Yagi is making me wary again

I went for a short ride after a day of doing nothing at the campsite but listening to a book and relaxing.

I had read my destination, a group campsite about 3 miles from my camp.  Yagi, my TW200 however chose that moment to have the engine die forcing me to coast the final few feet to the entrance.  Yogi would not start again, despite several attempts and some checking of the usual suspects. She was acting like the time when I had damaged wiring to the stator causing problems. 

Some deep sign and cursing later, I started pushing her back towards camp along Arivaca Road.  There was one steep hill, at Lisa was steeped to me, before I got to the entrance to Morris Road 227.  Huffing and puffing I pushed Yogi past the entrance and stuff for a rest.  I know where my decided to try the starter again, she cranked and cranked and I was about to give up when the engine caught! 

Of course she started working after the hill not before the hill, that would have been too easy. 

I rode back to camp with no further issues and spent the rest of the afternoon troubleshooting things. Found some wiring that needed repairing but that was not related to the problem. They're appears to be, though I can't replicate it reliably, a loose connection on one other wires leading to the stator. It would sometimes cut out the engine when jostled it and sometimes it didn't.

Anyways, button things up went on a couple of short test rides in case I had to push the motorcycle back and there were no issues. Did multiple stop starts, no issues. More testing to follow. But again, there's trust issues between me and Yagi.

More rigs have shown up for weekend but still at least .3 miles away 

High Temp: 85°F

Saturday, February 28

High Temp: 87°F

Spent the morning cleaning up the battery terminals and doing some rewiring because previous efforts had proven not long lasting, shall we say.  

Just before 3:00 in the afternoon, I went out for what turned out to be a 15.2 mi test ride that involve both dirt and pavement, and Yagi did fine.  I think for the short-term I will be riding only on roads that the VRRV can negotiate to recover Yagi in case she does another outage on me.

Sunday, March 01

Woke up this morning to the news of the US / Israel attacks on Iran. Spent the day basically looking at the news to see what was going on. I did get a couple more test rides in with Yagi, she seems to be back to her old self.

High Temp: 89°F

T'dubing for binos shots of Baboquivari Peak.

Sometimes, I Have Too Much Lens!

Perhaps it's a strange statement but I shall demonstrate:

I rode out on Yagi, my TW200 dual sport to get long depth of field shots of Baboquivari, the Mountain peak that dominates the view here in the wildlife refuge and surrounding areas. 

I was hoping to use my binos with cameraphone adapter to accomplish this goal as in previous postings.  This day however, it became clear I was using "too much lens".  Meaning that the binoculars were too powerful at their 10x magnification factor to be useful for the shots I was trying for. 

The first attempt was at the junction of State Highway 286 and the road that leads onto the Baboquivari trailhead a few miles down range.  From where I stopped the motorcycle just before a bend in the road, I walked all the way back to the fence line where the angles suddenly became bad for capturing both the motorcycle and the peak itself. 

You can't see I barely captured Yagi within the shot

This is the spot from which I shot the first pic.

I then motored onwards a couple of miles or so to a wide parking spot where I have camped before with the peak in the background as you can see below: 

You can ride closer, all the way to the trailhead for the trail which you can hike to get closer to the top of the peak. It's not a really well marked trail and I had lost it during previous attempts to do it.  This time I decided to turn around and try for a different spot closer to the refuge's visitor center. 

No binos used...I tried the binos adapter but the shots

Didn't turn out.

Next I rode to the small village of Arivaca as the sun rose ever higher in the sky and the light got more and more difficult to work with.  

About 3 and 1/2 mi south of Arivaca on the way to Arivaca Lake there's a set of small ridges that I have used before for long depth of field shots.  Previous ride

I didn't quite align the camera and bino eyepiece and sadly this was the best of the several I tried.  The lighting from the bright sun forced much post-processing afterwards too.

Below shows you how far I was from Yagi when I tried for the shot above it:

I believe this was using 10x digital zoom, no binos

At this point, the light was so flat I gave up on further pictures and proceeded back to camp.  The next shot was done later on in the afternoon once the light became a little better. 

Then, the light got a little better:

Is it apparently happens during this time of year, the shadows start to form on the peak as the sun moves across the sky.  So I tried this bino shot before the shadows completely covered the peak and made it appear as a hazy silhouette in the late afternoon. 

1x zoom with binos

(Obviously)

2.9x zoom with binos

Checking Out the CBP's TAS

Today's riding was mainly spent locating the Customs Border Patrol (CBP)Tactical Aerostats System (TAS).

Morning at camp:

The TAS is The smaller version of two types of blimps used by the CBP to do border surveillance. The larger version is mainly radar-based whereas the smaller version uses surveillance cameras mostly. It is the smaller version that is hanging out here on the north side of the wildlife refuge where I am camping. 

The blimp is about 11 mi straight line distance from my campsite. 

It was more like 20 miles by road to get to it, it's location giving away by the EFF website which apparently tracks such things for the public. 

From my campsite, it shows to the naked eye as a small white dot in the sky.  It's actually pretty easy to miss unless you're looking for it. 

Here's what it looks like close up: 

2.9x zoom with bino

This is how the blimp is anchored to the ground.  It's also the way it's retrieved for maintenance and for weather issues.  Apparently one of these made the news sometime back when it broke free and crashed in Texas. 

I rode away from the anchor site perhaps a mile or two south of it for these two shots: 

This was 3x zoom without binos, scaled up in post-processing 

These blimp systems are apparently hideously expensive and so the CBP has installed over 500 towers all along the border that carry out surveillance.  There's one about 3 mi from my campsite at the junction of our Arivaca Road and AZ State Hwy 286:

It's the one on the left, the other one is an old telecom tower

There is a noticeable increase in border patrol vehicles cruising about and also stationed about the area. 

A photo of Baboquivari Peak taken at the campsite using the bino adapter:

1x zoom with binos

2.9x zoom with binos

Back Again in the Buenos Aires NWR

Almost six years have passed since I was here apparently....I didn't think it had been that long!  The last visit: Link 

After doing chores in Ajo, AZ, it took about two and a half hours to get to the NWR. I transited the Tohono O'Odham Nation along the way.

By 3PM I had camp setup at one of the designated camping spots along FR227 within the NWR. 

There will be more pics of the above peak.  Known as Baboquivari and sacred to the Tohono O'Odham people.  I've previously camped much closer to the peak.