Another One Bites the Dust

Our stay here at Fiesta Grande RV Resort has flown by (map). Tonight will be our sixth night of a seven night stay. The weather has been changeable. We went from temperatures in the 90s on Thursday followed by a heavy thunderstorm Thursday afternoon, then a high of only 73 degrees on Friday with a passing shower or two.

I’ve been a pickleball glutton since we arrived. I’ve been on the court for about three hours a day. Donna played most days except on Friday when she went for a bike ride with an avid cyclist named Terry that she met here in the RV park. The shifter cable for the rear derailleur on her bike broke during their ride. I need to find a bike shop and buy a replacement cable.

I managed to get one project done. When we were in Mesa, I searched hardware stores for tie-down anchors without finding what I wanted. I needed to add more anchor points to keep things from shifting in the trailer. Lately, my ladders have been falling onto the scooter and scuffing it up. I don’t know what changed – I use bungees to secure the ladders and that’s worked just fine for two years. Maybe the bungees are worn.

When we arrived here, I ordered tie-down anchors from Amazon and they arrived in two days with my Prime account. So on Friday, I installed the anchors with #10 one-inch self-drilling screws. From now on I’ll strap the ladders to the wall. I ordered eight tie-down anchors and installed four. I’ll keep the rest on hand in case I need additional anchor points.

New tie down anchor installed

New tie down anchor installed

On Wednesday we had another Verizon Jetpack blow-up. The lithium-ion battery pack blew. I wrote about the last blow up in this post. This time the battery bulged and blew the back case cover off the Jetpack like the last one, but the Jetpack continued to work. I’m not sure how that happened. I ordered a new lithium-ion battery from Amazon and it arrived on Friday.

I think the battery issue is caused by overcharging. The thing is, we use the Jetpack all day long. I keep it plugged in because if I don’t have 120-volt AC power to it, the battery will run down in three or four hours. I’m not sure how I can avoid overcharging while running it 24 hours a day. Having the battery charging constantly makes the electrolyte form dendrites which eventually grow to a point of shorting the anode to the cathode. Apparently the Jetpack doesn’t have smart charging capability – it just keeps charging away until the battery fails.

We’ll pull out of Casa Grande on Monday and head down to Yuma for few days before we continue on to San Diego.

 

*Just so you know, if you follow one of my links to Amazon and decide to make a purchase, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

2 thoughts on “Another One Bites the Dust

  1. Mike Sipes

    Why don’t you just plug the jetpack into to a standard 110 volt timer. Get one with multiple cycle capabilities and set it to charge for 1.25 hours and then off for one hour. Since li batteries don’t have memory like the old ni-cads, you should get long service by discharging about 30% of capacity then a full recharge.

    Good Luck

    1. Mike Kuper Post author

      Thanks Mike! Sometimes the best solutions are simple – why didn’t I think of that? It’s brilliant and it should work perfectly. Thanks again.

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