grendel

After a minor delay yesterday (trip to my parents to change a flourescent tube) and shopping this morning, I finally started the wiring, now I have another short delay, my small soldering iron tripped out my breaker twice, so its been retired and a new one ordered. anyway, I now have the battery wired, complete with connector, and labelled, the solar panel wired complete to connector- and labelled, and the first one i did- the searchlight connected and labelled, the searchlight plug was unfortunately too big to add the heat shrink labels so I had to do a normal label and wrap it around the wire. I then proceeded to make the heatshrink labels for the remaining circuits (i remembered I had the heatshrink label material just after putting all the connectors on the ends of the circuits. a few years back now I picked up this Dymo Rhino pro label machine at a boot fair, and found you can actually get heat shrink label material for it, so now my cables get proper labels. I have also shown roughly where the electrical panel will be mounted (i have some super double sided tape used for attaching car body panels to attach the panel and the battery)

thinking up new quiz questions

what you have to understand is the different types of load, resistive and reactive (coils and capacitance's) these shift the phase very slightly and this imbalance can cause a neutral current/ voltage. if you have a RCD or other protective device fitted it will trip the circuits if this current exceeds 30mA. on the sort of cables we use at work (mains electric feeders) a neutral cable can also act as the earth - depending how it is wired, so imbalances in the loads between the phases can cause a current in the neutral cable. for domestic wiring an imbalance on the neutral/ earth - up to 2v is normal, and up to 5v can be accepted, but anything higher might indicate the cable is being overloaded. so your 3-6v is almost within tolerance, and assuming you are running from a shore power outlet, it is possible that somewhere along the path, there is a less than perfect connection, but whether thats on the boat or ashore, is anyones guess. it could just be an indication of distance from the power source- which would seem plausible given the rcd showing current at 36mA, this to me would indicate distance from the rcd trip coil. it could all indicate for instance that the shore power cable had been neatly coiled and was introducing an imbalance (this is why coiled extensions have a lower power rating than uncoiled ones)

well that was a close run quiz with ties in first second and third. I won the tie break for first so will be presenting next weeks quiz (once i think up some questions WD Jean for a great quiz

well you know how it goes, the best laid plans to work on the model this afternoon went awry when i got a phone call to come and please change the flourescent tube over the cooker arrived from my parents, apparently my sister who lives just around the road (and was working on their back garden when i arrived) was qualified to change a bulb this morning, but not a flourescent tube. so after work 2 hours was spent driving over and replacing the bulb, fortunately they had a spare sitting waiting( probably only been sitting there for 20years waiting for the first to fail. anyway parents are now happy and can see to cook breakfast tomorrow.

what I like is that they are one of the yards I see going round the boat when it comes back to the yard, with a mop, cleaning the waterline - that also gives them an opportunity to check the hull for knocks and scrapes, I was once told, if you havent scraped the paint, you arent using it properly. I am certain when its done, not only will it look pristine, you wont be able to tell that it was ever touched. inside or out.

ask 100 different people what is the best boat and you will get 120 different answers, and you will probably pick a different one. as mentioned there are a lot of options, petrol engines, not only is there getting it to the boat, but with the new petrol it has a short shelf life, so goes off fairly rapidly, so leaving a full tank over winter, and you may well find yourself stripping the engine down and cleaning it t get it running. - just my opinion though. if you asked me I would tell you a wooden centre cockpit boat, because thats what I like, go for a marthams judith, juliette or janet, and they will go under potter heigham bridge most of the time. but thats just me.

there are some electric points up at the west end near the nelson at reedham (ie the official yacht station part.)

well I got impatient, the ancient black and decker with its right angle drive and a step bit was still an inch too long, but I found once I had started the hole and was half way in, i could straighten the bit up slightly, so now my bulkheads are drilled ready for cabling. just goes to prove it doesnt need to be modern to be able to do the job, this drill is permenantly set up, as its good for drilling joists as it goes places other drills cant get into.

I was made redundant at the age of 55 and opted to take the company pension to start paying out directly,(the company scheme would only pay out like this at age 55 if you were made redundant) I too did the calculations on when leaving it in would outweigh taking it out, and for me it came back as nearly 30 years before i would be better off. of course the ex got a chunk of that in the divorce (i got the house), but it still pays a small income every month (and halfway through the month between normal paydays too) meanwhile I have started another pension with my new employer, so hopefully when I do decide to retire it will pay enough to live on, I will continue working as long as i am able, as I enjoy the work i do, maybe i will reduce my working days per week after retirement age, I will see when i get there.

this is the second model, the first one is the one that is for me and has been put on the top shelf (literally above the workbench) I dont really have the room to work on both at the same time.

so next step to progress the wiring- and I wish I had thought of this before i put the model together - is to drill holes through the bulkheads to do the wiring. the problem is its down in a 6" wide space, and i need a 1/2" hole. the only right angle attachment I have that will fit is hex drive, and all my step drills have too big a set of 3 flats to fit in. thus a set of hex drive step drills has been ordered, so i am now awaiting delivery before i can do any wiring runs.

if the woods good put a bung in t ole, if its bad put a new plank in

the need for a voltage regulator is to bring the battery (and solar panel) voltage down from a max 4.7V down to a voltage below 3.4V and keep it consistent as the battery voltage drops under discharge, this can be achieved by running resistors in the leads of the LED to reduce the voltage they see, but getting the positive rail of the board down to the correct voltage seemed one way to achieve the solution, and it works, when you dont have a dodgy voltage regulator. at least I dont need to relamp the bulbs, that was what I was dreading.

panic averted, I pulled up the specs for the LED,s and even the most sensitive should have been good to 3.4V, went back and tested the 'blown LED's and they all worked from my known good 3V power supply, strange, now for more testing, plugged the battery into the board, tested the voltage with a meter - 3,2V, under the specs for the led's, retested one of the lED's and the same behaviour, a quick flash then nothing? strange- retest the LED on the 3v power supply- still fine- ok then- retested the voltage on the board- 0.5V below the LED threshold, aha, time to replace the voltage regulator (you must remember these are made from purest chinesium, in the thousands, yes, I had managed to get a bad one, out of the 3 I had bought, so I swapped in my known good voltage regulator, and now everything is working as expected.

not overly pleased with myself, I have managed while testing the power board to blow several LED's how did I manage this I hear you ask, I had tested the voltage regulator at 3v and it worked, unfortunately I didnt fit the one I had tested, but an identical one, and turned right down instead of 2.95 volts this one was 3.1V, this difference was enough to take out the LED, whether it was a surge in voltage as I connected or what, I dont know, what i do know is I have at least 3 LED's to replace now (future testing will be done with spare non installed LED's. the trouble is I had encased the LED's in superglue when fixing them into the fittings- the blue deck lights worked fine as they have a very slightly different voltage range (up to a fractionally higher voltage than the others, so it was always going to be a balancing act to get the correct voltage that allows everything to work (3v was that voltage) but 3.1-3.2V and some dont like it. we will get there, I am just upset I didnt test with spare LED's.

I know some of the Marthams boasts have cabin hatches (in fact a lot of them do), so they might give you a quote for fitting some.

I ended up with only the work computer still functioning, so ended up shutting down everything, and then going through restarting everything in order, which has finally got everything functional - fortunately for me the teams meeting was cancelled

not a great start to the day here, I managed to log on and can access the internet via my work computer, but for about 50% of the rest of the websites I try and visit (including google) i get nothing. Luckily NBN is working. an internet search via my work machine tells me that there is a BT outage centred upon my postcode, Its not good timing a I have training via teams this morning, youtube is up, but refusing to play any videos (must be a bandwidth or speed thing) so I am not hopeful that I will be able to receive the video content of the days training later- which will be 100% of the content of the session no doubt.

probably still trying to figure how to get there to inspect it

it would probably be a good idea to take a narrowboat holiday as a trial to see if you really do like it first.

3 hours more jobs after finishing work, that is trip to been and queued, purchase new toilet and cistern - fit same the incoming tap wouldt turn off fully and dripped, and generally everything on the old one was rusty and stuck, anyway its out, the new one is in, now to watch for possible leaks, literally just finished, but once again a working toilet.

I once had an alternator going bad, I drove into work, took the alternator off and dropped it into the alternator shop down the road, I picked it up at 5 pm at the end of work and refitted it to my car and drove home.

well after bright lights, magnifying glasses, tiny soldering iron and squinting a lot, the connectors are mounted on the veroboard. two cuts were made across the tracks to separate out some of the circuits. and the voltage regulator is plugged in, next stage once the connectors come in will be wiring up lights to work off the board, different circuits have been given different colours, with the positive being red and the negative bar blue (nearest I had to black) so you can see in the top left there are 2 red sections, one for incoming power from battery or solar panel, and the outgoing power at 3v from the voltage regulator for the LED's, by the end everything will be disconnectable by unplugging (i will need to label each circuit too.

they might gain that extra inch of clearance they need by doing that, if you are doubtful, take it slowly