CYCLED TO CANADA & PALISTINE


Me and a bunch of lads decided to pull some of our mates leg. We decided to cycle to Canada and Palistine. That right the other side of the world. Well we not that fit. But fit enough to do a 120mile round trip from Swindon to Canada Near New Forest. Also pop in and said hello to Palistine on the way. Most of the time we cycled along roads and footpath. Of course we did get lost a little on the way back. I guess we all was tired and exhusted.

Bike Trip, Bristol to Devizes

The trip started from cycling from our house to nanny house. Then I loaded the car with the camping kit, trailer and bikes. Of course we took Holly (The dog). We drove to Bristol near Temple Mead Train Station where the beginning of the National Cycle Route 4. This is the Start of the Bristol & Bath Railway Path. 13 Miles off-road cycleway. 8 miles to go and it has stop raining. On the way it is all smooth tarmac made it very easy to ride and only 2 pelican crossing. There even a 0.3-mile-long tunnel under Staple Hill. The tunnel is lit all year-round. Some of the route had remains of old engines and track like a old junk yard. As you can see that there are many straight parts on this route. Towards the end of the journey you go over the K&A canal 3 time before you come into Bath area. This is the end of safe of road riding. Up in front you will see a kid park where we rested for 30min. All we had to do was find the camp site. Behind the park is a bridge over the canal towards the bus station and then onto Lower Bristol Road. Turn right and up the road 100 yards you will see a archway with a road. At the top you will go onto Newton Road. Turn right and keep going to the end you will come to the entrance of Newton Mill Camping Park .
For more information about the trailer please check out my other blog.

Bike Trailer

The trailer design was based off on what martial and boxes that I had lying around my home. For month I been trying to sell an old metal bunk frame. Instead of taking to the metal scrape yard to be melted again I decided to build my bike trailer. This of course save carbon footprint as the metal does not need to be reheated and melted for another purpose. Other material that was required are wheels, universal joint, pile of nuts and bolts. Tools that was used to build this trailer. I used a arch welder to weld it together. Angle grinder to cut and grind the weld. Of course a metal saw to cut, tape measure, spanners, paint, cordless drill, drill bits and clamps. It started from having a few key point for trailer purpose. Narrow enough to fit through doors way, large capacity for carrying logs, stable for safety, strong enough to take the odd bang and bumps. The design composite started from laying some section on the floor and build as it went along. Keeping to the minimal amount of cutting and welding. Save waste and save build time. I used normal sized mountain bike wheel as they are easy to come across and also act as spare wheel for the bike. As you can see from the picture on the left side is the completed trailer frame painted from left over black gloss paint. This hope to protect from bad weather and stop it from going rusty. After the painting. I put on orange side and rear red reflectors. For safe riding in the night or day. Which you can see from the very top picture of this blog. The first test of the trailer was very brutal bashing around the local park. to make sure no weld break and the geometry was about right connecting to the bike. Then the trailer was tested on a 5 mile journey with 1 concrete block in each box. Each block weighs 18kg giving a total of 36kg (79Lbs). Not including the trailer weight 25kg. From the 5 mile journey there was side way moment due to the flex from wheel bracket. This causes the trailer to counter steer me on the bike. Not very nice a little scary above 7mph. This had to be sorted out to have a nice riding speed of +10mph. The answer was to stiffing up the wheel bracket with some extra metal. The trailer is now ready for it first real journey please check out my other blog.

Solar Power

Free power all sound good. But when put into practice around the U.K. it not made out to be. Because we are far from the equator the average sunshine per day through the year is about 4.5 hour. If you had a 100w panel you would only have 450watts of electric in a day. Which is enough to run your lights in the evening. That if you use energy saving bulb. A energy saving bulb is about 10w an hour. A average house will have about 10light fitting. So that 100watts an hour. So you would have about 4 1/2 hours of free light. It all sound good so far. But when winter arrived you have longer night than day. This is where all the hic up start. OK light might not be good way.

Now look at the fridge. It run over time in the summer and the solar panel will be working over time. And in the winter the fridge hardly have to work or you solar panel. A average fridge consume about 400 Kilowatts a year. That about 1.2kw a day. So you would need at least at 280watt panel. That 1260watts a day.

All these figure are based on peak condition every day. If it a cloudy day you probably get less than 50% of the output and when it snow 0% as it will cover the solar panel.

Wireless Network

The purpose of this medium range wireless net work was to see if it was possible to save money on the long run. I just moved into my own home a few street away from mother. At the time I could not afford to have a phone line and broadband. One or the other. Well mother had a phone line so I got broadband at mother house. This enable me to save about £120 a year. So the wireless kit most not cost any more, so in the a year time it pay for it self. All I needed to do was to be able to link the 2 houses together via wireless. After a long search and research on the Web. To make sure that I get thing right the first time. The distance from the 2 houses is approx 300meter. The only line of sight was from the back of mother garden to the roof of my place. I had to run the Ethernet cable along the wall along with the low voltage power to the access point which is mounted in a water proof box at the bottom of the mask. The mask is on a 4 foot pole with a parabolic dish which is pointed to my house. The parabolic dish was picked to help security by narrowing the beam only to my house. This carried the broadband. Of course use encryption for more security. Now on my house was a omnidirectional antenna which has a horizontal beam for covering wide area. Of which I share to who ever I wanted. The antenna on my house is mounted on the roof with a 12 foot pole. Just inside the house is the wireless access point. A very good question is why am I using such a big antenna kit that are high gain. The answer is simple it due to having poor coax with high loss of signal. But this cable is very cheap RG58 compare to LMR400 that is nearly 10 time more and is 100 time better. Not to say all the cost of the connectors. In All the project cost me about £150 to set up and going. The wireless network is still going today after 5 years. Yes, it is the old 802.11b 11 Mbps. It plenty fast enough for 2MB broadband and playing network games.
Please fell free to look at my other blogs