Distancing

Always nice when your transportation provides a decent seat

Nice to get out of the house and watch the sun go down

up and back

I went for a scoot this afternoon, up to Queen Mary Falls and back.

regen question?

I was also interested to explore regen a bit so I had that in my mind on this up and back trip. First observation was that that it uses relatively little of the battery climbing hills (of course the distance was only 4.5km. But to me the trip reveals how little I'd get back on regen braking, even on that mountain descent, because simply put: I don't even feel inclined to use the brakes.

Had I used the brakes somewhat then it would have been quite the boring descent in comparison.

Trip was only 9km, and you can see from this how the turn around point is much shorter than half the time .. so even any imagined recharging time would be less than the discharging time. Even shorter if I wanted to keep my speeds as I did.

Obviously because I am going faster the duration of (time taken to cover) that distance is less time than the climb. So in reality even on a really steep hill I'll get "stuff all" back from regen (BTW the hill elevation looks like its a higher slope because I've put it on duration not distance too). It's impressive how the speed on the way up was so stable, despite hill slope changes made clear on the descent.

Right near the bottom of the hill I had a "close encounter" with (what I think is) a wren.

For those who may not have watched the whole thing, I managed to edit together this, the point where the small bird (probably a wren) flew out and collided with me (gently)

I hope you enjoy the trip as much as I did ...

to the edge of the Rim

The area around here is called The Scenic Rim and its actually the edge of an old (millions of years old) volcano. Where I live is just back from the remaining walls of that and the plateau (500meters above sea level) gradually recedes over hundreds of kilometers to the west into the deserts of the center of Australia.

In previous videos I've gone up to the top of the range from Killarney to the tops of that (Queen Mary Falls and over to Carrs Lookout) and down to The Head. Today I took the scoot from just near The Head (where I parked last week) and took it right to where it descends down onto the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range.

This is a view from Carrs Lookout to the East showing todays journey with the red line.

Some of it was below the visible edge over there.

Here are the GPS stats

...and the trip video

I mentioned in that video I would provide a link to some of the bird sounds I've previously recoreded in the Rainforest near there so here is one.

You may have noticed the trees there (on my brief excursion) are buttressed ... this is one just near where I parked in there (although not taken today).

Its a fascinating and complex landscape.

I had a brief bit of excitement on the tail end of that above video when I decided to go down and sus out the cows ... a Red Bellied Black snake was out and took some exception to me riding past him (had a bit of a go at me but as I was going fast he kept going his way:

Some Australian language can be heard

As I mentioned earlier this pretty much completes the trip (done in sections) riding my scoot from my house all the way (car lifted some sections) to the edge of the range

All up that's about 30Km and actually I think that if I modded the scoot to have regen brakes then I may indeed be able to do it in one hit, because there are enough really steep down hills which may indeed make it possible. Cos then I could use the regen to save my brakes AND charge my battery for the last bit.

Especially given that I've done some of those bits "there and back" as well (like I rode up to Queen Mary falls and back, and have done the entire top of the ridge and back to Carrs from Queen Mary falls too.

So, there you go ...  a quick tour of the area on a Sunday Arvo.

PS: almost forgot to add in Pete scratchin around on his Beemer

afternoon ride

Reilly Report:

I took the Mercane up to the other side of Carrs lookout (before it gets super steep) in the Pajero to have a tootle around

which more or less went like this :-)

and went back again after the tourists left to enjoy the lookout in a bit of solitude...

Always travel prepared to hydrate ... this is Australia after all.

Cheers

morning ride across the range

Here where I live its right on the edge of the Great Dividing Range, and so its a very pleasant trip across the top through (normally) moist Rainforest and green hills to look East to the ocean.

So here is my trip from Queen Mary falls East to Carrs Lookout, its 26 minutes (the way back didn't make the recorder due to card being filled)

On the ride I conjectured that it may have some amount of rise, so here is that from Google:

not as much as I'd thought, but as you can see I made it in less time than a cyclist would (which is interesting because on flatter ground I've found that Google is pretty close to the same time I take).

Battery was grinding down on the way back, but was 47V when I returned to where I'd parked the car.

I'll leave you with one of the views taken with my stills camera.

up the mountain on the mercane

I decided to take the mercane all the way from the bottom of the range up to Queen Mary falls (again) and this time video the descent (last time the card filled up ... fcuk)

This is the basic plot of the altitude and speeds recorded by my GPS on my phone

So I climbed nearly 300 meters over more or less 4km, where the GPS shows that on the way up it just sat on about 22kmh no matter what, and then hooted back down under gravity peaking at 44kmh (it might have peaked higher if I didn't touch the brakes, but I've had enough bone breaks already). The GPS shows that the downhill had some steeper bits which showed up as speed peaks but the uphill barely registered because the motor is within its power to deliver.

When I got there I checked the motors and battery by hand it it was barely warm to the touch, so I didn't bother with the thermal camera. I believe this clarifies how well designed the system is from the engineering side.

I hope you enjoy my trip back down

I did ;-)

Moon rise

The first gibbous moon after perigee

My local walking track.

It's nice to have this a few km from home...