Inverter hooked up and outlets installed

The second part of the inverter charger is the inverter. I now have nice outlets where I can plug in most any power tool.  One is up front and the other is in the back. 

The 110V power socket at the rear of the trailer. (The wood wall is the back ramp, closed.)  

The forward outlet next to the window. 

The losses in the inverter are a little bit higher than I had hoped. When in charge only mode it appears to draw 195mA. And when inverting it consumes 1.2A. Under load I think the losses drop to a little under 1.0A. At least there is a DC-OFF switch position which does not load the batteries. 

Backup Sun Enabled

In case there's not enough sun to keep things going. (Or I haven't had time to get the rest of the solar panels up.) I now have the option of using shore power. The inverter charger also enables 110V outlets too, but more on that later.

Added the receptical to the side of the trailer. 

The inverter charger pushing 23 Amps into the batteries. 

The net result is that I can now plug in the trailer if I want to top off the batteries. The inverter charger I have is the Tripp Lite 750 RV model.

2 of 4 solar panels installed

I've successfully installed the 2nd solar panel on the roof of the trailer.

Two solar panels successfully mounted. 

Take a look at the closeup the first one is already quite dirty.

New and old panels side by side.

Nothing that a hose can't fix...

With the second panel the voltage was up to 60V and there was a peak of 282Watts and form 8am to night it gathered 77Ah and 1.05 kWh. And had reached the float charge state. 

Solar power x4

Now that one is shown to be working I can fill up the roof of the trailer. So we had a small delivery at work today. 

The small UPS truck delivering to OSRF

The solar panels getting unloaded. 

3 more panels to keep the lights on much brighter. 

The solar panels delivered

And stored in the trailer

All I need to do is get some angle iron and I can strap these to the roof too. 

Solar Power!

I finally mounted the solar panel on the roof of the trailer.

The solar panel on the roof of my trailer. 

You can see my shortcut to getting the cables inside the trailer is simply going through the vent.

Doing this cleanly is going to be a pain and has been much of what has been slowing me down trying to find a clean alternative. There are lots of parts and solutions. Finding a clean way to make it secure and waterproof and easy to fabricate.

Simple angle iron mounting

For the panel mounting I simply used some angle iron into the side of the panel's box. With sheet metal screws down into the roof rafters. The mounting along the roof is all lined with silicon to avoid water intrusion. I'll cover the screw tops like the other screws in the roof. 

And the results after a few days of testing are that I can get about 44 Ah into the batteries from the solar panel. It maxes out at about 124-127W peak per day in the current configuration. There are trees to the east and it's mid winter so the sun is pretty low and my mounting is very close to flat. 

Even in the shade it can produce about 60W. 

One more step toward solar power

I had some time this afternoon and have mounted up the solar charge controller in the trailer.  I need a few more cables and another breaker to finish the wiring correctly.

The solar charge controller mounted next to the batteries.

Interior Trailer Lights Running!

I've gotten a little bit distracted from the hovercraft, but I'm making progress on the trailer outfitting.  Last night I wired up my deep cycle batteries to power the trailer's 12V system.  This is usually supplied by the car, but I now can supply it internally.  And the solar panel will soon be charging the batteries.

The lights are on and it's powered internally. You can see the solar panel sitting on the side too. Waiting to get mounted on the roof.

Here's the wiring, including a battery selector and a breaker before connecting to the trailer.

Test cutting lift fan hole

I spent some time experimenting with cutting holes in the middle of the foam to be able to cut out the lift fan.

Initial scaled hole required for the lift fan

Once I had the initial lift fan hole, I then created a set of overlapping squares to make cutting with a straight knife easier.

Internal polygons to cut with the straight knife

I've been avoiding using the jigsaw to avoid lots of foam sawdust. However to get started I used a spad drill bit to make an easy way to start the cutting.  But that created a bunch of foam dust anyway. 

1" drill bit

Drilling through the foam is quick work.

Using the 4 drilled corners made cutting straight forward.

The resultant holes

Cutting between the holes

One square cut out.

After cutting out one square, I could relatively easily cut away the small corners of the offset square.

Cutting out the extra corners

 The net result was most of the area filled out.

The final resultant hole

I specifically kept the slight interior flanges so that the cowling can have something to rest on when it is installed above.  There will be some experimentation later I'm sure about how to secure and seal the cowling to the body.

Results of glue lam test

Checkout below to see the results of the glue lamination test.  

An example of filling in a patched corner.  It seems to work fine.

There's still some gaps between the foam, though it's still pretty sold.  More even weighting would also help this.

Keeping the edges aligned will be a problem.

Epoxy definitely doesn't fill in the gaps well.  It will need some filler. 

Carefully cut edges match up much better.

Another place where filler would help a lot. 

A good contrast between well cut edges and poorly cut edges.

More hovercraft news out of Russia

In Russia there's lots more excitement with respect to hovercrafts.  The largest hovercrafts in the world just show up on the beach in the summer!

There are lots of news sources covering this one little video
http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-hovercraft-on-beach-2013-8
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10257870/Navy-hovercraft-surprises-sunbathers-as-it-lands-on-Russian-beach.html
http://gizmodo.com/giant-military-hovercraft-lands-on-crowded-beach-becaus-1178684399

To cite a few.

It appears to be a Zubr.  More info on wikipedia.