oldgregg

Yeah they really are and DJI drones particularly are incredibly smooth. It's mad really. 20 years ago I was shooting on VHS shouldercams and editing on a pair of VHS decks, and today I have a camera in my pocket which shoots footage that broadcasters could only dream of even 10 years ago and can edit on an app. And we can buy a flying camera for a few hundred pounds.. Or about the cost of hiring a helicopter camera crew for the day back in the 90's.

I think also some yards do discourage it in order to stop less experienced hirers from sticking it in the mud. When I hired last year the handover guy asked us what our plans were for the week. We said that we'd find somewhere quiet on the first night and then head down south for the rest of the week. The response was something like "Ooh I wouldn't mate, there's strong tides down there and you have to be really careful, more hassle than it's worth" etc etc. We pretended to have been discouraged and then were at Oulton Broad the following evening as planned, but I do think it will put newer hirers off. I was speaking to a (distant) family member last year about it as he'd been on the broads a few times both North and South, having hired from NBD and Silverline and he said that he was reasonably confident but went on to say that "the one thing I'd never do is go across Breydon, sounds too risky". I just think that's a shame as like Paul says, you use the tide tables and then keep within the posts. There must be a lot of northern hirers that don't get to see the south and that seems a pity as it's (arguably) the nicer part.

I think if done well they do enhance a film. Having the camera 15-20ft above ground level adds a perspective to filmmaking that you just can't get from a camera mounted on a tripod at ground level. Also, because drones open aerial photography up to anyone and because they can be flown in places where helicopters can't it does result in footage you wouldn't otherwise see and some of it can be amazing. But yeah, it's possible to overdo it and drone footage generally needs to be cut in with other footage in order to make an interesting film.

Yeah the one I looked at was 2010. I don't fit in them either.... S2000 is a bit more spacious (relatively) although the price tends to reflect how good they are. Just don't buy an RX-7 or RX-8!

I think that's one of the reasons the MX-5 is so popular actually - There are no roof electrics to go wrong (apart from the folding hardtop version obviously) and the engines are Japanese so other than a bit of rust the cars are fairly painless to own.

https://www.dronsfields.com/

Agreed. Old Mercedes' (well... old but post 1997) are notorious for electronics problems and because they tend to use a lot of proprietary components things can get expensive.

Cars are being packaged with LED lighting in mind and have been for a few years - Unfortunately the short term drawback is that early production and lower-spec models have halogen lighting and so there has to be a (clumsy) workaround for changing bulbs.

And worse....

I'm not a fan of that. Personally I wouldn't let a Halfords employee touch my car. Headlight covers and the bulb carriers tend to have various clips etc that are easily broken if you're not being careful. I can't really see a Halfords guy saying that he's very sorry and he's broken the clip that keeps the cover on (and rainwater out) or the one that stops the bulb rattling about in the housing and will order you a new one up from the main dealer.

I like the lines actually. I have no idea what it is (I tried to Google the picture with no success) but it looks like a proper cruising car.

Just a reminder that you can filter out topics you don't want to see by changing your settings. That's the great thing about the forum software NBN uses. These are the settings you'll want to look at - You can exclude whole forum sections if you wish.

Yeah that sounds about right. Very interesting guy and I still remember some of the clever techniques he told us about for making candles.

It is, but it had a total refit in 2009 so isn't really comparable with a boat that has an original 1970's fitout. Same story with Escapade and Barbados. Simon would fall foul of the solo hirer rule, though.

Yeah I think to be successful you need to cater for the locals during the quieter months and build up a customer base.

I'd guessed at Fresh Cream Eclairs

What's an FCE?

Here's the thing though... You could have a combi boiler that would give you instant(ish) hot water at mains pressure with no worries about it running out, and simply have a radiator installed in your airing cupboard for drying your washing.

No indeed. And you can usually spot these cowboys as they arrive in a blue van that matches the TV adverts.

Yeah I don't see how that one is feasible, and really is a step backwards. Storage heaters I guess would be what people are forced towards as electric boilers are pretty expensive to run, with instantaneous heaters for hot water. Actually likely to be very reliable compared to gas boilers, but the energy bills would be scary. And I'm sure many on here remember how horrible storage heaters are. And yeah, the power has to come from somewhere. Build a new estate of 1,000 houses that are all-electric and that's an insane amount of energy required out of nowhere - And everyone will need maximum heat at the same time.

I checked what the legislation is and the European Commission say this: That's a very ambitious target and we're going to see a real shift in the industry as they struggle to produce compliant cars. Our government has said they'll just copy what the EU does when it comes to future vehicle legislation, so there's no escaping it here. Plus no-one is going to build cars specifically for the UK market anyway. I can imagine salesmen spinning all sorts of stories to push particular models to customers in order that the manufacturer meets their targets. You can see why the industry wants to move to producing electric vehicles, even if the infrastructure isn't ready.

I think it's a mad state of affairs where people don't trust cars older than three to five years. It's all down to emissions regulations, and car manufacturers trying to work around them - Hence lots of over-stressed three-cylinder engines with high compression ratios and lots of forced induction. They give less tractable power and obviously are much more highly-stressed hence the high rate of failures. Look at the 1.0 EcoBoost in Ford cars, which is reaching almost epidemic levels of failures. Why are they doing it? Because EU law means that the average CO2 output for a manufacturer has to be 130 grams per kilometre or lower otherwise they are fined huge sums of money. That figure drops to 95 grams per kilometre in a couple of years so they are excreting breeze blocks at the moment. You can bet the manufacturer isn't going to want to pay that fine any more, so they have found ways of meeting the test requirements on the day of the test. If it explodes in five years, why would they care? The salesman can flog you another 'quality product' and say how unlucky you must have been while maybe not mentioning their latest car which reportedly does 5493mpg in a lab somewhere is also probably as well engineered as a box of Kellogg's cornflakes. But the marketing guys gloss over it all and make the new models more and more desirable so we must have the latest and the vast majority of the public buy all of their nonsense. Some manufacturers are still spending the money under the bonnet though, rather than on the journalists favourite 'high-quality plastics' and other guff that adds weight and lowers the engineering budget. It's really simple. If the manufacturer doesn't trust their product enough to put a long warranty on it, walk away. VW give just a two year warranty, yet Toyota do 5 with an option for a sixth, Kia do 7 years and their parent Hyundai offers 5. What does that tell you? Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Yup. This is why manufacturers are ditching mid-size three door cars at the moment. Shame, as stuff like the Focus RS and Megane R.S. look so much nicer as a three door.

I had much the same issue on my old system. PRV leakage was a symptom of the expansion vessel diaphragm having perished so when the water heated up there wasn't sufficient room for the expansion and the system vented itself. Cost was about £50 for a new expansion vessel and replacement PRV. As others have said, once they start opening they don't reseat well. Looking inside the old expansion vessel afterwards, there was nothing left of the diaphragm. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

I hope that Ferrari have a load of parts to bring to the start of the European season otherwise this year could be dull. There was nothing about the pace of the teams that surprised me at all. It's a long season though so fingers crossed. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app