Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Back in the day, being 30 km away from a kiloton or ten of nuclear blast was deemed Far Enough, although nobody actually pulled the string to find out. Apparently, sections of surplus barrels make hella-good bunker buster bombs, at least when you’re in a hurry.
Obsolete, of course, explaining why it’s parked behind the York Agricultural and Industrial Museum, seen from the wonderfulHeritage Rail Trail. We rode south from York almost to the the Maryland line, then back again; a good time was had by all.
Un-wearably bad Baofeng headsets now cost just over a buck apiece in lots of five, delivered halfway around the planet, and provide:
A compatible molded mic+speaker plug
A decent length of four-conductor cable with solder-meltable insulation
An unlistenably bad earbud on a stick
A lump with an electret mic and PTT switch
Various junk I’ll never use
The “hook earpiece” seems to have been designed by someone who had read the specs for a human head, but had never actually met a human being.
The wire colors from the dual plug, along with the wire colors for the repurposed USB cable to the headset, and the PTT connection:
Baofeng headset cable vs helmet cable – wire colors
Then wire it up accordingly:
Baofeng headset wire plate – first wiring
The small heatstink tubing surrounding each connection isn’t easily visible, which, in the case of the ground / common lump, is a Good Thing. I chivied a strip of Kapton under the whole mess, folded it over on top, squished it together, then secured it with 1/4 inch tape extending over the plate edges. The cable ties stick out far enough to keep the joints from rubbing on anything; it’s not built to last for a thousand years, but should let us hear how this lashup works.
Now, to the bikes:
Baofeng headset wire plate – in use
I’m convincing myself a little supporting ring under the SMA-to-UHF adapter won’t actually stabilize the precarious-looking joint.
My venerable amateur radio HT APRS-voice interfaces have recently begun failing and, given poor APRS coverage in Poughkeepsie due to having two iGates shut down (due to the aging radio geek population), I decided it’s time to simplify the radio interface. Given that HTs are designed to run with an external electret mic and earbud, the “interface” becomes basically some wires between the radio’s jacks, a repurposed USB plug on the bike helmet, and the PTT switch on the handlebar.
I expected to add a resistive attenuator to the earbud, but it wasn’t clear whether the mic would need an amplifier similar to the one in the APRS interface, so I decided to start as simply as possible.
The general idea is to anchor all the cables to a plate on the back of the radio, interconnect as needed, then “protect” everything with tape. The pocket clip has M2.5 screws on 26 mm (not 25.4, honest) centers, so that’s how it started:
Baofeng headset wire plate – dimensions
The four holes beside the tabs will serve as starting points for rectangular notches holding cable ties lashing the wires to the plate:
Baofeng headset wire plate – drilled
Like this:
Baofeng headset wire plate – sawed
That’s hot and nasty, straight from the bandsaw.
After some edge cleanup, add obligatory Kapton tape to insulate stray wires from the aluminum:
Baofeng headset wire plate – installed
The alert reader will note beveled corners on one plate and square corners on the other; think “continuous product improvement”.
The big rectangular gap in the middle of the plate provides (barely enough) finger clearance to push the battery release latch.
Now, to wire it up …
The dimensions of the recess surrounding the jacks on the Baofeng UV-5, just to have them around:
Baofeng headset jack socket – dimension doodle
Which came from measurements of both the Wouxun and Baofeng radios:
Baofeng Wouxun headset jack sockets – measurements
But the soles jammed against the frame on the PD-M324 pedals.
So I carved away enough rubber around the cleat sockets for clearance to float properly with the cleats latched. A bit of trial-and-error, probably with a bit more to come after on-the-road experience, but definitely a step in the right direction.
Protip: always always always arrange the workpiece so the blade trajectory cannot intersect any part of your body, no matter what slips occur.
For future reference, the rebuilt wheel spoke tensions came out around 25, slightly lower than the 27-ish I measured on Mary’s bike; it didn’t occur to me to measure the tension until after I’d relaxed the spokes. I’ll ride it for a while before doing any tweakage.
The spoke pattern is pretty close to four-cross, due to the large-flange Phil Wood hubs:
Tour Easy Front Spoke Pattern
Which makes for a hella-strong wheel, particularly seeing as how it’s very lightly loaded. The Tour Easy we got for our lass came with a radially spoked rim around a Phil hub.
I transferred the hub and laced spokes intact to the new rim by the simple expedient of duct-taping the spokes into platters, removing the nipples, stacking the rims, sliding the spokes across into their new homes, reinstalling the nipples, then tightening as usual.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 