Been pretty rubbish on the old bloggin front of late peeps, not that I haven’t had much time, which is my usual excuse, and not because I’ve nothing to write/lie/embellish or just plain invent 
I’ve never let that stop me before, no, I’ve just plain been preoccupied with other stuff and sitting for any length of time is a bit of a struggle, even with the exercises. Nope, I’ve just been pottering about and not doing a great deal, a wee tinker here, lots of lying down and stretching interspersed with a few walks. My main achievement however has to be total lack of any medication, well apart from one can of lager which I didn’t finish and what’s more I’m sleeping really well
That didn’t stop me getting up at 5:30 this morning to do my VAT return FIVE weeks early, now that is unheard of, normally I’m a month late. Not that that’s usually an issue for 99% of the time HMRC are owing me money. Typically, the one time that I’m going to be away for months I owe them £300 
so I spoke to a nice man called Andy who said I could submit it early. Well I eventually spoke to him after being given the run-around by the recorded message for ten minutes
So where was I, well judging by the camera, down at http://www.raasayengineering.co.uk/ for gas, something else that was needing dealt with before I left, though not by me personally I hasten to add. All I had to do was remove them at the other end and I’d gravity on my side for that
Making a bridge rectifier
One thing that suited my condition perfectly, in that it required no bending down, got me outside and exercised the brain a little was making up a ‘bridge rectifier’ for my high voltage ‘Stream Engine’ as I have a cunning plan This little turbine that draws its power from the small drain between crofts 1&2 and 3&4 South Arnish has performed splendidly for the last couple of years, that was until April and the drought. Now I don’t want to bore you with details but despite the hydro turbine spinning round it’s not generated any meaningful power for months on account of it needing to spin fast enough to raise the voltage higher than the battery bank. That’s kind of over simplifying it as the turbine generates high voltage three phase AC current and the charging circuit is low voltage DC via a transformer.
However I figured that if I could rectify the AC to DC then I could use either a ‘grid tie inverter’ or ‘MPPT controller’ to squeeze some power out of the turbine at the lower voltages. There are calculations that will tell you all this but it’s way over my head so I figured that the easiest thing to do was make up a ‘bridge rectifier’, couple it to the high voltage AC and see just what kind of high voltage DC it produced ‘off load’. Once the max DC voltage was ascertained then I could start looking around for something to accept it without giving off the magic blue smoke I know, I know, it’s a bit vague and sounds risky but that’s just the way that my Powerspout GE http://www.powerspout.com/ and its SMA 1200http://www.sma.de/en/products/solar-inverters-with-transformer/sunny-boy-1200-1700-2500-3000.html#Technical-Data-8713 inverter work and I’m most impressed.
It should roughly be around 50% higher DC than AC so I was hoping to make use of that 100 plus AC volts produced by the turbine that has been going to waste all summer, by my reckoning about 40 or 50w. It does not sound like much and there are of course inefficiencies in the inverter but it could still mean some .5 to 1Kwh of electricity a day, up to one third of our daily consumption. Having purchased three diodes some time ago on eBay I got on with making one up like so http://www.reuk.co.uk/Making-a-Bridge-Rectifier.htm
Using just a piece of aluminium bar as a heat sink, for it would be mounted within the transformer box itself if the voltage stayed below 400v off load as that’s the maximum that the Sunny boy 1200 will take, any higher and I’ll have to start looking at other options.
It’s easy enough to wire up, you just have to know that the AC and DC are diagonally opposite and the terminal that’s orientated differently is the positive. So the three positives go to one connection and the three negatives to the other, then each pair of AC terminals are paired into the individual three phases. That will be the green, blue and red on the right for AC in and the red and black on the left for DC out.
Well it worked well enough but there’s still not enough water in the burn to see just how high the ‘off load’ voltage will rise.
Three days later
Three days one hundred and seventy miles and one glass of red wine later I’m in Dunkeld http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkeld well not the town itself but a nice caravan site http://www.invermillfarm.com/Invermill/Welcome_to_Invermill.html about a mile away on the confluence of the rivers Braan and Tay. The smaller Braan flowing peacefully just yards away from my pitch.
I dunno what happened last night but despite a couple of hours of trying I just could not get my internet to do anything other than crawl so gave up. I could have just just done all my work ‘offline’ and posted later rather than spend hours trying to actually fix it, but hindsight is a wonderful thing and I wouldn’t have been able to bore you all with those links
It’s a miracle I’ve made it so far to be honest, the ‘Old girl’ has definitely been trying to tell me something, OK, at 26 years of age and a quarter of a million miles I’m asking a lot but her normal reliability has become a little questionable of late. First there was the worn out rear brake pads, no big deal and obviously a result of the rather ambitious tow recently https://lifeattheendoftheroad.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/stuck-half-way/ but that was closely followed by an alternator bearing failure and the rear shock absorbers. Then just as I came to lower the tow bar on Friday I noticed a problem The two M16 bolts holding the draw bar had bent fortunately I had spares, as you do
Again probably related to my rather heavy residential caravan hanging off the stern
Then I noticed that there was a leak from the radiator header tank,
investigation of which left me holding a detached hose and spigot in my hand
Luckily I had a blow torch and solder at hand but it did leave me thinking that perhaps the Land Rover just did not want to visit ‘the Republic’ http://thepeoplesrepublicofnorthumbria.wordpress.com/ , don’t think she’s ever been to England before. Or at least not since she rolled out of the Solihull factory gates in May 1986 just about the same time that the good ship Loch Striven was launched on the Humber.
Not that Steve would probably think that the ‘Peoples Republic of Northumbria’ is in England anyway
As if a bad back and all those glitches were not enough to convince me that it would be prudent just to take wifey’s Nissan and find digs then yesterdays disaster should have been.
Having not made it to my parents on Tuesday due to being strung out on the kitchen floor at regular intervals I went to visit on Friday. I missed seeing my dad as he was away at the Alzheimer’s day clinic or whatever it’s called in Dornie but it was good to catch up with mum, even if I could actually do anything useful other than change her water filter. That done I just managed to squeeze on the 16:15 ferry back to Raasay only to discover a slight fuel leak. A slight fuel leak that turned into a major one and left me on three cylinders as soon as I tried to tighten it up Number one injector pipe had failed,
luckily I had a spare but it certainly reinforced that foreboding I had about the trip south
Some pictures
I know, I know, it’s a little disjointed and boring so I’ll try and redress the balance with some pictures, might even give me some inspiration
Something I’ve been seeing a lot of lately, the views from my windows, not very exciting I know but probably the last time I’ll see greenery out of them until next year
The new house site, I’m hoping the next time that I see this it will have some concrete there instead of rock
It probably has a Gaelic name but to me this large puddle, for it is hardly a loch is ‘the Dude’s swimming pool’ not that my son has ever been for a dip in it but someone once cleared it out so he could Actually this peaty puddle is my emergency water supply, not that you’d drink it (I’ve tried) but it’s good enough for washing and flushing, though it’s so high above the house that it tends to burst the tap washers with the pressure. It’s also so acidic that it leaves blue stains in the bath, still its better than no water at all
A last purple flush at Tarbert, already much of the heather is loosing its deep hue.
Shamefully low electrolyte level on cell number five of the 24 x 2v forklift truck batteries that power our house and check out the straight back Also check out the filters on the top shelf that I forgot to pack along with my slippers, dish towel and washing up liquid.
I know it’s only a rock but it’s some of the oldest rock on the planet
and there’s precious little of it in South Shields
Probably not an awful lot of these either, hens that is or at least not in the ‘toon centre’ this one was checking out the newly fitted electric blanket that was lining my nest
I suppose these will be a little thin on the ground too, no more pig feeding for me for a while, not that they’ll care, the ‘wee dug’ will miss me but the pigs don’t care who feeds them, so long as they’re on time
I may have only been away from the south end of Raasay for one week but I was staggered to see this the other day, when I left the Loch Striven last Tuesday it was still at foundation level
Mushroom magic
The day that I went to visit mum I stopped just after Kyle to take the ‘wee dug’ for a walk
heading up into the ancient oak wood towards Loch Scalpaidh whereupon I was assaulted by a carpet of chanterelle, fly agaric and cep mushrooms.
Hard to believe but even such a short distance from home the heather is still full of colour and the shrooms far bigger, something that is readily apparent in the spring when everything in Kyle, and even more so Auchtertyre is a good two weeks ahead of Raasay.
Or is it two weeks behind at this time of year just check out that heather.
I could have picked loads but just got enough for a couple of meals, had I had more time I would have gone berserk and then dried them. mushrooms dry well and actually benefit from the process, at least in the flavour department if not the texture.
Our sojourn up towards Loch Scalpaidh was curtailed by a looming shower but not before we had time to admire the vista toward Skye across Loch Alsh and up Loch na Bieste, places that I did much clam and wreck diving in decades past. Loch Alsh being the final resting place of HMS Port Napier and Loch na Bieste to more than one ammunition barge.
Once at my parents I was graced by yet another rainbow, this time over Loch Duich.
Today
Well, after fixing my injector pipe and staying up late into the night packing stuff for the trip I finally left South Arnish on a beautiful September morn almost exactly ten years to the day after first ‘signing on’ the MV Loch Striven, I’d ‘signed off’ yesterday but the significance had escaped me.
Towing a forty year old caravan with a vehicle that is a quarter of a century old and has been ten times around the world is not to be undertaken hastily, especially when the pilot is well past fifty and hates driving to Inverness, let alone England.
Consequently I set off early and took my time, though not as early as the crofters at Oscaig who’d been busy cutting silage long before I passed by on my way to the 9:55 ferry.
- I managed a full fifty miles to Cluanie and beyond before stopping for a break and was so glad that I did, the drought having forced the long ago flooded valley to give up some of its secrets. Though those will have to wait, it’s almost 22:00 now and I need my bed
not only that but I’ve not worn any overalls for two days. Rarely a day goes by without me being clad in a boiler suit, holidays away from the croft excepted. Apart from a little gentle pottering about in my workshop, a little tinkering around the caravan and some gentle walks I’ve done zilch. I’ve not even done a great deal on the computer as I find sitting down and effort and very uncomfortable with a straight back and uncrossed legs 
Life at the end of the road 
