Hi, and thanks for the note.

"heftenfleunter" wrote in message
...
I'm confused about your laptop. Mine draws a measured 2.5 - 5 A off a
12v battery. About 3A if I'm watching a movie and powering an outboard
USB soundcard with headphones. I'm pretty sure your 30A figure is in
error. I have a 3 year old ECS 1.7Gig P4 with a 15" screen, 60G hard
drive. I've also hotwired it through a 10A auto fuse directly to a
stand alone 12v deep cycle battery; no inverter, brick, filter etc. in
a pinch. If you find a Wi-fi for dummies resource please post it. I
read for a while but I just don't get it. Lot of stuff about pringle
cans. Work on that shoulder, I hope to see you pitching for the A's
again.


I'm not sure of my math - the brick draws 3A at 120VAC, and outputs 11A at
20VDC. As the brick stays hot all the time regardless of activity, while
it's a regulated power supply, I presume it to be eating those 3A
continuously, regardless of load on the other end.

I'd thought the math to be linear, more or less, which would translate to
10x the amps at 12V.

However, my computer is a desktop equivalent, with no particular effort to
be power-sensitive, as it's doing graphic-intensive stuff with a very high
res screen (256m card), so perhaps that's at the root of it. I've not yet
had the opportunity to have it running aboard, through the inverter, so have
not been able to meter the actual amps consumed.

As to the wifi, I'm not into homebrews, and the pringlecans, while very
effective, are also totally directional, which is of little to no use aboard
a moving boat, at least, in MHO. I'm working (well, technically, *NOT*
working, it's in the to-do pile) on a totally contained, plug-and-play,
system you stick up the mast and put 12V to, which would give you, usually,
a mile or better offshore honking wifi (assuming there's a point ashore
which has good bandwidth and an enencrypted AP).

And, as to the shoulder, it's a daily progress thing, which I consider
remarkable, as this sort of thing shouldn't be able to be measured daily.
I'm still a long way out, but I can see, on a daily level, how things have
changed. Traveling 100 miles each way to the PT who does the Braves'
shoulders (they come in, sometimes, during my sessions, but mostly their
time is separate, none other scheduled), twice a week, is worth the effort
to back up the surgeon, who's also the Braves' shoulder guy (does nothing
else but shoulders, noted presenter and innovator in the field). I'll not
bore you with the details; others who have had destroyed shoulders are
welcome to write off-list if you want to compare war stories or get
referrals :{))

So, I'm working on getting the remainder of the shoreside stuff finished,
having sold both our houses, giving it all away, looking to sell our 3 cars
and two lake boats, and pointing to early next year to get aboard and cut
the cord...

L8R

Skip (now a HAM, one of the shoreside targets)


--
Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
http://tinyurl.com/384p2 The vessel as Tehamana, as we bought her

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail
away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.
Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain

On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:34:11 -0500, "Skip Gundlach" skipgundlach at
gmail dotcom wrote:

Hi, rhys, and group (leaving comments entirely as too difficult to delete
stuff):

"rhys" wrote in message
. ..
On 14 Nov 2005 07:32:27 -0800, "Skip Gundlach"
wrote:

running an automotive sound
system and dvd player/flatscreen rather than computer for
entertainment, etc.,

Is there a reason why you can't spec a laptop, say, that has two LiOn
batteries in swap-out bays, and keep that charged from solar/wind via
the batteries (make electron hay while the sun shines?) If you run it
constantly for navigation underway, that's one thing, but if you want
to watch a two-hour DVD on a 15" laptop in the evening, you should be
able to do that entirely on battery, particularly if you tweak the
power management settings and use a slightly "stupider" laptop with a
cooler processor, etc, like a Celeron M or the equivalent under 2 GHz
CPU. (Massive computing power is NOT necessarily for today's
navigation or communication programs: a perfectly adequate laptop for
marine use could easily be a PIII from four years ago.)

Our navigation suite laptop draws about 30A (3A@120)- it's the one with
the
big screen. Our smaller, "landside" (the one we wouldn't kill ourselves
if
it went in the drink) laptop we'll carry to shore and/or use for wifi on
board if I'm successful in resolving those IP conflict issues, is less,
but
still hefty. I don't think one can run those bricks without a serious
power
drain.


That said, certainly, charging the battery, whether spare or not, is
easily
enough done. It's all a part of the electrical budget, however, and I
suspect that the 800-1350AH bank I have will feel the pinch less than the
direct use of the battery, requiring just as much power to charge it, it
seems, as it's a brick which outputs the charging voltage. As much as the
screen brightness suffers in both our laptops (YMMV, of course) due to
battery conservation modes, we'd likely not want to use it on battery
except
below or in low light situations.

The reefer is likely by far the biggest energy pig, and the only
solution is more insulation and never opening the thing OR keeping it
small and compact in the sense of not carrying a huge mostly empty
fridge/freezer full of expensive chilly air. This, however, may fall
under the "diplomatic relations" rubric rather than "scientific
sailing".

We anticipate having the reefer and freezer reasonably full, so expect the
best efficiency possible in "normal" use. We have a large number of
screw-top plastic rectangular storage bottles which we expect to use in
both, and when they're empty, we'll put them back.

The autopilot should be backed with a windvane if practicable. The
utility of this (and the effectiveness) can be found in Tony Gooch's
article in either SAIL or Cruising World of about last year when he
put them head-to-head passagemaking. He found that rather than backing
each other up, they complemented each other dependent on local
conditions, and that the best situation was "mostly windvane, but
autopilot when necessary". The beauty of this is, of course, that when
you can use the windvane, you are making and storing power for the
autopilot to use in light airs later on, meaning you might just avoid
running the engine some days, extending range and "quiet time".

Other than docking and perhaps mooring, we hope to run the engine only in
emergency conditions. The purpose of all the exercise we've gone to in
our
refit has mostly to do with killing all noise, starting with the genset,
which was akin to having a Massey-Ferguson in the living room - but
running
at 3600! :{/)

How's the arm, Skip? Coming along nicely, I hope...

R.

Just got back from the PT, who tells me the doc is all excited about his
reports, and went to a closed conference of shoulder docs this past
weekend,
where, apparently, I was the subject of much discussion. I've been
steadily
adding work (not long since I was allowed to leave solely isometric
stuff),
and while it will be a long haul, and Lydia will probably have chewed my
head down to the neck, if not off, before it's finished, the expectation
is
that this one will be a success. Thanks for asking - I'll be doing my
final
followup with the surgeon tomorrow morning, where I expect to be released
for starting serious (meaning weights, pain-for-gain) work

L8R

Skip, hamming it up (well, not really, don't even have the radio yet, but
looking forward to it)

"Skip Gundlach" skipgundlach at gmail dotcom wrote in news:35235$438f4683
:

KI4MPC

I got some great phonetics for this call, but nothing you could say over
the air without losing the new license....hee hee...(c;

Welcome to ham radio, Skip!

73 DE W4CSC - Whiskey for Charleston South Carolina