dor

Vinyl lettering depends so much on the preparation. I've seen plenty of boats where the lettering is curling up at the edge. But my boat has vinyl lettering. Most of it has been on for at least seven years. We changed the name of the boat when we bought it, 4 years ago, and the local vinyl shop matched colour and font exactly. You have to look pretty closely to tell it is vinyl not paint. There is also a fairly fancy compass rose graphic on the side, again at least 7 years old, which is also as good as new. I think if the quality of the vinyl is good, and the surface is cleaned properly, it should last a good while. Easy to apply as well - ready spaced.

Just a quick point: Are you sure grease is going into the stern tube when you screw down the greaser? I had a piece of grit get into mine and it blocked the tube.

They obviously took notice of my comments above: it is much improved by not jumping about so much. Don't think I will be able to look at my partner holding the boat pole in the same light again though!

These sort of generators tend to be quite noisy. Difficult to beat the Red Hondas for noise level, but relatively expensive for their output. I think the rules for petrol are similar for gas as regards storage, and that includes the tank. Therefore it is difficult to install them inside the boat without causing BSS problems. Storing externally of course brings security problems, not to mention space. This is why most people with little generators hide them when the BSS inspector comes round........ PS see the justgenerators site: the 3000 is on for £569 inc vat & delivery - I would say that's a pretty good price for a 3kw genny.

I have watched pretty well all the previous series, and find it generally interesting, but two thing irritate me. The first is the way a particular storyline is repeatedly broken up into little pieces. Now I know that TV producers these days seem to think that people only have a 10 second attention span (and need to see things at odd angles and zoomed in/out rapidly), but I would suggest that is not the case for viewers of this program. Secondly some of the content leaves much to be desired, and gives a rather false impression of waterways use. In particular was the story of the hen party, which seemed to concentrate on how stupid the girls were. No doubt they were nowhere near as bad as it came across, but I suspect selective editing was used to give a more "fun" (!) story. The impression was given that it's ok to go boating in high heels, it's a bit of a laugh if you crash into other boats, and isn't it sooooo funny that we haven't got a clue what we are doing. There is so much of interest on the canals: the people, the buildings, the engineering, the history and heritage, it is a shame that so much of the program is given over to trivial "popular" style broadcasting.

Empress in Nantwich seem to be quite keen to have their boats used for weekends throughout the winter. Anglo-Welsh (Bunbury) on the other hand seem to strip their boats out for the winter and don't hire them out. Chas Harden at Beeston also hires throughout the winter and I suspect he would be quite willing to do a mutually beneficial deal.

dhutch: I live in Cheshire also, but with an aerial pointing southish, I can get a decent analogue signal (digital not so good though). So I have a Central aerial plugged into the aerial line socket, and a NW aerial plugged into the digibox. Anything to avoid paying the murdoch shilling.

For those of you in the Carlton Central region: "Thursday 19:30 Waterworld New series exploring Britain's inland waterways, beginning with a report on a new generation of water-dwellers who have profited from the property boom, and news of pole dancing aboard the world's first stretch limo cruiser. Timothy West presents." For those of you NOT in the Central region: na na na na na! If the program lives up to expectations, I don't think I will be able to look at that pole on my roof in the same way ever again.............

The following site may be of interest........ http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/analogue_tv/onthemove.shtml

Sterling, Good.

Buggsy: by this do you mean that the piezo only sparks on in 10, or only lights the gas one in 10? If the former, you almost certainly need a new piezo, assuming no wiring has come loose. Although having said that, piezo's tend to either work or not work. If the latter, then the most likely cause is a partially blocked pilot light. The Alde one is quite unusual in design, and a partial blockage will make is burn only in part, making it difficult to ignite. The answer is to send it off to Alde. Whilst you have to disconnect the gas, it is only one compression fitting and despite all the paranoia about gas and snappy little welsh dogs, it doesn't present that much of a problem. Full maintenance notes including instructoins on removing the burner can be fould on the Alde website. Send it off to Alde and they will fully service it, replace any faulty parts and recalibrate it. Costs about £50 depending on what parts need replacing and takes a few days. Well worth it, especially if it is a few years old and not been attended to.

OK, OK, so I've been baptised. Brought the boat across the canal at lunchtime, to be ready for our Christmas cruise tomorrow. In the winter we use a cover over the cruiser stern, which is held in place with lift-the-dot tabs. In awkward places. So just clipping it back and, what with the duck-doo on the stern, and my trendy - i.e. slippery-soled - trainers and......... SPLASH. I can assure you, the canals are cold this time of year. It is also surprising just how heavy a fleece is when it is soaked with the shroppie's finest. Just for once I was glad of the notorious Shroppie concrete "shelf" that sticks out about a foot below water level. So a possible cracked rib and a bruised knee. But I was on my own, and it did occur to me that I could have been knocked out. Would just about be floating past Hurleston by now - not the intended Christmas cruise.

So wouldn't it have been a good idea to have had a Home Sec in the last year or two who actually had the guts to do something about the hooligan crime that is ruining this country. But no, let's keep the police off the streets and "control" (haha) crime with CCTV & speed cameras. GRrrrrrrrrrrr

Ah Martin: the key word in my comment was "prolonged". With a car, assuming normal starting, the amount of power used to start is about what, 1 amp-hour? I.e. 200 amps for 1/200 of an hour - i.e. about 20 seconds - quite generous really. So to all intents and purposes the battery is still virtually fully charged [/i]after doing all its work. If you do really have to crank the engine for several minutes you will pretty soon knacker the battery: both from the high discharge rate, the depth of discharge and the high recharging rate as the battery is not designed to cope with that sort of activity. In my studies, the figure of 10% was given for recharging quite heavily discharged batteries such as we have after a night watching tv, running a fridge etc (including making smoothies?). The more recent suggestion comes from the design of modern batteries being more able to cope with prolonged high charging rates (hmmm - maybe elecsol excluded!). So Tolstoy, I don't think we are too far out!

I understood that the percieved wisdom for prolonged charging was to charge batteries at 10% of their capacity. Some view that modern deep-cycle batteries can cope with 20%.

I think I agree with pretty much all of that Martin. One small point: My fairly early Stirling Alternator controller does indeed boost for a set time before measuring the need for a boost. However it is user-settable for 1, 2, 3 or 4 hours. I think the idea is you adjust it depending on what sort of use is made of your batteries and how big the bank is. I have mine set on one hour. If I think I want a bit more of a boost that the regulator thinks after an hour, I can stop the engine and restart it to reset the controller.

I bought a 17inch wide screen recently. In my research I found little difference in quality of the picture for equal pixel size. Some cheap ones are only 600x800 for a 4:3. I suspect most makes use the same source anyway. The one I bought for 399 had the same basic layout - switch positions etc - and firmware as a Philips at 599 and a sanyo at 499. Picture quality was identical. Sound qualaity however did vary and the philips was definitely better. However a £29 pair of active speakers gives better sound than any of them.

My 6500 hour Thorneycroft Mitsubishi will give a healthy belch of black smoke when starting - and leave a little slick of soot on the water! This is normal for a relatively crude diesel that's had a bit of use. As long as it doesn't smoke in normal use then don't worry about it.

I had thought in the past of using a dc to dc converter to keep my TV going when it decides to cut out through low voltage, but they seemed rather expensive. The 12v gizmo above is about £10 which is muuch more reasonable. My CRT 10" TV is rated at 39 watts; I think similar sized LCD tvs are less than half that, so shouldn't be a problem. But the real question is: do LCD tv's actually need this sort of thing?