With Wings As Eagles: Craig P. Steffen's Blog

Oshkosh 2013 3 of 5

2013 September 15 12:21

This entry is pictures of my camp site at Oshkosh and the charging implements that I brought along.

Here's where I camped, at the west end of the North 40. The position is being indicated by he Stratus GPS.

The inital unloading:

As a historical note, the weather at the time I landed was ASS cold. Something like 43 degrees F and windy. And I didn't have anything with long sleeves, because Oshkosh tends to be hot or humid in the summer. While I was unloading and pitching the tend, I wore my headset. I looked like a big-ol dork but at least my ears were warm.

I tied the plane down to "The Claw" anchors.

The knot securin the rope to the anchor is a double-bowline.

The top of the rope is tied to the plane's tie-down loops with two double locking half-hitches.

I pitched the tend behind the right wing facing the fuselage

as close to the wing as I could make it.

That way, I could step out of the tend and be at the luggage door in about two steps, which was nice.

My walkway in and out was between the horizontal stabilizer and the tent, which isn't ideal, but it worked, and kept the whole camp site fairly compact.

I realized I was going to be mostly away from plug-in electricity, with my phone and laptop and camera. In the past, I've brought a big battery pack to charge things from. Those dont' last very long, though. So this year I stopped by Harbor Freight and bought a brief-case size fold-out solar panel, with fittings so that I can connect it to car chargers to charge my gear.

Here's the briefcase solar panel sitting on the tail catching the morning sun:

On the wing getting the mid-day sun

And then on the windshield to catch the late afternoon sun

The solar panel has a cable attached to it, that comes in the lower right to the plug at the bottom center:

The it plugs into a car-charger-type socket (top center). Then there's a car charger at the top center (with the blue light), into which is plugged a usb cable which then charges a device. Here's another charger charging the Stratus unit:

There are charging stations around; there's a big one at the North 40 shower house. Here's someone who has a battery back like I had who had plugged them there:

EAA had other places around the grounds for this function too:

Honda combined this concept with advertising both for themselves and their generators by putting stations like this around the grounds:

This is a running generator with a couple of power strips on a little platform. It also had several chargers and cables already. I plugged in and charged my phone at one of these a couple of time. This station was right by the food court, and it was well-used.