First Ural Road Trip

I left Barrow on the Thursday morning flight and arrived back home about 2:00pm. By 3:00pm, I was packed up again and heading out on my first Ural road trip. This is just a short, weekend trip to Anchorage to meet with my brothers family and start planning the 2016 Machida Family Reunion in Alaska. Bridget is flying down on Friday evening so I'm on my own for this road trip down.

I think that I need to remove the FrogzSkin from the air cleaner housing as the rig was really anemic. And gas mileage was horrible as in 16 mpg. I needed the gas in my 3 gallon gas can twice as I could only go 116 km before switching to reserve. We don't have that many gas stations on our highways. My son had asked if I was going to bring both 3 gallon gas cans but that seemed excessive at the time.

Right now I'm staying with friends just north of Anchorage having arrived at about 9:45pm. North of the entrance to Denali Natl Park, there was a strong headwind and I was barely able to maintain 50 mph on the flats. South of Cantwell, the winds died down and I was able to easily maintain high 50's and gas mileage jumped to 19 mpg. Tomorrow, I'll remove the FrogzSkin and see how much of a difference it makes.

Here is a short video with bits and pieces of the trip.

Friday Afternoon Update - After a restful morning visiting with BobP in Wasilla, I pulled the air cleaner housing and carefully peeled off the FrogzSkin mesh. Just in case I want to use it again. On the ride across Knik Arm, there was a really strong headwind and the Ural was able to maintain 55 mph without full throttle and the CHT was the desired 350°F/375°F. If I sped up to 60mph, which it now does easily, the CHT climbs into the less desirable 425°F range pretty quickly. And 61 mph on the GPS is about 57 mph on the Ural speedometer. I think that I'll ride with the GPS more often as the indicated speeds were all over the map i.e. not consistently high or low. The gas mileage without the FrogzSkin may be higher as I already passed the 116 km mark where I've had to switch to reserve twice on the trip down.

In Cantwell, I had forgotten to replace the gas cap when I took off so now I'm using a piece of duct tape. Not optimal. I stopped and visited Mickey and all of the ones he had lying around were for the older Urals. He mentioned that I should try an auto parts store as the cap is supposed to be pretty generic. I tried three stores and no luck. 

Even More Antennae

This is on the roof of the BARC (Barrow Arctic Research Center) with my latest antenna at the very top of this mast. It is an omni-directional antenna for cell phones. The building itself is clad in metal with metal-coated glass panels to help hold in the heat. So, as you can imagine, cell reception inside the building is poor and there have been many complaints over the years.

BTW, if you have an iPhone, you can quantitatively measure cell phone signal strength by entering *3001#12345#* and pressing the "Call" button within the phone app. The signal is shown on the upper left of the screen in place of the bars or dots. This feature was very useful when setting up the cellular repeater. Outside of the building, signal was a very good -67db, inside of the building, a horrible -97db. After the installation of the repeater, it was -69db (inside). On Android, I installed an app called "Network Signal Info" from the Google Play Store. It has a really nice graphical interface and a lot easier than dialing the weird code.

Inside of the building, I have two small antennae mounted to ceiling tiles in the hallways. Between the inside and outside antennae, is an amplifier that allows you to adjust the gain of each cellular band. Hopefully, this will eliminate some of the complaints. The low loss coax antenna cables were a real pain to work as they are pretty stiff and it was still only 11°F outside with a 10mph wind. There has been snow flurries most of the time I've been up here on this trip.

There is starting to be some open water and the spring whaling crews are out. The Barrow Sea Ice Radar images seems to be popular at this time of year. The science support staff has started installing the new Ubiquity radios on the huts so there is a chance that this part of the project may actually be completed. 

Back In Barrow

I'm back in Barrow to finish configuring a new metro wireless network for the NSF leased facilities on the NARL campus. This photo shows the two base stations, the long, white panels. These radios are running 802.11N @ 5 GHz and, depending on the client, have a useful range of several miles. Each panel covers a 90° sector. The panels and cables were in the process of being installed the last time I was here but didn't get finished until after I had left.

Here is a typical client installation. The client antennae are only slightly directional (45° beam width horizontal and vertical) and I was getting great signal even when the antenna was sitting on the snow. But it's probably better to be mounted to a mast off of the ground. Less chance of damage.

Here is a "snow photo" for those still longing for just a few more weeks of winter. Water is dripping from roofs edges and sunset is now a bit after midnight (12:35am) with sunrise a few hours later. In ten days the sun will be above the horizon all day though with today's fog and cloud cover you wouldn't really know.

Finally, Balanced

Balanced carbs are a wonderful thing. I had relied on BobK, a fellow airhead, for balancing the carbs on the Beemer with his Hg sticks. The Ural seemed fine when I picked it up. Over the winter, I had raised the idle speed a little so that would have messed up the balance and I could feel the vibration. I was waiting for the Harmonizer, another electronic tool, to be built again but decided that I was tired of waiting. The TwinMax electronic balancing tool made in France and I believe that it's been around for a while, and though not quite as slick as the Harmonizer it is $25 cheaper. I picked it up from A&S BMW and the first one I received didn't work (doesn't sound promising) but the replacement arrived today and it worked like a charm. The needle essentially displays the difference in vacuum between the two hose connections.

The two vacuum hoses from the TwinMax are plugged into the vacuum ports on the two carbs. On the Ural, the left carb vacuum port is used to control the fuel petcock so after disconnecting the vacuum hose, the petcock needs to be turned to the "Pri" (prime) position. The TwinMax is powered up, sensitivity knob to max and the zero knob is adjusted to center the needle. The warmed up engine is started and after setting the idle speed to about where you want it, in the case of the Ural, right around 1000 rpm, the idle speed screw on the right carb is adjusted to center the needle. Before doing this, you want to make sure that the throttle cables are not tight. Then, using the throttle, you speed up the engine to around 2500 rpm and by adjusting the throttle cable on the right carb, you center the needle. If there is too much slack in the throttle cables, the slack can be taken up using the adjustment on the throttle. You can use either carb to make your adjustments but the adjustment points are easier to reach on the right carb.

Both idle and high speed adjustments were needed on the Ural. Afterwards, I took the rig on a short test ride and the difference is engine smoothness was pronounced. Now there is very little engine vibration at any speed. I was hoping that this tool would arrive this week so I could balance the carbs before my road trip to Anchorage on the 7th.

Tomorrow afternoon, I head back to Barrow to finish the installation of the new Ubiquity radios.