Bells and more trains

I have finally installed my Christmas present -- a duck doorbell.






I went to another railway exhibition with a friend last Saturday. These were large models for garden railways at a scale of 16mm to 1 foot or about 1:19 of full size. The exhibition was nearby at Stonleigh Park near Coventry. It was a very pleasant day out. There were many very detailed locomotives and rolling stock with many models of Irish narrow-gauge railways. It seemed strange to me, however, that the models of buildings and people were more like caricatures in contrast to the fine detail in the train models. In particular the stonework on many buildings was much too deeply grooved. When you look at a real stone or brick building, including those that are a couple of hundred years old (there are plenty of examples around here) the surface is almost smooth between the stones or bricks, and if you reduced everything to 1/19th of its size it would be perfectly well modelled by a flat printed surface. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos to illustrate the point.

Trains and Wales

I went to the London Festival of Railway Modelling last Saturday at Alexandra Palace. What a treat. As well as the place being spectacular there were so many wonderful models.




My favourite was a very small 00 gauge layout called Wansbeck Road. The landscaping was so very natural with a lot of trees giving a very rural look. The picture is a little blurry due to camera shake as I was not using the flash. The flash made the trees look very flat and unrealistic.






On the train on the way to London we passed a building with two vertical axis wind turbines, one of which was stationary. I must say I like the look of it and the simplicity of the concept - it does not matter which direction the wind is blowing from.




When I got home Saturday evening I discovered someone is interested in buying my catamaran so I set off for Holyhead on Sunday to see how it had survived the winter. This is the first winter that I was not living on it so I was a bit apprehensive about its condition. However I was delighted to find that the interior was perfectly clean and dry and the engines started without any trouble. Hopefully the buyer will like it when he sees it.





Sunday was a lovely fine day so I decided to go to Holyhead on the A5 over the Welsh mountains. The last time I tried that route it poured rain so it was hard to appreciate the scenery. Anyway on Sunday I made a short detour to see the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct which I hope to cross in Leopard at some stage.







Then towards the top of the mountain pass I came across a recue helicopter flying in the valley well below the leve of the hills. Of course it always takes so long to get the camera ready that you miss the shot you were aiming for.

A name and a fish

I've finally painted a name on my boat. And I have been able to get a picture of the whole boat, now that it's in its new berth.










Before Christmas we noticed a large fish was sleeping (do fish sleep? - well it was stationary, but not dead) in a shallow edge of the marina with its back and dorsal fin actually out of the water. The fish is a good 500mm long with a large girth. Someone said it is a mirror carp.

Interestingly it is back again, and this morning there was another fish alongside it. The other fish was not quite so long and was very slender with a long snout. I wonder if it was a young pike. Just after I got my first photograph it suddenly disappeared in a cloud of mud.

I find it difficult to get a good photo through the glare of the water surface, even though they seem easy to see with the naked eye. These pictures have been tinkered with using PaintShopPro to make the fish as visible as possible.

New view

I have moved to a new berth which is a longer walk from the marina facilities but has a wonderful view.

And I have officially changed the boat name to Leopard. The next problem is to put the name on it. Thankfully the old name (Arkansas) was not on it and does not have to be removed.

Electricity

I have just finished installing my Sterling Alternator to Battery Charger and my Sterling Power Management Panel.

The Alternator to Battery charger (A2B) is a clever device that tricks the alternator into producing more output in order to charge the batteries faster. It does this without any modifications to the alternator. And you can connect two alternators to it provided their total output is less than the max for the A2B.

The Power Management Panel (PMP) is a device that measures voltage and current and can calculate the number of amp-hours drawn from your battery. (These are pics from Sterling's website - the PMP is much smaller than the A2B).



A few months ago I installed a Sterling pure sine wave inverter-charger to keep my batteries topped up while I am connected to the marina shower power. The inverter-charger works very effectively as an uninterruptible power supply as it automatically starts generating 230v ac from the batteries if the shore power fails. I proved that it works by accidentally overloading the shore power which then tripped off. However I did not notice until the inverter started beeping because it was overloaded. The 2.5kW inverter continued providing over 3kW until I switched off one of my electric appliances. I presume it would eventually have shut down.

The purpose of all this electrical equipment is so I can enjoy 230v ac when I am not attached to shore power. To test my new installation I switched off the shore-power and turned on a fan heater. With the boat engine running it was comfortably able to provide 1kW and spare amps to continue charging the battery. As 1kW is 83 amps at 12v (and more when you allow for inverter inefficiency) it was clear that both 70 amp alternators were contributing. When I turned the heater up to 2kW the alternators could not cope and there was about 75 amp drawn from the batteries. However at that rate I should have enough battery capacity for about 2 hours usage, and I can't imagine wanting as much as 2kW for more than a few minutes a any time. (Needless to say I have no intention of driving the fan heater from the inverter - it was just used for test purposes.)

My main 230v demand will be a microwave, fridge and washing machine. I bought a regular 230v fridge/freezer rather than pay the exorbitant price for a 12v fridge.

I have installed the A2B so that I can re-wire the system back to its original state easily. I must write down how to do it while I still remember!

I also installed the inverter charger so that I can connect the shore power through the inverter-charger (the normal day-to-day situation) but I can also connect the shore power straight into the domestic 230v circuit.

I intend to put some sort of indicator in the saloon/kitchen area so I can easily see whether the shore power is working - so that I don't inadvertently use battery power.

It's in the back of my mind to have a mains socket in the boat that draws directly from the shore-power and never from the inverter. It would be useful, for example, to avoid accidentally heating water with battery power.

IKEA Ugh!

I visited IKEA in Coventry yesterday. I had never been to an IKEA store so I just went along to see if the hype is justified. All went fine while I toured the 6th (showroom) floor. After doing the full circuit back to the lifts I assumed I had seen all there was to see, but there seemed to be no exit. I asked one of the staff who said I had to go down to the next level. The stairs was nearby so off I went, only to discover lots more stuff on floor 5. However I quickly got tired of looking at stuff but I couldn't see any obvious exit. I followed the arrows on the floor for a bit, getting quite angry at this waste of time. Another member of staff pointed me through doors (by-passing some of the shop) to the top of a long 4 section escalator which just brought me to another floor. But at least there was now a lift nearby. After the usual delay the lift arrived - but it only went UP. I was really furious at this stage and had to ask a third person how to get to the exit. I told her I wouldn't be back just because it is so difficult to leave. I think it took about 15 minutes for me to calm down.

Evolution

I'm re-reading "The Ancestor's Tale" by Richard Dawkins. I have a very poor sense of the passage of time - for example did I do something last week or three weeks ago? Nevertheless it is mind-boggling to try to think about something that happened 18 million years ago (when humans and gibbons shared a common ancestor). And this is only a short distance into the book. It's a long book so I'm not sure if I will read it through completely for a second time.








Prior to this I re-read "The Selfish Gene". It seemed appropriate as this is the bi-centenary of Charles Darwin's birth. The selfish gene is a must-read for everyone so that we appreciate our place in the world.