NIX WEEKLY #02 — The Fogstar Era Gets Loud

This was the week Vanilla stopped treating electric hook-up as part of the furniture, a ten-amp charger politely revealed that it was now the narrowest pipe in the system, and the new music wing of NIX filled up so quickly that somebody should probably check the floor loading. Power below the passenger seat, playlists everywhere else. A very NIX seven days.

The biggest change was not another number on a specification sheet. It was confidence. The Fogstar is installed, the real measurements have started and the conversation has moved from how much energy I can carry to how quickly I can put it back. Meanwhile NIX LISTENS has become a proper part of the site: road music, speaker tests, electronic soundclashes, festival memories and a shameless refusal to stay inside one genre.

Welcome to NIX WEEKLY #02. Turn the charger on, turn the music up and try not to stand on a cable.

The week’s main story begins beneath the passenger seat. On 5 October, Vanilla’s Fogstar 105Ah LiFePO₄ battery went in and changed the question I ask before a trip. It is no longer simply, ‘Where can I plug in?’ It is increasingly, ‘Where do I actually want to stop?’

The important number is not the five amp-hours apparently lost when comparing 110Ah on the old AGM label with 105Ah on the Fogstar. Lithium behaves differently: flatter voltage, far more realistically usable capacity, rapid charge acceptance and a battery management system looking after the cells. Around it sit the 200W solar panel, Victron SmartSolar, 30A Orion, SmartShunt and the separate Jackery reserves. Together, there is roughly 5kWh of distributed energy aboard.

That does not repeal physics, sadly. It does remove a lot of the nervous checking. The Webasto can heat, the fridge can remain a fridge and the battery can quietly do its job while I concentrate on the reason I parked there. The best electrical upgrade should eventually become almost boring. This one is heading in that direction, although my enthusiasm for its graphs remains medically impressive.

READ THE FULL STORY → Fogstar 105Ah: the day Vanilla cut the cable

Then Vanilla supplied the next clue herself. During 9 and 10 October, a real spell of campervan use took the Fogstar from 98.4% to 45.8%, a net draw of about 56.5Ah. Nothing collapsed and nothing needed rescuing. The 10A Victron Blue Smart charger and October solar then brought the battery back towards 90%. The system worked. It simply took its time.

That is the ten-amp bottleneck. Rough bulk-charge arithmetic puts a 57Ah refill at about 5.7 hours on a 10A charger before loads and the finishing stage are considered. At 30A, the basic division becomes about 1.9 hours. Same battery, same stored capacity, radically different recovery time. A larger charger would also turn Forge, the Jackery 2000 v2, into a much faster reserve supply for the Fogstar through a normal charger connection. Useful, if not a masterpiece of conversion efficiency.

The story does not pretend this is a plug-swap job. A 30A IP22 charger needs a dry, ventilated installation with suitable cabling, protection and terminations. Nor does the article claim the current charger has failed; it demonstrably completed the recovery. The point is subtler and more interesting: Vanilla may not need more battery. She may need a bigger tap.

READ THE FULL STORY → The Ten-Amp Bottleneck

NIX LISTENS properly arrived this week, and it immediately behaved like somebody had handed me the keys to an empty record shop after closing time. The section is not meant to be a pile of bare Apple Music links. Each playlist gets a permanent editorial home: what it sounds like, where it fits and why I would choose it.

The first shelf started with NIX Punky Reggae Party, putting punk attitude, reggae weight, ska bounce and dub space into the same room. Small Bose, Big Sound was built around what the little grey Bose Micros do well: punch, vocal clarity, crisp percussion and enough bass to make their size seem faintly dishonest.

After dark, the sequencers took over. I Feel Love After Dark follows Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder into hypnotic electronic disco, while Classic 80s 12-Inch Remixes gives extended mixes room to stretch their legs. These are playlists that understand the lost art of not reaching the chorus in the first twenty seconds.

The road received its own soundtrack through NIX: Long Haul, with Dire Straits, Simple Minds, Depeche Mode and other mile-eaters keeping an HGV shift moving. Dire Straits then earned the full two-hour treatment in The Best 2 Hours Ever. For the electronic heavyweight bout, Underworld v Leftfield trades hypnotic propulsion against bass pressure and dub space. I would call it a draw, although the speakers may request legal representation.

Festival memories produced two different Dubbed Out perspectives: Two Years, One Field captures the broad Britpop-to-rave sweep, while Three Years Dubbed Out sharpens the selection around the acts I genuinely wanted back in the running order. Then came focused sets for Michael Jackson and RUN-DMC, one flowing like a stadium show and the other built for old-school momentum.

By Saturday night, genre boundaries had been politely removed. PROPER NIX — No Genre, No Rules lets punk, reggae, ska and dub take turns at the controls. Sunday morning supplied the most appropriately charged finale: NIX HIGH VOLTAGE, two hours of electricity, power, circuits, synth-pop, rock and rave. It is the only playlist this week that sounds as though it might charge the Fogstar by itself. It will not. I checked.

The Fogstar story takes the highlight because it changes more than the electrical specification. Wheels change how Vanilla looks. Tyres change where I am comfortable taking her. The heater changes the season. This battery changes the decision before the key even turns.

Cold forecast? Go. No hook-up? Fine. Three nights? Interesting. Pub stop in December? Exactly the point. The real prize is confidence to say yes, then let the battery disappear under the seat while the adventure gets the attention.

READ THE FULL STORY → this week’s highlight: The Day Vanilla Cut the Cable

Because this Sunday edition covers a rolling seven-day window, a handful of stories first gathered into Wednesday’s launch issue remain within the dates. They still belong in the record, but I am not pretending they were published twice.

The Drift Changed Everything explained how 4,000 miles across Europe turned a list of upgrades into a clearer travel philosophy: Vanilla as a base to stay at and explore from. NIX Payload put Elvis Juice ketchup and mature cheddar into a soft white PN100 loaf, because ordinary bread had clearly become too peaceful.

On the power side, Vanilla Unplugged explored using the Jackery 2000 v2 as portable shore power with the Sargent charger isolated, while Vanilla’s Secret Kitchen Weapon looked at the Panasonic microwave-and-grill’s new role away from conventional hook-up. The Little Grey Van That Learned to Make Her Own Weather joined lithium, solar, alternator charging, heating and the measured overnight load into one energy story.

Those pieces are the bridge into this week’s Fogstar and charger articles: first build the system, then use it hard enough to discover what deserves attention next.

The Fogstar article makes the next phase explicit: proper winter testing. Cold nights, weak December solar, Webasto figures and complete 24-, 48- and 72-hour stretches will tell a far better story than another evening admiring the Bluetooth screen. The useful questions are now about real consumption, recovery and how the system behaves when British weather stops cooperating.

The charger question also remains open. The 10A Blue Smart has proved the system works; the 30A idea is about whether quicker recovery is worth a correctly engineered installation. That decision deserves the same treatment as the battery itself: evidence first, tidy wiring second, celebratory graph shortly afterwards.

NIX LISTENS will keep giving music a proper home on the site, but the week has already supplied enough playlists to soundtrack several expeditions and one minor power cut. For now, the best next step is to use them: long road, small speaker, warm van, full battery.

That was the week NIX gained a lithium heart and a much louder soundtrack. Come back next Sunday. I’ll bring the numbers; you bring the volume.