grendel

oh - its going to be a dead calm then, I only get seasick in a dead calm, when I was small I slept on the ferry from holland to Harwich, in a force 7 with the stabilisers broken, apparently at times i was a foot above the bunk.

Griff, just started sorting my packing list - what is rig of the day for the social evening - formal or casual?

1908 regatta footage- now here:- http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/57

ah - ok -not so easy to fix, are there any fuses on the pcb? - either that or its the power regulator circuit that reduces the voltage for the PCB. we had an early washer drier many years back and that went through several pcb's and the voltage went up from 6V to 12V to 24V on the pcb, all because of a badly designed connector between the PCB and the rest of the machine.

Griff - most washing machines nowadays have sophisticated circuitry in them and wont spin properly if the load is unbalanced - we had problems with stuff coming out wet - until we found that to spin properly it had to have a minimum of about 1/3 of a load in the machine - in the cases where this has happened in the past we have just thrown a couple of towels in as well and things have worked fine. so if it was a minimal load, it may just have not had enough washing in it to spin properly. (I hope that sorts the issue).

I will just test using one of the less good cameras for now, I have one camera of spare parts at least (if I cant get it running as another spare).

here is a typiical video clip, it clearly shows the image stabilisation in action (watch the window frame moving while the view remains relatively stable). Excuse the dirty / wet windscreen, I was really testing the battery life on the way to work, it died at 90 mins - just as I turned into the car park

I am also trialing some new ni-zn rechargeable batteries in these cameras, these batteries have one advantage over standard rechargeables, instead of 1.2V they start at 1.6V, avoiding the normal problem of the camera seeing the battery as flat when the voltage drops below 2.3V (for 2 batteries) you get more useable capacity from these higher voltage batteries (standard alkaline batteries start at about 1.65V which is why they work better for high demand items like cameras) the disadvantage is they need a special charger.

bonus, I have just won the waterproof case for the flip ultra for just 99p on ebay, good for up to 30 ft underwater.

pictures

Well this week has seen an addittion to my array of not new camera gear, I already had one flip video ultra HD video camera, this is a very basic camera that runs on either a rechargeable battery pack, or standard AA batteries. mine runs for an hour, then has to be charged / downloaded. they do do a 2 hour version, but these cameras new change hands from between £69 and £200, so when I managed to get a few on ebay, labelled as faulty for less than the price of 1 new one, I was happy, confident in my ability to fix them. 3 I got were the ultra models, of the 3 - 2 of them worked straight away when batteries were put in, one starts fine, but then shows blank, so one dead one, one of the others flattened the battery overnight, but as long as you only put them in when you need it, its fine. of the remaining 3, one was the latest model, and came with the magnetic wide angle lens, (an extra £30 new), all that was required with this one was to press the hidden reset button, and put it on charge - now working fine - 2 hours video, and 90 minutes battery life. the second Mino model camera responded to a new battery, and the third is waiting for its new battery to arrive, so at the moment 4 cameras working, with a maybe on the fifth, when its new battery arrives. I now reckon I am ready for the sea trip later in the month, both video and stills cameras sorted, I can see I will be having long chats with our Robin on the trip there. Unfortunately these cameras are getting scarce new, as the company that made them stopped making that sort of thing.

does it appear in Robins video of his trip up to Norwich recently?

I did have to log back in on all 4 machines I regularly use, but mine seems to be there.

I'm starting to get excited now - looking forward to this.

we get them circling above the office, as we are just off junction 29 of the M25, this puts them in a perfect alignment to fly up the Mall to Buckingham Palace, they circle us until the perfect time is reached, the best one was last year when there were several jets trying to fly slow enough to not overtake a spitfire and the lancaster the jets were in a very nose up attitude applying a lot of thrust (we could feel and hear it) (dont ask me what the jets were but one was in ww2 paint job)

(the Big Six (Arthur Ransome))

that George Owden And Ralph Strakey have a lot to answer for.

Vaughan, I can see you need to come to the summer meet at Oulton broad on 23rd July, where both Robin and myself will be there to sit around and chat (about all things under the sun).

any laptop can be charged from 12v, either get a universal charger of the correct wattage( they will come with a variety of tips to plug in) or google the proper car charger for your laptop (particularly if its a dell with an awkward type of plug. I have 3 car chargers for laptops, yet had to buy a dedicated dell one for this reason, these convert 12v input to a higher voltage output to plug into the laptop, I think my three are variable up to about 22v.

my take is that at 24V you halve the current, transmission losses in the wiring is less as the loss due to the resistance in the wiring is reduced with the current carried. (this is why the main overhead grid network runs at 400,000V.

aas someone who works in the electricity supply industry, the costs to run a cable in a remote location to get a supply to that point are huge, we have to pay the local DNO (electric supplier) to make a connection, cables cost, and the further you need to run them the bigger they need to be, even running a cable a few hundred metres can cost thousands - for example a three phase service cable (35mm) costs us nearly £5 per metre to install, with the cross section getting bigger, the cost rises - this is the cost without the trench, which would have to be dug as well. Most moorings are remote from the electricity network to start with, this means the costs are increased. I agree with Jaws, the answer is effectively silenced generators, a work colleague I used to know had one converted over to propane (lpg) so it ran off the campers gas supply, and that was whisper quiet.

when I hired a while back, the boat behind us did the same, they like us had only just taken over the boat, had finished their trial run, and were just heading up river, we were struggling to figure out the steering and go in a straight line there was a dead spot about 1/8 turn then suddenly it seemed as though you had full lock. the people behind were performing similar manouvers, then suddenly they performed a neat 90 degree turn, straight into the reeds just like that, speed about 4mph.

there was a house at the end of the runway at one of our local airports near ashford, this had had its chimney knocked off many times (lymne airport I believe) I think it was originally a WW2 grass strip the planes would come in across the road, only a little above the chimney, their tv aerial was lower on the side of the house.

at work we have been expanding rapidly the last 6 months, we are ok at the moment, but our business does depend upon housing development, so we have to see how the markets going.

shssh you werent supposed to notice that