RussnSue

Hi, we (or at least, I) am still in SA. Sue is in Perth visiting family and adding credentials to her already extensive CV. At the moment I am at Perlubie Beach, which is at the northern end of Streaky Bay. I will be here for another week, before setting off for Broken Hill. I will pick Sue up after she flies in to there and then we are on our way to Cape York. Looks like we will just miss you as I have to be at Broken Hill by the 18th March. Cheers Russ

Hi fellow Koggers. I have been very remiss and have not updated the blog for over a year! You could call it a case of writer's block, or you could also call it slack. Anyway, here is another episode in our travels. I have a full year to catch up on, so hopefully I'll be able to punch a few more out before we head off to our Winter employment at Cape York. Here is the link: Russ n Sue's Blog Happy travels Russ n Sue

Well, as it happens, Cape York is on our bucket list. I doubt that they'll have time to seal it before we get there though, Colin. We leave in two weeks to go and work at the Loyalty Beach campground for the dry season. Will possibly go via Cairns, so will try to catch up with you. Cheers Russ

Hi Colin, can you advise as to the intended route from Innamincka to Birdsville? The reason I ask is that the Cordillo Downs route can be problematic. Sure, you will get through, but the going can be very slow due to track conditions. Locals at Birdsville told me that the grader has never been over it! (Not sure if that is true, though.) If the route is via Walkers Crossing, phone ahead and be sure that the road is open. The road northward from Innamincka to the Windorah - Birdsville Rd (Birdsville Developmental Rd), via Arrabury, is much longer but usually in much better nick than the others. This road also goes within 13Km of Haddon Corner, for those who like to put ticks in boxes. Cheers Russ

G'day we had some repairs done by Adelaide Caravan Dr quite recently. The guy's name is Dave. I cannot fault the workmanship for the jobs he has done, but he can be a little tardy responding to emails and phone messages. Cheers Russ

Still not sure Colin. We have asked to be considered again this year. Whatever happens we wouldn't start until at least mid March, but would be there when your tour came through. I've also heard about the bird redistribution thing, Colin, but a mate of mine who was in the WA conservation dept. reckons it is a fallacy. Unlike vegetation eating animals, birds have no immunity to 1080 poison. They would be dead within seconds of mouthing a bait. (which they rarely do, apparently.) Cheers Russ

Hi all Just a note re: Arkaroola. Arkaroola is a privately owned sanctuary. It is not under the auspices of National Parks, nor any State authority. Dogs are allowed, with the usual expectation that the owners of those dogs will be responsible for them at all times. Arkaroola has a caravan park, but also has a massive campground which is ideally suited to folks like Koggers, whom are self contained. It would be a shame to leave it off your itinerary due to a misunderstanding about pets being allowed. Things to do at Arkaroola: Lots of excellent walks, from easy, right up to World rated. If you're into 4WDing, try the self-drive Echo Camp backtrack. If you want to find out how to involuntarily turn your backside into a suction-cup, try the Ridge Top Tour. If you are into scenic photography, Arkaroola is paradise. If you just want to do nothing, it is easy to do that too. You can meet and talk to Doug and Marg Sprigg, who were with their Mum and Dad on the very first vehicular crossing of the Simpson Desert. Fascinating story. Doug can take you for a flight over Arkaroola and surrounds. If you are into rocks, Arkaroola has some of the most diverse geology in the World. and.... You might catch up with Sue and I, as we hope to be working there this season. Cheers Russ Just a quick edit re: wild dog baits. These have been used on Arkaroola in the past, but the distribution takes place some distance from the public areas. Therefore, the only way for one's pet to fall fowl of a bait is for it to have been allowed to go on a very long walk. Knowing the "Tolleys" as I do, this would not happen.

Hi Chanty, There isn't a lot of free or cheap camping in the vicinity of Port Augusta, other than roadside stops. If you aren't in a hurry there are camp places a bit off the beaten track, some reasonably close, others not so. For example, Warren Gorge, 21 Km nth of Quorn, is really nice and it's cheap. Unfortunately bushfires, in the ranges between Port Pirie and Port Augusta, will have ruined some of the camp places there for the time-being. Having said that, if you drive on to Kimba you will find a nice little stop right in town. The WA side has lots of overnight stops along the highway. Many are set well back off the road and have some shade. We've done the "Nullarbor" three times in the last couple of years and stayed at different stops each time. They were all satisfactory. They are free and quite few at least have long-drop dunnies. There is one stop, about 90Km from Norseman, that even has a dump point(worth remembering, given that the Information Centre at Norseman charges $3.00 to use theirs.) In March you probably won't have to fight for a spot, but during peak tourist times you can see the roadside stops filling up from about midday! Cheers Russ

OK, for the last three years of my "real" career I worked as a corrosion protection technician, or Rustologist as we prefer to call ourselves. I will not go deeply into the theory of these gadgets, I am simply going to say this: They do not work. Let's face it, if they did work every vehicle manufacturer would fit them as a standard item (to prevent claims for rust penetration.) My last vehicle did not have one fitted, lived just 40 metres from the salt water for three years of the six that I owned the car, lived by the ocean for much of the rest of the six years and it had not one skerrick of rust when it was sold. The alloys used in steel making, along with the advanced coating compounds, negate the need for any further protection - even if it did work, which it doesn't. Just one small bit of theory so that you can understand why they don't work. For cathodic protection to work, electrons must flow from the source (anode, electrical connection or whatever) to the steel being protected. For this to happen, the source has to be more negatively charged than the item to be protected. Because the body of the car is already connected, or grounded, to the negative terminal of your battery, the "capacitively connected" pad of so-called ERPS must be more negative than the negative of the battery! Not going to happen. Even if that could be done, for the "pad/s" to create a field to protect the entire body of the vehicle you would have to immerse the vehicle in conductive soil or a conductive solution. Hardly practical. I was at a conference of the Australian Corrosion Association, where the keynote speaker chose to explain the theory of ERPS to the attending corrosion engineers. He filled two white boards with formulae, drawings and blurb. At the conclusion of his piece he simply wrote in huge capital letters "THEY DON'T WORK, THEY CAN'T WORK." This guy is right up there on the pecking order of Corrosion Engineers, so I have absolutely no reason to doubt him. I wouldn't be parting with my hard-earned for one of these bogus systems. Cheers Russ

And here we are, wishing that we had got the L shaped lounge.....lol..... Cheers Russ

I've had our fridge out to insulate the cavity around it. There was no seal around the securing frame. I suspect that its only purpose would have been as a dust seal, if we were to have one. Defrosting the Vitfrigo is the key to efficiency, along with insulating the cavity as we did. Before insulating the cavity we had to have the thermostat on the coolest setting and the motor running almost constantly to achieve safe food temperatures. Now we have the thermostat on its lowest setting and have a 30% duty cycle on average. Another trick is to drill a heap of half inch holes in the tray thing that is immediately under the freezer. This lets more cold air get down into the fridge compartment. Do this in stages or you will end up with stuff on the top shelf of the fridge freezing. In other words, start with, say, 10 holes and check the temp of the goodies on the top shelf. Do another 10 holes and check again...etc. Don't forget to spread the holes around. Cheers Russ

Thanks Rod and Mavis. I confess that I have been very remiss in keeping you all informed of our wherebouts. We have spent the entire year in South Australia (or within 10 Km of it) and have enjoyed it so much (SA really is one of the best kept secrets.) We worked at the Birdsville Pub (hence the 10 Km from SA), the Mt Dare Pub, Arkaroola and are currently at Pinnaroo for the grain harvest. In between work we managed to have six months off to really look around the place and confess to having a real soft spot for the Clare Valley. Along the way we snuck in a Simpson Desert crossing, extensive touring of the Murray River, the Coorong, The Yorke Peninsula and all of the wine districts in SA. We did revisit some of our fave places on the Eyre peninsula as well, although we had "done" them the year before. So, all in all, it has been a wonderful year. We caught up with many Koggers in all sorts of places and had a great time with them. Thank you for the Christmas wishes and seasons greetings to you as well. Very sorry to hear that you are stuck in one place at the moment and we hope you sell real soon and are on the road before you know it. All the best Russ n Sue

G'day All, When I installed our LiFePO4 batteries I said I would give you all a report after 12 months of operation, so here we go. The plusses: .The 360 AH Lithium battery bank delivers more available power than the 480 AH capacity we had with the AGM batteries .The charging regime I set up in the Plasmatronics solar controller and Sterling battery charger works fine .No battery failures have occurred The minus: Lead acid batteries have the ability to "smooth out" bumps in the voltage of a DC system. By this I mean that, for example, when the piezo igniter of the hot water service operates, the short, sharp spike it causes in the DC rail of the van is soaked up by the batteries. This does NOT happen with Lithium batteries. When the piezo igniter fires with Lithium batteries, the lights blink in the van. On one occasion the voltage must have dropped enough that the TV dropped out for a few seconds. Also, the LED lights, of one particular brand that we have, blink in time with the pulsing of the solar and 240 Volt chargers. This only happens when the batteries are on the "float" stage of their charge cycle. These are not huge issues and we can live with them, but the blinking lights can be annoying. So, the solutions? I could install a small-capacity lead-acid battery with similar charging characteristics in parallel with the lithium batteries, which is not desirable and defeats the purpose somewhat, or I can install capacitors at each light fitting. This wouldn't be difficult and should work. I'll probably do the latter (only to the lights that blink) as it is much cheaper and relatively easy to do. Overall, I am very pleased with the result. The weight savings we have achieved mean that we are finally travelling at legal weight, for the first time since we've had the van, when fully loaded with all the stuff we need to carry. This is also true for the ball-weight of the van - which was massively excessive. The power delivery of the batteries is great and because of the nature of their charge cycle, recharging is quick. Best of all, there have been no failures. Some opponents of these aggregated Lithium batteries (that is to say, Lithium cells coupled together without charge-management links between the cells) were predicting early, and expensive, failures. A simple method of testing whether the cells within the battery are misbehaving is to disconnect the batteries completely and leave to settle for an hour. After the hour of rest, a digital voltmeter can be used to measure the voltage of each battery. If they vary from each other appreciably it will be because individual cells within those batteries are not charging to the same voltage as others. I am happy to say that all four of my batteries had identical voltages. Only time will tell whether we get a long working life from these Lithium batteries, but I see no reason as to why I shouldn't. I still manage the depth of discharge of my batteries, just as I did in the AGM days, and so far I have not even gone close to 50% of available capacity (which is a doddle when you know that Lithium batteries can be discharged by 75% to 80% of capacity with perfect safety.) I'll write a follow-up report in another year's time. Cheers Russ

The "bounce" that you describe is characteristic of lead-acid batteries. It is all to do with the chemical reaction taking place inside the cells. For the battery voltage to drop so much initially I would make the following assumptions: *The current drawn by the coffee maker is quite high. *For this kind of appliance a battery bank capacity that is somewhat larger than you have now would work better. The second point is born out by the fact that after four operations, the battery voltage begins to drop by 0.1V each time to coffee maker is used. Given the starting voltage of 12.5 V, and it takes approx one minute per cycle for the coffe machine to do its thing, it means that after just 8 serves your batteries are going to be technically flat. Put simply, the more battery capacity you have, the longer they can deliver a given current. Since we all have weight and space constraints in our vans, increasing battery capacity is usually not possible. So the short answer is, to preserve your batteries, limit your coffee consumption and give the batteries a chance to recharge between cups. Running 240V appliances on 12 V systems soon exposes the weaknesses. Cheers Russ

Hi all, we are still at Arkaroola and will find out tomorrow whether our tenure is to be extended. We have extremely limited Internet access and no telephone access, so our communication with the outside world will be sporadic at best. It is fabulous here and we are doing our first tour this afternoon (the Ridgetop Tour, for those who know about these things.) Cheers Russ

G'day all, After spending exactly three months at Birdsville, we have moved on. We resigned just over a fortnight ago, worked our week of notice, before heading out into the Simpson Desert and doing the crossing to Mt Dare. We took the easiest route, via the Rig Road and spent four days playing in the sand. Next we drove up to Alice springs, where we spent a couple of days before heading back to Birdsville to pick up the van. The return trip was via the Plently and Donohue highways, Boulia and Bedourie. After picking up the van and saying our goodbyes, we made our way down the Birdsville track, camping along the way. We then spent an enjoyable night at Marree before moving on to Copley. We left the van at Copley for the night, while we shot down to Port Augusta for the night (to buy some essential parts for the van.) Today we arrived back at the van and I have fixed the broken door handle ad replaced the burnt out power inlet. Tomorrow we will head up to Arkaroola, where we have a couple of weeks work lined up. After that, who knows? See you on the road. Russ n Sue

Hi Bondi and Jenny I guess I'll throw my hat into the ring with my take on the 12Volt power issue. We have no generator. I officialy sold it this year after doing four laps of Australia and using it just once. Our setup consists of the three factory fitted solar panels and two that I had from the days when we had a Kimberley Kamper. In the early years four of the panels were mounted on the roof and one was carried on the car. I wired in an Anderson plug and could plug the free unit and point it at the Sun as soon as it (the Sun) had stuck its head up over the horizon. This was a great setup and I would have the 4 x 120 AH AGM batteries charged in no time. During the past 12 months, having determined that the generator wasn't necessary and having purchased of a VAST satellite system, I removed the Winegard TV antenna and chucked it - leaving me room to permanently mount the fifth panel at the rear of the van. We now harvest all of our power needs from the Sun without any messing around pointing panels. The four AGM batteries have also gone, having been replaced with lighter, smaller, but equal in capacity, Lithium batteries. They are mounted under the seat of the rear-most café lounge chair, in order to get some weight off the towball. The result is that after five years I have finally got the "ship's power" to where it should have been from new. We are totally independant for our power requirements. Now, if I could only come up with a cunning way to extract water from thin air....... Cheers Russ

Another way to do it at the next weighbridge is to weigh the van unhitched and on its jockey wheel. Then hitch it up, drive forward, unhitch again, this time with the jockey wheel off the weighbridge. There will be no discrepencies using this method. Good luck! I hope you don't end up having to jump through hoops like we did, trying to get the van to a legal weight. Cheers Russ

Very sorry to hear about Lionel but, on a positive note, you could be in worse places than Derby. They will look after Lionel well there. By the way, what was the problem with the satellite dish? Cheers Russ

I'm pretty sure that it would have been Peter and Lynn. They were here at Birdsville for a couple of days and were heading to Marree and points further south after leaving here. Cheers Russ

Yes, they are a good team at Kedron. In this day and age where people change jobs at the drop of the hat, it is refreshing to see that the names mentioned in the post (above) are the names of the same people that assisted us so well when we picked up our van over four years ago. They must be doing something right there! This can only benefit us, the customer, by providing continuity of support as our vans age and require repairs or replacement. Welcome to the Kedron fold Ian and Vicki. See you on the road somewhere. Russ n Sue

Hi John For the time being I am running the gear from the inverter when camping, but will be either making or buying some DC - DC converters for them. The model I have is the Digitech AR1877 (which is the matched pair) and then I later purchased the AR1876 (which is a receiver only.) There is no limit to how many AR1876's you can have because you can only operate one at a time. I have one that is permanently fixed in place and the other is a "roving" unit. You can buy additional matched pairs and use them simultaneously because they have a range of frequencies at which they will operate. Cheers Russ

Hello Andrew, my persistent leak turned out to be a hairline crack in the inner moulding of the hatch, combined with a gap in the seal that goes around the lip of the outer hatch. The seal had split where it was joined and had shrunk until the gap was about 20mm wide. This was big enough to let quite a bit of water in when raindrops splashed up from the roof. The water then either leaked in directly, and/or seeped down the crack. Cheers Russ

Hello Julia Sue said that she met you. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to do so. Some other time perhaps? We are enjoying Birdsville and the friendly locals and visitors alike. Glad to hear that you enjoyed yourselves as well. Cheers Russ