MOEPED3 (MObile Experimental Physics Educational Demonstrator #3) is ready
to hit the road.

MOEPED1 was a Derbi DS 50. MOEPED 2 was and remains my Peugeot mountain bike
but the modifications have been removed. It's a great exercise bike.

MOEPED3 is a 2004 Lightning Cycle Dynamics Thunderbolt recumbent bicycle,
their base model, with a 16 inch nominal front wheel and 26 inch nominal
rear wheel. The steering is above-seat, like a chopper-style motor cycle.
Over the four years I have been working on MOEPED 2 and 3, there has never
been a formal declaration of the project's purpose; it's just sort of grown:
electric flywheel, heavy cast iron flywheel, ultracapacitor energy storage,
various lighting concepts including fluorescent, 110 VAC onboard power, the
use of the Pocket PC and GPS, the use of TOPO software by DeLorme, a Mathcad
routine taking profiles generated by TOPO and converting them to estimates
of transit time over terrain using Mathcad's fourth order solver, a Mathcad
worksheet comparing simulated bicycles equipped with electric flywheels,
conventional flywheels, and batteries, measurements in the CoCo physics lab
of the "stiffness" of a coupled motor/battery combination in watts/rpm, and
now, a constant speed electric motor driven by the road wheel powered
generator that provides incentive, of all the silly things, for the rider to
pedal while heading *downhill*!

Not far away is a seated AC generating system using a self-excited induction
motor as a generator and an ESGE dual leg kickstand combined with an
optional wooden brace to clear the rear wheel during seated pedaling. A
capacitor in parallel with one motor coil provides a reactive current path.
It's not the most efficient generator, but it's extraordinarily reliable.

What I accomplished today, what got me jumping up and down in joy, hilarity,
and excitement, was the culmination of months of persistence in the face of
a distracting move to new quarters purchased 2004-11-24 with Teri Newbery,
and four years of experimentation mostly on the Peugeot platform to see what
might be possible. Today I got the newly chamfered and polished 8 tooth
pinion cog on the Ametek 900 rpm 30 VDC 12 A servo motor lined up with the
48 tooth cog mounted on the rear disc brake hub using the Big Cheese BMX
spider I had bored out, and got the chain tensioned right, and found the
drive quiet and stable. I connected the cigarette lighter socket I'd crimped
pins to into the Molex socket I'd wired onto the motor long ago when it was
only a spare. I switched on the inverter. There was a terrible drag on the
system. I checked the polarity with the voltmeter and clip leads. Somehow, I
managed to get it wrong!

After struggling with this for a while, and wondering if I'd ruined the 140
watt inverter, which is clipped underneath the Expedition rack with a formed
bit of Lexan strip, I got the polarity right and installed the polarizing
shell. I switched on the inverter and plugged in a desk lamp with 20 watt
fluorescent bulb. I clamped the lamp to the back of the seat and spun the
pedals. It worked! Then I tried a Bicycle Lighting Systems front headlight
with a cigarette lighter plug, into the socket, right off of the generator.
That worked, too. Then I went for the real test; I plugged the AC
motor/generator with its split-phase capacitor, which is in use as a drive
train tune up aid, and will be used as a generator one day, and pedaled like
crazy in third gear, and it worked! I could feel the inverter drawing power,
energizing the motor, and losing power as the draw became too much. On road,
the momentum of the bicycle will smooth this action.

My plan for the future is to momentarily pole the AC generator, if needed,
with a pulse of DC to initiate generation. This can be done on road, or, if
the kickstand is properly braced to resist wear, while seated and
stationary. I may use high-rider spokes to the rear of the chain stays to
secure the stand, and 2-56 wingnuts to tighten the spokes. They'd run
through holes drilled through the legs, near the ground. That kind of stuff
is not easy but I've been trained for it. This generator theory with the
phasors and rotating fields, reactive current paths, residual magnetization
and switching supplies that work between 80 and 240 VAC is a little
confusing but I used to do it in high school....

Why am I doing this? 1: Because I can. 2: Because one day, we'll all be
riding bikes. 3: More Power!

Yours,

Doug Goncz
Replikon Research
Seven Corners, VA 22044-0394