Mitch - Soma

Dunno, had two on board for a few years, but they both, at seperate times a year or so apart, just went out one night and never returned. Haven't got any now. They were great fun though, and I do miss them, but am not intending to replace them any time soon. Niether of them were at all pleased when the engine was running and we were cruising, and it was certainly quite a lot of trouble when cruising single handed. Cat's pulling a Houdini at the lock when one is on route to a time-scale, and having to moor up for 3 days waiting for a cat to return can be rather frustrating. Also not sure about the praise thing regarding mice. My youngster - a 2 year old male - would regularly bring a mouse in undamaged, and proceed to drop it on the floor and watch as it shot under the fridge. He would wait patiently for about half an hour for it to come out, eventually give up, and saunter off to find another and repeat the excercise. At one stage I had more mice than a pet-shop!!! He would also bring dead ones in and drop them at my feet. One evening, as I was about to sit down to my tea of stew, he came in with an enormous expired rat and dropped it in front of me. It had obvioulsy put up a fierce struggle, 'cause he had got himself a tatty ear. Well, he turned round and stuck his face in his food bowl, and while he was doing that, I flung the rat and settled down to my dinner. Tiger came back, looked at the floor where he had dropped the rat, then looked at me. I had a face full of stew and was munching away contentedly. He looked again at the floor, then at me, and I swear he grew an inch with pride!!!! He marched out his cat flap with a look of great determination - and I didn't see him for 3 days! Reckon he was after a buffalo or giraffe, or something somewhat more challenging than a mere cat sized rat! He eventually returned home somewhat worse for wear, and humiliatingly empty handed. After a good feed and sleep in front of the fire, he got up and decided to take the short-cut out of the side hatch instead of going all the way to the back to use the cat-flap. Unfortunately I had turned the boat round while he was on his hunting escape, and he ended up taking a flying leap into the middle of the cut. He immediately came straight back in, gave up on the world and just decided to stay in bed for a few days. Yep, I DO miss them..............

Paid £1.400.00 for an Envirolet in 2004 - have had it six years and it has NEVER made any "proper" compost. Just gave up and dig whatever is in it out when it's full. Never again. In the process of trying to make it work, over and above the additional peat moss, hemp chaff and a zillion other compost "accelerators", I eventually ended up with 3 x 12v fans in the breather pipe - still no joy - I gave up! Next time will be quite different I can assure you. If you want a composting loo, best thing is a bucket from the pound shop - could have bought 1,400 of them for what I paid for the existing bucket.......

I have 2 x bulbs in parallel - ensures that the alternator gets enogh go to fire the excitor and if the main bulb fails, a quick look in the 'leccy cupboard shows if it's a bigger problem than just the main bulb.

Not near London Paddington Arm - have been monitoring 24/7 since the topic. Did expect at least something due to Cavalcade - Little Venice this weekend, but absolutely nothing water related - only a couple of builders. Absolutely zip on Ch. 16 C.B. also, barring our own little crowd.

An alternative view - are you sure 200 odd litres was put into the tank in the first place? I have a diesel fire and a 600 litre tank. Figured I had about 50 litres in the tank, was on my secured moorings and didn't go anywhere - definitely no "theft " from the tank. Put in 160 litres - all the supplier had - this is then over two hundred. At maximum clout on the fire I use 12 litres a day, so at least 14 days worth. Didn't go anywhere, didn't run the engine, and ran out of diesel in 4 day's. "Theft" wasn't from the tank - it wasn't put in in the first place! I just paid for it............

Wiiawaw, Thanks for clearing that up - I do agree that hold-up's as you suggest would indeed be "ships business", but would it be legal for a chandlery/boat yard to install a base station on land? I could imagine that a call for breakdown assistance could be construed as ships business, likewise, would it be legal to have one in a mobile mechanics vehicle? Obviously the port authorities do have land-based base stations, but would this be restricted to only the authorities, I wonder? Mitch. P.S. Further tests yesterday from a boat mounted radio/aerial to the 27 meg Maycom portable being carried into the high street were absolutely dismal. Approximately 500 yards through buildings, only fractionally better than standard 446 units. The Maycom worked surprisingly well along the tow-path to the same boat install, but in the built up area it was atrocious, am confident VHF would have way better penetration.

Thanks for your input Tidal. Judging from the various posts, it would appear that quite a few people don't really understand what I am proposing. If you want only personal comm's for locking through etc, or very short range, boat to boat within sight, then yes - PMR446 is the way to go. My proposal is not a long range replacement for internet/mobile phone, nor necessarily a replacement for PMR446. I am looking to over come some difficulties I have experienced living aboard. Our first problem was, to often frankly, turning up after an hours journey to the Elsan, only to find a nice little notice telling us it's currently out of order - there are no facilities at the moment for a local authorities office to inform all craft within a few miles of the office of things like this. I have, while cruising, turned up at a services for fuel/coal/gas, only to find that they are out of stock - many more examples of short-range - a few miles - can be given. The "network" I am proposing is only required to cover a few miles in the immediate vicinty - 4 miles on a boat is an hour away - that's more than enough. For myself personally, I would find it extremely useful if - wherever I was on the canal system - we had decided that we would move up to the facilities tomorrow but later that day my radio went off with an "all Call" from the local office informing us that the local facilities had a problem and would only be repaiared Monday". We could just stay put until the next message saying all was repaired. When waiting for the "coal boat" - how many occasions have we waited all day, and he turns up tommorow morning. He was only 2 miles away, but his delivery was late - a single call to his next stop to say he will only be coming tomorrow would save everybody hassle. Would it not be be nice, when turning up quite late on an unfamiliar visitor moorings, to be able to just "dial" for a take out shop that knows the moorings and has installed a radio specifically to gain boat clients? Quick and easy, make the contact, get his phone number in minutes, phone him and place your order? I think that 27 meg C.B. is ideal for such a system. The latest radio's are tiny, work off 12v and draw milliamps on standby so they never have to be switched off. Selective calling eliminates noise and chatter - you only get disturbed if some-one specifically "dials" you, or a group of boats. Any chandlery, service provider, waterways authority etc can just buy and install with no licence or red tape. Basically, the system could provide for all the things mobile phone/internet doesn't. Mitch..

Am not licensed myself, so would only be able to listen in, but for London, my next door boater neighbour has a V.H.F. Echolink station operating from his boat - M0GPQ. Am sure he wouldn't mind it being used for the weekly net - will ask if it would help. Mitch.

Excellent Martin - just remember to use Ch.8, ctcss 0.

I bought 20 x Energy 100 a/h, sealed for life - 88 quid each in 2007!!!! They were really lucky to give me 50 a/h each from new, and died to about 5 a/h each within a couple of month's. I have been living on a total of 100 a/hr's for the last two years - never again!!!! First set were Elecsols - 90 to 110 a/h advertised, gave me a reasonable 100 a/h each, cost £69.00 a piece in 2004 and lasted me over 3 years. Reckon I killed them, since I couldn't be bothered checking the water levels.......... Next time will be Rolls batteries, but only when I have enough charge to look after them - no point in decent batteries and then just murdering them by flattening them every day. Golden rules - never charge/discharge at more than 15% of the amp-hour capacity - 300 amps of alternators on 20 batt's and 1 x 3Kw inverter on 20 batts, 15 amp max charge and discharge per unit, never discharge more than 50% or so, (I think about 12.3 volts when measured AT THE BATTERY!) and keep the electrolyte levels topped up, your batteries will probably give you 4 or 5 years of good service - even el cheapo rubbish ones! Mitch.

Yes Nick, I am biased towards 27 Mhz - as far as I know, the Citizens Band Radio Service is the only group of 40 frequencies, 80 in the U.K.), which one can legally use for any purpose, on land or water, vitually un-restricted, licence free, no certificate required, where you are allowed 4 watts power, any equipment (hand-held, mobile, base), external aerial equipment from mobile to huge base aerials, etc, etc. PMR 446 is restricted to 300 Mw, no external aerial, 8 Ch.s only - (forget the DCS/CTCSS they are NOT Ch's, only masks). The authorities have been so lax regarding PMR 446 that now - in London anyway - it's almost un-usable. So many two-way radio dealers seem quite happy to provide 25 watt base-stations and mobiles programmed to the PMR 446 frequencies that the congestion is un-believable! Just drive round London with a mobile and aerial and you will soon see what I mean. I firmly believe that the C.B. service allows far more options than any other license free band, hence my bias. Done properly, 4 watts at 27 Mhz can produce very satifactory results - I know, I ran a car-phone service on it In South Africa before mobile phone!!! Genuine!!! Mitch.

Nick, Have played with the Maycom - yea, a bit big when hooking up the "charge adaptor" and batt. pack. Range was well above expectation, hand-held to a boat install with a springer mag-mount was about 60% of that achieved from two installs, both with springers. (Springer is a metre long whip with "air" coil base load). Maycom was on re-chargeables, so power output was down, but the comm's were bi-directional, ( Maycom weak to the boat, vice-versa was true), so I put it down to the aerial. Size-wise no comparison to PMR 446 - a real brick if you want to compare, but not bad for a 27 Mhz unit. Nice bit is that one can strip off the batt. pack and aerial etc, plug it into 12v and a proper aerial, and you have a full-blown 4 watt radio with equivalent range, which is not (legally) do-able on 446. Regarding selective calling, am having quite a bit of trouble with R.F. bailing into the DTMF mic's when hooking the radio up to a rubbish mag-mount. Works fine on a proper fixed mount install, but a mag-mount just corrupts the tones and hangs the PTT on - all sorts of mayhem. Am struggling to suppress the mic's, might even have to go for more expensive, better quality - but we shall see.... So far, the decoders are working a treat, right down to .3 uv, a pretty noisy signal on C.B.! We are doing a load more work on the decoder software and should have a really neat unit in a couple of weeks time, different alerts for individual and group calls, PTT reset of call alerts and led etc, etc. Six demo units are out and about around London currently, but will hold back on doing any more until the new software comes and have sorted out the mic problems. Regards, Mitch.

Sorry Roger and everyone else - all the above is true, but I only qouted the prices to show that you don't have to pay over the top. I fully support PMR446 as well. Yes, I am dealing in radio, but this is honestly not a sales pitch for myself - I genuinely would like to see a useful radio system get going for the canals, but as you say, the threads do seem to attract only radio buff's - this is totally not what I intended. I do apologise - certainly no offense intended, so I will now withdraw from posting in the general section on this topic. Radio enthusiasts - please P.M. me or email directly soma.home@i12.com and I will happily continue discussions away from the forums. The same goes for anyone wishing to supply and install radio's, I will gladly provide whole-salers details - you can deal with them directly. I am not doing this as a get rich quick scheme, much more important to me is to get a system actually working for the benefit of all. Thanks for all the input so far, Mitch.

O.K., o.k. I haven't got it yet, but the size of the Maycom, looking at the pic, appears to be really small compared to the old bricks you used to get as a "hand-held" 27 meg. The aerial is really small, but I did have experience of something called a Hygen 55 a good while back and was surprised at how well the aerial worked in comparison to the "rubber duck" type aerials commonly supplied then. The aerial on the Maycom looks remarkably similar, so am holding thumbs. If you take the battery pack off the Maycom and plug it into 12v, and connect an external aerial, the thing becomes the size of a large microphone, and will still have the range of a fixed 4 watt radio. The Maycom is also both E.C. and U.K. frequencies, or 80 ch. I can let you have a Maycom for £70.00 inclusive of V.A.T. A straight forward TTI TCB550 multi-band radio and reasonably good mag-mount aerial for £70.00 and a full DTMF mic, DTMF decoder installed radio and aerial for £180.00. Yes, I still make a small profit - it's not neccessary to pay the much higher prices qouted by some retailers. P.S. London is starting to go - will have the 9 th full blown DTMF radio installed by next week. For those who know the London area, range tests so far from Scrubs Lane, (close to the Kensal Vistor Moorings) - boat to boat - have worked to Little Venice and the Junction Arms pub in the opposite direction - about 2 to 3 miles either way. The noise floor at Scrubs Lane is around 12 Micro-volts, 24 times above the sensitivity of the average reciever tested - so to hear anything at all here the recieved signal has to be at least 20 times stronger than if there was no noise at all. I don't know if this is perculier only to my location, (5000 cars in stock over the fence, all with alarm systems), or if it is the general noise floor for London - or even the U.K. - further investigation is required! Mitch.

Have just ordered a Maycom hand-held, looks to be the dogs b*****s as a "walkie-talkie" - at 4 watts and 27 meg, should make PMR446 look like the kiddie's toy's that they are! Will come back to you once proper tests have been done. Mitch.