A triumph of over engineering II

Bit of an update on the last post to show progress on the sub and amp enclosure for pROJECT mAYHEM. Now the main box is built it is time to get a bit more cosmetic on things like some rather shiny fan guards...

As hinted at in the last post I have also been enclosing all of the wiring in an effort to keep interference to a minimum - it also looks nicer and gives me an excuse to exercise my perfectionist tendencies!

I appreciate that fans with lights in are probably extremely unnecessary and will quite probably be abused greatly but the effect is rather good in my opinion.

Pic to give a general idea of what it is supposed to look like now I have managed to get the fans sorted and the hole for the sub woofer cut out.

Same shot just taken from the other end.

Now we are starting to cook on gas - BOOM!!

Finally a few shots of the wiring which turned up at last today - both amps have all the necessary power etc. but I have only wired in the one for the sub woofer so far as that was the easier one of the two to deal with - just one set of speaker cables to deal with. The other amp will prove to be a bit more challenging but the vast majority of the wiring will be out of the box as someone forgot to allow for space to install the four crossovers. This provides its own challenge though as I can't wire in the crossovers until the box has been carpeted - it is the carpeting (or rather not being able to afford to buy the carpet yet) which is going to delay the finish of this part of the project. I have probably got another half day of things left to do but after that it will be the insulation and the panelling to take care of which will no doubt prove to be equally fun.

A triumph of over engineering

If someone had told me that building a bass bin would have been as complicated as it has been turning out to be I might have had second thoughts but there again I probably would have just proceeded anyway with careless abandon. Just getting to the initial stage of construction was a long drawn out affair as I had to calculate the volume required for the bass bin but the only measurement I had was the width of the entire bass bin and amp enclosure to work with. Working on a guesstimate of half the width as a starting reference and 1 cubic foot for the volume I threw a series of numbers at a spreadsheet that worked out the volume for me until the required figure and the projected figure were close enough. I then found out that 10" sub woofer I have recommends a cubic volume of 0.75 cubic feet - arse!! Cue more calculations and tweaking of figures until I managed to get it to a compromise of about 0.825 cubic feet. As a result I will probably end up experimenting a bit with the level of fill that I put into the enclosure due to the over-sizing but that is a problem that can be managed at a later time - all that mattered was that I had measurements for the box

For construction of your sub-woofer\amp enclosure take vast amounts of 15mm ply, similarly vast amounts of 32 x 32mm box, a sack of 30mm screws, various other sized screws, ducting, glue, silicone sealant, an old mat from the back of the van and a few other odds and sods as required. Add in circular saws, drills, screwdrivers, clamps, tape measures and a life saving mitre saw courtesy of UKB\Paul B and you can start.

The initial stages of construction.

Taking shape.

The main box frame fully constructed.

Amps in place for measuring where the mounting boards needs to be fitted. The one on the left is to power all the speakers other than the sub-woofer - that is getting powered by the one on the right running a low pass filter at 80Hz. BOOM!!

Given the amount of glue that has been whacked between each of the joints on this construction there was very little chance of it leaking but just to make sure all of the seams have been sealed with silicone. I wouldn't recommend using the clear variety of silicone sealant as it is a right pain when you have to apply it by hand at the points where you can't get the cartridge gun - being clear you can't see the stuff and end up either missing parts or reapplying to the same point! It also looks shite in a photo...

Tracking laid in for the power cables and speaker wires and the amp mountings in with some shock absorption added in for good measure.

View from the other side.

Finally got the lids cut out last night and temporarily screwed into place just to make sure everything is in place.

Next stage will be to get the hole cut out for the sub and the riser plate (visible on the right) fitted and once that has been done then I can run the speaker wires through to the sub and get those sealed off, add a bit of stuffing and that will be that for that side.

For the amp side it is a matter of running in power, earth and remote power for each amp, cutting out the holes for the fans and wiring those up, figuring out which screws I am going to use for fixing where they will be visible and last but not least the small matter of how to fix the whole thing to the floor. After that I think that is probably that until next month when I can afford the carpet to cover the whole enclosure.

Wales pics

Oooo matron! Yours truly getting stuck into Brown's Crack with a slight degree of trepidation it would seem.

Fiend looking hard for some sort of footholds on The Seam - truth be told he spent an awfully long time looking for footholds on this slab. I pointed out the sequence that I had worked out but this was rejected in the vain hope of finding something that was actually visible from more than a couple of inches.

After aeons of contemplation some sort of sequence was arrived at for the flash attempt but once that had proved to be futile it was over to a slight variation on my method. I didn't get further than this - damn that mono for the right hand was painful but probably nowhere near as hideous as the two finger sidepull that Matt came up - a Fiend in more ways than one for squashing his sausage fingers into that hold and sticking it!

10m too much bloody rope!

Heard this a lot over a great weekend climbing with Fiend in Wales. Apparently having 60m half ropes is a crime though I don't think it rates quite as highly as cycling, running or hill walking on the list of things punishable by death but I could be wrong.

Anyway other than having the length of my rope complained about it was a bloody good weekend for a whole host of reasons. It was my first time doing trad in 13 months and it showed the first time I racked up and struggled to remember which side of my harness I rack my cams on. Once that minor issue had been sorted though I got Yellow Route in the bag and a fine route it is too - well worth doing whatever grade you climb. Well worth checking out Creagh Dhu Wall as well if you are in the Tremadog area - two fantastic pitches on great rock. I also managed to second two E1s and an E2 clean as well which I was quite happy about as I am a fat weak boulderer.

After two days of trad I was shot (figuratively anyway) but not to the point where bouldering in the Pass seemed like a good idea once I had gotten over the excruciating tightness of my shoes. With my feet now only rating as painful I tried Browns Crack which proceeded to eat the backs of my hands a fair bit thereby moving the pain about at least. Twice I got past the hand eating crack (which I got sorted relatively quickly) only to be repelled by the crux at the top due to not being able to figure out where to place my feet and after the second time I gave it the honour of being my first nemesis in the Pass. From here we went onto the Roadside boulder - flashed the rising traverse in good style and then made a complete hash of the start of the direct from the same place!! Got it on the second attempt which added to the disappointment but didn't detract from what is a great problem. From there we went across to the slabs on the opposite side of the Pass and after taking into consideration the lack of skin I decided to attempt the classic V3 slab problem over the equally good looking V2. The only problem with the V3 is that it has a vicious move off a mono for the right hand and by the time I had worked out the feet positions I was running out of time and after experimenting with some very random taping it saw me off to leave me with another nemesis.

Other than some great climbing pROJECT mAYHEM got us there and back without a problem apart from a very annoying rattle but at least I know the location of the rattle now so the mission to get that resolved sometime over the next few days. Also having slept in the van for three nights it gave me a much better insight into how the layout will work and just proved that it was the right thing to do when I bought it.

Death by Midges

Sloper's sport climbing ambitions had been cruelly thwarted so it was up to me to take him off to Apparent North for some easy bouldering as some sort of consolation. We decided to warm up on the left hand side where it became obvious that it was not going to be much a pleasant day out in the sunshine - no breeze, greasy holds and lots of midges was the order of the day. We stuck this out for all of about three or four problems before seeking some respite further to the right and we ended up at yet another one of my many, many Peak nemeses "Crimpy Roof Problem". On the one time that I have knowingly tried this before I failed to get as far as the lip of the roof but my recent run of discovering some sort of working sequence seems to be continuing and I now have a method of getting both hands on the lip courtesy of a toe\heel lock. Sure there is still some footwork stuff to do to get the next break but I feel that another very small breakthrough has been made. Awesome!

Anyway back to work tomorrow and then it is off to Wales for three days with Fiend (soon to be McFiend proper) for some trad and boulder action which I am rather excited about to say the least.

Greasy as a weasel...

...liberally coated in butter, engine oil and lard and then deep fried - if you had used said culinary masterpiece to brush the sidepulls on Strawberries at Curbar today then it wouldn't have felt any harder. However I digress slightly so I shall backtrack a few hours and start at the beginning.

Today I woke up and felt confident about doing Strawberries - quite why I don't know but that was the case so after a couple of coffees I set off to Curbar in a rad and syked mood to send. Did the usual warm up problems - the traverse and back on the other side of the Trackside boulder, the mantle\undercut problem, the three pocket problem and the one on the big holds to the right of that. All was going strangely well - the footwork was good and the friction while not exactly great was feeling OK. Still feeling rad and syked I cleaned off the holds for Strawberries, rolled up a quick tab, sat in the sunshine and pulled on my shoes,. Having done that I worked out the sequence again just to make sure it was right in my head, gave the holds a last brush and tried it out.

It felt awful - truly, truly awful - I could get to the higher sidepull with my left about half the time but from there it was time to forget it - you could just feel it sliding off and there was no way you could get the necessary leverage on it for the move up to the jug. Still it will be there another time and I still went home happy - I have finally managed to get a decent sequence to the three pocket problem which means I can semi-static to the third pocket in control now instead of it being an all out slap and I got introduced to a problem that I think is called "The Eyes" (to the left of the problem Trackside). Now this feels like a really nice problem and it will be good to have that to project alongside Strawberries but will require better conditions to get the bottom section wired and the top doesn't look too much of a gimme either. Also starting to get ideas re: Trackside itself and I still have The Ultimate Gritstone Experience to do - bring on the cooler temps - the rad and syke seems to be back!

Cornwall

Cornwall was not bad really considering the weather was as inconsiderate to me as it always is. I had originally planned to stay down for at least a week maybe nine days but a lack of money and indifferent weather conditions resulted in me bailing early. Arrived circa 11AM on the Tuesday and after meeting up with my brother and his girlfriend who I was staying with I decided to head down to Little Fistral for a quick check on how weak I am which it turned out was bordering on very.

Little Fistral is never going to going to be considered a premier venue for bouldering and would struggle to get into the second or even the third division if we are honest. It consists of an overhanging wall with two maybe three traverses on it all about 10 metres long max. There are also a few up problems of debatable quality but it is a venue I know and I wanted to get the middle traverse done if possible. The hardest part of the problem is getting to the main line of the traverse itself which consists of about 7 moves with the crux being bumping the left hand across with the right on a decentish sized flat hold. In essence a 5+ which requires a bit of thought regarding footwork and body position and after that it is piss. Anyway I worked out the sequence to get into position to get the flatty and from there it was one move and pretty much over. Did I do it? No in a word - if I had been on my own I probably would have done but my brother and his girlfriend had decided to accompany me and conditions were less than hospitable with a stiff onshore breeze carrying with it large amounts of salt spray and the like so I decided to bail out for a beer and cordial relations.

Wednesday and Thursday were pretty much rained out and nothing got done apart from travelling about and eating and drinking too much but Friday was a better day so I went up to Helman Tor for some easier bouldering and general exploration. Getting there was interesting due to turning left about 200 yards too soon which resulted in driving down some very narrow "roads" with grass growing down the middle of them - seriously out back of beyond! After a bit of guesswork I eventually arrived and once I had figured out that the topo was not exactly accurate in relation to distance and where things were located it turned out to be a nice place to be albeit a rather windy one. There was some sort of bird of prey flying over the valley below, some really rough granite to deal with and some nice views just to make it really pleasant. As it was I got a few problems done and backed off a few more mainly due to the remoteness issue but also the wind howling across the top which made things seem that little bit more tenuous. Still it is a worthwhile venue if you have a couple of hours to kill.

View from the walk in.

The mat marks the centre of the three problems on this block - the left hand problem (no arête) is one I backed off more than once as the top out is a very rough but slopey horror show, the centre problem I couldn't work out the start and the right hand one is easy as.

There is a seriously good looking problem up the centre of this wall at about 6b - one to go back and try for sure.

Not a difficult problem up the flakes (I did it sans mat) but nice all the same.


Didn't even bother with this - slab to a big roof with a decent prang potential if you got it wrong!


Another three lines up here - I looked briefly at the left and centre problems but didn't have a serious go as there is a deepening gully from the left hand side that you can't see. The right hand problem is not one to fall off at all as warned in the topo - I couldn't see anyway that you would walk away from it if you did. There are a couple more problems and a project around the corner of the right arête including a really nice looking line up a ramp but they all start from a ledge about a metre wide with a fair sized drop off behind that. The project is a blunt arete that looked simply nails. There is also a couple from the cave to the left of this - one really hard problem on small holds and an easier one that I could figure out the start of but the finish (and the point of it) was lost on me.