Please share your generator baffle designs.

[happydragon]

African or European Swallow?

how many hogshead per gallon does it get while carrying an unladen swallow ?

[sardonyx247]

Most people I see bring genny's to run x-mas lights, power a blender, and don't really use much or to charge batterys, like go-ped batteries, or some kinda electric car batteries.
Modern alternators do put out like 60% at idle now, not like the old days where they put out very little. 12volt batteries take the charge better using an alternator anyway, than useing a charger that plugs into 120volt A/C.
Plus you can have a deep cycle battery in the camp, as a camp battery to use to fill up air mattresses, charge phones, cameras, e-cig chargers, etc. It sucked listening to the neighbors genny to run his x-mas lights, it was a waste.
The car I brought you couldn't hear from 5 feet away. We have used our car as a genny for the last few years on the playa, and it works out well for us.

[Zhust]

how many hogshead per gallon does it get while carrying an unladen swallow ?

1 mile per gallon is 504 furlongs per hogshead. (Presumably, wine hogsheads.)

[MathewCox]

Wow, I'm glad I ran into this thread. The last thing you would want to do is be caught out there without power.

Mathew Cox
Towing College Station Tx

[Captain Goddammit]

Ironically your estimate is pretty close, a car like that does typically idle through 1/4 to 1/3 gallons/hr... but I fail to see how vehicle speed during a coast down test, which is mostly a factor of rolling resistance, has anything to do with testing static-state hourly consumption.

*Facepalm* I had the car in neutral. The fuel use at idle was (essentially) constant but the mpg monitor was still calculating it as if the car was in gear. So to ascertain the fuel usage, I slowed until the gauge hit an arbitrary value — 40 mpg was right in the middle, so I picked that. The efficiency gauge was reporting miles/gallon which is (miles/hour)/(gallons/hour) so I just did a little algebra to get gallons/hour = (miles/hour)/(miles/gallon).

That’s still a completely flawed theory even if you accidentally got fairly close numbers.
MPG takes speed into account. GPH does not.
MPG, even coasting in neutral, is still affected by speed. MPG at idle at zero MPH is zero. MPG at idle at 100 MPH down hill, or coasting down from 120 MPH, is a lot.

Your test was just you picking a number you liked.