Potpourri

I borrowed the title from Coop's last post as it seems to fit this hodgepodge of subjects though the “pourri” apparently means “rotten” or “putrid”. Sunlit trees and a dark sky is still my preferred winter picture. This was taken around 11:30 am when the sun is still at a pretty low angle and lighting thing up from below the clouds. The location is Creamer's Field behind the Fish & Game offices on College Road. We stopped so my mom can get some more snow pictures but she didn't bring her camera.

This afternoon (Saturday), was spent fabricating a rear rack on the Ural. There are four holes in the fender for either installing a rack or a second tractor seat. The seat would also have an additional steel that attaches to on top of the rear fender essentially doubling the thickness. For my home-made rack, I added two vertical supports which attach to the rear frame and provide most of the vertical support. I still need to pick up some rubber spacers for the front two fender bolts. And some longer bolts. I will probably disassemble the whole rack one more time to use blue Loctite on all of the screws. The hardware store didn't carry stainless nyloc nuts. There is about 22mm between the front of the rack and the fender. The fender bolts are mostly providing side-to-side and front-to-back support.

The Saturday evening project was this PaddleStick keyer. It came as a simple kit though the all of the components didn't match the instructions. Kind of a pain. The company (individual) is sending the right ones. Fortunately, they provided a schematic simplifying the task. Now, I just need to dig up a 9V battery and connector before I can test it. Maybe I can dig up some 2.2k resistors from my small stash of Arduino pieces. I’ve run into several code decoders based on Arduino boards. Hmmm, that seems like cheating.

On Sunday afternoon, I added the spacers and longer bolts between the rack and the fender. I ground the spacer to match the curve of the fender and bolted everything in place. The rack is incredibly solid. You could probably pick the bike using the rack. I Just drilled some holes in the box and the rack to fasten them together. I’m thinking of permanently attaching bolts to the rack and use some threaded knobs inside the box. This would allow me to remove the box with no tools. My son suggested making another small box or platform to attach to the rack when the box isn't attached. I like it when projects just work...