Woohoo Tax time

Yesterday the tax bill for my bus arrived. It was a whopping $26.52 which by the time they had charged me extra for the luxury of paying online was $27.97. One would have thought that payment online would have been encouraged rather than penalized due to the Covid situation. On the other hand America seems quite happy for 6% of the population to be killed off by the population's intransigence and hatred of anybody not seen as perfect. Yikes - that sounds a bit... Aryan!

So, throwing my trusty bedroll on the ground, I lay under the bus and disconnected the old camera. Fortunately the connections on the old camera mirrored those on the new camera so it was almost a case of plug and play. I did have to release the cables from tied down cable conduit but that was no big deal.

Popping the camera into place was a pretty simple affair. I will definitely have to replace the rather sad looking reflective tape on the back of the bus. Indeed there's a plan afoot for that since so much paint is now beginning to peel after 6 years in the South Carolina sun.

One of the important things was to install a bracket above the camera to protect it from rain and from falling objects. The last camera protruded a long way. This one is almost flush with the body. The last one was broken by a sheet of steel being dropped on it.

The camera really isn't that visible. It'd have been nice to have it mounted somewhere black but I'm not about to spend a day drilling by hand through a 1/4 inch thick steel bumper to install a camera.

Upon testing, the corners seem a little blurry but this is not a big problem. The whole point of a rear camera is so that I can see if I'm about to mow anything down. With the C-DVR that I have, attached to that camera, I can record when I'm driving. In an accident even the worst possible video evidence can be invaluable. That's why both front and rear cameras record.

One of the things I like about this camera is there are none of the annoying and misleading lines that many cameras have built in. Perhaps there's a case for replacing both the front and upper reversing cameras with similar cameras of which, oddly enough, I have two. If both lack the irksome lines then that really will be a step forward. For some reason, this camera also looks to have a wider angle of view which is very welcome.

I still need to work on brakes. I'm not a huge fan of lying underneath a vehicle - even though there's plenty room under my bus. I'm not a fan of walking underneath aeroplanes and there's plenty room underneath them! Perhaps I have a touch of claustrophobia?

The new top camera probably needs a waterproof enclosure. I'm thinking something with a sloping roof that will prohibit water collecting on top. I'm also thinking of including an Anderson recepticle as I still feel a roof mounted 10W flexible solar panel might be an interesting experiment. While I'm up there, one of my marker lights has gone out so I might just replace the whole marker light unit. I've been fighting against these LED things but I might just try one to see how long it lasts. One thing's for sure - if it's a sealed unit, it won't suffer from bulbs jogging loose as happens with other units.