I am now situated securely behind bars though not at Her Majesty's Pleasure.

My front door now has real bars over the lower glass. That should make the casual miscreant think twice! I'm sure a professional miscreant would find some way around all my security measures though I'm constantly making it harder to do that.

After this I took a break and fabricated a component to repair milady's ice dispenser. That took a while! The end had broken around where a corkscrew thingy rotated. I had to include a bearing surface in the design. I'm waiting to see if it works or I need to adjust my design.

A few days ago, I bought an 8 pack of AA NiMh batteries for a really good price. I believe I got them in Walmart. Even at 40% off, Radio Shack was still too expensive. That's why, of course, they're losing so many stores. Anyway, I plugged the new batteries into a fan I had attached to the ceiling vent in the cockpit. There is no noticeable fan behind that so it was worth using. I'd tried a fan there before with mixed results. This time, the humidity in the galley was lower than that of the bedroom, having started higher. That's very promising!

The goal is to run the batteries down to zero. They came ready charged which is not what I need for my next experiment. That will be to put the batteries on one of my two rear fans. I want to see what difference if any, a system with a rechargeable reserve battery will have. I know the panels produce more power than each fan can use, at times. I'd like to see if I can get full power operation more consistently and possibly into the night. The problem will come if the batteries are not exhausted by morning. That'll mean I'll have to install a charge controller and hunt as I may, I cannot find any 12v NiMh solar charge controllers. In fact, I can't find and NiMh charge controllers ready made at all. They all seem to be for lead acid or flaming lithium batteries (sic).

If that works, I'll rig up something similar for the front fan. I'll also see about including some kind of power switch and possibly some kind of fuse though where the overload would cone from, I'm not entirely sure.

I still need to fill the hole in the bedroom floor as well as insulating the forward roof cavity. Other than that there are things I'd like to do and things I need to do but that list is now very short indeed. I could make a list but there's little point. It'll all get done in due course. What I'd really like is for Eric to come to lend his opinion but he's in France or Belgium at the moment and highly unlikely to tootle down to South Carolina from his regular visits to Canada - whenever his next visit will be!