finally got one of the solar panels soldered before the afternoon winds came up, using the open flame from my butane torch/iron. melted some of the plastic of the Uni-Solar panel in the process, of course, but nothing more than a cosmetic blemish.
all in all, it's probably a good thing I had so many problems with it; it had completely escaped my attention that there are no blocking diodes on these panels (though there are bypass diodes), so the soldering issues triggered me to do some Googling, which reminded me. I'm using 6A diodes from Radio Shack.
last updated 2013-08-27 16:53:29. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com