The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Category: Recumbent Bicycling

Cruisin’ the streets

  • Poughkeepsie Waterfront Reclamation

    Back in the day, long before the environmental movement got any traction, the Poughkeepsie waterfront along the Hudson River used to be an industrial hotbed. That tapered off and, after a while, only the Dutton Lumber treatment facility remained; they manufactured classic CCA pressure-treated lumber. Quite some years after (IIRC) they went bankrupt and abandoned the facility, various buildings burned and the site seems to be slated for redvelopment into condos and suchlike.

    The wisdom of siting condominiums along a tidal estuary, just a few meters above the current waterline and well below the future projected flood stage, seems dubious to me, but, then, I’m not a developer.

    Anyhow, a recent ride across the Walkway showed that they’re sealing off the contaminated soil under what was once the lumberyard:

    Poughkeepsie waterfront brownfield reclamation - overview
    Poughkeepsie waterfront brownfield reclamation – overview

    An excavator moves gravel from the barge, which probably came a few miles upriver (or downriver, depending on the aforementioned tidal flow) from the Tilcon quarry at Clinton (no relation) Point, into the dump trucks:

    Poughkeepsie waterfront brownfield reclamation - gravel barge
    Poughkeepsie waterfront brownfield reclamation – gravel barge

    The scale of the operation snaps into focus when you notice the guy standing on the quay:

    Poughkeepsie waterfront brownfield reclamation - truck detail
    Poughkeepsie waterfront brownfield reclamation – truck detail

    An old joke defines the difference between electrical and civil engineers: electrical engineers build weapon systems, civil engineers build targets…

  • LAW Lifetime Member Plaque: Rejuvenation Thereof

    The brass plate from this plaque rattled down the basement stairs(*) a while ago:

    League of American Wheelmen plaque
    League of American Wheelmen plaque

    As you might expect, the adhesive failed and has been replaced at least once. This time, I drilled a pair of 2-56 clearance holes in the plate, match-marked the wood with a punch, drilled a pair of tapping holes, and put it all back together.

    There’s not much to see, but I’m pretty sure that plate won’t fall off ever again:

    League of American Wheelmen plaque - detail
    League of American Wheelmen plaque – detail

    The lacquer finish has begun disintegrating, but I wasn’t in the mood to strip-and-restore that. The tile remains firmly affixed; when that falls out, it won’t be pretty.

    The LAW long ago morphed into the League of American Bicyclists, after deeming Wheelmen as too gender-specific for the modern era.

    (*) We hang plaques, certificates, diplomas, and suchlike on the walls beside the basement stairs. Every time we pass by, it’s an Ego Trip…

  • Driveway Drain Pipe Grate vs. Chipmunks

    Known to be true: chipmunks love drain pipes!

    Chipmunk peering from drainpipe
    Chipmunk peering from drainpipe

    Obviously, an open pipe attracts rodents.

    That didn’t matter with a three-foot pipe attached directly to the downspouts, but, as part of the driveway project, I routed the house storm drains and wall footing drain pipes about 20 feet down from the new retaining wall, with the two joining into a single outlet. There’s a cleanout plug on the storm drain line, but the footing drain consists of about 50 feet of corrugated and perforated tubing that would be just about the finest possible chipmunk habitat.

    In principle, one would simply glue a grate into the final fitting and be done with it, but leaves from the gutter will pack behind the grate, so it must be removable. Leaving the grate loose means it’ll pop out at the slightest provocation and, most likely, roll another hundred feet down the driveway into the street.

    Rather than coping with that, I drilled a clearance hole in the elbow and tapped a matching hole in the grate:

    Drain pipe grate - hole tapping
    Drain pipe grate – hole tapping

    I have a few white nylon 1/4-20 cutoffs from the bike fairing clamps, so I wrecked the threads on one and jammed it into a black nylon thumbscrew:

    Drain pipe grate - thumbscrew
    Drain pipe grate – thumbscrew

    Now, of course, the critters can still climb down the drainpipes from the gutters and set up housekeeping in the plumbing, but I’m not putting grates where I must climb onto the roof to clear them. A chipmunk dropped from two stories will scamper away; I’d never walk again.

    We shall see how this works out…

  • Beaver Engineering

    Beaver-gnawed stump on DCRT at Lake Walton
    Beaver-gnawed stump on DCRT at Lake Walton

    I spotted this bit of engineering while riding on the Dutchess Rail Trail at Lake Walton:

    Evidently, the beaver stopped just before the tree toppled, because the last cut looks very much like a chainsaw.

    I didn’t spot their lodge out in the lake; they may have tucked it under the bank below the railroad bed.

    If they keep this up, they’re sure to get trapped and moved somewhere they can’t interfere with our enjoyment of the natural landscape along the rail trail. [wince]

  • APRS Electronics Case: Battery Contacts, Again

    Although the contacts passing power to the Wouxun HT worked well, they were obviously (in retrospect, as always) in the wrong place. Recently I rode the bike over a major bump and heard the radio reboot (it gives off two low-speed Morse “M” characters), which suggests at least one of the screw heads just barely touches the radio’s spring contacts.

    Two folded-under strips of copper tape may work around that problem until I build a whole ‘nother interface:

    Copper foil on power contacts
    Copper foil on power contacts

    The black tape adds emphasis to the lightly sticky end of the copper tape. The folded-under ends lie to the left in the picture, so there’s a continuous copper sheet connecting the radio battery contacts to the screw heads on the green case. It’s not a huge cross-sectional area, but … it’s better than no area at all.

    The last time I tried this fix, I used woven copper mesh tape. This time, the solid copper tape was on top of the TLB (Tape Lookaside Buffer) holding the specialty tapes. Either should work fine.

  • Hudson River at Poughkeepsie

    During that ride for apples, we stopped for lunch in the middle of the Walkway where the scenery is a lot better and the traffic much more pleasant than elsewhere along our route:

    Poughkeepsie Bridge
    Poughkeepsie Bridge

    For reasons that have nothing to do with engineering judgement, the west (right) end of the Mid-Hudson Bridge terminates at a cliff with the road in a monster cut turning abruptly to the right and ramping up to the toll plaza. It’s still a pretty span…

  • Inkjet Colors vs. Time

    Back in December 2007 I printed four copies of a picture on various papers with the Canon S630 and hung them on a floor joist over my workbench, directly below a fluorescent shop light. Having just hung those screwdrivers where the pictures used to be, it’s time to see what’s happened.

    The pictures, scanned on an HP C7670A (aka Scanjet 6300C) against the neutral gray of the ADF platen:

    Inkjet Colors vs. Paper vs. Time
    Inkjet Colors vs. Paper vs. Time

    The papers, clockwise from lower left:

    • Glossy
    • Matte
    • Plain
    • Inkjet

    While the scanner isn’t renown for its color fidelity, the overall results look about right; the platen really is that shade of gray and the upper-right picture has a sickly green hue.

    The faded edges along the right side of the left-hand image show where the adjacent sheet overlapped: the colors didn’t fade nearly as much. The small rectangles on the lower left corners of the right-hand images show where I put clothes pins to keep the sheets from curling.

    All of the images have a blue overtone; the magenta dye fades out with exposure to UV from the fluorescent fixture.

    As you’d expect, the glossy paper looks best, with very crisp detail. The inkjet paper is next, followed by the matte, and the plain paper in the upper right obviously doesn’t support the ink well at all.

    Of course, after five years I no longer have any of those papers and am using entirely different ink…

    To show that the scanner really does matter, here’s the same set of images from a Canon LiDE 30:

    Inkjet Colors - Canon LiDE30
    Inkjet Colors – Canon LiDE30

    In both cases. that’s without any color correction / gamma compensation / whatever. I should fish out my scanner calibration targets and go through the whole color calibration dance again; with any luck, the Linux color management infrastructure will be less inadequate by now.

    IIRC, we were doing public safety radio at an event at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds with the Mt Beacon Amateur Radio Club. This was before the Diamond antenna mounts disintegrated, too.

    Memo to Self: If you love it, don’t expose it to UV.