Specifically 5, 10, and 15mhz AM. There are others, but you'll really hear NIST WWV/WWVH if you're in North America/Pacific.

I'm not car-free, but I do all my grocery shopping without a car. In fact, I'm at my local grocer as I type at 1.7 miles away taking 250 feet elevation gain and 210 feet loss. I understand your pain!

Here's why I still think a bike fits your situation. Namely an inexpensive folding bike with a front basket and rack.

Hills are conquered in the same way as a cart: walking uphill. Also known as "hike a bike." Folding bikes are usually also allowed on busses, so you could take a bus one way. You could time your departure to a bus schedule and shop knowing you don't have to rush or spend a long time at the store.

Folders can be brought inside and consume about the same space as a folding trailer.

My overall point is a folding bike is a trailer that you can ride downhill in. Electric would be a nice upgrade, but it's not necessary.

When cars are the only way to get to a bar or a friend's place, then you're going to get drunk drivers. Car dependency has a big hand in causing these deaths.

I agree it doesn't make sense to pick regen for extending range. Just buy a bigger battery if that's the biggest issue, say a rarely used bike but long ranged when needed.

To me it's the brake pads that add up. Replacing two pairs of pads every few hundred miles is way more expensive than the system and any additional battery wear. $500 isn't that many sets of pads.

Considering I don't charge my batteries much beyond 80%, yeah, there's plenty of room to put that extra energy early in the ride. I'd rather charge a battery than to grind pads into dust.

It's not common, but it does make sense to do! No, not in charging the battery but in braking. Regen slows down the bike without wearing down your brake pads, which is extra important with a heavy bike. I cannot even manage 900 miles without changing my longtail's pads. I have yet to replace the pads on my regenerating e-trike.

The extra 20% range is nice but I'm more happy about the money and hassle I've saved in not replacing brake pads.

These disks were designed to self-destruct in the presence of oxygen. They literally rust away.

Oxygen and its O2 form does like to sneak into everything. Even sealed in the original packaging, there's a limited shelf life. Flexplay claimed stability of only one year, which isn't much given it comes sealed in a plastic bag.

You're probably decoding noise or in the middle of the bit stream.

What you're looking for is called "preamble." That's a sequence of bits used to synchronize the decoder (marks the start of data, useful in modulation schemes for clock recovery, and a few other things).

Looking at minimodem's manual, try using the sync-byte option. Prepend your tar stream with a string of bytes, like 0x01, before sending to minimodem for encoding. Then use the sync code option to mark the start of the tar bit stream. This is as simple as cat preamble.bin myfiles.tar | minimodem --tx ....

Other things to consider: start small with 300 baud BFSK before speeding up. Test with wav files before attempting physical tape or speakers and a microphone.

Oof. You definitely were taking a risk with that drive train. I'm glad the worst of it is a few broken spokes.

That's clearly have a working bike, not some sort of weekend roadie show piece. Put a dork disk on there! There isn't any shame in favoring function over form.

Awesome call-out on zip ties. They're the duct tape of the bike world.

One small thing I noticed is how your fender and rack are mounted. It's fine to share a single eyelet to mount both, but it's best to mount in the order of frame, rack, fender, washer, and bolt. That ordering shortens the cantilever of the rack load, a much higher load than a fender, on the bolt.

95lbs is quite a bit of weight! I totally understand the desire to get something lighter and easier to deal with. It's one reason why I recently got an acoustic folder.

A significant amount of weight comes from the battery and motor. Reducing weight to <50lbs means going for a smaller battery and likely a smaller motor.

In other words, consider going to class 1 or 2. There are more road and commuter bikes in that class which meet that weight target. For example, Trek's FX+ 2 at just over 40lbs. Smaller batteries also mean less expense, so perhaps you'll keep your existing bike instead of selling it. Then you'll be able to choose the right bike for the day's plan. :)

I've got those same pedals on my trike recumbent. They feel great and incredibly grippy, which is important for avoiding "leg suck."

Don't wait on installing them! I'm sure you'll enjoy them.

For sure. These fuses have been a scourge.

Here's a video by a radio fan who's circuit is designed to blow fuses just didn't.

https://youtu.be/apQU_VuJlFU

Not a problem. In that case you'd also have theft charges and would be liable for the car's value in civil court (or whatever the Danish equivalent is).