Tugger

Lee, I never did get to take up the offer of having a sit in your fox... however I feel that if I had I would still be there now trying to get out. Bearing in mind your neighbours, you were parked almost next to a dutch(I think) chap who had various bits for sale and also a stall, I don't suppose you know him? as is always the case I'm kicking myself I didn't buy something at the time I wish I had.

I have to say the tent proximity although close in some cases isn't even close to that of major festivals, Glastonbury & Latitude for example, where you physically cannot pass between tents. With refrence to the accident in Monkton's Meadow, the kids on the outfit (four of them) were pissing around and even thought they'd try and pass behind a reversing tank :nut:. They succesfully managed a sliding turn in one direction and then tried it again and failed resulting with the outfit overturning. One of the lads did suffer a what appeared as a broken arm as it overturned, however it wasn't an open fracture. (we need to be careful of passing on information that can become exagerated... before we know it, it could be blown out of proportion) Just think about the quantity of seriously big stuff moving among the public, then consider that the accident involved four immature kids in an open field and no other vehicles. No matter where you go you're going to get a stupid element that deserves to be removed from the gene pool. In my opinion with the quantity of vehicles and numbers of people 99.9% of attendees are more than responsible. Of a more concerning matter was that when the on site emergency number was called it went through to answerphone. After saying that though. the loos wern't as terrible as before (where I was at least) and I will certainly be going back.

Got back home yesterday from W&P (the radiator held up...thanks for the advice Mike) Sad I had to leave early but work beckoned However, a b****y fantastic time was had with dashes of hillarious loonacy:-D, and really enjoyed meeting up with everyone. Special thanks to Mike, Vince, Mark, James, Chris, Nick and everyone else in the camp for being brilliant hosts. I hope you all have a cracking weekend. Now off to photobucket to upload the hundreds of pics.

Right...that's the tent re-waterproofed,so hopefully the sun will no doubt shine and it'll have been a waste of £28's worth of Fabsil and 3 hours.

Nice to see Hoa Hakananai' making an appearance this year.:-D (Someone's been listening to 'A History of the World in 100 Objects')

I was a little worried at the weather outlook yesterday as Metcheck had it down to rain pretty much every day, however it now looks somewhat better. Check the link below for updates http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/FREE/14days.asp But knowing the British weather, I'm still off to Blacks to buy a tin of Fabsil for the tent.

That really surprises me, I've never been able to arrive before the Tues and I've turned up on the Wed of the show in the past and been let in without issues, admitedly I don't have a fleet of vehicles and it took a little while to find a corner of somewhere but invariably someone's always been kind.

Out of experience, HMRC will query any reason to accept duty on red diesel as there should not really be a need to use it on the road, the only time I've known of it was during the fuel strike all those years ago when a couple of folk at work used it to get about and had to cover themselves legally if they got stopped.

Sorry a bit O/T but if one ever came up for sale and I had the cash, a PBR mkII would look stunning moored under or near the metal bridge there. Theres loads of undergrowth to recreate an Apocolypse Now scene. (I've even gone so far as to check navagability up to that point )

It's pretty much all been covered already but to clear up the marine side of it if anyone's interested, Red diesel is still available and is sold to private and commercial vessels. Private vessels are allowed to declare how much will be used for propulsion and hence dutied at a higher rate. They are allowed to declare a percentage to be used for heating or running generators, this is at the old rate of duty as it's classed for heating not propulsion. We (the supplier) then have to send in these declarations to HMRC at the end of the month and thet will follow up any as they wish...which they haven't and I doubt ever will. Commercial vessels are still allowed to buy and use red diesel as before (ie at the lowere duty rate) but must declare in the same way as above that they are commercial users and we again send in these declarations. On the road (again as mentioned previously) you may use red diesel to power a road vehicle as long as road duty has been paid at your local HMRC office where they will issue a certificate to that end. Then don't leave home without it!

Booked in and looking forward to meeting up with some of you I had the good chance to meet last year. May the sun shine.

It was all coming together rather well if I say so myself and it wasn’t long before a slap of paint was going to be required, naturally grey would play a major part in the colour scheme as would some primer red as antifouling below the waterline. I found other little bits and pieces at the model shop, like lifebuoys, radars, guard rails and stanchions and flag staffs. Other bits I made, like the Hiab crane, its control pedestal and sonar buoy on the starboard side, I designed the markings and had them custom made by a mate who got hold of the waterslide paper. Time then for the official launch (although I haven’t got those pics… trust me she was dressed overall for that occasion) This is her second outing finished… Thank you for allowing me this indulgence…I hope you enjoyed it half as much as I did making it.

I thought I'd post my effort up here. Many...Many years ago a mate at work had a 4ft fibreglass hull hanging around and decided he was never going to get round to doing anything with it. He very kindly gave it to me and the original intention was to fit a petrol chainsaw or strimmer engine into it and make some sort of racing replica. However years passed and it languished in my parents barn and it wasn’t until much later that I relieved them of it (rather they said take it or it’ll get chucked out). I had since got into military machines and whilst passing a model shop I saw some rather spangley 5 blade brass props… those…I thought, would look rather smart on that boat hull. So the seed was sown. The decision was made to run twin electric motors, water-cooled with a switch able pump. I wanted motors to be individually controlled so one could run forward whilst the other ran astern (just like in real life!) plus rudders…the whole thing would be as nimble as a …nimble thing. After a fair bit of fudgery and bathtub testing I had the positions of the motors, shafts rudders and battery worked out, then over a period of weeks they all went in. When seaworthy, I took the hull down to the local boating pond for sea trials… bareback if you will. Well that seemed to go pretty well. Now about that superstructure… I’d always fancied myself as a bit of a naval architect, so with some ideas’ borrowed’ from various ships I set to work drawing…sorry designing. I used the technically accurate method of using a profile picture (the first of the previous ones in fact) and sketched on it the sort of shape I was after…as it was I knew the length of the hull so working out the scale was easy…ish. Out then came the cardboard and gaffa tape and the first pattern for the superstructure took shape. The eagle eyed of you may notice some plastic parts creeping in already…these parts were handily available early and helped form the design, such as: The ventilation brick standing in for the rear exhaust. The Pledge top, pipe and Superglue top for the Bofors style gun. And the two halves of a compass cover stuck together to make the radar array. I was happy with the result of my crash course in naval architecture and so the whole thing was transposed on to plastic card and during the many weeks and months it took shape. Time I think for another test run… It floats! It moves! and the little lights come on! Boy I was happy. Extra little bits finding their way on at this point were: 4 hose connectors for the missile tubes and carrierbag hangers as crosstrees... cont...

Might be a bit late now but for info anyway. That's a very shallow draft for the size of boat. When referring to 'deep draft' boats you would normally be talking about large commercial shipping that need about 15' of water to float. Motor boats primarily come in two styles of hull; plaining (one that will lift the boat higher when at speed reducing drag) or displacement (one that will just shove the water aside). On the whole motor boats (of sensible size... up to about 45') seldom have drafts exeeding 6'. Even the Severn Class Lifeboat doesn't exeed that at 57' long (and they cram all the running gear below the waterline to help with the self righting)

Yes I remember it too, I've got some pics somewhere. They had it in the arena and showed how the prop deployed... on a long beam over the top and into what would be the water so it would in effect pull the craft rather than push.

I was trying to find out some further info, but my 'source' is unavailable at the moment. If you know the area, you may know of the old steel fishing boats up at Ipswich docks. Apparently, the guy who owns the Alligator was going to cut them up and use it to ferry the steel down river to Pin Mill where it would be loaded on to lorries for scrap. However I was told that Ipswich Port Authority who police the upper reaches of the river were not happy about it considering it's speed, manouverability and amount of commercial shipping it would have to avoid. No doubt the residents of Pin Mill would have been none too happy with lorries up and down the lane taking away the scrap either.

It's at Pin Mill just down the river from me. I know why it is/was there too.

Well, as and when you need to sell the WMIK to finance the next project, you'll be sure to let me know :cool2:

I've only got a narrow track so my measurements won't help, but If I needed to remake mine (which I do...and soon) I'd use the internal buck dimensions taking off about an inch from around the edge, the batton used is about 1"x1/2", you know from the pic how many lengths needed, a bit of maths later will give you the spacing and total length of batton required, throw in a selection of galvanised or zinc nails and Bob's your uncle. I would suggest using pressure treated or tanalised wood as this will see off the rot for much longer.

I'm a little confused, As far as I see it, donating to one charity does not exclude you from donating to another. Whilst I agree that Children in Need is quite close in date to Rememberance day I managed to stick a few quid in for a poppy and also managed to chuck in some to Pudsey too. I would dissagree that the poppy appeal does not get the publicity that CiN does, Throughout October and into November I'd defy you to spot a BBC (or for that matter other tv) presenter without a poppy and since CiN is a BBC based charity it stands to reason they're going to make the most of the medium. It's a little unfair to band Help for Heroes in with these two as H4H is a continual fundraiser without a base date, that's raised close to £32m in just over two years... frankly brilliant. CiN manages admitedly more per annum at £21m last year, but it's been going for 30 years. As for celebrity endorsers, are The Sun, Princes William & Harry, Michael Caine, Jeremy Clarkson, Ross Kemp, James Blunt & Simon Cowell not big enough? Sure, more is better but I would hardly call it low profile. I'm not having a go at any of the above, I am astounded however that one can feel that it's a one OR the other scenario. As an addendum Sir Tel, waived his £9000 fee for the 2007 CiN in question which was originally paid by the BBC and not charity funds. (agreed not that he should have charged in the first place).

Was it a LCA that was for sale on Milweb in France last year? It needed a restoration but it was all there shape-wise, the metal work was present but I don't know about the engine. With ply construction it would have been be a breeze to restore.

With Iceberg lettuce?... Ah, that'll be my coat...

And still they couldn't get the bloody thing right...:rotfl: Admitedly it had only been in circulation for 4 years. Anyone else spot the 'deliberate wrongness' of it? I may be also completely off the mark, but the Jack was/is only flown whilst at anchor or in harbour, otherwise the white ensign would have been in use. So why was the Jack flown in battle? :??? Wikipedia, (the font of all that is not quite right) says the white ensign was certainly being used in that period .

In which case I whole heartedly appologise...Sorry...please feel free to delete this. haha

I'm all prepared to be flamed so please don't hold back, but it seems to me that there is an amount of sweeping under the carpet going on. Now I'm not the most regular poster and there are times when I've been away and like to catch up...I know there are a lot of site lurkers who read more than post and ocasionally chirp in. So imagine my surprise when I got he chance to do a bit of catching up and found a thread disappear from right infront of my eyes. Whilst I am aware that there may be reasons that individual posts may need to be moderated... hence the need for moderators, the wholesale removal of threads seems a little Stazi-esque. I'm sure I'm not the only one who after being away for a bit might be surprised to find one of the sites most prolific posters no longer around and might like to know why, rather than have any explanation spirited away. It's as if nothing ever happened. We're all grown up enough to realise that no one sees eye to eye at all times, to ignore that is blinkered. An extreme analogy might be... "That Hitler chap's doing all sorts of nasty things to the Jews and upsetting the Government in Germany" "Really? What happened?" "Nothing... It's ok...we won anyway" Not all information is happy and jolly, but to ignore it is worse. I am a member of a car forum where all editing rights are removed, you type it, you post it, it stays! so you'd better mean it. Very little moderation takes place because very little is needed, everyone is well aware of the ramifications of errant posts... there are of course heated discussions... but that's all they are, they don't last long. Very few leave the site, you just get a better idea about what individual members are passionate about. Sorry rant over....I still love you all though