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Even out of the box, he looked pretty big. Fortunately, we'd taken the precaution of measuring the distance between the bed and the left-hand back seat, so we knew there was just enough room to squeeze him in. And there would have been, provided we didn't want to recline the seat ... duh!

R2D2 comes with a whole bunch of handy-dandy accessories, many of which you won't really need. There are four castors, but you won't want those on a bus. There's a water tray to catch the water when you drain it (the manufacturer says this is only necessary in very humid climates, but that's where we live), but we'll be putting a drain directly through the floor once we decide exactly where R2D2 will live. There's a fancy remote control, which Florrie loves, though I can't see the point in it. And there is the exhaust hose, which you will definitely need. The flexible plastic hose will slot quite nicely into the lower sliding window if we remove the insect screen (see the photograph), and the unit comes with a face-plate on it to make sure it doesn't fall out.

Trial run
We plugged R2D2 in, mounted the exhaust hose, and pressed the power button. He sprang to life immediately. Cold air wasn't long in coming, and nor was a significant warming of the exterior of the exhaust hose. Inevitably in these portable air conditioners, cool outside air has to be diverted through the outlet to carry out the hot exchanged air. If you extend the flexible exhaust hose a lot, you've got a great source of radiant heat that's warming your bus while you're trying to cool it. In other words, these units work against themselves to a small extent, and that's why we selected a 9000 BTU unit for a job that could have been done by a 5000 BTU window unit.

R2D2 has some fancy controls, like a timer, a digital thermostat, and an AUTO cycle. In no time at all he'd pulled the temperature inside Fergus down to 79 degrees, which would probably be OK for Florrie and me (this was evening, remember; see the previous episode of Cool Bus for our cooling criteria, which may be much less demanding than yours). He runs very quietly, despite having more than one motor (just like his namesake in the movie, in fact). We let him cycle on and off a couple of times, and then concluded the trial. It was a very impressive debut, and bodes well for the future.

Other remarks
R2D2 is a big guy, and he hastened our already-planned removal of the left-side second-row seat. We thought at some length about just where he was going to go, and settled on a location by the foot of the bed, facing aft. This permitted us to tether him to the bedframe, and addressed the problem of the 6-inch flexible exhaust hose, which could now be routed each time we use him directly out of the lower sliding section of the big window. When he's not in use, the hose is stowed beneath the bed. All that now remained was to install a drain hose through the floor so that we wouldn't have to empty his internal tank, and this was done by forcing the hose through a hole that was once used to bolt down a seat.

On the road
R2D2 received his first real workout during a two-day camping trip in the middle of September. In partial shade and during a hot afternoon, he proved capable of pulling down the inside temperature of Fergus over a four-hour period from 93 degrees to about 85 degrees. The next day he was able to do the same thing from 88 degrees to 83 degrees. In the evening he was easily able to reach any desired temperature and then cycled on and off. He remains extremely quiet in operation and trouble-free.

Conclusion
Based on our experience so far, we strongly recommend this portable air-conditioner -- it's well worth its price and the loss of floor area inside Fergus.

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Latest post: The latest offering from Sprint means we can leave our laptops at home.