Life magazine will be hosting a major event.  It should be great fun, with seminars, vendors, entertainment, a barbecue, and much more.  It will be open to all RV owners (Airstream and non-Airstream, new and vintage), but be warned, if you show up in an non-Airstream trailer we will convert you on the spot!  As to location, all I can say is that it will be east of the Mississippi.  I can’t reveal more at this time but there will be a formal announcement with all the details sometime in November.

The corollary to this is that the popular Vintage Trailer Jam will not be back in 2010.  The co-sponsors of the event have decided not to continue with it.  We all had fun but we’ve decided to let it go.  So if you’ve got time next summer, keep an eye open for the new event.

We’ve been in the house for nearly a week.  Time to hit the road!

I’m serious.  We haven’t even unpacked the Airstream from our four month odyssey this summer, and we’ve already found a reason to take off again.  On Sunday I was doing what suburbanites do all over the USA: reading the Sunday paper.  (In my case, it was mostly for the novelty of it, since I haven’t read a Sunday paper in about a year.)  And there it was — an ad for the Copperstate Fly-In,the fourth-largest fly-in event in the USA.

To appreciate how that hit me, you need to know that I was for several years a card-carrying member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) and the Experimental Aircraft Association. In those heady days B.K. (Before Kid) when we had disposable income from two well-paying jobs, we owned an airplane which we flew all over the east coast. My mother, father, and one older brother all have pilot’s licenses.  In the era B.K. my brother and I flew to major aviation events including EAA’s Oshkosh, the world’s biggest fly-in, and camped next to the airplane in a tent along with 13,000 other aircraft.  My brother and I also flew to the 2nd largest fly-in event, Sun-n-Fun, in central Florida, and camped there too.

The third largest fly-in is the Arlington Fly-In, held up in the northwest.  I haven’t made it to that one yet.  But I was pleasantly surprised to see that the fourth largest fly-in is held only about 80 miles from our home, right here in southern Arizona, this week!

It seems like the perfect diversion from sedentary suburban life.  The weather in southern Arizona is ideal right now, and it’s a shame to spend the time cooped up in the office.  I think Eleanor is not in a hurry to settle into housewife mode either.  All I had to do was mention the existence of Copperstate, and she was immediately on board.

Hey, what’s not to like?  Dry RV camping for ten bucks a night, right by the action.  Aerial demonstrations, rides, exhibits, and all kinds of aircraft.  We’ll see warbirds, ultralights, historic aircraft, plenty of home-built aircraft, helicopters, and who know what else.  When the action slows down, I can return to the Airstream to do some work, take a nap, have lunch — or we can drive a short distance to Tempe and Scottsdale for some retail action.  (We’ve got a few things on our list at REI, IKEA, and other places up there.)

One of the really great parts about camping at a fly-in is that you can always hear the sound of engines coming and going, all kinds of different engines.  Old rotaries radials on the antique fabric bi-planes, pistons on the modern single-engine craft, turbines on the big boys, little 2-strokes on the ultralights, and lots of variants.  Pilots love aircraft noise. It is part of the fun of being on the field.  I remember one damp morning, very early, at Oshkosh when we were overflown by a low-altitude diamond formation of WW II bombers.  I’ll never forget it.  The sound was so thunderous and menacing that we all were shaken from a sound sleep and rolled out of our tents thinking (in our half-awake state) that we were going to die.  It was great.

So I hope for a few exciting moments like that, this week.  Feeling the ground shake as 50-year-old warbirds fly over gives you a tiny taste of the fear of war.  In that moment when the bombers passed by, I suddenly knew the terror and helplessness that people must have felt in Europe when the machines of World War II visited them.  I think that’s an experience that would be good for anyone, to have perspective on what it means to go to war.

And during the rest of the time, I hope Copperstate causes us to meet some local aviation folks, and maybe a few RV’ers.  I’d like to explore the possibility of getting back into aviation in the next few years.  It would be fun to do a little flying again, perhaps in an ultralight like we used to do in Vermont.

So now we are re-packing the Airstream.  Since we took very little out of it, our re-packing efforts are more about removing things than loading up.  Eleanor has unloaded some heavy items like Emma’s schoolbooks and her sewing machine, and we’ve taken out the things that we were transporting from Vermont.  We’ve filled the fresh water tank and defrosted the refrigerator.  Tomorrow I’ll toss my office bag back in there and hitch up.  That should do it.

Still, I’m keeping a lot of stuff in the trailer that, strictly speaking, we don’t need for a three day trip.  I can justify this because it’s more trouble that it’s worth to remove those things, but the real reason is that I want to leave the option open to extend the trip.  What if we suddenly get the brainstorm to keep wandering, say, up to Roosevelt Lake for a few days?  It would be a drag if we couldn’t only because we left some piece of equipment behind.  So we are packed as if we are going out indefinitely.  I doubt we will stay out more than three days, but anything could happen …