Tourist in MSN

Sorry for being off topic (topic is wire thickness), I am answering a question.

Cycle2Charge.

Trip was 13 days (11 days actual travel, took two days off) and 381 miles. (My GPS sometimes reads a bit high, this might be an overstatement.) Natchez Trace is closer to 444 miles, but we did not start in Natchez. Our plans were to rent a vehicle from Enterprise in Nashville, drive to Natchez with our bikes and gear. But after we priced and planned the trip, Enterprise stopped renting vehicles to go to Natchez, or anywhere else from Nashville for that month. We rented from someone else and that was to drop off the vehicle in Jackson. I did use my phone on the days we did not travel, but did not use the GPS those days.

EDIT: Looking at this days later, I realize I screwed up, trip was 11 days of travel, two zero distance days, total of 13 days. I corrected the error in the above paragraph that previously said "Trip was 11 days (9 days actual travel, took two days off)"

This was a very relaxed trip, my touring partner is still recovering from a bad crash that involved surgeries. Only two days were longer than 40 miles. I mention that because my last tour before covid, a quarter of my days were over 60 miles and half were over 40 miles. Thus this trip has a lot less rotation of the dynohub than most tours, thus not much dyno energy produced.

I had my GPS on when rolling, a Garmin 64 that runs on AA batteries. I use and recharge NiMH batteries in it. I had a headlamp for my head in the campsite, that uses one AA rechargeable. And used AAA in my taillights, also rechargeable. I did recharge some of the AAA batteries but not all during the trip. And I did charge up my headlamp AA during the trip. But finished the trip with the headlamp and taillights with a partial charge. I did not bother to charge my camera batteries on the trip, I did not take enough photos to need to do so. I had two spares, was on my last spare battery at the end of trip.

On day one, I did not charge any batteries since they were all full. That was the only day I used my dyno powered lights, otherwise those lights were off.

I use a Voltaic powerbank that has a capacity of 44 watt hours. It started out the trip full, finished the trip with three of four charge indicators lit, thus more than half full but those charge indicators do not really mean much.

Thus, I ended the trip with less of a charge in the powerbank and with other batteries not full, but overall it was not too far behind from being fully self sustainable on power for the trip of a week and a half. I think if I only turned on my phone to check forecasts once a day and turned if off, that I probably would have been self sustainable for electric power and could have finished the trip with all batteries fuller. I never plugged into an outlet on the trip.

The Cycle2Charge does not start charging batteries until you are up to about 7 mph. And when slowing down, it quits at about 6 or 6.5 mph. The northern part of Natchez Trace is quite hilly and some days I spent a lot of time pedaling up hills at a slow enough speed that I got no charge out of it. That said, at that slow speed, no other charger would produce much, so I do not see that as a downside. But it does mean that a lot of hours on a bike trip, you are pedaling but not making much if any power. There was one day that was on a detour almost the entire day, I probably had less than one hour of speed over 7 mph that day since so much of the time was on the uphill side of the steep hills.

Am I happy I bought the Cycle2Charge? Yes. I will use it on future tours.

I loaned my Sinewave Revolution to my touring partner to use on his bike, and he never used it, he left his phones off most days and did not use a GPS. When he had an opportunity to charge up his powerbank from an outlet, he did so. But I wanted to see how close I was to self sustainable I was, so I intentionally never plugged in. I am not really sure how water proof the Cycle2Charge is, so on future tours I might bring the Sinewave along as a spare.

I previously wrote up my thoughts on the Cycle2Charge when I first bought it, posted those thoughts on a different forum. On that forum, I am Mickeg. I do not think a non-member can see the graphics, so I included one graphic below, this compares Sinewave Revolution to the Cycle2Charge, and a few others.
Cycle2Charge charging unit

On that forum I also wrote up a thread on my power usage on my 2019 five week long tour with the Sinewave. That is on a S&S coupled bike, thus I have to disassemble the bike before and after a trip for shipping, thus skipped using any dyno powered lights on that bike. Link is:
Electrics that I use for bike touring - what works for me.




It is a bit hard to find the Cycle2Charge in the photo because I am not using it as a stem cap, it is below the handlebar. But if you follow the coiled cord downwards, you will see where the USB end is plugged into it. It is mounted on my handlebar bag bracket that is on a second lower stem. This is not my S&S coupled bike, I have dyno powered lights on it.