There are around 15 leather straps, mostly visible on the row of buckles near the front of the bucket. The ones near the rear have a grommet that snaps over a series of knobs, you can just make out one near the tail light. This leather has deteriorated and needs replacing. The black cover, also leather, is still supple but it has been torn and repaired.Fortunately I know a Peruvian shoemaker who is a past-master at fixing or duplicating this type of cover. And he happens to have a Russian assistant in the shop who apprenticed near the Ural factory. Yep, it’s a good thing I don’t spend all my money in one place. The item is technically called a “tonneau cover”, where tonneau is an old word for barrel, or the cargo area of early automobiles. (Hence, the English word "ton".) Wiki is right that the purpose is more for concealment than security.
Visible also is some of the heavy-duty tubing mentioned last day. See the foot step to get into the tub? The entire frame is made of this material. I’d say the most surprising aspect of the rig is when people climb on it the first time. They are expecting something flimsy, but instead this is solid and it feels it. Even old-timers around motorcycles are impressed by the construction.
I rolled it down to bingo and Karaoke, both successful tonight. Some big sports game is tomorrow and the TV crowd was out in force. Alas, I could not stay as my arm and shoulder acted up again. I have a real aversion to taking pills, even painkillers, that operate while I am asleep, so I did my share and got home early enough to make a better sling. The one they gave me lets my arm slip out in normal usage, where those triangular bandages they teach you in Scouts are a better arrangement. They pull your palm right up near the opposite shoulder. Amazing how eons before first aid, God put the spot between your neck and shoulder in exactly the right place.
ADDENDUM
Flying blind, here is the first stage of my first home-made flip-flop. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know the connections that have to be made whether I can imagine them in this layout or not. Using two pairs of two NPN transistors, they will be wired to function as two NOR gates, which will then use feedback to create a SR (set-reset) flip-flop. SR means one switch can only turn the circuit on, the other turns it off, and they can only take turns because the circuit will “remember” where it was last. This is the solder side, the working components are on the reverse.
As stated, I will continue with this path until I get something that functions. If you know your basics, this picture shows the lead wires of four transistors and four “base” resistors which will form the logic inputs for the circuit. In this instance the transistors are biased to be fully on or off, that is, they never operate in the range where they would amplify the signal. Thus, they are “switching” transistors. This is a digital circuit.This is likely repeat info, but it is so important I’m putting in my opinion again. When I began, there was mass confusion as some “experts” said the transistor was an amplifier, others said it was a switch. Much later I developed my own theory that it is both, depending on your base input current. I’m about to explain it more clearly than any authors of the dozens of books, all expensive and for sale.
The base current is what controls the transistor. This base current can take three forms. If it is above a certain level, called “saturation”, the transistor is fully on. If it is below a certain lower threshold called “cut-off”, the transistor is fully off. Simple as that. But there is a range between these two levels where a weak but varying AC base current causes a larger current flow through the transistor in proportion to the base current. That’s the range where amplification occurs. I also learned that conditioning the base current to only operate in the range where it amplifies is called to “bias” the input.
Thus, I will not bias my base current. That’s because I want it full on or full off. The circuit, as I am building it, is vulnerable to stray currents because I am using ordinary off-on switches to turn the current on and off. This means the circuit is susceptible to what is known as “bounce”. But I fully understand the problem there and may build a separate input circuit that eliminates bounce if it becomes troublesome. For now, getting this flip-flop to work at all is task enough for my poor little head.
As is now usual, I had to figure all this transistor stuff out on my own from the mass of conflicting information. But once it clicked, it was easy enough to go back and see what many of the authors meant. Still, that is no compliment to their presentation. The best material I found was this site in Western Samoa.
