Kit List

7 responses to “Kit List”

1. DPF | 7 May, 2012 at 15:59 | Reply

   Proud to have provided the fine linen scarf x DPF

   • threewheeling | 13 May, 2012 at 06:31 | Reply

     Proud to be wearing it.

2. Duncan | 11 May, 2012 at 00:27 | Reply

   Heyup, T+K. Amazed there isn’t a column listing the mass of each item, go on…

   • threewheeling | 13 May, 2012 at 06:30 | Reply

     Heyup Dunks. I thought about that….but shame prevented it. We are not weight weenies.

     And in any case, as we can’t bear to part with anything we are going to have to lug it along and doing so feels a bit easier if we remain in ignorance about the tonnage. 🙂

3. Joachim | 30 September, 2012 at 18:12 | Reply

   Hi,

   Very nice reading all about your travels. I found your blog while googeling around for long distance travel with tandems and have enjoyed reading your stories.

   But a minor question. Since you noted in the kit list above you wouldn’t buy the “MyMobilePower MMP16-25W” again. I was wondering why. I am considering buying it myself as a power supply for my next trip but you suddenly got me to rethink.. If you have a part of the review about it ready, please let me know.

   Thank you.
   Joachim

   • threewheeling | 2 October, 2012 at 05:45 | Reply

     Hi Joachim,
     Sorry, I haven’t written a report on the solar panel yet, but basically, it was marketed as a “laptop recharging kit” but it is not up to the job. The solar panel is good for charging a mobile phone or camera battery and in good sunshine can charge my smartphone in about 2 hours. The Tekion battery that makes up part of the kit is also good when you recharge it using mains electricity (but the battery is becoming very temperamental), and it will store about sufficient energy to add 30% power to my Samsung netbook computer. But the solar panel is completely incapable of recharging the Tekion battery, and in a full day of summer-time east-european sun, or a full day of central Asian, or Russian sunshine, it will not recharge the battery, nor even come close. So if the Tekion is flat, and I have it on charge all day, it will perhaps give my computer an extra 3% or 5% of power. This would barely power the laptop for 10 minutes. Thus a whole day of sunshine for just 10 minutes of laptop power, is not what I would call a “laptop recharging kit”.

     I did contact SOLARIFLEX about it last year, but they just told me I was using the battery the wrong way and that I should not try to “recharge” the computer with it, but should “run” the computer using the battery on a lower voltage than the computer is meant to run. They did not address my issue about the fact that the solar panel, will not recharge the battery.

     However, in terms of finding the solution to charging a laptop or netbook while traveling – I haven’t found anybody else who has managed to solve this problem either, whether by use of solar power or by use of dynamo-hub on the bike, but we are currently looking into getting a dynamo hub. Laptops are just too power hungry, and perhaps our better solution would be with a tablet computer which I think runs on 5volt rather than 19volt, but again, more research is required on my part.

     Thanks for reading – hope this is helpful. I will try to get a full review written soon,
     Keith.

     • Joachim | 6 October, 2012 at 19:30 |

       Hi Keith,

       Thanks for the explanatory reply 🙂

       Interesting to read your experiences.. I think I will hold off buying it then. I can however give you my experience with a PowerMonkey Extreme and an iPad. I used the combination last september in Scandinavia (I hiked from Abisko to Kilpisjaarvi).

       I wanted to use the Powermonkey to recharge my camera batteries and iPad, unfortunately I had about the same experience as you did. The PowerMonkey would be charged about 15% to 20% on an average day. It would require 3 to 4 sundays to recharge my camera battery (Panasonic GH2) and there would be no charge left to recharge my iPad. As the iPad can hold quite a charge it wasn’t a huge problem. But it did run out of juice 1 day before we arrived in Kilpisjaarvi. In the meantime I was able to charge it one time from 21% to 40%.

       The iPad is nice as a backup for pictures but the capacity is quite limited. Mine is 32GB’s and since I was also filming a lot I quickly run out of space and had to delete some apps to make room for data. Especially on longer trips this would be a problem.
       I did solve this to some extent by jailbreaking the iPad and then attaching a portable USB drive to it. This was quite tricky as the iPad doesn’t give enough power to let the drive run by itself. This is what I did:
       iPad –> USB camera Connection Kit –> cheap USB hub –> Harddrive (with the drive connected through a dual USB cable which was plugged into the hub and the USB outlet of the Powermonkey).
       Without the USB hub, the iPad wouldn’t create a USB connection, the Powermonkey was used to power the drive.
       Using a program named “iFile” I was able to copy files from my iPad to the drive. I couldn’t copy directly from the SD card to the drive.

       Summarizing, I am still looking for the perfect mobile computing solution. It would be wonderful to have a fully fledged laptop that can be charged over USB or a tablet with built in SD card reader and powered USB output.
       If all you need to backup is pictures an iPad could be perfect, but for larger files (video) it is simply to clumsy.

       I did hear about a wireless 500GB drive that you can connect your iPad to, via WIFI. This could be a nice solution. Connect your camera using the Connection Kit and wirelessly backup the data to the WIFI-drive. It is however quite pricey.. (http://bit.ly/Oyo4lf)

       I hope this helps you.

       Kind regards,
       Joachim