Just mesh the subsystems
Happened across a quote from a user forum this afternoon, that describes the reality of owning technology to replace basic gear. “Anyone owning a boat or RV has to be a trouble-shooter; there will inevitably be troubles”. Compared to a dugout canoe, or a lean-to shelter of fortune, this is truth. The larger the number of subsystems, the greater the chance of two things interacting in unexpected ways.
We may have figured out the AC subsystem in the RV, this afternoon. Going beyond a cross breeze through opened windows, there’s a whole set of objects that we didn’t fully understand; not by name, not by form.
Of course, simply turning the system ON went to naught, because we had run down the internal batteries. And the shore power stopped, when a car ran over the extension cord and loosened the interconnection. We knew little of all this, at the start. Even trying to use the onboard generator was a failure, until we related the gas supply being turned off and the batteries being at flat zero. Some careful fiddling around outside (plugging the fat cord back together and throwing a switch) meant that we were getting sufficient current to kick the AC into action. The generator was just another variable in the equation.
Try charting the system explains the why; we just had to get to a charted position. After our session, we now can probably cool things down on demand, without waiting for December to begin. And some of the cryptic prose in the manual stack now has new significance. I wonder if doing things with a mentor, rather than by discovery method, would speed up the process?
