Week of 2nd September, 2013

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Monday, 2nd September

New fortnight starts today, more 10s.

And, as such, I'm mostly checking short-form material. There isn't much.

But there are problems with preparing HD programmes. Which seem to have been resolved by quitting time - seem being the operative word.

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Tuesday, 3rd September

The HD programme problem does seem to have been sorted, so all is back to normal.

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Wednesday, 4th September

I visited my tame garage today, to get an update on Ulysses. And it seems as though considerable of the bolt-on parts of his engine are plastic mouldings. I discovered that the inlet manifold and water pump housing are plastic, as is the timing belt cover, so it was no wonder they were damaged in the overheating episode at Cosford. Also the timing belt seems to be the original, so if they're going to half-dismantle the engine, they might as well change that, too. Ulysses has done about 53,000 miles, and belt life is somewhere in that order, so that belt is near, or at, it's expected life. This won't be cheap, but not as expensive as the dealership.

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Thursday, 5th September

It would seem that Jane's baby buggy has a broken wheel brake. There's a repairer some miles away, so I loaded the buggy into Nyree, and schlepped off. I've got a discount voucher, worth UKP0.05 per litre at any participating Shell garage, and Nyree needs fuel, so I stopped at a local Shell station and filled up - 40-odd litres, and UKP53 later, it's good.

After visiting the buggy repair shop - estimate UKP50, or UKP200 for a new version of the same model, I dropped into my tame garage again. I wanted to get the new rucksack I bought at Dunsfold out of Ulysses' boot. Turns out I probably needn't have bothered - they'd already done 90% of the work, including fixing Helicoils into the 10 cylinder head bolt holes in the block - one of the bolts had stripped a thread in the block, so they decided to do all 10, just in case. I approve - better that than having to lift the head later to fix other bolts. All should be finished sometime tomorrow, but I can't collect until Monday.

But they need the space, so they'll deliver the car to me - or the house, at least - when it's done, and I'll drop in to pay for it Saturday morning, on my way to the UKHAS Conference in Greenwich.

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Friday, 6th September

And Ulysses is back home with me!

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Saturday, 7th September

UKHAS Conference, Greenwich

This is the UK High Altitude Society's annual get-together, to listen to, and discuss, presentations about the art and craft of flying weather balloons and their tracking payloads. Not all such payloads are mere trackers, though - witness Dave Akerman's PIE flights, with balloon-borne Tardises and skydiving teddy bears. As an almost total newbie, I'm hoping to learn a lot.

On the day: And I did learn a lot. Not as much as one might have wished, but still... The outing was marred somewhat by the fact that London Underground decided, in their wisdom, to close the entire Central Line west of White City. Thanks, guys, now I have to change trains 3 times, rather than once.

But before that, I drove up to my tame garage to pay for Ulysses' repairs. And they weren't open. Never mind, Monday will do.

Having got to the Old Naval College, Greenwich, I had a little difficulty finding the Conference - the signage said "1st Floor", but could I find a staircase or lift? Eventually I did, and sat down for a morning of talks on various aspects of the High Altitude Ballooning hobby. And hobby is le mot juste - we none of us make a living out of this.

One of the things I found most amazing was Phil Heron's demo of an SSDV transmitter (for still images from a balloon) running natively on a Canon digital camera, driving the NTX2 70cm trasmitter module directly without any other computing resources. It was a bit unstable, due to battery depletion issues, but as is said of dancing bears, "The wonder is not that it is done well, but that it is done at all." And it was done well - issues with receiver overload (with a FunCube dongle without an aerial) notwithstanding. The process involves the use of chdk, the third-party hack of Canon cameras

After all the talks and demos (and a severe lack of coffee!) most of us adjourned to the next door pub, the Trafalgar Arms. Not much to be said there, it's a pub, large, with a function room upstairs that was in use for a wedding reception. But it had a wide range of good beers on tap, Shepherd Neame Spitfire and Adnams Southwold bitter to name but two. There was much chat and discussion of the hobby, until finally people started leaving. I followed, and discovered that my impression of the Underground closures was overly pessimistic - DLR to Bank/Monument, and then District to Ealing Broadway, my home station, from whence Katy collected me - at her suggestion, not my request.

So a good day. I will definitely attend the next Conference - now graced with the term "International" since we had several overseas visitors and speakers.

I loaded all my travelling traps into the Dunsfold backpack, which worked fine. It's from Kombat..UK Ltd., a UK-based manufacturer of mil-spec kit.

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Sunday, 8th September

Back to work, and it's all FCP packaging. 7 jobs done - all movies. This is, of course, slower - the files are bigger.

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