Need help with JMT power strategy.

the best use of a solar panel is not to charge an iphone, but to charge a battery. Here is what the maker of the TinyCharger5 says: "The way you used it the optimum: charge a battery, and use that to charge the phone. Batteries are better than phones at taking a charge from a solar panel. The reason is, if there is a momentary shadow it can cause the voltage to drop, which fires events in the smart phone which actually cause it to burn power. The battery just takes what it can get." It worked well enough for me that i'll take the 4 oz solar panel plus a camera battery charger on the next week long hike i'm on.

That's really interesting that you weren't able to charge things with the suntastics unless you had ideal light… Here is me in some very not ideal conditions on the CT – I'd plug my iPhone in, connect it to the charger and just walk…and by the next time we stopped it would be fully topped up. It worked with my delorme and my nook, too – I charged my Sony RX100 batteries in the camera, so I waited for when we were stopped to do that. ADDED: i wonder if the iPhone 6 is different??? I had the iPhone 5….

He told us he was walking Southbound meaning he was walking into the sun for a large part of the day which isn't going to place the solar charger into a good angle on the sun along with added shadows. Going north like many of the PCTers he saw, didn't have that issue. I've been on the fence about solar panels, having found that carrying extra batteries had a better power to weight ratio. 6 years ago when I hiked the PCT, no one I talked to had a good experience with solar. I'm glad to see that solar is getting lighter and more reliable. I may consider it for the CDT in 1.5 years.

I did two SOBO hikes this year with the Suntactics smallest panel. I found that charging during breaks was better as was charging the battery first and only topping off the iPhone 6 if I had the time while not hiking. If the phone battery is very low, attempting to charge it off of the Suntactics while hiking only drained it down farther to the point of being dead cause all the constant display of the message "this device might not support….." when going in and out of shade. Other than that I REALLY like the Suntactics solar charger and when in full sunlight it was almost as fast as plugging into an outlet. The extra eight ounces is for me worth the weight penalty on my hikes. Another reason I don't charge my devices while hiking is because dust and fine dirt has been the death of all my phones and eternal batteries so I keep them in ziplock lock sacks until I am either using them or charging them.

DM, what battery capacity do you use for charging off the suntactics?

I had a last minute freakout about my pack weight the night before i left for the JMT. I took my kitchen scale with me to the hotel in Lone Pine and went through the pack and removed tons of small items. I was able to pull ~2# of stuff out of my pack which included the Anker lipstick charger. I might feel better about the Suntactics panel if I had brought the external battery. It's all water under the bridge at this point. I won't be doing a long hike until the summer of 2017 because my wife made me promise to do an "urban vacation" next summer with her rather than disappearing with our son. I sold the Suntactics panel because I figure there will be dramatically improved options in 18 months. :)

an external battery charges at whatever rate the power source will deliver. It draws as much current until the voltage drops to 4.8 Volts or so too bad phones don't do that. It's like they designed them to charge fast because that's what you usually want, if you're plugged into the wall I wonder if "there's an app for that". Phone uses as little power as possible, about the same as if it was turned off. Will draw as much current as the charger will deliver. Charging off a solar panel is unusual, but you'd think there'd be some people that do this.

Sorry it took me a while to get back to my computer……winterizing our ranch. I use a Morphie power station with 4,000 mAh. I like that size as it's a compromise between a slightly heavier model and the lipstick sized Jackery I use for shorter hikes. Oh and I forgot to mention the Suntactics panel charges the InReach pretty well too. It tends to drain the Morphie battery down fast so I just wait till I have time and charge the InReach on the Suntactics in camp or when I'm at a hotel. I can go weeks without having to recharge it though….the full charge can last a long time even using it to text twice or more a day. I don't use the tracking feature often so don't leave it on. Theres a really nice short cable (description below) I like to use since it has both apple and standard plugs. I got tired of carrying long cables for charging. Have been using these for the past year and no failures yet. This way I have ONE cable for the iPhone 6 and the Inreach and the Morphie. They're so light. Amazon. Apple MFi Certified lightning cable with micro USB [2 Pack] – Skiva USBLink Short (0.5 ft) Lightning Duo 2-in-1 Sync and Charge Cable with Lightning & microUSB connectors for iPhone 6 6Plus 5s 5c 5, iPad Air Air2 mini mini2 mini3, iPad 4th gen, iPod touch 5th gen, iPod nano 7th gen, Samsung Galaxy S5 S4 S3 S2 Note4 Note3 Note2 Note Tab3 Tab2, other Android & Windows Smartphones / Tablets (Lightning and micro USB Combo) [Model No. CB110] – 1 Year Warranty by Skiva Sorry to hear your backpacking activities are being curtailed a bit Matt….:-(

"Here is me in some very not ideal conditions on the CT – I'd plug my iPhone in, connect it to the charger and just walk…and by the next time we stopped it would be fully topped up. It worked with my delorme and my nook, too" It's interesting how different experiences can be. Of course I believe you but if I saw that photo of the cloudy sky and the panel mounted on the backpack my experience would say there's no way it would work. I really like my Suntactics charger on long trips, primarily with a 4s. As a rule of thumb I find it needs to be faced reasonably squarely into fairly decent (not perfect)sun. Under those conditions I find it easy and fun to use. There's something about getting energy from the sun that I find satisfying.

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I’ve used this battery pack to keep my phone and watch alive for 5 days while hunting with really active GPS use that completely drained the phone battery each day. With less active use, I could see this powering a phone and camera for a week or more. And it’s $40 and only a pound. I really can’t imagine a solar charger being more convenient, lighter, and capable of more power over the course of a week than this. It rained the last six days of my JMT hike—a solar charger would have been dead weight.

The only downside on a longer trip is it takes 10 hours to fully recharge, so you’d need to spend some time  recharging at Red’s or VVR to make it last the whole trip.

I walked 10 days in the Sierra this summer, some on trail, some off trail.  We walked primarily south.  My 2 hiking buddies brought suntastics and were very happy with them.  Both used them to charge iphones (one with a 5 and other with a 6).  They did seem to have to tend to them a bit.  But they kept plenty of power.  It seems like the iphone 6 user had more extra power, but it could be differences in use.

I had a Samsung phone I used primarily for photos and occasional GPS on Gaia.  I just brought an extra battery for my Samsung (the Samsung allows you to open the case and insert a new battery).  It worked great through 9 days.  I borrowed a little juice from my friend’s suntastics for day 10..  If I had brought 2 extra batteries, it would have been more than enough for 3 days’ use for me.  The extra batteries were really cheap and significantly lighter than the suntastics device.