The latest from Dr. Frankenbike's Laboratory....

[BiggJawn]

Where I live, if I want to get in a 2-3 hour ride after work, that usually requires riding the homeward leg in darkness. Now, my 40-something eyes aren't as good as they used to be, so I've been experimenting with different home-brew lighting systems for my bikes.

I started off with one of those LED blinkers and a Cat-Eye battery light, but after not seeing a BRICK laying in the road and getting flatted, I needed something better.

Power is no problem, other than the weight penalty. I have LOTS of 12V-7.5 AH pull-outs frmm the UPS' here at work. OK, so since I weigh 20 pounds less than I didn last fall, I'm not even gonna notice the weight.

For a front light, I have a 20-Watt halogen spot light mounted on the former reflector bracket. I'm going to experiment with a 11-Watt "Malibu" light that looks like a plastic sealed-beam and seems to have good output and a nice spread. That will give me almost twice the battery range of the 20.

Now, so I don't get rammed in the butt by some oblivio-tron in their Dodge RAM Penis-Augmentor, I took the red reflector in the rear, sawed it open, and drilled 6 holes and glued in high-output LEDS. the bank of LEDs required only a 20-Ohm resistor for current limiting, and draw 33 milliamps, so the battery will hardly notice them....Glue it back together, with through-bolts (4-40 hardware) for terminals and it looks like something you'd pay Pete White $45 for....

See what you can do when you give up sex for Lent?

[MAlibdem]

1. That's crazy

If you know the physics behind your work, can you explain flux to me?...I'm trying to learn Gauss' Law right now...it's impossible to conceptualize.

[BiggJawn]

2. I'm a Broadcast Engineer, not a Physicist.

The only thing I know about Flux is that solder will not flow without it, and there was a Cartoon Noir character named Aeon Flux.