Meanwhile, down at the Hamfest

Attended the Slidell Hamfest today, and did something different.  Instead of treating it as a shopping trip and social event, I made a point to attend several of the forum meetings.  Here's a link to the complete list; I just took in the NWS's Severe Weather and Hurricanes and a club member's Overview of Digital Modes talks.  Both were really informative, without getting too far off into the weeds either.  I'm going to make a point to look ahead at these forum schedules in the future.  Time well spent, and once in the door they didn't cost a dime more.

Having said all this, naturally I got sucked in while passing the solar guy's table, and picked up a 27 watt foldable panel and associated hardware.  At about 3 lbs, it's really too heavy for backpacking, though I could if pressed.  It's really more of a car camping item.  Realistically, a 27 watt panel will put out 1.6 amps of useable current over the course of a 5 hour day.  That's plenty to keep an FT-817nd happily running indefinitely with something left over.  It's also enough to extend 50 watt radio operations by about 2x, which will let me skate for a weekend pretty easily if I start with a full 12 A-H LiFePO4 battery.  I'm estimating it'll give about 7 hours total operating time under those conditions.  In any event, it's a lot smaller and lighter than a rigid 100 watt panel, which is what I'd been taking along before.

So back to my plan of "gain knowledge not stuff, and don't spend a bunch of money," it sort of worked, if only in principle.  Anyway, it was fun running into friends and making a long morning of it.