Site Survey and Beginning Stages

I knew that i wanted to do this and thought of a couple options for location, one being the roof and the other being a ground mount to the west of my house.  I opted for the ground mount due to aging roof and not wanting to have to mess with taking the system down at a later date.

So i began by doing a solar site survey for the area i thought would be best for the ground mount, and it turns out it was a good choice.

 Here is my setup facing 180 degrees south with all my site survey tools at hand.  this was easy to do.

The area below the plotted line with the highlighted lines represents shading.  Shading is bad.  I will get minimal early morning shading due to a couple locust trees to the south east of the array.  This shouldnt cause too much problem and will only occur in the weeks surrounding the winter solstice, when the sun is lowest in the sky.  Trees can always be removed if need be, but id rather not do that right away if it doesnt pose a problem.  I will keep a close eye on output.  This is easy to do yourself by hand and teaches you a fair amount.  This link is all inclusive on doing this yourself: http://www.builditsolar.com/SiteSurvey/site_survey.htm

So i have my site picked out, time to get to work.