darylhunter

Enjoyed the reports, have a safe flight home.

Donation sent.

I read the book back in the late '70s after being given a copy by one of my friends in the Army who was older and who had enjoyed the book. I think I was a bit too young, care free, and immature to really get the book at the time. The copy is still packed away along with hundreds of other books read over the years. Now a year away from 60, probably should go back and give it a fresh read. Another book given to me by the same friend did resonate quite well at the time. That was Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. In the Army at the time, I could really relate to some of the ridiculous circular BS rules they had.

I read about this yesterday while trying to find more info about a motorcyclist killed in Hemet yesterday morning. That Hemet motorcyclist was struck from behind by another driver who didn't see him while looking into the sun. The SB rider hitting the partially downed line came up while I was searching. That was just a total freak of a bad day

I have ridden the Big Bear Trail Ride a few times on a DRZ 400e (plated dirt only version), though never to the finish for one reason or another. I've also ridden it on a Husky TE-510 and KTM 500 EXC. While the Husky and KTM are lighter than the DRZ, picking the bikes up when dropped wasn't the limiting factor. The extra weight of the DRZ wears on you the whole ride long, not just when you have to pick it up. On my first BB ride I was teamed with a couple guys on Honda 230s, which weren't that much lighter than my old DRZ. While down on power and slower on the open trails, the 230s did just fine up most of the hard stuff while I with more power ricochetted around like a pinball when doing some of the hill climbs. Proving that technique was way more important than hardware. Following that, I got a trials bike and some training on some of the fundamentals and learned to ride standing up and how to set the bike up for that versus sitting down all the time as I had been. This made a huge difference in the ability to tackle some of the hardway hill climbs and other bits. Yes, having a lighter bike will help. But I would spend a few hundred on a class with Gary LaPlante at Motoventures, it will be a much better investment than buying a different bike.

If you see a bright yellow 2 door Jeep Rubicon with a rack on the back near Palomar Airport Rd and ViaSat or the Starbucks near the airport, wave hi That's my daily driver because I take my daughter to school in the morning and can't ride the 1190R most days.

In the past I used the Garmin Mapsource program, but since switching over to the Mac I've started using their BaseCamp software. I believe it is a free download from Garmin. Once you have that installed on your computer, any you plug in your Zumo it should recognize the device and offer to download the tracks. After that, it isn't too hard to export them to a file.

I'm really happy with my Badlands jacket. Felt a bit too long in the sleeves for me when I first tried it out, but I took the advise of others and went with it anyway. Never bothered me a bit riding the bike and once the jacket got broken in I never gave it a thought. Feels even better now that I've laundered it once. Veys and KLIM do a great job on these rides and I'd like to do another one with them some time. Sounds like this ride was really fun except for the weather part. Would like to give it a go on a warmer weekend. Did anybody get tracks?

REI has them as well

Happy Birthday Don. Never met him but knew his brother Dave well. I met Dave while riding at Mt. Palomar back in the '96/97 timeframe. Dave was also a AMA championship winning racer and an instructor at the DP racing school. He got me and a few others to go to the school and start doing track days rather than riding so hard on the street. That also got a number of us started racing with CCS or other organizations. Sadly Dave himself passed away after a crash on Old Julian highway.

Man, that just totally sucks. I try to avoid Wildcat Canyon and HVR both. My brother-in-law was struck head on on wildcat canyon rd a few years ago in his 4-runner by a sports car that crossed over the DY. The sports car went under the 4-runner causing it to roll. My brother-in-law was concussed, but otherwise OK. He lives in Ramona and drives that road often, but recognizes that it and HVR are both frequently closed for accidents. Back when I used to ride Palomar regularly I was following another rider when a driver in front of us pulling a trailer pulled to the side of the road to let us by - NOT! Just as the rider in front of me started to pass the driver, he whipped a left hand turn into one of the properties on the mountain - he'd pulled to the side to make a wide turn and never even saw us. The rider in front of me braked really hard to the point of doing several stoppies and almost avoided contact but just struck the left front tire of the other vehicle causing $1000+ in damage to the bike but fortunately no injury. Driver was cited for improper left hand turn and failing to signal. When riding a dual sport ride near Beaumont we were on a street section between two trails when the driver in front of us pulled over to let us pass - NOT! Just as the rider in front of me was about to pass the car, the driver initiated a U-turn. Fortunately we were going slow - 25 MPH per the speed limit - and the rider was able to stop. The young lady driver in the car had eyes the size of saucers looking at the dirt bike that stopped about 2 ft from her window. Since then I've been really careful whenever someone "pulls over" for me.

Cool, thanks for the GG update

I thought GasGas was out of business?

Happily I have a compressor in my winch so I can air down/up in the jeep. Have been able to use it for others a few times while out on the trail or on the road when it turned out that their spare was flat also. Has been a good reminder for me to check my spares in the truck and mini-van every now and again. But, this reminds me that in addition to the various goodies I keep in the F-250, a small compressor wouldn't be a bad idea in addition to picking up another tire plug kit so I can have one in each vehicle.

I use the Garmin BaseCamp software when running in native Mac mode. I also have Windoze 10 running as a VM under Parallels and can use the old Windows Mapsource software there when I need to for some reason.

I got the card when I renewed my Global Entry this year but haven't used it. Figured what the heck why not sign up for it just in case while I was at it. Most of my travel lately is to Europe or Asia, so the Global Entry comes in handy.

Nice to meet everyone. Thanks Ken. Waited just long enough to try out the rain setting on the TC and check out the anti lock brakes, but with the short trip home still stayed pretty dry

I think I have the same radio. I got it for jeep outings where others in the group only have CB. Played with it a bit when I first got it, and as near as I could tell it worked OK. But don't think I've actually used it to talk with someone because we ever ended up in a big jeep group where it was needed. Also, because I'm a licensed ham, I typically end up using that instead when I'm out and about. The range is much better and the audio quality is way better.

At some point I would like to give the Recluse a try just to see for myself. Pretty comfortable with the manual clutch over all sorts of terrain, but at the end of a long day (which for out of shape old me is getting closer and closer to the start of the day ) I could see the benefit of giving the left arm a little less work.

Is this as averaged over a few rides or just a sudden change after one ride? I've found that fuel consumption goes up when I'm riding more of the tank in lower gears or in deeper sand, or other changes in the riding surface. In fact, I usually plan for lower mileage on those kinds of rides if I know I'll be stretching the capacity of the tank, and bring extra fuel.

Welcome aboard! I'm in San Marcos, well, technically in a small slice of unincorporated SD county on the border of San Marcos and Carlsbad/La Costa. I also have an 1190. We should get together for coffee sometime and work out a ride.

Saw that earlier. Thought it was a good piece. Also thought it would be funny to have them compare the MX bike with the Adventure bike on a road tour. The 1190 isn't the right bike for some of the trails I ride, so that's why I have a 500 EXC as well as a trials bike. I'd like to add a KTM 300 in the stable too. Haven't yet found the perfect Goldilocks bike yet but still looking . . .

BTW, there are a lot of videos and pictures of how to set up the pulley system using carabiners, but thought I'd post one that I found that helps to illustrate how it's done. Normally, pulling a bike up hill you wouldn't use the last loop through.

I keep a flat tow strap in my backpack and a couple of carabiners. While they have drag over a real pulley, you can construct a functional equivalent which really helps to reduce the effort required drag a heavy bike up hill. I have a 9000 lb winch on my jeep, but I also keep a snatch block with me too to help.

The ARRL Antenna book has some really good information on antennas. I still have my copy from 1976 in my office along side a newer 20th edition as well as a handful of other antenna engineering / design books. The ARRL books do a great job of simplifying the explanation of how antennas work and are what I usually pull out when trying to explain something on the topic to a new engineer. Here we're talking about antennas that are a fraction of a wavelength, whereas the antennas I typically work with are many multiples (like 150 or more) of a wavelength. But the principles are the same. Generally, the larger the effective area of an antenna, the greater the gain. The gain over what, you might ask? The gain of an antenna is typically referenced to a standard like an isotropic source or an ideal half-wave dipole in free space. An isotropic source is one which radiates equally in all directions like a sphere. It's an ideal reference that isn't physically possible in real life. It is possible to get closer to the ideal half-wave dipole so for wire antennas that are a fraction of a wavelength or maybe a few multiples, the half-wave dipole is a common reference. Gain is often expressed in dB form, typically with a suffix to indicate the reference to which it is being compared, such as dBi for an isotropic source or dBd if the gain reference is to a half-wave dipole. The dB form of gain is simply the logarithm of the numeric gain multiplied by 10. If the antenna you are looking at has a gain of 5 x that of a half-wave dipole, it will have 10 log(5) = 7 dBd gain in dB form. By the way, a half-wave dipole has a gain of 2.15 dBi, or 1.64 times that of an isotropic source. Helpful to know so you can make an apples to apples comparison when people are throwing out different gain numbers. You can look through antenna design books all day long, but at the end of the day, the antennas we're talking about for use on motorcycles with a handy talky are generally going to be a compromise at best. Keep in mind that a 1/4 wavelength at 146 MHz is 2.05 m divided by 4 or 0.51 m give or take, which is 20.2 inches. That's a lot longer than the little rubber ducky that comes with the radio, right? How's that work then? Antennas need to be a given electrical length to work right, but they can be physically shortened by use of a loading coil that basically winds the extra length into a more compact form. That's how they get the rubber ducky so short. I do have a 5/8 wave antenna for 2 m that is coiled up in my backpack that I have pulled out a few times on the trail and made some comparison contacts switching between the rubber ducky and the 5/8 wave antenna. Not a huge difference and most of the time not noticeable. The only time is when I'm on the extreme limits of being able to get into a repeater. I've found that simply walking to a better location further up a hill usually makes a much bigger difference. Short of going with something like amgems showed in his post or packing up my Cushcraft 15 element beam, most of the time I'm happy to just live with the rubber ducky.