And here's another one of our 2,971 famous quotes:

"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."
-Gore Vidal

Why Time Travel is Difficult

Time travel is one of the subjects discussed in my novel. But in reality, although time and space are connected, there are problems!

To illustrate, take the following excerpt from Chapter 65 of Time Gods, by Wayne Boyd. Here, Paul McPherson, from the year 2027, is talking with Odus, a time traveler from thousands of years in the future.

“So tell me. That time machine of yours also transports people through space?”

“Time and space are connected,” Odus agreed. “Don't think all your unidentified flying objects are fantasy. They move by creating a distortion in space time ahead of their craft. This creates a 'gravity' space for them to 'fall into.' As they can control the distortion, they can choose where to move and at massive speeds. My time device works on a similar principle, but with much greater relative time distortion.”

“So why don't you have that thing transport us directly into Milam Valley and forget all these other problems?”

“I can't do that. Without the exact coordinates we could wind up inside a mountain or under a glacier, or we might step out thousands of feet from the ground. The distance of only a few feet could be catastrophic. Let's say we wanted to be on a particular slope on a mountain, but we missed by a few feet and instead found ourselves standing in the air over a tall precipice. We'd only be inches from where we wanted to be, but we would fall to our deaths.”

“But you were able to get the two of us into Kali's underground hideout under New York.”

“I had the precise coordinates,” Odus explained. “You have to understand. I've been down there before. On your linear experience, this is the first time you've been here, but in my linear time-line I've done all this before.”

“Well, had to ask,” Paul said.

“This is the same reason we needed to fly to India and take a taxi to Rishikesh. I can only step out of time and space if I'm sure of the precise four dimensional coordinates ahead of time. Here, let me show you what all these buttons and dials on this time machine look like.”

Solar Panels Installed

The new solar panels are installed to add to my existing system (increasing my generating power by more than 4 times) and I have a lot MORE power, but now not as much storage capacity as I would like.

Since my system is an off the grid system, I store my solar electricity in a deep cycle 12 volt battery. From that I run about 200 feet of 12 volt LED Christmas lights and slightly less feet in 120 volt Christmas lights powered by a 1500 Watt inverter.

And all is well, except I probably need more than one battery to store all the new power from the solar panels which I successfully erected last weekend!

Solar Panels Revisited

I have some solar panels and a small (useless) vertical wind turbine. They trickle charge a deep cycle battery, which in turn power 12 volt flood lights that come on at night and light up my house, which makes me feel more secure. This time of year the battery powers 12 volt LED Christmas lights which are decorating the front lawn and outside of the house.

I used to use 110 volt flood lights running off an inverter that was powered by the deep cycle battery, but I noticed that unless I unhooked the cables of the inverter every morning, the battery was not able to charge as fast as it was draining, and over the course of a few days, the battery voltage went way down. I concluded that the inverter itself was burning electricity even when there were no appliances turned on, and that the solution would be to convert the entire system to 12 volts – flood lights, dusk to dawn sensors, even LED Christmas Lights for the upcoming season.

Well that worked over the summer, and the battery achieved full charge by the end of every sunny day, and so I thought I could add more flood lights and see how that affected the system. So I purchased two additional flood lights. While the original 12 volt flood light, still in use, uses a florescent bulb, the new flood lights were much brighter multiple LED floodlights. The brightest one uses nearly 1000 individual LEDs and consumes 12 WATTS of power.

This proved to be more than the system could handle, even in the long days of summer, and if I let the lights come on at dusk automatically, and burn till dawn, it took two days with the lights off at night to recharge the battery. So although I liked the lights on the house (we have the best lit yard at night in the neighborhood), I could only use them every other night.

Now I've purchased some new solar panels, which will increase my power production by more than 4 times. The panels are much larger than the old ones, still on the roof of my shed.

To mount the panels I am constructing a frame made from 2½ inch PVC pipe. It is impractical at my location, for various reasons, to construct a sun tracking system where the panels follow the sun. So the next best thing, and easiest solution, is to point the panels toward the south, since I live in the Northern Hemisphere, and the sun tracks to the south.

Directions that came with the new panels say it's best to mount the panels so they directly face the sun at high noon during the shortest days of the year, when sunlight is scarcest. If the panels can generate enough power pointing in this direction, then they should be adequate for all other times of the year, when the sun is higher in the sky, even though they will not be facing the sun square on in the summer because the sun will be higher in the sky.

Taking this into consideration, I next set out to find what angle the sun is at during the month of December in Amarillo, Texas, the largest city closest to my location. I found this information on the Internet. It's about 28º, which means the sun at it's highest point during the shortest day of the year in Amarillo, Texas, is amazingly low in the sky, and to think I used to live in Canada!

If the sun was on the horizon, that would be zero degrees. And if it was straight overhead that would be 90 degrees. Half way between would be 45 degrees.

Then I did some trigonometry calculations to take into effect the slope of the existing roof on my shed, and the dimensions of a frame I would have to build and mount on that sloping roof to achieve a face that was at right angles to the sun at it's lowest point in the summer at high noon. If that sounds complicated, I suppose it is, but I had some help from the Internet, of course, especially from CSGNetwork.com by using their free, online Right Triangle Angle and Side Calculator. Below is a crude pencil sketch that I made for these calculations.

Although I have all the PVC parts necessary to construct this frame, I won't be able to install the new solar panels today. I have a lot to do with very little time, and I have to go back to work for four days tomorrow. So I will put it all together another day, weather and temperature permitting.