It's the journey not the destination

Monday, 18 January 2021

Viewbug

Today I deleted my account on Viewbug.com

It's a shame really, I like their site and their proposal but since joining around 6 weeks ago I have been bombarded with advertising, continually told there is a time limited special offer (which is the same special offer as everyone gets all the time) and had feedback from people who patently don't exist (accounts with profile pictures on a photography site where no photos are loaded, who does that, bots that's who).

It's just become tedious, along with every review complaining that competion prizes don't happen and it just seems like one big scam.

So given up having received another email with non working hyperlinks and the latest identical special offer.

Monday, 11 January 2021

Swytch bike ride

Second test ride of the Swytch today.

I started with a plan to ride to the top of the Downs and take some photos, it was definitely going to be cold (approx 2 hours later the car said -2.5c) but was also misty.

A new plan was called for, I would do my "normal" 10 mile loop :

mostly flat with a couple of hills, all road, at my middle aged fat bloke pace I'm looking at around just under an hour. I should be able to do it quicker but generally I'm out for a ride, I get some puffing going, I get some sweat going and I listen to some podcasts.

My revised plan was to do the loop all on power level 1, with the plan to do another day on power level 5 to see what difference is makes.

I'm beginning to wonder why I try to make a plan, a close to the 2 miles from home mark there is a short sharp hill, it takes a couple of gear changes and a bit of effort and it's done but today all I could feel was the drag of the front wheel.

Onto the next section which is a slight uphill and I was finding it just as much effort as normal. I checked which gear I was in and no different to normal and no little red light on the sensor so I pulled over to take a look at what was what.

Sure enough the sensor has moved, so realigned as best I could, changed to power level 5 to get more obvious effect and really the rest of the route was a demonstration of how this should not work. It is quite clear that I'm not getting enough assist and the problem is misalignment of the sensor / disk meaning that I am getting a response about half the time which explains the pulsing effect I was feeling yesterday.

Almost back home and one the flat and I get a notable vibration which lasted perhaps 20 seconds and went away - that was definitely just random vibration.

Back and home and warmed up again and checked the settings on the power pack.

1) The wheel size was set to 26" not 28, changed that

2) Top speed is set as expected, so have increase that to see what happens - if anyone can help here I'm stumped because the setting only moves 1 step, almost like there is a further restriction in place.

3) Power level is set as default @ 80%.

Then there is the PAS sensor, the sensor itself has lost its stick and the replacement stickies are much thicker than the original so unusable and the cable ties don't have enough strength to hold it in place and the sensor disk is both not flat out of the box and after 1 rid mis-aligned horizontally and vertically.

What I have now done is to use one of the disk inserts to fit around the sloped part on the inside of my pedal, it doesn't fit as such but appears to be much more solid.

I have replaced the provided cable ties with bigger ones for the sensor so I can get some good tension.

Finally, I have tested just up our road and looks like might be on for better things whilst using a teenager to test the throttle shows it does work but the issue is me :-0