Any boaters left here? Holiday light question.
(The current ratio of off-topic to boating threads is running about
4:1. The current ratio of OT to boating posts is running almost 13:1).I'm going to be rigging for a couple of lighted boat parades and I'm
trying to figure whether to run my Honda 1100 watt genset or run off of
the inverter. Anybody know, offhand, how many amps a string of the itsy
bitsy holiday lights might draw? If I can get a couple of hours of
light off the inverter bank
I won't screw around with the gasoline powered genset. |
Chuck
Nov 18
2006
|
| I have a dual channel Tek and I know where it is. Talk to the possessor
couple times a year. Is a 100mhz Field engineer model, forget the number.
Is small enough to easily carry. I remember working as a Field tech when
going to college and we had to carry the 541 in the car to the computer
sites. |
Calif
Nov 20
|
| OK. So what's the difference? |
Dan
Nov 20
|
| Apprentices start at one half the rate of journeymen. |
Harry
Nov 19
|
| Had a Simpson for years. Until a battery leaked and ate lots of the inside
up. Was a great meter. I have a Fluke for the house / garage. But in a 99
cent store one day, is a nice small digital DVM with diode checker, etc.
Bought that one for the boat box. A nice meter. |
Calif
Nov 20
|
| Depends on the Black Energy, the counterpart to Gravity. |
Calif
Nov 20
|
|
Same he pays the Mexican day laborers. |
Calif
Nov 20
|
| 99% of the time that's all you need. I have a few of them because whenever
I need a meter to work on something I can never find one, so I buy a new
(cheap) one. I have the Simpson with it's original case and also a Fluke DVOM that I
rarely use anymore. The Simpson is more of a collectable now ... my only
souvenir of 9 years in the Navy. I used to have a nice, dual channel
O'scope as well, but I haven't seen it in years. Don't know what happened
to it. Eisboch |
Eisboch
Nov 20
|
| Tektronix 561 with the plugins? That was a great scope - used to own one myself. |
Short
Nov 20
|
| No, although we used them in the Navy. The one I had I purchased after I
got out of the Navy ... I think it was made by Hitachi. For the life of me,
I can't remember what happened to it. It's either packed away in a moving
box that I haven't opened in years or I ..... oh ..... now I remember
...... When we were buying our first house back in 1981 we had a huge yard sale to
raise money for the downpayment/closing costs. I sold it then ... along
with a pair of the original Bose 901's that I had treasured for years. Also
.... two Sansui power amps, four-channel decoder, (before the days of "Dolby
surround sound", Teac reel to reel tape deck ... Dual 1219 deck ...a bunch
of cool stuff given up for the sake of domestic tranquility. Eisboch |
Eisboch
Nov 20
|
|
My favorite is the Tek 465B, I've got one that has done very well for
me, after using a handful of modern scopes I still won't give up my 465. |
James
Nov 20
|
| Best route it to throw an extra deep cell battery somewhere and run the
inverter off it. 2.5 watts? Common sense should have told you that was impossible.
Even one single night light bulb is 5 watts. |
jamesgangnc
Nov 20
|
| Me too. :^{ ) |
Jim
Nov 19
|
| I wouldn't trust half the characters in here with a dull butter
knife...let alone a 28" chain saw!
I finally got my 8 month old Ranger truck dirty yesterday hauling the
scrap lumber from my deck addition project to a construction debris
site. One more load should make my backyard presentable. |
Don
Nov 19
|
| Tom could bring his 'Tree Farmer' to help out.
http://www.equipfind.com/logging/1985TreeFarmerC5D.htm |
Don
Nov 19
|
| Come on...imagine "Smithers" with a real chain saw. He's surely cut off
both his legs. |
Harry
Nov 19
|
| For someone you don't give an *f* about, you sure whine about Reggie a lot.
Have you ever noticed that? |
JohnH
Nov 19
|
| Facilitating again, eh? |
Harry
Nov 19
|
| You needed none. You did quite nicely without! |
JohnH
Nov 19
|
| Crap - well, don't I look stupid. :>) I took the power analyzer out and took a look - works out to 40.3
watts per 100 mini's. You're right. Upon reading the box, the only way I can think of that I came up with
that is that I read it wrong - it's small print, I took off my glasses
to read it. It's 2.5 volts per bulb. My bad. I APOLOGISE A THOUSAND TIMES!! I MADE A MISTAKE!!!! I'M ONLY HUMAN!!! :>) Oh, and the inverter in my truck is 1k watts, not 350. D'Oh!!! |
Short
Nov 19
|
| I was thinking more along the lines of the Twelfth of Never. |
Short
Nov 19
|
| Not at all. I think "Smithers" is a piece of sh*t. I see no reason to
hold back. |
Harry
Nov 19
|
|
No rod building, no tree cutting, no nuttin'. |
Harry
Nov 19
|
| I can't understand why you could feel so strongly about him. He's done
little more than correct some fallacious thinking on your part and tried to
instill in you a little civility. Be nice. |
JohnH
Nov 19
|
| >>>> wrote: |
Reginald
Nov 19
|
| > |
Jim
Nov 19
|
| > |
Jim
Nov 19
|
| Oh no - not another extended discussion about the nature of time. :>) |
Short
Nov 19
|
| I'd be glad to do that for you - sometime over the winter. I'm
running on short time until after Christmas. >What sort of instrument are you using to get such a precise reading? Fluke bench DMM - a left over from the consulting days. Measured the current, got an accurate reading on the voltage, applied
Ohm's law. This Fluke also has a power recording feature, but that was off by 5
watts. |
Short
Nov 19
|
|
A Fluke? I'll never replace my Simpson 260. The one that has a sticker
on it that says, "US Government Property, Department of the Navy". Eisboch (now, how the heck did *that* show up in my toolbox?) |
Eisboch
Nov 19
|
| Nothing like a precision bench DMM - especially a Fluke. I have a Simpson 260 myself. One of the best meters ever made in my
opinion. I have a Fluke portable, but if I'm working on something and
need a portable, I always grab the Simpson. I feel the same way about my Bird 43 with the 4304 adaptors. I've had
that thing forever. |
Short
Nov 19
|
| Are you paying scale? |
Dan
Nov 20
|
| Sure, the unskilled rate. |
Harry
Nov 19
|
| Chuck, are you talking about the 1000 bulb strings that peole wrap
their Christmas trees 20 times with ? The ones with the box that makes
them doo all kinds of tricks? or standard 120v. small bulbs. the tinly little lights don't pull much at all individually, but still,
amps x volts = watts you sould see on the string what the wattage is that will be needed to
carry them. and how many lights are you trying to pull with your
inverter? It's really not difficult. Chuck Gould wrote: |
Tim
Nov 18
|
| >trying to figure whether to run my Honda 1100 watt genset or run off of |
Short
Nov 19
|
| good call, Tom. I wasn't sure how many lights Chuck was going to pull,
but I did think that the genset would be a bit of overkill. |
Tim
Nov 18
|
| Congratulations. |
Harry
Nov 18
|
| Try closer to 50W for a string of 100 mini lights, unless they're the
LED type. I was a little surprised honestly, but last year I acquired a
power analyzer and ran around plugging in everything I could find in the
house. The Christmas tree with miniature lights on it was pulling around
350W, at which point I started checking individual strings. Incandescent
loads have a unity power factor, so you can measure the amp draw with
any cheap multimeter and use ohms law to calculate the watts. The bulbs themselves use a lot less power than the larger old fashioned
C7 lights, but people tend to use so many more of them that they end up
not saving much power. |
James
Nov 19
|
| The problem is that those boxes of lights usually don't indicate wattage or
amp draw.
They just say "120 vac". But .... I strung several strings of lights on a car trailer one year for a Halloween
hay ride. Since I didn't know what the draw was, I did not want to risk
powering the inverter from the tractor battery, so I charged up a deep cell
and installed it on the trailer A frame. Ran the lights using a Radio Shack
700 watt inverter and the lights were run for several hours continuously
without killing the battery. Eisboch |
Eisboch
Nov 19
|
| >4:1. The current ratio of OT to boating posts is running almost 13:1). |
JohnH
Nov 19
|
| No way. And just to prove a point, I went out to the garage and |
Short
Nov 19
|
| NO WAY
2.4W.
I just checked a set of icicle lights.
Individual lights =2.5V
Total of 100 lights
Fuse = 3A
No where on the package could I find watts or amps rating.
Measured draw = 300MA or 36 W |
Jim
Nov 19
|
| You guys need something useful to do. Come on down here. Now that most
of the leaves have fallen off the trees in my woods, and the visibility
is good, I need some fallen timber cut up and hauled. I got 24" and 28"
chain saws, axes, carts, whatever you need. |
Harry
Nov 19
|
| How can anyone refuse an offer like that? |
Jim
Nov 19
|
| These are GE lights that I've had for at least ten years and the boxes
have the wattage rating right on them at the back. Tell you what - I'll go down to the barn, pull out the power analyzer
and check them. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I'm more than willing to admit it. No problems. :>) |
Short
Nov 19
|
| Agreed. :>) |
Short
Nov 19
|
| So, what time will you be here? |
Harry
Nov 19
|
