Tag Archives: Beta Site

Weekend stuff

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Well, yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day. It started out cold and by the afternoon I was sweltering up at the Beta Site moving stuff around. As is becoming a habit, here’s a weekly summary of highlights from the cameras:

There is, apparently, no shortage of mule deer up there. Unfortunately, you cannot shoot mule deer in that hunting district. You can drop whitetails but I do not believe I’ve ever seen a whitetail up there. Well, when the apocalypse gets here things like hunting regulations will be a quaint memory.

This weekends trip was mostly just tinkering with the solar panels that I hae up there. I’d left them horizontal over the summer since that was easy and didnt really have a downside. Now that snow has started to show up, I need to move them up at an angle to help keep snow off them and to get as much of the low winter sun as possible.

I’ll be up there next weekend for the start of hunting season. After that, I doubt I’ll be up there every weekend but I’ll be up there at least once a month, if I can, so I can see how the the road conditions change over the winter.

Starting the power part of the equation

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Stopped by one of the solar power companies here in Missoula this afternoon. I explained to them that I need a setup for an off-grid location and specified my needs. It would be running Starlink, some lighting, cameras, recharging small devices, and at a later date possibly a well pump and recharge an electric dirtbike. My concerns are reliability, survivability, durability, and modularity. There is a high likelihood of initial vacancy during winter, meaning no heat will be at the property so batteries will be in a sheltered but unheated environment. System needs to be adaptable to future expansion without srapping whatever is already in place.

Be interesting to see what they come up with.

Snow

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Ran up to the Beta Site this weekend to swap out the Jackery 1500 for the Jackery 3000. I wanted something with a more capacious battery to compensate for the upcoming overcast days of winter and the resultant effect on solar panel output.

So, headed up there and swapped out the battery and updated the panel to two 200w panels. And, of course while I was up there I swapped out the SD cards on the static cameras and am sharing the interesting pics with you savages:

First off, we have a rare hoverdeer:

Next up, check out this utter unit of a deer:

Once I had gotten done the things I went up the for, the weather started to turn. The rain to to sleet, which turned to snow, and we get this:

Usually October, and sometimes November, has a couple very summery days left it but I suspect this is the closing of the ‘outdoor construction’ window. It also means that my trips up there will probably be reduced since there’s really not much need for me to go up there once the snow falls. I absolutely will be trying to get up there at least once a month until spring so I can evaluate accessibility throughout the winter…truck, sidebyside, snowmobile, whatever. The only needs that I see for me to be up there, other than that accessibility evaluation, between now and spring is for either camera issue resolution or security issues. Now is the time to start planning on spring, which I am going to plan around a June 1 date but I suspect I may be able to get in and out of there easily as early as May. But for planning purposes – June 1.

I should mention that I will, as best as I can, be up there during hunting season.

I suppose now is a good time to evaluate how the year went. By most objective standards, it was….okay. I got a few of the big expense items done – got the survey (which was a big deal), got the storage tanks buried (another rather un-cheap expense), got Starlink setup, got cameras installed, and got the cargo container situated. I like to think of it as laying the groundwork for next years more major adventures – well, septic, and solar system. And, of course, the actual ‘real’ structure of residence.

But, for now, it’s time to put things away and go dormant for the winter. For the next several months it’ll all be theory…planning, scheduling, saving, etc…in preparation for the spring.

 

Starting the well research…

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Did you hear the joke about the three holes in the ground? No? Well, well, well…..

One of the things on next years agenda is a well. Drilling a well, as I understand it, is like buying a lottery ticket with a blank check. Maybe you drill 50 feet and hit 35 gallons per minute, maybe you drill 350 feet and get 10 gallons per minute, or maybe you drill 1000 feet and hit nothing except a very expensive hole.

New wells have their data submitted to a state database. I did some searching and found a well that was dug within the last two years about a half mile from me. They appear to have had to go down between 150 and 175 feet and are getting around 20 gallons per minute.

Is that any guarantee of what the situation will be on my side of the fence? Absolutely not. No guarantees. But I like to think it’s more hopeful than if they had to go down 1000 feet.

I know quite a few people in the local plumbing industry and have asked them to recommend a driller who is willing and able to go a little off the beaten path. I need to talk to them to get an idea of what the financial side of this production is going to cost. I’m thinking around a hundred bucks a foot, and budget for that. While I do have surface water on the property in the form of a creek, it appears to wax and wane with the seasons and does not seem as reliable a source as I would like.

So…its off to the well driller’s to ask them about pricing and that sort of thing, as well as seeing if theyre willing to take on such a job. I’ll need to start saving up money over the winter to make this happen when spring gets here, but thats fine…just as long as I get it done next year. Then once the well is in, its time to worry about septic…and to save up for that.plan

Camera catches

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15

Well, its gonna be a long weekend at the Beta Site, thats pretty much a guarantee.

As you know, I installed some new cameras up at the Beta Site, but I left the old ones in place as well. More is gooder, right? So last time I was up there I did my usual circuit of taking out batteries and SD cards, downloading the SD cards to my laptop, and then replacing the cards and batteries.

Other than the usual stuff on the cameras were two episodes of intruders. One was my neighbor who lives kittycorner from me. He apparently came up the driveway and then left two minutes later. Later that day a white Dodge Ram came up, and then two minutes later it left. I didn’t spend all that money to not have privacy. Need to fix that.

What does that fix look like? Well, it looks like a 14′ panel gate from Murdochs. Trouble is,m the gate is dang near the length of my little pickup. So, I bribed a guy from work who has a larger truck with a pipe/lumber rack on it to haul it up there for me. I’ll pay him, comp his gas, and take him to Buffalo Wild WIngs afterwards. In exchange, I get the first of several gates that are going to wind up up there.

So, assuming all th is goes according to plan (ha!) I’ll get the first of what I imagine will be four gates installed.

For the record, I may (I don’t recall) have told my neighbor he could zip his 4-wheeler across the place from time to time to make sure nothing was amiss, but now that there’s more stuff up there I need to rescind that. Hopefully a closed gate will get the message across. Sentry guns are the next step.

But it wasn’t all annoying news on the cams. Our buddy the fox got caught on video:

I finally figured out how to set the sensitivity and ‘action areas’ for the newer wifi cams, so I’m expecting some more interesting intel updates from up there than just what single still images provide. The tradeoff, of course, is power.Ā  The wifi cameras come with some small solar panels to keep them charged up and transmitting. I’ll be swapping those panels out with larger ones in order to get the most charge out of the shortest solar exposure. So far, though, I’m liking these new cameras.sec

Not as smart as I thought

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So the terrain at the Beta Site is, to put it mildly, challenging. There’s a lot of up-n-down. This means that the Starlink signal faces some terrain obstructions in terms of range. I had wanted to get one of the remote cameras at the top of the hill (“Roadtop”) which is where 90% of the gamecam pics I post is. The problem is that the range of the wifi didnt quite make it that far.

I normally set the Starlink up on the wooden deck I built out in front of the cconex. This weekend I decided to move things around a bit. Most notable, I moved the Starlink onto the roof of the conex, giving it more line-of-sight to the cameras and I moved the solar panels up there as well.

Before I did that, though, I charged the Jackery up to 100% using the Honda EU2000. Once I did that, I unplugged everything, precariously carried it up a ladder, and set it all back up. I turned the Jackery back on, plugged in the Starlink, and I was in business.

Except for one little detail. The display showed an output of about 15w, which is about average for the Starlink. But on the input side, it said it was receiving 0 watts input from the solar panels. THat can’t be right, thought I…its bright sun and there’s no obstructions. Those panels should be kicking out at least a 100w. So I checked all the connections. All good. Zero watts. So I unplugged everything and replugged it back in. No watts coming in. Spent twenty minutes going thorugh YouTube and Reddit links looking for tips. And that’s when the penny finally dropped.

You can’t put gas into a tank thats already full. The reason the Jackery was showing 0 watts coming into it was because the battery was at 100% full…as such, the battery management system shuts off the input from the panels. To double check, I disconnected the panels, put a high draw device on the battery, and when the battery charge hit 99% I plugged the panels back in. Display showed 125w incoming.

So, as the post heading says, I’m not as smart as I think I am.

On the bright side, moving the Starlink 12 feet higher did, in fact, extend the range of the wifi and I got the camera exactly where I wanted it at the roadtop. If CostCo still has them in stock, I’ll pick up one more camera and see if I can get on mounted on the alternate-entrance road.

And speaking of power, I found this guys YouTube to be wildly informative. Especially this particular video for a simple and somewhat portable PV system.Ā 

What I have up at the Beta SIte right now is okay for the immediate short term. But those flexible folding panels aren’t as resilient as purpose-built ones, that battery is not large enough to cover my anticipated needs and contingencies, and at some point hteres going to have to be a significant expenditure to get something a little (or a lot) more serious. That’s one of the things on tap for next year. In the meantime though, this little setup is delivering for my rather small needs at the moment. But next year…different story.

Cold weather Jackery musings

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So, the background here is that The Jacekry, which has been working out quite well, has a hiccup – because of the type of battery it uses, charging it when the temp is below freezing will damage the battery. The battery will output power below freezing, but it will not recharge since the battery management system in the Jackery will disable the charging circuit when the temp is too low.

Now, the obvious solution is to keep the unit someplace where it will be warm. However, no such option is available at the moment. Even if I put the Jackery in the conex, it is still just in a large unheated box. It will get just as cold in there as it will outside. No help there.

But…it occurred to me that the Jackery, as it is running, has a cooling fan running. Why does it need a cooling fan? Because it generates some degree of heat. Hmmm. So, hear me out, what if the Jackery was placed in an insulated box that retained that heat to keep the unit above freezing? The type of battery used by the Jackery does not off-gas like other batteries, so thats not an issue. And, any container wouldnt necessarily be airtight anyway….think something like a styrofoam cooler with a couple small holes punched though for the cables.

This is something I need to experiment with while the weather is still reasonable. There is, of course, a couple risks here. One risk would be that, on a particularly unseasonable day, temps could get high enough that there might be a risk of overheating. I believe I can mitigate this by setting the Jackery to shut itself off and then restart in several hours (the app gives you the option of setting times for it to run). The problem with that is it would mean that when the Jackery restarts Starlink would re-boot and while I admire what Elon has created, theres no guarantee the reboot wouldnt require me to be there hands-on for a problem.

The Jacekry app indicates theĀ  temperature at the unit. So, on my next trip up there, drop it in an insulated container and track the temperature for a few hours while Im up there and see what happens.

And speaking of, local Costco has the same package I have of Jackery back in stock. However, it is not on sale as it was when I bought. Still though, I’ve been pleased with it so far and even at ‘full price’ I’m tempted top get another.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how this experiment goes.

Live from the Beta Site

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One of the things that has been an inconvenience at the Beta Site is the lack of cell signal for my gamecams. I have several cams out there but only one can actually check in with any regularity and even then its spotty. The ideal solution would be cameras that sent signal over the internet, thus negating the need for cell towers and signal. However, that opens up its own can of logistical worms. This weekend is an experiment in wrangling those worms.

First thing we do is pick up a “Ring”-style camera. In this case a Eufy E30, which I temporarily mounted to the corner of the conex.

This camera comes with a small solar panel to keep it charged. Like most gear like this these days, the panel and charging port are USB. I had a larger Goal Zero Nomad 20-watt panel laying around and since it was significantly larger than the small panel the camera came with, I decided to use that to keep the camera topped off. I affixed some weight to the panel so it wouldnt get blown off the top of the container and set it up.

So, the camera part of the equation is done. Now for the internet part. A few trips back I experimented with the Jackery powering my StarLink setup. Under full sun the numbers were promising. It appeared that one hour of recharging under full sun gave about ten hours of internet time. I set up the panels flat on the deck, secured them so they wouldn’t blow away, and plugged them into the Jackery. This required the Jackery to sit outside which is not a great idea for electronics given that things like rain exist. After some thought, I decided that I would put the Jackery on the deck, run the wires from/to the Jackery down and through the spaces between the deck slats, and flip a plastic tub over the whole mess to keep it dry. Ventilation would come from below but rain would not.

The Starlink is, by its design, waterproof and not needing of any particular protection. However, I will wind up putting a semi-permanent pole mounting for it. So…camera has power, Jackery is getting power from panels, Starlink is up and running. Lets check the phone app:

And the real kicker…the camera has a pan-tilt-zoom feature so I can move the camera around remotely to look from different angles.

Now this isn’t 100% as cool as it seems. The camera is running full-time, meaning it is constantly sending live signal upstream to the internet, even if no one is watching it. That uses power. However, I can remotely turn the camera on and off so the camera only streams images when Im actually looking at it. Thats great. But it means the camera and its motion detecting is off if something walks by it. The obvious solution to this is to provide more power and a more capacious battery for the camera itself. This isnt necessarily a problem. It would be a simple matter of creating a battery/panel charging combo similar to whats running Starlink at the moment.

The weather this weekend is rainy and overcast, so I’m curious to see how battery recharging is going to go. In theory, Starlink can run off the Jackery for about four or five days before it runs out of juice. Even with overcast weather there is still a measure of recharging that occurs, so it might be feasible to say that as long as there isnt a continuous five days of no sun, the battery will power things ‘indefinitely’. Gonna find out.

For now, I think its cool as heck to be sitting at work, pick up my phone, activate the camera, rotate it 360-degrees and see whats going on up there. We’ll see if this works out long term or not, but for right now its very cool.

So much fail II

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Okay, not my best moment.

Went up to the Beta Site and did some camera work, which I’ll talk about later, and got ready to leave. Locked up the conex, locking all five padlocks on it. Climberd into the truck and…hey, wheres the car keys? And with that sense of dread that lets you know you really messed up, I realized I had locked the car keys in the conex. Where were the keys for the padlocks that were securing the conex? On the key ring with my car keys.

So here’s the situation – it is 5pm, daylight is starting to head for the hills, it is pouring rain. And Im sitting in a truck that cannot move because the keys are locked up. Now, I do have a spare key hidden on the truck but that is just a key to open the doors…which made sense at the time because usually the keys are locked in the truck, not in a cargo container. And, like most modern vehicles, the truck requires the chipped key that is wildly expensive to duplicate. But, I do have a duplicate…at the house in Missoula.

So, there’s no real option here. I’m going to have to break the padlock that I purchased specifically for its breakproofness. How to do so? Well I have access to a small bag of tools in the back of my truck…theres a heavy steel mallet in there. I use that and a combination of wrenches, heavy screwdrivers, and the like to achieve the spectacular result of…nothing.

Now, having to spend the night out there wouldnt have been a big deal. In addition to just sleeping in the truck, there was a cache a hundred yards away that had sleeping bag, tarp, freezedrieds, sleeping pad, cookstove, etc. Staying out overnight wouldn’t have been an issue, but so what? The next morning Id still be locked out of my car keys.

:::sigh::: Okay, I’m not happy about this, but theres only one real course of action left – shoot the damn lock off. Weapon of choice? My bear AK w/ steel core ammo. As you know, the sights on the AK, like the AR, are offset a bit above the bore. I didn’t want to get too close because I really didnt want shrapnel or bullet fragments flying back into my face. First couple shots missed because of the sight offset. Next couple hit the lock but not enough to bust the shackle…my shots were hitting closer to the bottom of the lock, not near the hasp. Looks like the only way to do this is to risk a little shrapnel and stand right next to the stupid thing, put the muzzle an inch from the lock and pull the trigger.

Which I did.

And the lock came apart like a Mexican space shuttle. I didnt catch any fragments but I sure as heck don’t ever want to be in that situation again. Which is why, on the way back from the Beta Site I swung by Home Depot and picked up a half dozen heavy duty combination locks. I’m replacing the keyed locks with combination locks so I never have this problem again.

And, really, this shouldn’t have been a problem the first time. Wargame the scenario – you show up at your hidden supply cache with whatever you could grab as you fled for your life. Where’s the keys? One less thing to have to worry about if you just carry the combo in your head rather than having to frantically make sure you grabbed the keys, or dig through six inches of snow and ice to find the key you cleverly (you thought) hid up near your stuff. No, for me it makes more sense, especially after this incident, to use a combination lock instead.

So, a hundred dollars worth of keyed-alike locks wasted. I’ll find other uses for them, but this was a lesson I’d have been happy to not have to learn the hard way. And you, my friend, can take what you will from my experience. Maybe I can save you the cost of a set of new padlocks and a dozen rounds of 7.62×39.

Looking in the rear view mirror

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Summer is slowly dying. But dying is a long way from being dead. There’s still probably another month, maybe two, before I need to start thinking the Beta Site is ‘closed for the season’. I suspect right around the middle of October it should start dropping concerning amounts of snow. That means that the ‘construction season’ will also be winding down.

How has 2026 gone for the Beta Site? Well, I didn’t get as much done as I want, but I got a bunch of things done, including some of the more expensive things.

  • Got the game cameras deployed
  • Had a professional and legally valid survey done
  • Got the conex put in
  • Established StarLink for connectivity
  • Found an alternate route into the property to facilitate better access in bad weather
  • Met a couple neighbors
  • Got the storage tanks buried
  • Got the secondary entry into the property cleaned up a bit

Expensive? Some of it…between the conex, survey, mini excavator and trailer rentals, and a few other things I’d say I dropped about $20k altogether. And that, my friends, is going to be the cheap part. Plans for 2027 are grand. Tentatively the biggest expenses will be:

  • A well
  • A septic system

These two things will give me the major accoutrements of civilization. I don’t mind living on 12v power, and keeping an eye open for bears…thats the price for living in the middle of nowhere and I accept it. What I will not tolerate (if I don’t have to) is a lack of flush toilets. Now look, I know that in the apocalypse the ability to drop your pants and sit on a nice porcelain throne is, at best, sketchy. And I’ve gone the caveman route when I’ve been out hunting or otherwise far from civilization. And, yeah, its no that big a deal. BUT…if I can have a nice, honest to Crom flush toilet why wouldn’t I? So those two items will be the most expensive things in 2027, I suspect.

And, of course, theres still the matter of the ‘real’ structure. I’m not living in a cargo container. I want a small-but-cozy four-season cabin/structure that has running water, heat, light, a flush toilet, internet, and all the creature comforts. Sure, I can ride out the apocalypse in a tent but if I don’t have to……. Really, something similar to this would be supermegawesome.

Other upcoming big expenses will be locking gates, water infrastructure (mostly piping water to various points on the property), fencing, gabions, sangars, decking, solar/power infrastructure, communications infrastructure, etc.

See the keyword there? Infrastructure. Its not going to be quick, and its not going to be cheap, but it does need to be done. By this time next year I want at least half of these things done. Since winter will be a time of inactivity, that will translate into a time of reduced spending..that’ll give me time to put together a war chest for jump starting things when ‘building season’ resumes, which I am scheduling as June 1 but will in all likelihood be about a month earlier.