Solar work and visiting friends in Quartzsite

 I was up at 9 this morning and the weather was perfect.  Sunny with a little breeze and temperature already in the 50s with a high of 70 today.

Had a quick breakfast and at 11 o'clock I headed into Quartzsite to visit Solar Bill.  Not really him but the store.  

I brought two 10 watt panels with me from home to use for supplemental power and recently when I tried using them neither of them seemed to work.  I wanted a 20 amp controller and another 100 watt solar panel and they had them.  Quickly picked them up and I also dropped off the 2000 watt inverter for them to check and see if it could be fixed.

On the way home I pulled into La Posa South to find where Patsy, Bill, Tom, Deb and Nancy were parked.  That place is huge.  I wandered around looking for Tom and Deb's distinctive black and yellow Stinger "B" and could not find it.  Finally, I texted them hoping they were home.  Sure enough, they were and guided me in for a perfect landing.

We all got together at Bill and Patsy's place and chatted for a good hour.  Yuma and Gibbs got along great!

I'm staying about 20 minutes south of them.  Got home at 2:30.

I moved the White Lion so the door side is facing the south so we get sunshine all day while laying outside in the sun.

While it was running I took a look under it because after our little run-in with the ditch yesterday, the rear of my rig is not rising up with the airbags as they should.  The front does but not the rear.  

It appears that I tore an air pressure line and not getting the lift I need.  Nancy, at the visit today, gave me the name of a big rig repair shop right here in Quartzsite that may be able to replace the torn line.  Sure hope so!  I'll call in the morning.

Then I got out my new solar toys and hooked my old panel to the new controller and still didn't get any amps coming from the panel to the batteries.  Then I tried the new panel and I did get amps coming in.

Confused, I called my son Jim who is fast becoming a solar wizard and chatted with him to find out what could go wrong with a perfectly good solar panel.

There are a two wires coming from a box on the panel, one negative and one positive.  Jim said maybe one of the wires got pulled too hard and is disconnected inside the box.  Sounded logical to me.

I had Nick help me to disconnect the latches to the back of the box and what do I see.  One of the wires is disconnected from the screw holding it in place.  That will be an easy fix tomorrow.  By this time the sun was almost gone and time to fix dinner.  Got a call from Solar Bill on the inverter and he told me it is toast.  Bummer 😩

We had pulled two 1 lb Rib Eyes out of the freezer this morning.  Last time I let Nick buy the steaks on my credit card.  These babies are $11.50 a piece 😨  With fried potatoes and French Beans it was delicious.  I ate the whole thing!

We have had enough for one day.  We have no local channels so will have to find a friend watching the games this weekend and be invited over.  Yuma stays home.  Hint hint 😀  There's always a bar.

Thanks for stopping by.