Planes and stuff

Project Larry update

2011-08-12T19:37:00.001+01:00

Well its been a while hasn't it? 5 months in fact. Lots has happened, mainly for the bad. One day, I hope I won't have anything bad to say on here, but I think that may be a while away yet. So, to list them, in no particular order:
Half crap 40th birthday (not that I was 40, don't care about that) - good bit was being in Spain; and mum and Mike coming out to visit
Work is crap
The house is crap and still costing me a fortune. To make matters worse a new house is being built down the road which is throwing up tonnes of sand, which then gets into the house; and totally covers everything as fine dust, like plaster dust
The weather is totally depressing - we had the bloody fire on the other night, it was the beginning of August!!
The Space Shuttle had its final mission. Weird to think thats it for the Shuttle. Luckily I was off for both the launch and landing. I was able to get a brief recording of them as they went over France after the launch, a copy of which is here: Atlantis over-flight They landed safely on Thursday July 21st 2011, ending 30 years of flying. I saw the first ever launch live on TV way back, I saw the last ever landing.

And, probably the worst thing - I've had to sell my GT3. I'm not going to talk about this, it's too depressing. Its been replaced by an Audi A5 Quattro 3.0TDI but its not the same

So, good things. Ummmmmmmmmmmm, nah can't think of anything off the top of my head.

Larry is probably the most productive thing thats happened, but the weather has seriously played havoc with the progress. The consistant rain, for nearly 2 months, meant I couldn't get to work on him. After all, electrics and water don't mix very well, neither does nice new interior fittings. But i eventually got the front finished, just in time, as the next day there was a planned trip to the Isle of Skye for a nights camping.

The main reason for the trip was to give him a good run and to make sure all my electric changes were functioning correctly. The cab is totally different to how it was. New seats, both heated, a new dash with new switches, a cubby box and sound proofing. All worked great, especially good was the noise reduction. The engine ran well, with 55/60 MPH being the average speed (not bad for a 1988 Landrover) and I reckon we got about 720Km for a full tank of diesel.

Of course, it sounds like it was an easy fit. It wasn't. The electrics from the Army is all over the place, with additional wiring for things like NVG headlights. I had to drastically redesign how I wanted the headlights, eventually going for a pod on top of the dash and refitting the original dial switch. I had great assistance from MUD-UK who provided the dash, switches and pod, exchanging a few things with no arguements. With this great service they'll know for sure I'll be back when it comes to fitting out the back - I already have my eyes on a few things

The seats, cubby box and sound proofing was from Exmoor Trim who I bought from direct after I emailed them for details about their products. A damaged bit of plastic on the passenger seat was replaced for free, even after it had been 2 months since it was delivered to me. Again, great service.

The back interior has changed a bit, but mainly in the fact that everything has been removed. I had great fun removing everything, with something along the lines of 80 nuts and bolts needing to be undone. Of course, all these holes then needed to be filled so a bit of resin later and all were pretty much water-tight again; nearly all as a bit of water gets in when I'm driving in the rain (all the time around here), but this is through holes that I've left open as the bench seat and a storage box needs to go back in.

The rear door has had a panel added to make it a bit neater. I also plan to attach a unit that will house my gas burner; a genious space saver that also lets you cook directly from it as it folds down to allow access to the burner.

The rear exterior has changed slightly, with the addition of a ladder and a spot light. Both are really useful, although the light is temporarly wired up. Once a second battery is installed the light will run from it, along with the two 12V plugs in the front. The main battery looks like a wiring death trap at the moment, there's so many connections on it. The ladder was purchased from First Four Off road as was the chequer plate panel inside the rear door. Again, there was great assistance from them before purchasing. I also removed the old antenna reel holder that was on the outside of the rear door. I will eventually move the spare tyre from the bonnet to this location

At the front there's been a couple of changes too, with the addition of two spotlights and a replacement of the original headlights for modern halogen ones. I'd forgotten about the days when the whole headlight unit needed to be replaced when a bulb had blown. So when it came to replacing these headlights it brought it all back to me

Breakfast at Loch Lomond

The picture above shows the new spots. These were a little tricky to fit, for two reasons. Army wiring and not getting all the correct connectors from Wipac. I managed to fudge it a bit but I need to replace the temporary fittings soon, before the weather starts getting bad (was it ever good?) All my wiring parts were from Autosparks and its from them that I'll also be getting some of the gear for the rear interior, mainly the carpet and wiring components.

So far then, Larry has been a great success. He's been hard work, but well worth it; and i'm looking forward to kitting out the back as soon as I can

Loch Lomond

Campsite in Skye - breakfast again

On our way to Talisker distillery

Project Larry

2011-03-10T21:47:00.002Z

A slight back injury at work has pretty much made me immobile for the last few days - typically for the whole of my days off. It's only now, on my last day off, that it's starting to clear

Anyway, what this has meant is that I have not been able to do anything that I wanted to do, mostly physical work around the house. Instead I've had to just sit around listening to the radios and doing the odd menial task. Listening to the radios has been interesting though - I'm just waiting on some tanking to take place over the Atlantic with some B1s; but aircraft aside I've also spent some time listening in on some Shortwave Radio Stations

So, I've picked up quite a few so far - Radio Bulgaria, Radio Taiwan, RAE Argentina, Voice of Nigeria, All India radio, Voice of Russia and China Radio International to name a few. Some "interesting" shows I must say with Radio Bulgaria's " Bulgarian Eurovision entries" being the funniest. Still, even the stuff that wasn't in English was a hell of a lot easier to understand than all the Scottish Fishermen I was listening to briefly on the Marine bands - gave up on that one pretty quickly

The other thing I've been listening out for is Shuttle Discovery. Didn't get anything until its last day in orbit. It came through clear as anything on its second to last ever orbit of Earth. The foibles of the UBC800XLT came through though as it didn't record properly as it had reset itself. very frustrating indeed as the comms were so clear and lasted a good 3 or 4 minutes as the crew ran through a checklist. I watched the whole thing online until the crew stepped off the orbiter. Very sad to think that's its last trip.

It's Endeavour next on April 19th

The real annoyance of my back issue though has not being able to start on "Project Larry". Larry arrived with me on Tuesday, he is an ex Royal Signals Land Rover 110; and I'm going to turn him into a sort of mobile Comms post and a Camper van

Arriving on the back of the flatbed

Being an ex Signals 110 it is pretty well kitted out in the back already. It's totally hardwired up, with a caravan style connection to a mains fuse box that then goes on to power 7 three pin sockets. Ideal for Radios, laptop, monitor etc.There's also 2 side panels, head height, just behind the doors that contain fitted antenna connections.

There's also plenty of room for storage, I'll probably get a powered cool box in there too.

First task though is to get some of the wiring sorted. There's a standard radio antenna that needs rerouting to the dashboard. when I say dashboard, there actually isn't one, just a central knob that switches the lights on and off. I need to update the standard fusebox for the vehicle, one with a few more slots; and then I need to get a new dashboard fitted.

Basic cab

Once an auxiliary battery is fitted and connected to the auxiliary fusebox down the back I can set about getting it soundproofed and insulated a bit. There will also be some new seats added.

I'll also work on the "Roll in, roll out" sleeping layer. The Landie is already fitted with some mounts for various Comms pallets so I will be utilising these for the sleeping layer. I have the plans in my head, I just need to make sure they'll work first.

Basically the idea is to have a bed unit (probably just a good thick bit of hardboard) that I can store in the garage and install it in when I want to go camping.

That will probably be it for the initial fittings. I'll probably look into some more storage and shelves maybe. Hopefully it will at least be fully usable by T in the Park 2012

Antenna connections, one on each side

Close up of the connections

Left interior with the Antenna connections

Right interior

Looking back from drivers seat

I will of course put up progress pictures on here

Cheers

Just a quick update....

2011-03-05T15:57:00.002Z

On nothing really :-)

Its just been work work work so it seems. With a new system in place that replaces our paper strips with electronic ones, things have been................. complicated shall I say. No further comment on EFD from me!!

A short trip to Iceland was taken last weekend to celebrate(??) Adrian's forth coming wedding. Seeing as what happens on tour stays on tour I can't even really comment on this either. Although I'm sure Adrian won't mind me publishing this lovely picture of him as Pamela Anderson taken at The Blue Lagoon. We all felt incredibly safe knowing we had an on the call life guard available should our beer run out

I finally ordered a UBC800XLT and I am now happy with it. When I say now I mean I wasn't when it first arrived and it nearly found its way back to Nevada Radio, but a bit of perseverance paid off and I am pretty well up to speed with how to operate it. It's not easy that's for sure. I also built a Yagi antenna with bits of old wiring, a choc block and some co-ax that I had lying around. This is currently connected to the 800 and it's working a treat, especially in the UHF bands when I'm scanning. I almost feel sorry for the Icom as its not been played with as much recently, but that's mainly because there's not much been happening out there. That is until the last week or so.

With all the trouble in North Africa I decided to listen in on Libya and have been receiving a few things on HF 11300. It's not always clear but there's been a few things moving around.

And finally, after a few months delay, Space Shuttle Discovery launched on the 24th Feb. I watched the event live on the Internet and 15 minutes later was able to catch a quick 15 to 20 seconds of the crew contacting Houston on both the Icom and the 800. I had set up the freqs in both just in case my homebuilt antenna wasn't up to much but it picked them up nice and clearly. What I've been able to mix together is below.

I've got to say I'm quite chuffed to, first of all, hear them in the first place; but secondly to pick them up on my homebuilt antenna. Later in the week I was able to pick up ISS on a few passes, although this is generally in Russian; and on a very clear night I was also able to see the ISS with Discovery attached to it pass over head. It really is hard to believe that the Space Shuttle is nearing the end of its service, I'm glad I managed to see a couple of them and I'm glad I was able to pick this one up. there's another launch due soon hopefully, but that's 1 of 2 that's left

Lastly for this blog is that I have a new project arriving next week. I won't say anything yet, but once it's arrived I'll get some pictures and my plans on here

Looking back to 2007

2011-01-14T13:32:00.000Z

Well a new year has begun, thank God the last one is over. I think I'll try and forget 2010 as quickly as possible but it's probably going to be a long time before I do

Getting moved to Scotland by NATS when I (and about 140 other families) didn't want to has done nothing but put trouble into my life. From virtually debt free to a ridiculous amount of money on credit cards, loans and a crap lifestyle isn't the life I had planned; and they don't even give a shit. A few of us have been trying to work it out, but this move has cost the relocating families somewhere between .75 to 1 Million pounds in total lost earnings (a year) as nearly all the partners have been unable to get a job - having been forced to leave theirs down south. As the New Prestwick centre nears its first year anniversary the company is very keen to find out how everyone has found the last year by asking for comments on the intranet - I don't actually think any ex Manchester people have responded - and if they did I don't think the company would find it pleasant reading

Of course, they didn't force me to by the hell hole of a house that I purchased, but they did force me to buy a house in the first place when I was very happy in Manchester. The light at the end of the tunnel for the renovations is far away; years away probably.

I got the GT3 down to Manchester finally on Saturday, although it was an interesting drive in places due to some snow. I had my back up behind me with Steph in the Freelander, communicating by walkie-talkie most of the way so there was a bit of fun involved. But it was a long day, finally getting back at 4am Sunday morning. It was an unprepared trip really, the battery died on the GT3 on Friday night, which left the drivers window slightly open and of course it started snowing as soon as that happened. So, I stuffed a towel in the gap, decided to call Green Flag first thing and got it jumped. I'll next see it in a few months when its had a pampering by Ninemeister

One thing though, just driving around Manchester brings it home just how crap things are up here for me at the moment

So, this week I've been working on some pictures from 2007 as I've been unable to get anywhere. The trip to the USA in 2007 was probably one of the best USA ones we've done (myself, Ant, Nigel and Pete). It started in Dallas and ended in Los Angeles. We travelled via Roswell , doing about 500 miles in a day spreading the driving between us. It was a weird 2 days (as it should be in Roswell). Getting there it was a brilliantly hot, sunny day, driving through the oil and gas fields, the smell of methane everywhere - to awaken the next day to snow, lots of it! Roswell was dead, it was Thanks Giving week, everything was shut. But the storage area at the airfield was still easily viewable and we spent a few hours going around it, be it in freezing conditions - I certainly hadn't packed for snow, even though it was November - we were heading to LAX after all and its always hot there. I haven't uploaded any pictures from Roswell or Dallas onto my site yet, in fact I decided to delete all the Dallas pictures - it had been cloudy there all the time and American Airlines silver against grey sky looks rubbish so I decided to clear some memory. The Roswell ones are pretty much the same, but I may salvage a few

From Roswell we drove to Tucson, another 4 to 500 miles and to nicer weather. Leaving the Roswell area we passed a petrol station with a sign "Last fuel for 450 miles" - we decided to fill up just in case.

Tucson brought us to Davis Monthan AFB, Pima and Marana. We'd booked a flight with Double Eagle Aviation, which ended up being two flights of two hours for two people. But it was still great value for money as we overflew DM, Marana (including a taxi around) and a landing and taxi around Avra Valley. Ant and Nigel went first, then it was me and Pete, with me in the front. Pete had to hold the window open for me so that I could take all the pictures, reaching through from the back. He's not the best flyer and with the stretching, the bumping around and the circuits he was a bit queasy at the end of the flight - he managed not to chuck up though. I'd had a disaster over Monthan. Getting into the aircraft I must have knocked the settings dial on the camera, putting it into manual mode, f22/2000s. Luckily after 20 or so shots I checked to see how they'd come out and realised that the total black image was wrong - if digital cameras are good for one thing, its that. Imagine if it had been slides still? I'd never have known till I got them all back. As it was Thanks Giving weekend the airspace was dead and we were pretty much able to do what we wanted

DM from above is a site to see and I recommend taking a flight if you can. Marana was just as good. Even back on the ground at Tucson, we taxied past the ANG base to get a good view of the F16s

From Tucson, it was to Phoenix, then Vegas and LA; but maybe I'll continue the story next time

So back to 2010 and the stats of what I saw. It wasn't a good year - in fact it was my worst one for Civil Airliners since 1989 ( I don't include 1990 to 97 as I didn't do civil during those years). All you non spotters can switch off now

Total new Airliners came in at 465, down 1381 from 2009 (this is registrations, not frames)
Grand total of Airliners and Mil was 659, 2009s total was 2024

Boeings were: 200(203 if you include 3 KC135s)
0 B717
5 B727
111 B737 (92 were NG)
20 B747
7 B757
14 B767
43 B777

Airbus: 164
6 A300
4 A310
1 A318
11 A319
73 A320
23 A321
27 A330
13 A340
6 A380

The rest were small amounts - 6 CRJs, 19 Douglas (2 DC8, 5 DC9, 0 DC10/KC10, 6 MD11 6 MD90) and 10 ERJs. There were also the odd DHC8 but I wont include these here as they're minimal

Russian stuff was good though: 32 (although maybe a few more as I have some unconfirmed ones)
6 An12
4 An124
3 An26
1 IL18
11 IL76
4 T154
1 T204
2 Yk42

Most of these were at Dubai, but a couple were at Prestwick

Mil totals: 174
47 UKMil
14 Gripens (Swed AF)
1 Irish Air Corps
112 US Mil ( 69 C130s (nearly all at Prestwick), 19 C17s and 3 KC135s previously mentioned. There were also a couple of C12s/C23s but ADU database was being a bit weird and couldn't give me totals for some things. Apparently there's an issue they're dealing with.

Finally where I saw them all:
DXB was top with 244
PIK 195
Trails 137
Lossie 29
LHR 27
MAN 13
Seville 13

plus a couple of others dotted around

Will this year be better? well I've already seen 9 new USAF Hercs, so who knows? I'm not even going to think about the what the house will bring this year

Frozen everything

2010-12-31T20:51:00.002Z

It's been even longer this time, but I have been busy

I suppose I could go on about all the things that have gone wrong; things like frozen pipes, frozen washing machine etc etc, but that's happened to a load of people so I can't be bothered

The frozen River Ayr though has been a bit of a change. Except for the fact that it has been stopping traffic, rightly so almost, it is quite an amazing sight. Since these photos were taken the "icebergs" have got even larger, but unfortunately they are a bit dirtier; and they also have the odd traffic cone and sticks protruding from them as extra decorations from the kids

The snow wasn't that much of a problem for me really, the Landrover coped very well. But it did mean that I was, and still have been, unable to get the Porsche down to Ninemeisters in Warrington. Hopefully it will be next week, but it's currently SORNed and has no MOT, so I can't even drive it now it's thawed out.

The cold weather did bring some really clear nights. The stars were very bright, as were Jupiter and Venus. I can't wait to get a decent Astronomers Telescope that I can attach my camera to. Won't be for a while yet though

December the 13th brought some very clear skies, just at the right time to watch the Geminids Meteor Shower. Over a few hours I probably saw a good 40 to 50 meteors, some of which were very bright and colourful - there were a few neon purple and blue ones in there. It was absolutely freezing though. So cold, that when I put down my Rum and Coke glass onto the decking it froze to it within seconds

December has been a very slow month for planes. I've hardly seen any new ones; I most certainly haven't taken any photos. I'll get around to doing the years stats in the next few days and when I've finished I'll put them on here.

I've had two more photos published in the last month. The Swedish Air Force Gripen was in the December Issue of radiouser; and the An-26 below was in the Autumn edition of Propliner, along with the An-12 picture from a few blogs back

After having been in the local Artist supply shop in Ayr a few times I decided to purchase a selection of Letraset artist marker pens. I've wanted to give proper line and colour Manga a go for a while so thought these would be ideal to start to learn how. After only a small bit of experimentation I came up with the finished picture below. It's 99% marker pen and paper; but I did scan it into Photoshop just to tidy it up a bit. I hope you like it

Rally Vincent by ~ATCManch on deviant ART

So, an early start at work tomorrow means it'll be an earlyish night tonight; hopefully I'll be asleep at midnight and the beginning of 2011

Cheers

Tony

Boring few weeks

2010-11-18T20:29:00.000Z

Well its been over two weeks since my last blog and I'd like to say lots has happened - but it hasn't

My new HD Camcorder arrived as expected but I really haven't had much of a play with it. The weather hasn't been that good to get out and about; and I've been fairly busy with work and other things that has got in the way a bit. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be able to give it a good testing.

As I said, the weather has been pretty bad. Plenty of windy 60mph+ days and lots of rain made for a couple of interesting days; especially when the sea got pretty high out the front - I live right next to a harbour. It was just inches from being high enough to get over the harbour wall.

Luckily the wind didn't damage either my VHF/UHF or SBS antennas attached to the chimney so everything is normal there; but my attempts at creating another VHF/UHF antenna didn't end up too well. I appear to have lost all skill in soldering and couldn't get anything to stick together. After hours of trying I've just given up - at this rate it would start to get more expensive building my own than buying a prebuilt one. So I'm going to look into getting one online sometime soon - probably at the same time as getting a Bearcat UBC800XLT

The HF listening has been good. In fact I tend to listen to that more than anything at the moment. Plenty of stuff has been heard with Shanwick; and I was able to catch a couple of B52s getting refuelled a couple of weeks back. I've been able to rig up my MVT7100 to a spare length of co-ax and the reception with this is good enough that I can listen to two HF freqs at the same time

There really isn't much else to say about the last few weeks. Because of the weather I haven't taken any photos so there's nothing to do with the website, although I am planning to go through some of my older images to add them. Now the evenings are darker it will give me something to do. I'll probably get on with some more art too.

Thats if I'm not online playing Call of Duty - Black Ops :-)

Star gazing

2010-11-01T12:46:00.003Z

I wonder what makes us do things? You know, you set out to do one thing; and that leads to another; and that leads to another

I can't even remember how I ended up standing in the freezing cold, at night, camera at the ready waiting for the International Space Station to fly past but the other night that's exactly what I was doing.

I've never tried taking pictures of satellites/Space Stations before so it was a whole new learning experience and to be honest I didn't get any good results; and to top things off, having waited for over an hour since the previous pass of the ISS (which was seen, nice and bright whilst it travelled over Southern France - not bad from Maidens), a big band of cloud appeared from nowhere and hid it from view. Never mind, it's here all week - although I am in Scotland and so is the cloud

My investigation of tracking the ISS has led me down various routes of looking for satellites; and has made me think about getting software that will let me convert the signals from the NOAA weather satellites into images on my computer. Of course, with the computer I use starting to get maxed out with SBS, Planeplotter etc I'll probably need a new computer. Maybe I'll use my laptop that just sits around doing nothing these days, or revive the old computer that's in a box in the loft. It's also made me think about getting a few more scanners/receivers to listen to some other things and download data - I think I'm getting old :-) I mean it was a saturday night, I should've been out not standing in the garden looking at the sky

Satellite passing through Sagittarius

Jupiter, with one of the moons passing in front of it

I've been listening to a bit of HF recently too; mainly Shanwick, but there has been a bit of activity with B1's and some Quids over the Atlantic. I missed a couple of B52's getting refuelled last night but there were other things to do as usual - and as always it was the house.

Probably the biggest decision I've made this week is to purchase a HD Camcorder. Hopefully it's on its way as I type. I've gone for a Panasonic HDC-TM700. It's had great reviews and I think it'll be exactly what I've been looking for. I've been very happy with my Panasonic point and shoot camera and this is a major step up. I'm sure some videos will be finding their way online soon

And finally, World Airline Fleets News arrived yesterday and there's one of my pictures in there from Prestwick

Come on Scotland

2010-10-27T18:58:00.000+01:00

Before I upset all my new friends in Scotland by slagging off the country I'd like to say that this time last year I was doing 300KPH in a Bullet Train from Tokyo to Fukuoka. Well when I say a Bullet Train, I meant 2 Bullet Trains and an Inter City version from Narita to Tokyo Downtown. Bearing in mind that I travelled on three trains and travelled about 1000 miles, I did it in about 10 hours and not one train was late, not even a minute! In comparison, few weeks later I travelled from Kilmarnock to Manchester, was an hour and a half late and had to stand up for 3 hours because they'd only provided 4 carriages for about 8 carriages worth of people - brilliant.

After my Bullet train journey I then spent 3 days travelling around the South western part of Japan on my own in a car that only had a Japanese Speaking SatNav. But it was brilliant, probably the best part of the Japanese holiday; I went to some great bases, took some great pictures (I think anyway) and had some fantastic experiances. I wish I did this back then to record them all.

So now to piss off my new friends in Scotland :-) I'm sorry but it has to be said, get it off my chest
Do you know that you can do 60mph in a 60? In fact you can probably do 66mph. Why do you all drive at 40mph? and why do you stay at 40mph when you enter a 30mph? It just doesn't make sense. I mean, what time do you have to leave to get to where you're going? I'm sure you probably make up a little time when you're speeding through the 30 bit but not as much as you lose in the 60.

And are you aware there's a recession? So builders, when I organise for you to come round and give me a quote for at least 10 grands worth of work, at least have the decency to turn up. Unlike the 7 organised visits already!! No wonder there's quite a few areas where poverty is a problem up here. If you actually did some bloody work you might actually have some money!! Deliveries seem not to turn up on the day quoted either, a few days late is normal; and post gets left leaning against the letter box as opposed to going that extra few inches through the door - just sheer laziness

But probably the biggest problem up here - litter and dog shit!! You're a proud country, want your independance, fight for your rights etc etc; so why do you ruin your country by dumping rubbish anywhere and everywhere? Do you know that Scotland produces more litter than the whole of Germany? And there's a slight difference in population and size of country. As for the dog shit, well you just seem to think its ok for dogs to shit everywhere, for people to stand in it and for kids to get it all over themselves, get infections and possibly die - come on Scotland!!!

Sigh, now I can dream of Tsuiki and Nyutubaru again

Alarm bells are ringing...........

2010-10-23T16:57:00.001+01:00

......... or not as the case was. When I woke up at 0745 this morning, 45 minutes late for an overtime morning I wasn't sure what had happened. I'd set my alarm and it had gone off, and work had rang to see where I was and not to bother coming in. After a bit of experimentation it turns out the speaker has gone on my Blackberry so I won't hear any calls, texts or alarms. So, a new Blackberry is on the cards shortly. As it turned out, I was needed on the afternoon so I've got my OT money anyway ;-)

I spent most of yesterday creating the LossieJW video and uploaded it to the website and youtube. It seems to have gone down quite well. It wasn't too much bother making it, but I did lose about an hours work at one point for some unknown reason, lucky i'd done a save.

One thing about doing this video, it has made me realise I want to do some more, but I'm going to have to buy a decent HD camcorder. This one was done on my Panasonic point and shoot camera and I really wish I'd had something better.

But, with the recent Strategic Defence Review I don't even know whether Lossiemouth will exist this time next year, so no matter what, I'm going to make a few more trips there with or without a new camcorder

This SDR has really made me wonder what our Government thinks about when they consider equipment for the Forces. They've decided to purchase Airbus A400 to replace C130Js!! Are they mad? Nothing will ever beat the Herc capability wise, but as usual it's jobs for the UK that has made this decision. Why oh why don't they just build C130s at BAe under licence? That way they can get good aircraft, quickly, cheaply (with no development costs) and give jobs to the UK work force. It's the same with the JSF/F35 (or whatever they want to call it these days) instead of building new F18s. If they did this the new aircraft carriers would be equipped as they rolled out instead of floating empty for years.

But no, it'll be over budget and late. Something the Armed Forces of this country are unfortunately used to

I've finally decided to Blog

2010-10-21T16:35:00.000+01:00

After thinking about it for ages I've decided it was time I created a blog page of my own

Now I can whinge and whine, get everything off my chest and no-one has to read or listen to it if they don't want to

So what to talk about today? There's a few things I suppose. Probably the biggest thing on my mind at the moment is that this time last year I'd just flown from 11 days in China over to Japan for another 10 days there. I hadn't forgotten I'd been to China, I loved it there, but it really doesn't feel like its been a year. It hit home last night as I purchased a Chinese take-away, cold and miserable in Scotland.

Normally at this time of the year I'm abroad, somewhere nice and sunny. I was supposed to be in the USA at the moment, and I got a text from Ant yesterday telling me he was just about to get on a JetBlue flight to Orlando and reminding me of the fact. I'm so tempted just to get on a plane and head over there, but money has to go on the house for a while so I have to be sensible for once. I'll save it for March when I'm on leave for pretty much a month.

The other thing to talk about is BT and it's crap internet service. For 6 weeks now i've been running at about 50kbs on broadband, that's worse than via a standard telephone connection. Of course, it's all my computers fault according to them; except the whole street is suffering and has been for a while. But, apparently they are going to replace 450m of cabling in the next week or so just in case!! Not your fault then BT, eh?