Week of 21st August, 2017

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Monday, 21st August

Some time ago, some of the add-in calendars I like to have in my Google calendar failed to update, most notably, Julian Day Number and Mayan Long Count, from Webcal.fi. Today, I thought to retry them, and after a small amount of trouble remembering the procedure (hint: it's not automatic - do it manually) they re-added correctly.

So, flushed with success, I tried a few more. EU Week numbers, Moon and Ordinal Day haven't had problems, so they were ticking away nicely. I tried French Republican and Discordian, and both also added fine.

It should be noted here that there are some errors with these calendars. Julian Days are reckoned from midday to midday, thus ensuring that the primary user community, astronomers, are not faced with a date change in the middle of a night's observing, whereas the Webcal version runs from midnight to midnight. Julian Day Numbers are also ionconveniently large for everyday use - 2,457,977 for today, for example. This is defined as the number of days and decimal days since 12:00 UT 4713 January 1, BCE in the proleptic Julian calendar, which is the Julian Calendar extended backwards to times before its introduction. Note the epoch time, that's what makes it useful to astromomers - other people, not so much. The epoch of the Julian Day number is defined as the common start date of three calendar cycles - the Indiction, Solar and Lunar, and is chosen to be conveniently before most well-dated historical events. This coincidence will occur again 7980 years later, in 3268AD, and defines the Julian period.

Because of this, various other forms of day count have been defined - for me, the most useful is the Modified Julian Date, which is JD - 2,400,000.5 - note the 0.5, this alters the base epoch time to midnight UT. Thus, today, August 22nd 2017, is MJD 57,977.

It should be noted that there is another soi-disant "Julian Date", which is defined as <2-digit year>+<day-of-year>. This is more properly known as the "Ordinal Date", today is 17234.

In the Mayan calendar, the 13th b'ak'tun ended on 2012 Dec 21, according to the currently-accepted "GMT Correlation". There is no evidence that the change from 12.19.19.17.19 to 13.0.0.0.0 was anything other than a cause for celebration to the Maya, although various overly-credulous catastrophist groups, and at least one movie, would have one believe otherwise. Remember, each number in those dates is expressed modulo-20, except the 4th, which is modulo-18. This is probably, although I have seen no scholarly analysis, to try to ensure approximate synchronisation with the seasons (18*20 = 360, or, very approximately, one year) By extension, one might assume that the Long count would add another digit of higher significance at the end of the 20th b'ak'tun, so 19.19.19.17.19 would be followed by 1.0.0.0.0.0. This event is sufficiently far in the future (4772 Oct 13th) that we may neglect any calendrical or catastrophic significance.

For that matter, the French Republican calendar is, strictly speaking, undefined since the fall of the Committee of Public Safety, and later, Napoleon Bonaparte. But I find it entertaining to see how the Revolutionary calendar compares with modern conventions.

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Tuesday, 22nd August

To Sarah and Tim's this afternoon, to attempt their router move. I attended with lots of tools in hand - you never know what obscure tool you will need.

First step was to replace the NTE5A faceplate with a filtered one. Even if nothing else works, this will allow the retirement of the cable-mounted ADSL filter. And absent a small problem with an ill-fitting captive plug on the back of the new faceplate it all worked fine. Phone and ADSL bitstream all correct on the two sockets on the front.

Next thing was to run the CW1308 4-core from the NTE5A to near the new router location. I had 15 metres of cable, the run is about 10. And I only need one pair of that 2 pair. I chose the blue/white-white/blue pair and punched it down into the correct IDC terminals on the back of the faceplate with my Krone tool. Route the cable appropriately, and clip it down with the appropriate cable clips, affixed with a hammer, discovering in the process that age has crept up on me, and I can't bend down or kneel down as easily as I could in past years. But Tim came to my rescue - he's younger than I.

The surface mount RJ-11 socket was the last thing - and easily the most difficult. It uses screw terminals for wire termination. Not a terminal strip, but separate terminals, on moulded pillars. And the termimals are unlabelled. I needed to perm any-2-from-4, and because of the style of connection you need to loop the wire round each screw before tightening it. And once I'd established that the red and green wires in the connector are the ones I need, I could mount the box to the skirting board (Merkin: baseboard) behind the cupboard, and connect the wires.

And it worked! So all tested and working. Result! With that knowledge in hand, I could pack up and return home. And did.

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Wednesday, 23rd August

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Thursday, 24th August

We need to start weatherproofing all the new wood outside. So today I excursed to the local B&Q and purchased appropriate jollop for some of it. There's more to get, but later.

I also obtained a new bulb for the security light overlooking the back garden. For future reference, it's an 88mm length R7S 120 watt. Or at least that's the replacement I bought. There is a physically longer R7S bulb, at 118mm, but that won't fit. Indeed, I was worried that I'd got the wrong one. Of course, swapping out the bulb was done during daylight, and the light doesn't work during the day - there's an ambient light sensor. Must test, just in case the old bulb blowing took the fitting with it - it shouldn't have, but you never can tell.

We also need another light over the drive, which I also got - LED this time. But I'm not fitting it - I don't do ladders any more. We'll get the guy who fixed Liz's problems in. Later.

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Friday, 25th August

Today is prep. day for Dunsfold, tomorrow. The celebrations there run over 2 days, but with no Vulcan, attending both seems like overkill. And I have freelance afterwards, a night shift. Attending on Sunday would not be a good idea.

I charged the radios yesterday. I should, perhaps, fit NiMH rechargables in the Uniden UBC3500, rather than the Duracell MN1500s I'm currently using, but that's a future change. Today, I'm packing, or at least setting out, all the stuff I'll be taking. And I'm rationalising the packaging - rather than loose bits, I'm pouching things up inside the Clas Ohlson rucksack.

I need another example of my preferred EDC bag - the Kombat Tactical Small Messenger. I'll see if the retailer I bought it from is at Dunsfold, and check out his stock and prices, with a view to buying from the cheapest source. Amazon have it, too.

That bag is small, at 10 litres, but not too small to be useful - it will hold a Filofax Pennybridge A5 organiser, or a 10 inch netbook computer, with power brick - specifically a Dell Latitude 2100. In normal use, my current bag holds -

in the body, with a couple of microUSB leads, for charging things, in the zippered map pocket inside the flap, and a folding magnifier in the outside zip pocket. It wears a Velcro morale patch (a Welsh Dragon, although that is out of stock as I type) on the Velcro patch on the flap.

I also normally carry the Yaesu VX-8 clipped to the Molle webbing at one end. I could put the Kenwood TH-D7 on the other end, or indeed the UBC3500, but normally don't.

I charged the Tecknet powerbank, too. And then went on a "Charge all the things" blitz, even though most of the "things" will not travel with me tomorrow. It's never a bad thing to keep everything charged.

Festivities start at 10:00 tomorrow. It's likely the best part of a two hour drive, so I need to leave by about 08:00. I absolutely need to be on the flight line by 11:15 for the VC-10 engine run, which I hope will actually be a taxi run. And it would be good to catch the Military Vehicle Parade before that.

Everything I want to see should be complete by 17:00 or so, so I should be home by 20:00 - getting out of Dunsfold Park and onward to Guildford is normally nose-to-tail traffic, so it'll likely take longer than the outward trip.

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Saturday, 26th August

Dunsfold Wings and Wheels

Make that an hour-and-three-quarters, although some of that was spent in a car park, attempting to look up the postcode (Merkin: zipcode) for Dunsfold Park. There are several, and it is recommended that you don't use the front entrance) For the record, I used GU6 8HY, which appears to be a back entrance, and is about 2 miles beyond where the AA signs want you to go.

The lookup was made difficult by the fact that Three appeared to have lost data capability - no lookups worked. But Voda. did, even though I normally prefer not to use them for data, because I have a smaller bundle with them and I'm terrified of using too much - probably unjustifiably so.

Anyway, once I'd got the postcode, the AvMap GeoSat6 GPS guided me there in jig time. Once parked, I loaded up the trolley shopping bag, and schlepped into the display enclosure - admission UKP25, concessionary rate. Full price is UKP28, on-the-day.

First up, the military vehicles parade - more interesting than the various cars rocketing along the runway. Then I walked the vendor line, finding that my tame mil-spec equipment vendor wasn't visible. Nor, for that matter, were Planes TV. But I did find The Hawker Typhoon Preservation Society, and joined up, followed by renewing with the People's Mosquito. And then on to the Vulcan to the Sky stand, where I didn't manage to renew - there seemed to be a degree of chaos there - but managed a very interesting and informative chat with one of the staff about the state of heritage air in this country. The Vulcan people still operate a dedicated enclosure for their members, and I managed to get in, which led to a much better view of the proceedings.

That chat was interrupted by the Brooklands VC-10, ZA150, starting its engines. But that's all it did - no taxi run. I could then settle down to watch everything, with a break for lunch during the second Wheels segment - as previously mentioned, I'm not particularly interested in fast cars zooming down the runway.

The BBMF Spitfire PR19 put on a nice show, as did the B-17 "Sally B", and the Norwegian Air Force Heritage Squadron with their brace of Vampires. The RAF Typhoon was its usual incredibly noisy self, and the Chinook did its usual spectacular display - there's something inherently odd about seeing a massive  (40,000+ pounds weight) twin-rotor helicopter leaping about the sky like a stunt biplane.

The display ended with the Bell UH-1 Huey - the quintessential Vietnam-era helicopter. After that, I packed up and loaded all into the car, before returning to walk the vendor line once more. And this time I found my mil-spec supplier. He had bags in stock, UKP2.50 cheaper than online, so I bought.

I did this in hopes of avoiding some of the departure rush. And succeeded. I was home by about 20:00, after a good day out.

And then on to freelance, where I merely had to monitor 3 already-established feeds. Nothing mush else to say about that, except that the feeds all over-ran, so despite the previously-notified, "It's only a half-shift", it actually ran into full-shift territory.

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Sunday, 127th August

Dunsfold Wings and Wheels

I mentioned the "state of heritage air in the UK" yesterday. From what I understand, it's not good. The Vulcan is, of course, grounded for want of manufacturer support, and VTTS are having difficulties with the new display facility at Doncaster, which seem to be pure bureaucracy - they have planning permission for the new building, but the airport management  seem to want everything tied up with legal red ribbon before anything can be built. Which means that the Trust's Canberra, WK163, is unlikely to be airworthy in time for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Air Force, next year.

That's bad enough, but the Classic Air Force, based at Coventry, has closed on the retirement of its founder, . What will become of its aircraft is, at present, unknown.

Similarly, the Mid-Air Squadron, who flew a Canberra PR9 and a Hawker Hunter, has gone bankrupt. The Hunter has already been sold to a collector in the U.S. The Canberra is still sitting in a hangar at Kemble, racking up storage fees, having failed to reach its reserve price at auction.

And Miss Demeanor, the gaudily-painted Hawker Hunter, is as present  also in the U.S., and is likely to remain there.

There have been problems with Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, as used in early Spitfire and Hurricanes, plus the Lancaster. This probably accounts for the fact that the BBMF was represented yesterday by a single Spitfire PR19 - RR Gryphon-engined. That said, Hangar 11's Hurricane IIB and a P-51D displayed - both Merlin-powered, albeit the Mustang's engine is Packard-built.

On the way home from Dunsfold yesterday, I wanted to get Ulysses washed, but the hand car wash facility I normally patronise was closed. I'll have to try again - tomorrow, maybe.

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