Projects for spring

The blossom is out on the damsel trees around us on the Nottingham Canal, a sweet smell permeates the air. The hatch is wide open today and amongst the din of passing cars on Castle Boulevard I can hear a the choral singing of birds.

I spoke to Mum on the phone the other day and already she has purchased her veg seeds, planning her summer grow. I have yet to sort anything out in terms of pots or containers and have been considering making a raised bed on the roof. I am on the prowl for an old pallet and piece of drainpipe to construct my vision.

On a practical note, having pots around the stern isn't ideal. With a working boat, moving around the cut we both feel best with a clear roof and space on the stern to move around. The raised bed I am planning is going to be closer to the bow and so shouldn't cause too much of an issue with the center rope. I would like to grow potatoes again, so somewhere we will have to make space for a pot.

In addition to all this, we have been talking about solar power. Keen to have a panel, we are contemplating making one ourselves; not only a good DIY project, it should keep the cost down and hone our skills.

I will keep you posted on the developments of my garden afloat and our DIY solar panel.

Where are we now then?

As our water pump ran dry we needed to leave Paddington Basin in search of a water point. So on Tuesday we untied the ropes and set off for the Regents Canal towards Limehouse Basin. Leigh and I struggled turning the boat in the great gusts of wind in the basin but eventually we got round - churning up all the debris in the corners!

We passed through Little Venice and after some troubles getting our propeller clear from the basin's rubbish we were on our way into Maida Hill Tunnell. At 272 yards long, it is one of the shorter tunnels. It is single traffic and fortunately was all clear for us. We then skirted some regal properties along the Regents Park and were heading into Camden Town and Camden Locks. Fenced off to the public, you need to use the British Waterways key to access the locks. At the locks we had a large audience to entertain! We passed through St Pancras Lock and on to Kings Cross where there are new waterside developments by the train station. After another tunnel, a little longer this time we passed City Road lock and found a tap.

Both feeling tired after a day fighting the wind, we were rather annoyed to discover the tap not working and the next water point three miles and two locks away. So we carried on through Shoreditch, Hoxton, Dalston and finally South Hackney where the water point was free and working!

We moored up against another boat outside the Victoria Park and have so far found a good community of boaters around us.

London is huge and we are slowly trying to find our feet and way around.

Today I took a bike ride to Stratford (New Town) and passed by the Olympic site. In parts it is a complete building site. But potentially it is clearly an outstanding area.

I was rather impressed. Unfortunately however, the boating community are being pushed out during the actual Olympics with a pretty penny being made out of renting moorings to those that can afford it.

Money has been spent smarting up Stratford and the main road felt like a Californian boulevard. I was in the area looking for a Maplins electronics shop as I needed a 100K resistor.

What for?

This....

Yes I am back on track with the construction of my Analogue Delay pedal! Horrah!

What have we been up to?

Friends, family, followers...

My sincere apologies that it has been close to two months since my last post on The Kite Experiment. I shall update and awe you with some stories of caves, hunter gatherings, visitors and other sorts of business.

The canal in Nottingham...


it is still a pretty picture for a large city.


Just a 10 minute walk from the city centre, the canal is positioned below the castle. It lines a lean 'Tinkers Lean' where Delia likes to explore and chase the wildlife as well as escape the hisses of other cats and growls of dogs walking by.

The towpath is a paved path right the way from the river trent to Beeston and there are endless walkers, commuters, and cyclists passing by.


With a thick hedgerow of bushes and trees there is alot of wild action too. Not to mention the amazing array of fruits! Which we had to get our grubby mits on. Well they are free and we are skint so the two go hand in hand.


We are still not sure exactly what these little fruits are, plums? Qunices? Damsons? Any thoughts??


With a tub of these fruits, Leigh made a delicious crumble. They were a little tart but very juicy-lucy.


The potatoes have been growing happily on the stern...


Leigh thinks they are ready, I beg to differ, so we did a test.


I pulled one out to have a look...


Now do you really think this King Edward is ready??


I have been working here in Nottingham, pulling pints at the cafe bar of Nottingham Contemporary (art gallery)


And Leigh and I have been formulating a plan to start our own business. So I have been attending various business courses to find out the finer points of 'cash flows' 'profit and loss' and meeting other like minded people. It is very early days but we are doing our research as we go, chopping and changing our plans and ideas to find the right sort of business which runs to suit how we wish to live. Our first main idea was a mobile cafe, something like this...


But this idea may have to be tweaked depending on raising capital and the market. Lots to work out yet, but our own business is a sure future plan.

I have spent alot of time cracking on with some of my creative projects, and have finally started on my delay FX pedal! Horrah!




I have been tinkering with the guitar again and got some lovely tunes on the way.


Leigh and I bought between us a portable amplifier. Finally we have sounds that are louder than an ant.


The Roland Micro cube is a battery run amplifier that I can play my guitar through we can plug our laptops into, mp3 players, FX units... basically anything with a Jack lead. As I am writing this Leigh is filling the boat with his beautiful washes of electronic music. You can see his 'Flotel' website here.

Leigh has spent his time in Nottingham making brillaint music, gigging...


and exploring the delights of battery operated devices often running several items at once - funny man!


I have also finished my bee-house project.


It was a gift for my mothers birthday but that time came and went and I still had two nails angrily sticking high out of the ply and pieces of bamboo rolling around the bedroom. It came to me over a couple of days when I was in a good mood and relaxed about continuing the diy project. Calm and collected I pulled the nails from the ply roof and set about fixing the base in place with screws (pre-drilling the holes this time!) I even covered over the screw heads with slices of a thick branch. Gluing the bamboo inside the triangle of roof and base was a sinch. After a couple of coats of wood stain it was ready to be gifted. But I was miles from mum to give it to her....

Then, my lovely brothers came visiting their lil' sis.


I handed the gift to them to take back to mother-bird.

I showed my brothers the sights and delights of Nottingham. We went for lunch at the Olde Trip to Jerusalem, the oldest pub in England (apparently, recorded back to 1189AD),


which is built into the caves underneath the castle. It is a fascinating place to visit.


And they loved the renovations to the boat.


It is coming towards the end of July, our time in Nottingham is coming to an end. We are planning to set off again for London on the first of August, yes that is my birthday! I will keep you all posted on our adventure 'dahn sath'. So for the mean time, I wish you all well from the Dove of Belgrade. I'm popping to sainsburys now (literally a two second walk behind the fruit bushes) to get some sunday roast food. Thank you all for staying with me on the journey. xxxx

Curtains to it!

My dear mother has been helping me to make some lovely curtains for the boat, winterising her as much as possible. I found some huge fabulous green velvet drapes in a second hand retro shop perfect for the job. They already had lining so just needed some good snipping and stitching up.


After trying to get my head round doing the curtains myself, I had to dash home to mother-bird for assistance, it just didn't make sense. I have never been much of a seamstress in my childhood and had little idea even now where to pin, stitch or anything else really.


After a day of female shenanegans, we set to working on making 6 curtains at 9pm! Note here I was aiming on driving back from the south to the midlands the next morning! With the measurements of the windows to hand, tape measures round our necks and the curtains stretched out we set about pinning along the lines to cut.


As it came together, it became clearer what we had to do. Cut one large curtain in half and this was enough for two windows in width allowing for some small ripples of material. It had heading tape already in place so we worked with this and just added in the seams either side and fixed the lining in place.

By midnight we had cut and pinned two out of six curtains.


So the next day, mum got up and was already sewing away before I had had my first cup of tea! And look what a wonderful sewing machine she was using...







Now that mum has shown me what to do, I have been sent to the floating home with Singer and the rest of the material to finish off. And they are coming along swimmingly! Already we have three windows hung looking very regal indeed.

With plans ahead of leaving our base this week we are tying up all lose ends and so the curtains will have to wait to be finished when we are on the move.

Stay linked to the kite project to see our move in text and colour!

Construction project continues...

So the audio amplifier is in place as above, the test for sound was a sucess and so I continue following the instructions to complete the radio receiver.

Next up are the resistors for the detector and preamp stage including a small wire to connect the long pad to a smaller pad. Notice that when soldering to the ground plane (the copper base) it is best to heat the area with the soldering iron then apply some solder to form a connection point to then solder the component to.


Then the capacitors are soldered to the board making sure the electrolytic capacitors were the correct way around. It was easier to bend out the legs to then solder neatly in place.


And then I soldered the zener diode in place taking note of the cathode/anode lead.


Then I soldered a wire between two pads joining up the amplifier and detector/preamp stages. After testing for voltage I did in fact get 8.97v which might be showing up some problem as I should have around 6.2v. I have checked the poliarity and resistors are correct but so far haven't seen any errors. I have continued none the less.


Next up were the transistors, 2N3819 - audio preamplifier transistor and 2N3904 - impedance detector transistor. Notice the positioning of the transistors identified by the semi-circle shape. After several tests of the transistors and putting the rest of the resistors in place the next thing is the controller.

This controller is a potentiometer as you can see attached in the bottom left of this photograph.


There are still 6 more stages of construction to complete which will have to take place on another day. It was getting late during this latest build and the smell of solder was getting to me.

Construction project continues...

After far too long away from the radio club, I finally made it along last night. It was a great evening and we cracked on with John leading the construction project, the SNARC version of "Nicky's TRF receiver". We got to view some mods that folks had made and check out John using the signal generator to check frequencies and make some pretty amazing sounds!



I am still in the process of building my radio receiver so carried on with that. I managed to complete the Af amplifier and test it out. As you can see I have attached the loudspeaker, battery lead and the volume control to the circuit and ground plane.


Above, you can see the chip in place, LM386 and the volume controller wired up. I shall carry on with this project throughout the evening and see where I get to.

Bassline Generator

So it feels like a very sad Saturday today. There is little that can be done. I want to continue with the completion of the Bassline Generator and let the day pass.

After all the top stuff was in place, then came the plastic jack to be fixed up. Notice where it is positioned, underneath the 100K trim pot so the ends of the pot needed a good trim.


On the underside of the PCB board you can see the send/recieve LED's (given the length to fit inside the wooden box) and the batery pack and jack plug.


Here we have the four plastic legs or stands fixed in place with nuts.


Oddly I realised that I had missed inserting the other chip socket so got this inplace and soldered. The instructions didn't mention about the 6-pin ISP header so this was sorted at this stage. I was unsure of the polarity so went with intuition.


After all points were checked the chips were inserted by bending the legs slightly in to allow for ease in pushing into the holders. The knobs were put on and here is the finished article!