With seven weeks until Memorial Day, it’s mostly cloudy and 54 degrees. More sun and 80 degrees as we have our first real day of spring or maybe more like summer minus the humidity. It was a nice walk down to the Park and Ride this morning, and a mostly smooth commute downtown.

Today at lunch time I plan to walk down to the DEC and get my fishing license. Should be a nice walk although I think I will end up walking the State Street Hill because I don’t have the monthly bus pass anymore. The Navigator Smart Card is more convenient as I don’t have to take the card physically out of my wallet.

The sun will set at 7:32 pm with dusk around 8:01 pm, which is one minute and 8 seconds later than yesterday. Today will have 13 hours and 12 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 48 seconds over yesterday.

I plan to head down to the park until dusk tonight after work. I think today won’t be so crazy at work, so I will get out right at five. The sun sets relatively early but if I get down to the park before seven, I’ll have at least an hour. Then I can sit out back and sip a cold Budwiser or two. It’s only getting down to 56 degrees tonight, so I can enjoy the fresh air all night long.

Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low of 56 degrees at 4am. 18 degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 46 at 10pm. South wind 11 to 16 mph decreasing to 5 to 10 mph after midnight. In 2016, it got down to 40 degrees with periods of rain. The record low of 20 occurred back in 1874.

I think I figured out how I wired the control module incorrectly. All I can say, is I’m glad I didn’t reverse the polarity or short anything out, when I misread the schematic. I will have to replace the black cable with a red cable, but the pin-out will remain the same besides hooking it up to the hot rather then the ground. I tried to be careful but I got confused, and I’m not always the brightest bulb on the planet. I should be able to easily fix it up and have the control module so I can set the low voltage disconnect to the desired cut off.

All that is left to do now is run the wire from the truck cap to the low voltage disconnect and the new switches in the truck cap. Shouldn’t be difficult to do now that I have the hole drilled to run the wire, and everything else wired. I should have everything ready by next weekend I believe. I do need to get to the transfer station next weekend to get all those bottles and cans out of my truck, and then to car wash to hose out the bed.

I’m increasingly thinking about permanently mounting the solar panel on the roof of my truck. I’ve been hesitant in the past about drilling holes in the roof of my truck cap, and the risk of damage of the panel on the roof, but the more I think about it, I think I could safely drill those holes, fit the bolts through tightly and seal with silicone. The place where I ran the wire back to the truck cap has enough room to drill more holes to run the solar cables up to the solar controller for permanent installation. I don’ t really need any hardware to do it. I don’t think it would increase clearance that much for the truck cap, and any wind drag of the panel would be offset by the not working the alternator so hard.

I really don’t use the solar panel that much because it’s a pain to load, then to connect and disconnect when I’m camping. But if it was permanently mounted, then it would always be topping off the battery whenever the truck is parked in the sun. Mounted on the truck cap isn’t ideal for capturing the sun, as I’m camping in the woods under partial sun or shade, which means output will be low. To say of nothing, when the kayak is on the roof. Yet, when the panel is sitting inside my apartment unused, it’s not producing any wattage at all. On the roof, I could always park the truck in the sun, and have fully charged batteries by the time I get back from the day’s activities.

I’ll think about it more. Definitely a project to consider for May or maybe June. All it would involve is drilling six new holes — four in the truck cap for the mounting brackets two additional holes in the polycarbonate floor grommet in the truck, and running the existing solar wire I have. Maybe run the wires in plastic conduit for their protection? I think I have all the hardware I currently need, although I may need another fuse for safety. It would be nice but not essential to have done by Memorial Day Weekend.

As previously noted, next Monday is Patriots Day when the sun will be setting at 7:40 pm with dusk at 8:10 pm. On that day in 2016, we had mostly sunny skies and temperatures between 76 and 36 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 59 degrees. We hit a record high of 91 back in 2002.