Off we go again

It's back to Europe this early summer but we are heading west to Ireland. So there are worries about the weather, especially as we have been used to hot, dry days and warm nights during our last trips to Iberia and the Balkans.

We are initially going to Connemara for a week with all the family and will be based near Clifden. We are hoping for great scenery and views like this.

Then it's north to a family wedding in Sligo before we crack open the camping gear and begin to wander south along the coast to wherever our fancy takes us.

This year we have upgraded the Landy to provide more battery charging capacity and reduce the reliance on mains hookup at campsites. This is through the addition of a 100W solar panel on the roof which feeds our existing service battery through a new bit of electronics.

The solar panel came from Photonic Universe and the box of electronics is an MPPT controller for the panel and a dual battery charger that handles the vehicle and service batteries. This is a Ctek D250SA from Tayna.

The important point about MPPT control of a solar panel is that it is Maximum Power Point Tracking and as such, the controller is watching the output that the panel is providing. The comes from the amount of sunlight falling onto it and the controller adjusts the load that it is presenting to the panel in order to maximise the output.

In other words the product of Voltage and Amperes is maximised and thus the power going into the battery loads is maximised too. Just how much of that 100W on the label is actually generated remains to be seen!

Here's the panel in situ. I used the T-slots on the roof bars, with an additional homemade plate off the supplied brackets. I hope you've already noticed that these are painted Epsom Green.

Here we were yesterday morning, all ready to go.

There's a massive "Mini meet" near us in the west of Ireland at Westport. It's the IMM 2017 and there's a clicky thing with details here. We started to see minis as we loaded onto the Holyhead ferry to Dublin and there were more on our overnight campsite near Athlone

 

These people are from Croatia and have driven five days so far, including a ferry from Cherbourg to Rosslare. It's really a mini adventure!

After a great overnight stop, we arrived at our house for the next week, just west of Claddaghduff, right at the end of the road.