May 2013
May started with the
Isle of Wight Randonnee
and what a lovely day it was too. A cloudy start followed by an afternoon of sunshine. I think of these trips as
my annual reminder that the IoW is far from flat and quite frankly, I simply don't have enough Torque to get the job done
without incurring a lot of pain. Only willpower and
Jelly beans
gets me round...
Or is this case proving out a
new bike
concept. If I do another one it will be electric assist. I might even enjoy the trip for once.
Having said that what else would have got me into building a
data logger.
As this project ended up being somewhat 11th hour I hadn't done the necessary work to identify the battery energy requirement. This became another project requiring the building of a simple data logger. An easy task for most but I struggle with soldering, two hands is simply not enough, and I even manage to crimp on terminals that have no electrical conductivity, most frustrating. Anyway, I won't bore you with the details here but if you want to read how I build a data logger using an Arduino Uno and an SD shield plus a few other bits of electronics here it is.
Meanwhile back to the boat.
This months project was to fit the engine bearers. The timber was salvaged from a rather large pallet that came with a very large machining center.
Mike planed the rough sawn timber to size while I marked out the hull.
Once the timber was cut to length it needed shaping to fit the hull. I have to admit to using straight lines when really the hull is curved.
But the epoxy will take out the gaps...
Here the engine bearers are dry fitted in position prior to bonding.