grendel

many years back when I was small, we used to attend a country church once a month (dad was a church warden), the vicar was responsible for 4 country churches in about a 5 mile radius and managed one a week, to say we were familiar with the old dusty churches of his parishes would be fairly true, each church probably had about 6 to 8 regulars and events used to take place in the church grounds, the church we attended was about 1/2 mile outside the village, and the death knell was when a major road was built between the village and church, and traffic could no longer get from village to church easily.

I think the problem always lay in the fact it wasnt obvious that there was more than one boat of the same name in the class, imagine therefore coming back to the boat from the pub to find there were 3 pearl horizons moored up at acle, and not knowing which one you had arrived in - particularly when there was just one other boat between all 3, confusing or what.

probably no worse than at the BA moorings either side of the viaduct.

when you enter bridge broad from the viaduct end, hang a left and go round the corner,, theres a lovely bay there for mudweighting, its one of my favorite spots.

further tests using a 12V rated speed controller (a 60A controller really is overkill for this- the motor is drawing .05A flat out) and this works well, actually this controller is so nice it may well get swapped out as the primary speed controller for the model. anyway out of curiosity I was looking online, and found that you can get winches for R/C trucks, well worth a punt for a tenner, so I have ordered one to compare with the one I made- the strangest part is you can buy spare motors for them, and they use the same motors as I have used, albeit with a slightly different gearbox mounted. so we will have to see whether they are as good or better than my home brew motor- obviously the best one will get put into the model.

rather than blame the staff of the Authority, who are just following company policy handed down to them, I would much Rather see the main man himself down at Ranworth explaining to the boaters why he has introduced these measures, if he cant stand up and justify them in person, and answer all of the boaters questions, then how can he expect his staff to do so? these charges have stirred up a lot of regular boaters to react and question them, for most new hirers, they dont know anything different, so dont question things (just go away with a bad impression of how expensive it is to go on a boating holiday, so maybe they will travel abroad or elsewhere next year). So it would be nice to have the reasoning behind this explained by the person in charge.

I think this is the most meaningful comment I have seen, I am sure that the word is being passed back that the 'peasants are revolting' (oops that sounds like something out of black Adder), that people are far from happy, but I am certain if Tom commented he would receive a lot of flack in return, so we must try not to shoot the messenger.

see now, thats what comes of consuming too much fruit.

if I do pay I will insist on a receipt that has the wording upon it that should a legal challenge find that charging for moorings is unlawful, I will expect to receive a refund with backdated interest added. (not that I moor at ranworth habitually, preferring the much quieter option of mudweighting somewhere.

The new work area

finally got a few minutes free to test the new setup, and happy to say it works (i did first have to fix my 30V power supply (blown fuse) to get a steady 9V, as the motor can work on 12v I am looking around to find a 12V capable speed controller so it can be run directly from the propulsion battery.

It seems the BA have branched out into Agriculture - Cash Cow Farming

I wonder how many prospective mooring fees it cost to buy and install the new signage?

is there a charge for the car park too?

I dont believe you have to live in a parish to be a parishoner, I think the regular attendance of the church is enough to qualify you for that. might be worth asking the vicar next time you are there CC.

After a day when I was getting other things done, I now have 3 shelves up on the wall above the little lathe, I have collected the parts and repaired my 3d printer ( I managed to snag and break the temperature sensor on the extruder, so a new extruder is fitted and a second spare on the shelf ensures it won't break down quickly) I have finally found where I put my 8BA taps and drilled the 1.8mm hole and threaded it in the top of the mud weight, so here it is one mud weight with eye bolt.

So the slow work of filing begins, things to consider, size of the files ( needle files) workholding, how to hold onto and still have room to work on something less than 10mm long and 4mm wide.

Now threaded, and flats filed, just got to drill out and file to shape

It was a tad chilly in the workshop today, so after I had dug out one of my other small lathes I set up in the spare bedroom, it's only small, but I was only making something small, it's now roughed out, I have to make 2 flats on the thick end, drill a hole through and thread the narrow end, of course it's a ring bolt for the mud weight. After the above it will get filed to final shape. I might well draw the line at making a shackle to go through it though.

I once bought a metal cabinet at a boot fair, it had little drawers on all 4 sides and was on a lazy susan bearing, inside the drawers (some sides had 2 rows of drawers, all pivot out on the corners,) was a complete set of whitworth taps up to 1", a comlete set of whitworth dies (up to 1") and the tapping drills for the above also a few odd drawers containing BA taps and dies and other useful threads. I also have other sets of drills, and now I buy cases where there are an assortment of sizes, with up to 10 drills of each size in the case. all useful stuff(all got at boot fairs when I see them, and i probably wont ever need to buy a new drill ever again.

Well my new bolts arrived, so I have fitted a bolt and nut to the motor. That's 50 bolts and 50 nuts there, in scale they are equivalent to m10x250 bolts. I do naturally have the full set of incremental drills from 1mm to 6mm in 0.1mm steps, as I had to run a 1.6mm drill through to get the proper clearance for the bolts

its amazing how many small screws you can store in small spaces, that little round tub contains 1mm, 1.2mm and 1.4mm screws nuts and washers- over 600 of them. I still have to add the loop to the top of the aluminium mudweight thats been turned down from a scrap of 1" bar I had. the video shows the winch working with the test weight, on 9 volts (its a 12v motor) (just as a reference for scale, the vice thats holding the motor is only 1" wide)

Ok some pictures, and how come it's 3.30 pm now, it wasn't even lunch time when I went out to play around with a scrap of aluminium. 20230326_132851.mp4

OK, thats got the bolts and nuts ordered- M1.6x20- stainless steel apparently is the size, That or m1.4, while I was at it I ordered several 3 tap sets to suit my small size metric fasteners (I bought longer bolts than I need in a pack of 50, as I can always cut them to length. less than the cost of a pint for the bolts, nuts though were not as cheap- in fact the tap sets were cheaper than the nuts

OK, so today I finally got to do some testing, I set up a voltage regulator to keep the voltage below 9.4V (the rated voltage for the speed controller) and connected everything up using a couple of small brass lumps roughly equivalent to the mudweight, here was where I hit the first snag, the winch would lower it, but raising was a different matter, the worm gear in tthe gearbox stalled out, this caused the voltage regulator to start getting warm, hmm. further tests were done using the variable voltage from the power supply, and I could lift half the weight of the brass mudweight, so maybe i need to make one from aluminium, this will at least match the chrome appearance of the real one. i need to think, the alternative is to hollow out the existing brass one. second problem, i have decided to use the built in mounting holes in the motor/gearbox, so I got out my small hardware, I found 1 bolt the right size, none of the M2 bolts I have would fit, no it was an M1.5 x 15 that would fit, but i dont have any nuts to fit that bolt or a tap to tap the plate in that size, so i will get some M1.5 hardware (I have m1 bolts, but the longest is about 6mm)I have BA taps that small, but no BA hardware smaller than 8BA (2mm equivalent) and though I could easily make some 12BA screws and nuts, it would be a little fiddly.