Land's End to John O'Groats

[manora]

My wife and I have just completed LEJOG on bikes. The weather ranged from wet and windy but warm to sunny and warm to wet and windy and cold but 982 miles later we have decided that we did enjoy the trip!

Used the Satmap all the way, what a brilliant bit of kit, made navigating the highways and byways easy.

I found a set of routes done by somebody a couple of years ago and using Memory Map modded and amended until we had something we were happy with.

I broke the trip down into days travel and loaded each as a separate route. A total of 30, we did it slow time, about 35 to 40 miles a day.

The battery life of even the rechargeable pack was a problem as we planned to camp and the chance to recharge would be few and far between so I made up an external power supply using a USB adaptor and 10 AA batteries to give about 5 volts. I made up a dummy battery pack to fit in the Satmap compartment and "modified" a cycle mount back cover to bring out the wire. This gave me 6+ days on lithium and 5+ on Duracell Ultra depending on how often I needed to view the map. the unit was on for about 5 to 6 hours a day.

The only real problem I had was with the screen and cover, the rain found its way between the two in no time and made it difficult to read. I believe it also caused water to find its way under the screen and appear as condensation.
I finally removed the screen protector and stuck an anti-glare film on the screen itself. I took the precaution of covering the Satmap with a clear plastic bag if it rained after that but I had no more condensation trouble.

I plan to build an external power supply, 12 to 20v in 5v out, and fit it inside the battery compartment either with a trailing lead or a socket for battery pack connection.

All I have to do now is sort out all my saved routes and misc POIs.

[mikealder]

Consider a tall water bottle or tool holder that fits the bottle carrier on the bike and fit some industrial grade D size rechargeable batteries in it, pot the whole lot in liquid silicon fluid that turns to a gel when cured and you can very easily build up a 13,000mAHr portable supply for the bike.

I put one of these together a few years ago to power high intensity lights for my mates bike, if you need any more details pictures etc just ask as I can always grab the camera and take some pictures of the unit we built which is still going strong some 3 years later, just take care when charging the resultant power pack as you need to be using an inteligent charger - Mike

[manora]

Good idea Mike, I may use that or a variation.
I used a bar bag for the batteries and resisted the idea of rechargeables as I wanted to use an easy to replace system although it did cost a few quid to buy AAs as we went.
I'll look at alternate battery pack fro next time. I was thinking Li-ion although cost would be a factor.

[4ndynorfolk]

Have you considered this: http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=227252

It was the UNIROSS equivelent they had in store when I bought one to experiment with.

[manora]

That's a neat thing, what was the result of your experiments?

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