That is really interesting Mark. I had never even heard of doing that. I looked around a little bit on that Lind website and they look like a really well run and reputable place. I saved it to my favorites and I'll definitely be going back to shop around.
In my first couple years of chasing I bought a power cord for my laptop that went directly into the dc outlet. For some reason the laptop didn't get enough power it was slowly draining, which I didn't find out about until later in the day when I was about 80 miles off a storm. I've had a million different issues like that. With my XM reciever it quit working off my dc power cord so I had to order an AC one and power it off an inverter. I've had dozens of things happen like that and I almost have a phobia of feeling under prepared. I like to know I have backups for my backups.
I just like the versatility of running power inverters where I know I can run anything I need to. I think if you could see the amount of crap I keep in my car (as long as I have time to pack for the chase cause I'm always running late and the pack job takes an hour at least) you would undertand. I make sure I have a charger for every piece of electronic equipment I own in there. I also run a ton of equipment for example XM reciever, two laptops, storm hawk (which require constant power to a cell phone and a PDA), radar detector, cellular amp, video camera for streaming and an ipod (at times). There are the occaisional things like charging cell phones or bluetooth headset if I forgot to since the last chase and a lot of times my cell battery runs out if I'm in the viewing area. It's a god damn mess in there. I actually have an appointment on Tuesday to have two more dc outlets instaledd which will make 6 plus a hard wired 700 watt amp. I'm talking about my car by the way. We won't have to use a van this year unless we start booking more people quick (we started way to late), so unless that happens we'll just use my car and one more SUV if we exceed three people that day. We got started really late on the tours this year so it's been tough getting the word out with advertising. We were actually supposed to start the tours last year, but it was a joint effort with another company and it fell through. This year we are only going to lease the van from another company that does similiar trips if we have to, which at this rate I doubt we exceed the capacity of the SUV's. I was just looking through emails and noticed that we actually started advertising the tours almost exactly one month ago. Nothing like waiting till the last minute.
Next year I'll go ahead and buy the van in the November time fram so I can start working on it (I know I'll book plenty of people next year for a few reasons). I actually think it will be fairly easy to outfit that since I know through trial and error what you need and where you need it. I'm really looking forward to doing that. The van sucks ass though because you can't get on any back roads that are wet and obviously can't get as close either. That's why I prefer the SUV's.
I'm a little too long winded lol.
