john6767

The law changed a couple of years ago, for a sub 250g drone you only need an Operator ID, you do not need a Flyer ID. It is the Flyer ID that requires the online test, the Operator ID is just a payment, with the Operator ID number displayed on each drone that the operator owns. The operator does not have to be the same person as the person actually in control of the drone, but the operator is responsible for its use.

The Ribble Link is different to other tidal passages in that you will be going against the tide for much of the trip. On the up you go down the Douglas while the tide is coming in and then up the Ribble after the tide has turned and is going out. You therefore push harder than on the Tidal Thames or Tidal Trent for example, therefore the most important thing is that the engine has a cooling system that can cope with high power for 3 hours or so. A draft of 33” would make life difficult, but I don’t have experience to say if it would make it impractical. The problem areas would be Savick Brook, particularly on the down, where with a 25” draft we were dragging the bottom, and on the main canal mooring would be very difficult as it is very shallow at the sides. The other issue that you may find with that draft is that the CRT system does not allow you to book the Ribble Link as you are out of spec on the draft, you may need to update the boat details and put in a lower draft to make the system allow the booking.

I agree, judging by the quantity of stoppage notice emails for it!

Same as everyone else, coming from the GU and heading to the North Stratford, it is natural to take the lock 20 which is on the diagonal to your right. You can't actually see lock 21 from there because of the cottage. If you want to you are free to use lock 21 though, but there is more manoeuvring to do. The only reason I would go though the "link" (the narrow bit straight on by lock 20) in your case, is if you want to go to the services, but if you want elsan, it is easier to walk the cassette through the path in the trees while waiting for lock 20, and there is also a water point above lock 19 as well as the one at the services, so the only real reason to go through the link for you would be for the pumpout machine. The rubbish disposal is in the car park on the far side of lock 21, so I guess if you had loads of rubbish to dispose of that would be a reason to go lock 21 and do that the while in the lock!

I do see the same sort of behaviour on the boat with my iPhone, and also with my iPad which is USBC, so not specific to Lightning for me. My phone spends much of its time on a 3m Lightning cable with the phone on the cratch board (as we use the phone as a router), my iPad is on a 2m USBC cable. They are both off a double USB socket which is wired to the same supply as the TV and is at the front of the cabin, ie. a long way from the batteries. So I think there is a bit of voltage drop issue going on. What usually gets the device charging again for my is if you switch off the USB and back on again (not just pull the cable and plug back in). I get none of these issues at home on mans chargers, although the iPad does prefer its supplied charger with it higher output.

Surprised at that, the charge ports are replaceable, £20 I think, in an iPhone, so why not in an iPad. Was this in the Apple shop or just a generic phone fixing shop?

Because it just works using the cloud. All your devices sync with the cloud, so for example if you take a photo on your iPhone, then that photo will be synced to the cloud (ie backed up) and pushed out and available on your iPad within minutes, probably less, and you don’t have to do anything.

There was always a separate class of repeater for use in motor vehicles. But the use of them was specifically excluded from boats. However I see there there were some updates to the regulation in June 2022, and whilst there is still a separate class for motor vehicle (which would not include boats), a quick scan on the main “indoor” type of repeater I can not spot an exclusion for boats anymore. It uses a definition of “indoor” as “indoors” means inside premises, which— (i) have a ceiling or a roof; and (ii) except for any doors, windows or passageways, are wholly enclosed; So your argument that a boat, once stationary, could fit the definition of “premises”, may be true. Not so sure personally, but it is not a specific exclusion for boats. What the updates are really about are allowing more choice of repeaters, there were only a couple listed as compliment to the original 2018 regulations. They are allowing more choice by allowing the unlicensed use of repeaters that support more then one operator, so what the OP was proposing actually could be legal as of June this year, so my apologies for stating it would not be legal, it may be (just questionable on a boat being premises). There are still other requirements that a specific repeater needs to meet, but supporting multiple operators does not immediately exclude it anymore which it previously did. Personally for use on a boat I still think the wifi route will be more successful, and clearly legal, as having the phone on wifi and allowing it it use wifi calling is not an issue.

I don’t believe OCOM have approved any mobile phone signal boosters for use on boats, only in houses and cars. So anything you choose is going to be illegal to use. Do you know that this one is approved for the use you want? For most people boosting the mobile signal is not what they want anyway, what they want is wifi, in which case if the phone is not good enough for you then you need a mobile router with an external aerial.

Don’t know if you can use iTunes, but you can do what I briefly described if you don’t have a working device on the Apple account, the support from Apple for us when we hit this was excellent, the Apple person stayed on the phone with us quite a long time right through the process. How good the restore it will of course depend on when the dead device was last backed up, which can be a challenge on the boat for us as we use the phones for all internet access, and it used to only do backup when on wifi. We have in the past had to “suffer” an hour in a pub just to have wifi for the phones to backup. I think you can now opt to allow the phone to backup using themobile network, probably a recognition that many people are not limited by data allowances anymore.

First thing to check is that the charger, or more specifically the lightning cable, is working ok, by charging another device with the same charger/cable. An 8 year old iPad is probably not worth investing too much in, you will be really surprised about how much better the performance of a new one is. It could be the battery, but you would think in that case it would work when plugged in as it would get at least a bit of power. It could be the charge port that has failed, those are replaceable in a phone shop, at least ones on iPhones are I had one replaced on an old iPhone 5. In terms of setting a new one up, you just use the same Apple ID and it will ask you in the initial power on sequence if you want to set up as new or clone the existing one. It will be indistinguishable from the old one once finished with all your apps and data. You will need another Apple device on the same if to allow you to authorise the new device on the Apple ID. When my wife’s iPhone when dead we could not set the new one up simply as she only has the one Apple device, it is still possible by setting up as default adding the device to the Apple ID, then doing a reset of it and setting up to the Apple ID now the device is added. The Apple help line will walk you through doing it, or make a genius. bar appointment and go into an Apple shop and they will do for you.

Did you keep track of the engine hours that you did? As a first approximation if you said you did 50 hours, that’s say 75 litres. Add on another 15 litres for the heater, so say 90 litres total. At 60/40 split it will get getting on for £2 a litre I suspect, so £180 would be in the right ballpark.

No that picture is of Selly Oak where there is a new winding hole for when the Dudley No 2 is restored there. There are mooring bollards in the winding hole.

The secure offside mooring only take a couple of boats. Not the nicest area, it is right on the edge of Bourneville rather then being in the main part, which is nice. I would personally not choose to stop there, even if you could get on the offside moorings (often CM'ers on there), and I certainly would not stop overnight on the towpath. There are always boats moored at the Vale (south of the winding hole), that would be a better bet personally, but why not moor in the the centre of Birmingham, you can easily get a train to Bournville if you want.

That’s interesting, did not know they did that. Someone approaching Llanthony bridge from the south could have a long wait to be spotted! I wonder if they have a camera from the bridge that they can display in the lock control hut.

You don’t mean Llanthony bridge I think, everyone needs that lifting. Presumably you mean the one at the tail of the lock? I use VHF to contact Gloucester, but if he is not there, he’s not there! I had a similar thing with lights but in reverse at Keadby. Approaching from the Trent I had already contacted the lock on the radio, and been told it was ready for me, but as I was crossing over the river to the lock side I could see there as a red light, so I called the lock again, and before I had asked the question he realised and it went green.

I agree you would want to go through before turning. If I were ever going to do that I would check with the insurance to see what the view was in terms doing that, and pay an additional premium if necessary.

Not a great situation. I call the lock again as I go under the 3 bridges on the approach to Gloucester, and check that at the lock is ready.

Do they though. In August the Tesco moorings in Reading were rammed with CM’ers so I don’t think there is much enforcement going in there. Were Henley using DE on the park mooring's, do you know they still are?

Our Craftinsure policy specifically states interconnecting tidal waterways and as far downstream as the Thames Barrier

If you are talking about doing this say next month, then you need to look at the winter stoppages to see what routes are going to be possible, if any. Also as we start to go into autumn you might want to choose to avoid rivers, eg the Severn and Avon, and the Thames and stick to canals. So in principle up the S&W, then through Birmingham to pick up the GU, or round Birmingham, T&M, Coventry, North Oxford, GU. You can use canalplan.co.uk to plan a route.

There is a winding hole as you come out of the tunnel, you can just turn there and reverse back to a mooring.

It the size limit for animated gifs is kept small, then bandwidth does not become an issue, but on low performance devices having multiple animating on the screen dies impact on device performance. One goo thing about the forum it that it is very lightweight in nature, this just chips away at that.

I have a similar paranoia with respect to the cassette cap. I mitigate that by putting the cap down on the floor, sometimes outside the building ifthe floor is “less nice”. There is also the sliding cover that goes over the opening in the cassette, I use my thumb it keep that in place as I tip the cassette, as there in nothing except friction that hold that in place with a C200 cassette.

Yes there is a sign for Wedges on the bridge, there is piling past the bridge so easy to stop. Also if you do make it to the top of Lapworth locks this evening, you can choose to just go down the first two, there is good piling to moor to just after the (ex) wood yard, or you can go down the top 4 and moor there. After that you need to do the main group of locks down to just past the Boot pub.