Power Video Diaries: Jonathan

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Okay, so it’s the first rest day after the first programme, and it was a fantastic programme, we had a great time, great fun. The last day was absolutely great. We were pushed to the limit to what we could do but we managed to succeed, so it’s a really nice thing. And so even by the afternoon before ending we still didn’t quite know whether it was going to work, so it’s like really not sure and that makes it very exciting. A little bit tense but very exciting, much more exciting than tense really.

So Ellen and I got the Pelton wheel to go round. We changed the nozzle, made it smaller and the jet was fantastic, it went about thirty foot or so, and that made the wheel go really fast. A really big surprise for me was how smooth the voltage was from the generator because it spins round, the Pelton wheel spins round and then that drives the generator, so when it’s going slow the voltage that’s produced is very pulsy, you can see the lights flickering on and off. And because we got it to go a bit faster the lights didn’t flash so much, they were quite steady, but I thought then when we wired the radio up there would be a horrible sort of whining noise in the background. So I could not believe it when we wired it up and it sounded great, it was almost unbelievable knowing that the voltage was coming just from water turning this wheel.

So that was really a surprise. I’m still not quite sure why it was so clear but I guess there must have been some circuitry in the radio that smoothed it out, but that was a big surprise. And it all came together. It looked like a storm was coming in and so just as we were about to finish the programme, it was the key moment when we all had to get our challenges to work. It had got quite stormy and the light sort of disappeared and so their lights with the coal gas were just fantastic. The little flickering lights from the generator were very visible and then it all came together in this sort of five or ten minutes right at the end and it’s just magic.

I think we were all delighted and so on a high I didn’t get to sleep ‘til about three o’clock this morning, and then we went for a big hike today so I’m feeling completely tired out but really great, and know that that first programme is just, it’s a lot of fun I think.