We’ve had the Kipor generator for over three months now so here is a brief review. When we first got our campervan it came with a generator. The noise it made was deafening, we thought it wasn’t worth the extra payload so we let someone take it off our hands. After being away for a few months in winter conditions we realised we just couldn’t do without a generator. So it was a choice between a cheap Kipor IG1000 digital suitcase generator or an expensive Honda 10i. Read the rest of this entry »
After Simon’s near miss a lot of lessons were learned. Most of them from sitting on the beach in the following days of very strong winds and watching other kite-surfers get in trouble and rescue themselves to varying degrees. Tarifa’s a beautiful place and the weather is warm and sunny consistently BUT!…when the Levante (easterly) wind is howling it’s not ideal for kite-surfing, sun-bathing (due to sand whipping violently across the beach) or even being in or around the van as the sand and dust blows in. Ok, so we’re not having a truly tough time but our activities have to be altered to suit the weather – poor us! Read the rest of this entry »
Filling locations - It should be pointed out that LPG on forecourts is not as readily available as bottled gas (which can be bought at almost every large supermarket and most filling stations). There are several sites on the internet showing where LPG can be bought - see our links page. In France it’s not hard to come by, and by using the sat nav to find petrol stations when we’re in a large town we’ve found stations in Bourg St. Maurice at SuperU supermarket filling station, Cluses at a Total filling station and in Thonon-Les-Bains at Carrefour petrol station. We also spotted a Relais station on the road out of Chamonix selling LPG, which is where we filled up for the first time. ‘Total’ brand garages carry a free map showing all of their filliing stations in France which sell LPG. This covers Total, Relais, Avia, Auchan and Elf stations as well as a few others. It also includes details of LPG ‘professionals’ where you can get LPG vehicles or installations repaired. The map is not totally exhaustive as most larger supermarkets sell LPG in their filling stations too. Read the rest of this entry »
The requirement - Gas is used to run the Propex blown air heating unit, the oven, grill and hob and 3-way fridge (which can also run on 12 or 240V electricity). From our research we expected to use as much as an 11kg bottle each 3 days, when the temperature was very cold. Because the usage could be high we wanted to carry 2 11kg cylinders. The gas type for winter motor-homing has to be propane as it has a freezing point of -40 degrees compared to butane which freezes at +8 degrees so would not be able to turn from liquid to gas. Read the rest of this entry »
It was difficult for us to anticipate how much we would spend on our trip - now that we’ve got some experience we wanted to share it for anyone planning a similar one. Read the rest of this entry »
Now that we’ve lived in a motorhome in France for a month, with no prior experience, we thought we’d share a few of our learnings and observations. Read the rest of this entry »
My latest attempt at making a high gain wi-fi antenna has been a success!
The dish part of the antenna is a vegetable steamer bought from Woolworths for around £4. I modified the steamer by drilling a hole big enough to push in the USB connector. I used the USB wi-fi adapter we already had with no modifications other than removing the plastic stand. The handle from the steamer was put in the wrong way around and is used to attach the antenna to its temporary base. The base consists of a funnel with no modifications and the top of an egg box wedged in between to make a sturdier base and assist in the vertical alignment of the dish. It currently seems like a Blue Peter project, but it does work and I will now direct my efforts into creating a sturdier base with a better alignment system! Read the rest of this entry »
Well my first attempt at making a high gain Wi-Fi antenna didn’t go too well. For my first effort I purchased a sieve from The Range for about £2 and made a hole in the center to accommodate the USB Wi-Fi antenna, job done!
It turned out to be a total waste of time. There wasn’t much gain in signal over using the USB antenna in its original form. All it really did was make the antenna much more directional. I can only assume a sieve doesn’t concentrate the signal to the antenna efficiently due to shape or mesh type. Or maybe my USB antenna needs to be slightly more powerful.
Back to the drawing board.
Volts, Amps,
The terminology
Volts: 12V DC low-voltage systems are powered by a leisure battery, 230V AC mains systems are powered as suggested through the mains electricity supply. Volts are somewhat like the pressure of an electrical system.
Amps: the amount of electricity needed. So lights will only require a small amount of electricity whereas a fridge will require a much larger amount of electricity.
Volts =
Amps =
Finally we have the campervan and it actually does fit in the drive way!
Driving the new toy home took some getting used to. I’ve had no experience driving anything bigger than a medium sized family car and Lucy had limited experience driving a mini bus sometime back. It’s not as nippy as the Renault sport, there is no rear-view mirror, you feel like your arse is massive, the cutlery draw comes flying out when hitting roundabouts at any speed and the sluggish gear change takes some getting used to. Read the rest of this entry »
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