| DESCRIPTION |  This cleanup involved getting rid of unnecessary wires, rerouting the existing wires and adding cable ties and/or Velcro to tidy things up. Everything was torn out and set on the passenger’s seat or the dashboard. The end result looks like the picture at thr right:
What
Now I just have to clean the rest of the van! |
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| TECHNICAL CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS |
The key technical challenge in redoing the electrical system was to properly balanced the load between the left-hand power outlet (20 amps) and the right hand power outlet (15 amps) in the front of a van.on several occasions , the onboard television was turned on and the fuse on the 15 amp circuit was blown after about the third time this happened . I took a closer look at the circuit diagram for the van and realized I had a 20 amp circuit right next door. Now the 20 amp circuit has on its the following: the onboard television, the camcorder, and a two outlet. adapter that powers , both the GPS unit and the ham radio.the 15 amp circuit runs everything that is mounted in the lower console: the Davis Weather Monitor to display, the CB radio, and the 500 channel scanner. As a matter of documenting the electrical demand in the van and also establishing |
| COST | I spent $22 on an assortment of fuses,though I only replaced a single 3 amp fuse, since I managed to lose one when one of the adapters broke open. That little glass fuse may be somewhere under the seats, but I’ll be darned if I can find it. This is a good general maintenance investment, as I have no spare fuses for the van at all. The $22 also included four single use tubes of superglue. |
| TIME SPENT | I spent pretty much every moment from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. (when I lost the light of day) cleaning things up. About six hours total, including a brief dinner break. |
| OTHER REMARKS | The next challenge is figuring out how to get the laptop computer into comfortable spot in the van and integrate the APRS software and the output of the Weather Monitor. The idea is to be able to take moving weather measurements and relay those out to the Internet using the ham radio.I have not decided whether to use the modified hospital tray(that I picked up at a garage sale) or improvise some sort of pedestal to let the laptop . swing over the passenger seat or over the existing center console that holds the radios and the weather Monitor. |