on the road again

[gazza d]

g day all , at neil turner weir mitchell , left calliope last monday, to mt. moffat via lake nuga nuga , heading for gibb river via charleville, quilpie, bouila, mt isa. have got five weeks to get to mattaranka to meet rellies, hope its not too rushed. c u on the road gazza. :biggrin:

[Chris]

Lucky you Gazza.

That sounds like an interesting itinerary and one I envy you. We certainly know the Neil Turner Weir, as we always call in to see it when in Mitchell (but we have always stayed at the council owned cp over the bridge from town - so we can access those wonderful hot springs!).

How long are you planning to take on this trip?

Chris

[gazza d]

g,day chris, going to go down the west coast , across the nullabor , back to home via broken hill or anywhere else that gets under the pin as it hits the map, home early dec. under orders from 9 grandkids to have grandma home for xmas. cheers, gazza.

[RussnSue]

G'day Gazza,

well, we beat you over here! Got to Karratha a couple of weeks ago and have since driven down to Geraldton and spent a week over on North Island (part of the Houtman's Abrolhos group).

We're back at Karratha now and will spend seven weeks at Cossack before heading north to do the Gibb River road etc. We'll most likely cross paths up there somewhere.

How's the solar setup going? We have a small issue with the battery charger. I had to trick it and tell it it was charging "normal" lead-acid cells and not AGM cells. It was cutting out if the solar charger raised the voltage higher than 13.2 Volts. Then it wouldn't cut back in after the sun went down.

It's behaving now, but I think I may have to alter the PL-60 program so that the charge voltage is slightly lower. I can use Program 4 to set that up.

We were at Mataranka about 4 weeks ago and it looks decidedly sad. They had floods there and the hot spring is very degraded. The pool was full of vegetation and sludge and the understory plants were all gone. The caravan park is quite bare of grass considering that they have just gone through the "Wet". They have added a couple of new powered bays to the camp area.

Hope you and Bev have a great time.

Cheers

Russ n Sue

[cvtripper]

Hi Russ n Sue

Which caravan park at Matranka did you stay at?

We stayed at the homestead one last year on the way to Darwin and it was just dirt and the "springs" are concreted around the edges and doesn't look natural at all.

On the way back we stayed at the Springs campground near the northern springs and that was much better - and you can walk across the road to the springs which are much more natural, deeper and larger area, and less crowded.

We stayed away from the caravan park in town.

I'd be interested on how you go with the charger. I have noticed that I'm best to isolate the solar when using the battery charger but the only time we use the charger now is when it is locked up at home in the shed and there' no sun on the panels, so no need.

In the last van the solar and battery charger worked together much better, summing their inputs. They were Gel batteries, so maybe that setting is worth a try, but they were different chargers too (Xantrex + Morningstar).

[RickA]

Gazza

We recently had problems with our charger, on going for some time since new in fact.It was very noisy when charging and would not go to float mode .Ashley changed it for us and adjusted the settings on the solar controller now every thing works fine. don`t ask me about the settings it`s all a bit techo! for me.

Rick

[RussnSue]

Hi Russ n Sue

Which caravan park at Matranka did you stay at?

We also stayed at the homestead and we were quite disappointed. We probably won't be staying at Mataranka on the return journey so we'll have to wait a while to check out the other camp ground.

I'd be interested on how you go with the charger. I have noticed that I'm best to isolate the solar when using the battery charger

I think that this is a design issue with the battery charger. It should be able to coexist happily with the solar regulator. I've had much cheaper chargers do a better job than this one does! I've contacted the Kedron factory about it an asked them to contact the charger manufacturer to see if there is a solution. That was a while ago and I still haven't heard back from Ashley so I'd better give him a reminder. I'll let you know what the outcome is.

Cheers

Russ

[gazza d]

g,day russ n sue, sounds like youre having aball. were in quilpie today . solar setup is going great guns, using down to around 80% overnight, and topped up by lundh next day , charger working ok , so all good, must have had smart lad install it hey. heading for windorah , bedourie in a couple of days . cheers to all ,gazza. :thumbsup:

[cvtripper]

I think that this is a design issue with the battery charger.

I suspect you are correct as the charger shuts down when there is solar input - I have tried it when the batteries were down once before we got the extra panels. With the extra panels, I've never had a need to use the battery charger (except at home).

I'd be interested on what feedback you get from Brendale. It doesn't concern me personally as I know the limits - if I ever need to use the battery charger, I'll isolate the solar (unless it's night).