IanD
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Posts posted by IanD
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1 hour ago, dmr said:
Yes, we are full length so the front is right up against the top gates. There are actually very few locks where the water comes out far enough to get over the foredeck into the well deck, but we have small scuppers so when it does happen its bad. Only had one really nasty moment in the last 14 years, and that was last year on the Rochdale.
Evesham lock is a bugger, have to be brave and wind the gate paddles up really quickly to get over the initial upward squirt problem.
With worse maintenance and leaky gates it's happening more often though -- I've seen bow waterfalls on the Rochdale, C&H, L&L to name but a few... 😞
(and it's one reason I went for an enclosed bow where this isn't a problem)
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3 minutes ago, magnetman said:
Not everyone is proficient with rope handling. I use the lightermans hitch on this situation but someone -will- wrap their rope around the top in a figure of 8 and if they get it wrong and it jams then out comes the bollard.
these things have to be designed to deal with clueless people of which there arrr many.
It is when someone uses such a bollard to strap a Boat from moving that the problem occurs. If these are for moorings which are not part of a stop start manoover like locking or moveable bridges then it is less of a problem.
They look pretty terrible but thats common lots of things look terrible. They'd stick out like sort thumbs on such a well designed canal system.
The article did say they were for accessible moorings, not strapping a boat to a halt... 😉
Plenty of the usual CART-bashing from people seemingly unable to read or try and understand why these might actually be useful for people less able than themselves, not exactly unsurprising... 😞
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Costs £3300, weighs 25kg without battery, 36kg with battery...
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10 minutes ago, magnetman said:
Thats going to want to be very well anchored into the ground. Too much leverage when someone throws a loop around the top of it.
Crap.
Whoever thought it up must have seen bollards on tugs and not realised that they are extended through the deck to a reinforced framework on the hull.
It will get pulled out in five seconds how are they intending to fix it and what to ? If it is a large piece of concrete its going to make a big hole when someone wraps a line onto it with a 20 tonne Boat still moving and the rope binds.
Blindingly obvious though, and not exactly news to CART either... 😉
“Of course, the bollards will have to be installed very firmly on a deep foundation into the ground to counter the extra leverage force that will be applied at a higher level. This needs to be factored into the final design, which has been developed by Marcus Chaloner, the Trust’s head of placemaking and design.
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On 26/09/2023 at 00:57, Hudds Lad said:
Well you would, it was a joint venture between Ford and VW, think there was a SEAT shared the same platform too
There was, I had all three over the years -- a VW Sharan VR6, a Seat Alhambra VR6 24V, and a Ford S-max 2.5T with the Volvo 5-cyl turbo engine -- the second two in particular were nice to drive and fast enough to embarrass hot-hatch drivers... 😉
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Just now, Tracy D'arth said:
Need a spray sheet or a cratch cover on the Bingley 5! Or you sink!
Or no well deck and/or front doors... 😉
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18 minutes ago, Stroudwater1 said:
Many of these have lockable tow bars and holders. More usual application is for cars/touring Europe. Parking overnight with them attached to the towbar security is noted to be an important part of the set up.
I realise that -- the problem is having them out on view as opposed to hidden away, you might as well have a flashing neon sign saying "Please steal me!"... 😉
The -- possibly mythical -- towpath tea-leaf with a battery-powered angle-grinder or bolt cutters -- or any of the other things bike thieves routinely use to defeat supposedly secure bike locks -- would make short work of them... 😞
(which is exactly what happened to the bikes on a lockable towbar rack just like this, on my mum's motorhome in France)
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1 hour ago, Stroudwater1 said:
There’s the suggestion of bike carriers attached from a towbar off the stern. Covered in the thread below.
I’ve seen quite a few of these arrangements and as a compromise it seems a reasonable option. With bike transportation it seems like there’s a lot of possibilities that suit different people differently .
If any tea-leafs are on the prowl for bikes, this seems a perfect opportunity for them -- much more obvious and easier to nick than a folding bike in either a steel locker or inside the boat... 😉
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2 hours ago, BoatinglifeupNorth said:
And now you’ve told everyone you have a £1k plus Brompton bike in your rear locker, not the brightest of moves I would say😉
Well it was there when I took the photo... 😉
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28 minutes ago, David Mack said:
I seem to recall that someone on the forum had a bike locker built into a newbuild. As I recall it was a semitrad stern with a conventional seat locker on one side and a full height bike locker on the other, with the locker accessed by a door in the stern bulkhead. With handle bars turned through 90 degrees and folding pedals the locker could be quite narrow yet accommodate a standard (non folding) bike. Secure storage, with no need to bring a possibly wet and muddy bike into the cabin. Although presumably a bit difficult to clean (or repaint) the inside of the locker.
That was me, and the locker was designed to fit a Brompton -- and it does, and the locker is just the right height to perch on while steering... 🙂
A towpath has to be pretty bad to make a small-wheel bike like this unusable -- I had no problems last year with the Brompton anywhere between Sheffield and Anderton, and I've cycled the towpaths for several years in the past on a Moulton with similar wheels/tyres. Yes if it's *really* muddy a bike with bigger wheels and chunky tyres -- like I use regularly near home -- is better, but then you have to find somewhere to stow it, which is no problem given a shed at home but more difficult on a boat.
It's the same issue as with a camera -- yes if you want ultimate quality and are willing to hump it around a DSLR with the appropriate lenses will undoubtedly take better photos, but what matters most is having a camera with you in the first place -- which is why most photos nowadays are taken on smartphones.
A small folding bike like a Brompton is not as good in really bad conditions as a bigger one, but it's a lot easier to fit in and have handy when you need it -- and great for taking on trains and buses on the way to/from the boat. OTOH they're expensive and allegedly are thief magnets... 🙂
Guess what -- usual issue with boats, every solution has good and bad points, you pays yer money and you takes yer choice... 😉
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9 hours ago, cheesegas said:
With a proper LFP install and an external alternator regulator, there's actually less worry from a user perspective about controlling it as the regulator takes care of everything. With a Wakespeed, you can program in an RPM/output power curve so it tapers down the field current as RPMs drop so it doesn't cause the engine to idle too slow and run rough. There's also a temperature sensor which allows for maximum charging current as long as the stator is below a certain temp - once it approaches the threshold, the current is gradually reduced until it finds a medium.
Agreed 100%, done properly with a Wakespeed or similar (and temperature sensor) none of this is a problem 🙂
However many boaters seem to go "'Ow much?!?!" and then try and do it on the cheap, and they have a whole load of potential pain waiting for them as a result... 😞
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1 hour ago, MtB said:
It works fine for me.
Most of the objections seem to revolve around potential future regulations, potential future insurance problems, and potential future FLA buffer failure.
Any or all of which may or may not come to pass in the fullness of time. But in the meantime, press on with what works I suggest.
It works fine for you (and some other vloggers), but I believe you (and they) understand batteries -- LA and LFP -- and charging and what is needed to make the system work and keep them all healthy.
Going by the number of boaters who manage to kill off their LA batteries before their time, many are not technically minded, don't understand any of this and don't take much notice of what is going on with their batteries. They're quite likely to come a cropper one way or another, especially if they just drop-in LFPs to a system with an alternator -- and may end up with prematurely dead batteries, either LA or LFP or possibly both.
The insurance and regulations issue is a separate one, and it remains to be seen what the industry does -- but clearly they disapprove of parallel LA/LFP systems, as do all the battery manufacturers/suppliers. For the time being you're probably OK doing this, though given the LFP suppliers specifically say "don't do it!" it will be interesting to see what happens if something does go wrong with a system like this which results in an insurance claim -- maybe not common today, but it's going to happen sooner or later if more people keep going down this path.
I'm not saying people shouldn't do it, just that they should be aware of the potential problems and what care and maintenance is needed, and keep an eye on the insurance issue... 😉
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4 minutes ago, dmr said:
After Todbrook, new legislation and climate change and wet winters I can't see CRT wanting to take on any new resevoirs, but on the other hand with climate change, dry summers and an ever increasing population it just might be a very good investment.
Some fascinating old channels and sluices up in them hills.
The Rochdale is a bit short of water but its not critical, a bit of water saving and leak fixing would help, but it would be great to see more boats on the Rochdale and this would stretch the current water supply. As Ive said before, one option might be to close the Rochdale in summer to get the maintanence done but try really had to keep it open all winter.
I assume you mean the other way round (close it in winter), since most boaters want to move in summer?
Still doesn't help if the money to do the desired maintenance isn't in the kitty though... 😞
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3 hours ago, davidwheeler said:
I am going to end my contribution to this, with illustrations from the local newspaper, the Express & Echo, showing two of the Services official visits to Exeter. The first, 'Dark Intruder' was built locally at Teignmouth in 1955, and was sold out of the Navy in 1966. One of class of 18 fast patrol boats. Powered by Napier Deltic 18 cyl 2 stroke opposed pistons, she could reach 40 kts. These boats were remarkable by the extent of diesel exhaust fumes and stains, which led to their being painted black instead of Navy grey. Based at Portland at the time of her visit in 1966, she was used as a helicopter rescue launch. The second, HMAFV 2772E came from RAF Mountbatten, Plymouth. An air/sea rescue and target towing launch. I have been told that to the shipwrights entrusted with their well-being, they were known as 68 feet of snarling dry-rot. In calm conditions they could manage 50 kts thanks to their two Sea Griffin piston engines. Four of these engines were fitted in the Avro Shackelton aircraft, the Lancaster successor. Not that sort of speed up the canal, of course, but the snarl was certainly there. I remember it. The sound grumbled up the canal, while the ship was still far out of sight. That won't be repeated.
That is finally it. I hope you enjoyed the pictures.
Going by the railway locos Deltics were light and powerful and howled lustily, but nobody would ever say they had clean exhausts... 😉
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18 minutes ago, jonathanA said:
yes but if your happy living on your boat having an 'industrial' building to store stuff and no doubt it would be perfectly reasonable to have decent welfare facilities in the warehouse/industrial unit.... could be quite attractive, some potential for income if you had a unit or units you could let out, perhaps to a canal related business. Although i suspect the £300K price for less than half an acre would seem to represent a residential development plot price and seems 'optimistic'
I think it's £300k because they're hoping that their waffle about conversion to residential -- unlikely to happen, and even less so for building a house there -- will con somebody into buying it in assuming they can do this. From the posts above, they're going to be disappointed. The estate agent blurb is close to being fraudulent by implying this... 😞
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2 hours ago, matty40s said:
Potential to get rid of those dirty boaters and build a lovely detached property .....
Assuming you get planning permission, obviously... 😉
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11 hours ago, nicknorman said:
What exactly are the requirements? Anyone of engineering competence designing a warning system would not rely on the recipient having a phone, a phone that is on, a phone not selected to “silent” mode, a phone that has a non-flat battery and a phone that is currently running the relevant App.
The requirements are the insurance ones that the BMS should be capable of alerting the steerer/boat owner when things go wrong, not just silently take action -- which means some link to the outside world not a standalone isolated internal BMS.
Many (most?) people nowadays are more likely to have their phone with them than be next to a warning buzzer or flashing light somewhere on the boat, possibly the other side of a couple of closed doors. And if you're not on the boat then a phone can still warn you, assuming remote access.
No solution is perfect and guaranteed to always work, either phone or buzzer/light, there will always be cases where an alert gets missed. The insurance requirement is that the BMS communicates with the outside world to warn of problems; how these are communicated to the boater/owner is a separate problem.
The phone solution has the advantages that the cost is effectively zero and no wiring or warning lights/buzzer need to be installed, so there's nothing to stop lazy people installing it -- and the battery doesn't need CANbus or any connectors adding to it. But if you don't like this, by all means adopt any other solution you want -- however battery manufacturers are unlikely to adopt a hardware trigger solution, cheapo ones will use Bluetooth and expensive ones will use CANbus -- and this is already exactly what they do... 😉
15 hours ago, Roberto Conigliaro said:I see, I wonder though if having to replace a 100ah AGM battery every couple of years still worth the advantages of having the Li on board..
whoever wrote the following has a huge believe in the hybrid
https://www.zwerfcat.nl/en/lithium-hybrid.html
He does indeed, and waxes lyrical about the advantages, while carefully avoiding several potential problems...
The first is that to stop the LA dying of sulphation it's down to the user to deliberately and regularly run charging for long enough that the voltage goes up and the LFP BMS disconnects due to overvoltage, so that the LA can get into the equalisation mode -- and this has to be done for some time, typically at least a couple of hours. You can bet that most can't-be-bothered users won't do this, they'll just run with the LFP providing power most/all of the time, and end up with dead LA batteries.
The second is that this needs to be done regularly to keep the LA healthy, which means the LFP is regularly charged past 100% SoC and (slowly) up to the emergency disconnect voltage, and this by definition is not a state that the internal cells are happy with for any length of time -- going above 100% SoC should only happen in emergencies, not regularly, and battery life is likely to be reduced as a consequence. There's also the question about how reliable the LFP is when a circuit intended for occasional emergency use (overvoltage disconnect) is used regularly.
The first one means short LA life, the second one means short LFP life. Neither will show up for some time, maybe a year or more depending on how often the boat (or RV) is used -- but at this point you're faced with unexpected and expensive battery replacement, both of the LA bank and also not the 10 years lifetime you were expecting from expensive LFP and used to justify buying them... 😞
And there's the problem in a nutshell -- how many of the proponents of these systems have used them heavily for years to hit these reduced lifetime problems?
In contrast, there's no doubt that a properly-designed LFP system will outlast most boats (and probably boaters) -- see here for example...
https://marinehowto.com/agm-vs-lifepo4-longevity/
This was my own personal bank that I built in 2009 and began using in the spring of 2010. This bank was built as an educational /experimentation tool for myself and our employees. As such, each cycle was carefully recorded and documented. I specifically ran each discharge to 80% DoD, occasionally 0% if needed. I also ran full 0% SoC capacity tests every 50 cycles. Once the bank broke 1000 80% DoD cycles I switched to capacity testing every 100 cycles (capacity just was not changing enough in 50 cycles to waste the time/energy).. At the time of testing this bank had just turned 13 years old and had exceeded 2200 cycles. It served summers (April to Nov) on our 36ft cruising sailboat and it spent winters as the “load bank” for our alternator test bench and also powered a large 2000W Inverter /charger in the shop that we ran an electric heater from…. This meant the battery was often sitting at 80% DoD or lower to serve as the load for alternators as large as 200A.
For the cells 13th birthday I tested each 400Ah cell individually. As can be seen the lowest capacity cell was 417.02 Ah. With LFP banks the lowest capacity cell determines bank capacity as this cell will cause the entire bank to disconnect the minute it his the low voltage cut off. For 13 year old cells the Ah capacity still matches to within 3Ah..It was slightly tighter when new but not bad for 13 years old and in excess of 2000 cycles!
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2 hours ago, dmr said:
Maybe this will drive the providers of the lithium BMS systems to give us a couple of simple "relay" type outputs:
90% please stop charging
95% sound alarm, internal cut-off approaching.
This would be a good halfway house for those (many) who don't want to go the full CANbus route.
The alarm doesn't have to be CANbus, a Bluetooth alert to a phone app costs far less, doesn't need any external hardware, and meets the requirements.
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23 minutes ago, MtB said:
Is that really true?
I get the impression there might be just as many liveaboard RVs as there are liveaboard boats. Administrative reasons not to use a hybrid system (insurance, BSS) are trumped by the absence of a significant number of users reporting fires in their RVs or boats. In fact I've yet to read about of a single incident.
I would imagine there is a large body of 'drop-in' LFP users reporting goosed alternators, but there doesn't seem to be an emerging problem with hybrid installations. Or maybe there IS? I don't know, I only know I'm not seeing reports of them.
I didn't say all, I said that "A lot of them have RVs which are used much less often (than liveaboard boaters)" which I'm pretty sure is true. Most of the RV/boat proponents of parallel LA/LFP say how brilliant they are but are strangely quiet about how many years they've been running these for -- there might be some out there who've been successfully cycling them for years, but I didn't find any.
AFAIK there have been few or no reports of *battery* fires anywhere -- boats, RVs, or houses -- with LFP batteries. Which is as expected, battery fire risk is *not* a good reason to be scared of LFP batteries, they don't really burn. However they're perfectly capable of setting other components on fire like alternators and wiring... 😉
46 minutes ago, Roberto Conigliaro said:They say you can drop them as long you use an AGM as a buffer, but I see your point, this system hasn't been tested long enough and it might destroy either or both in the long term, depending how long is the long term though, it might worth the risk, you still need to replace the LA batteries every 5 years or so anyways
If the LA batteries are in parallel with the LFP so they don't get cycled over SoC range (little voltage change) and never get charged to 100% SoC and equalised/desulphated at high voltage, they probably won't last 5 years, sulphation is likely to kill them *long* before that... 😞
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4 minutes ago, Roberto Conigliaro said:
On your first point - do you think that mixing the Li with LA would compromise the efficiency of the Li?
On your second point - I get it, it's not the 'right' way to do, but if enough people have done it and they say is efficient and safe (and I am not saying it is, just researching if it really is), the only issue remaining is passing the BSS really..
also in terms of costs, if a good 460ah Li is £1200 and 3 x 220ah AGM are roughly £1000, the difference is not even a big one
A mixed LA/LFP can be made to work/function, at least in the short term, and if you ignore implications with things like insurance.
How it works in the longer term is the question, because a lot of the people singing the praises of systems like this have no long-term experience about what happens to the lifetime/reliability of either the LA or LFP or both.
The LA is likely to get sulphated rapidly because it never gets cycled across any significant SoC range (LFP has much flatter voltage vs. SoC) and is never fully charged and equalised (too high voltage for LFP) -- but this may all be invisible because it's hidden by the parallel LFP.
The LFP may die sooner than expected if it does end up doing lots of low/high voltage disconnects because these circuits are designed to be "emergency-only" not switched on a regular basis.
End result : a sooner-than-expected death for LA, LFP, or both, and possibly with little or no warning until you suddenly don't have any power.
I'm sure the proponents will say this is all "Project Fear", but how many of them have used these parallel LA/LFP systems regularly for long periods of time, like a liveaboard boater? A lot of them have RVs which are used much less often, so if things are going to go wrong over time they probably haven't got there yet.
The issue with LFP on boats is no longer the cost of the batteries, especially when you consider usable capacity and lifetime and removing the need to charge for hours to get LA to 100% SoC. The issue -- apart from potentially insurance -- is that you can't just drop them in to a boat with charging systems designed for LA batteries, no matter how many people claim that you can... 😞
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19 minutes ago, Roberto Conigliaro said:
yeah I see your point, from what I am reading here (thanks everybody by the way!), there are a lot of different theories and disagreement, so it might seem too much of a jump in the dark a this stage. Said that, energy efficiency is such in important part of life on the boat that I am gonna do more researches and hear more from people who did the switch, before deciding it isn't the right time for this investment, taking in consideration the pros and cons, financially and on a practical level
I don't think there's any different theories or disagreement about the right way to use LFP batteries on a boat with various charging sources like an alternator and solar and shoreline and generator -- a proper charge controller/BMS/inverter/charger that keeps the batteries and alternator and everything else in the best of health, and stops them being over or under charged. For a new installation it's a no-brainer nowadays, but as an upgrade it means a rip-up-and-start-again.
The problem is that this is more complex and expensive than a good old dirt-cheap alternator/lead-acid setup, and lots of people can't or don't want to cough up and do LFP properly so they try various ways of saving money and bodging it -- some safer than others, some distinctly iffy, some combining LFP and LA, and some that shouldn't be touched with a bargepole -- even a long one.
The arguments are about how safe/dangerous/satisfactory/dodgy these cheapo setups are, with proponents claiming they're absolutely fine and others -- including insurers -- disagreeing.
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7 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:
So stopping me from driving a mini bus only reduces the number of people able to drive them, not stop untrained drivers driving them. I would suggest I am a better driver today than I was when I last drove a mini bus. a bit more patience these days
Not sure what point you're trying to make -- that everyone should be allowed to drive them like in the good old days (which would mean replacing 30M photocard licenses), or that this right should be removed from people who have a "grandfathered" right to drive them (like me) via an old green paper license?
There are a bit less than 5 million of these today, and given the glacial speed that the DVLA work at I hate to think how many years it would take to replace them all -- but presumably 6x less than replacing all the photocard ones... 😉
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12 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:
Thats a strange one, If I rewed my licence on line due to age I lose the right to drive a mini bus, not something that bothers me. But if I renew by post on paper I get to keep it, something I cant be bothered to do. Whether I can get it back if I wanted it I don't know
I suspect your licence covers you to drive a mini bus, have you ever been trained for it or tested on it?
It does (it's still an old green paper one), but I also did training/testing years ago so I could drive a bigger (17-seater?) minibus for a local community organisation -- I think this was their requirement, not a legal one.
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22 minutes ago, dmr said:
I suppose with a shunt you can set an accurate current limit (in amps) straight off, but with field current limit you would have to do a small experiment to find the relationship between field current and output, or can you assume that 100% output correponds closely to 100 field?
If you have real time readout of field and output then this is a quick and easy experiment, but in reality it is likely to be temperature or belt slip that needs to be controlled so a bit of experimentation is required anyway.
In the recent re-work of my high current electrics I have left space for a second shunt but have not fitted one yet 😀
Since the relationship between field and output current varies with battery voltage and rpm and temperature -- both ambient and as the alternator heats up -- it's actually a lot simpler to just measure the output current using a shunt and adjust the field current to set the required value (current demand), without doing any characterisation and curve fitting or relying on the belt not slipping.
If the controller also knows what the rpm is it then becomes trivial to do things like limiting the charging current (engine/belt load) at low rpm/idle, and if it knows what the alternator temperature is it can reduce the current demand if it gets too hot to stop it burning out when charging LFP batteries.
All this is what Wakespeed and the like do, because it's the right way to solve the problem 🙂
Is bicycle on the roof the only solution?
in New to Boating?
Posted · Edited by IanD
Bromptons are pretty robust, but with small wheels and narrow tyres (and no suspension to speak of) they're hard work if the towpath is really rough/potholed, and not so good if it's really muddy.
Still, I managed to use mine most of the way up the Rochdale last October with no problems, and it was rainy so everywhere was pretty wet, lots of deep puddles and some mud -- not inches deep though, it would have struggled then. OTOH it's nicer to ride on reasonable roads/paths than many folding bikes -- it was great for zooming along the S&SY to open all the swing/lift bridges, and folds down smaller than anything else if your storage space is restricted -- and perfect for carrying on trains/buses if you need to.
So some good plus points, and some significant minus points -- and expensive. Not for everyone, but good if it meets your requirements.