Jess--

My test (in anything but freezing weather) is to start the engine from cold without allowing glowplugs any working time, if it's not running within 30 seconds (and fairly smoke free after another 30 seconds) then I have know I need to investigate the engine condition. although to be fair I am a stickler for wanting engines to be perfect. On my last boat we arrived having left it untouched for 3 months, jumped up & down on the deckboard to break the ice so we could lift it and turn the isolator on, turned the key straight to start and 10 seconds later it fired up with a single puff of smoke that cleared instantly, overall I was happy especially considering I knew that the starter battery was the one originally fitted to the boat when it was built 28 years earlier (sadly the starter battery finally gave up a week before we sold the boat and we had to sell it with a new battery)

Your mention of the microdrive reminded me of another system I forgot in my list... The OPD (One Per Desk) I think it was from ICL, which combined a computer, modem, phone & answering machine into one unit and had twin microdrives

I grew up with computers, starting with a neighbours home built machine. My own first machine was a zx80 (that you had to build yourself) followed by zx81, spectrum, spectrum +2 other machines owned (in no particular order) Commodore c16, vic20, c64, amiga A500, Amiga A600, Amiga A1200, c64 portable Atari various VCS systems, 520stfm Amstrad various pcw systems, cpc464, spectrum +3 Toshiba MSX BBC Model B Acorn Electron After those I moved onto PC's starting with IBM XT machines (with their 8088 cpu) and working up through some servers that took 2 people to move (not lift) and dimmed the lights when you hit the power button. These days I am still PC based and have a lot of virtual machines running on a few heavy duty servers but for smaller PC projects I used the little micro PC's (like the intel NUC but unbranded), for hardware projects I use a lot of arduinos and esp32 boards.

Some friends in Australia have said "If you want to go into the outback take a land rover. If you want to come back take a land cruiser" I remember watching the little fiat panda 4x4s having no problems going places that the bigger 4wd cars just sank in

When a friend recently bought themselves a boat we went along with them to help them get to know how things worked & general maintenance jobs. They asked what to do if they had a problem while out & about, I told them to "look for the boat with the biggest pile of crap on the roof and ask them as they will either be able to help or know who can"

Personally I would go for a stainless tank, they are about as maintenance free as you can ever get and it should last longer than the boat.

Magnets are your friend for removing them

Once this is all behind us (I'm expecting some point next year) I think there could be a lot of questions being asked about data protection under gdpr as there seems to be a lot of peoples information being passed around. So far we've managed to get home delivery slots looking on tesco's at around 11am on saturdays, could have used asda but we were not impressed with them when they delivered a bottle with the anti-theft cap in place, the driver couldn't remove it, and couldn't take it back as rejected

looks like a combined version of the well known tracer controller & mt-50 screen that used to be separate, should be solid. we ran ours for just under 4 years before selling the boat (new owner still using it a year later) and it never missed a beat, may be worth noting that we also fitted new batteries (3 x 110 AH exide) at the same time and they are still going strong (the boat has never been on mains hookup so all battery charging has been via solar & the original 70A alternator).

the key to this may be that the radiator circuit is turned off leaving only the smaller calorifier circuit. if there is any air in the system (which is common) then it may just be a case of not enough expansion room. with mine when running normally (both circuits open) the level in the header tank used to stay between 2-3 inches (2 cold / 3 hot), with only the calorifier running (so no radiators dumping heat) it went from 2 inches cold up to the overflow pipe when hot. a silly suggestion would be to turn down the gas setting, we only ran ours on 1 (2 if it was freezing temps) 3 and above had the heater sounding like a boiling kettle.

The other bit that farmers are keeping quiet about is that usually (around here) the caravans the workforce stay in are classified as holiday lets (and should be closed during the lockdown anyway) but they shift the workers between different caravans / farms to get around the 28 day rules. with those holiday lets out of action and the larger caravan sites also closed down there isn't anywhere in the area that an army of pickers can stay (and comply with the rules) while they are not working in the fields.

ours was tested "as is" meaning exactly as the boat is used normally. after 4 years of use and many modifications 3 things were raised by the BSS (2 of which needed correcting before being passed) 1. there was a quantity of oil in our bilge (gearbox blew an O ring a couple of days earlier and cleanup hadn't been finished, bilgepump was unplugged so nothing went overboard) 2. incorrect size terminal on solar to battery connection 3. advisory on ventilation, mesh under mushroom vents partially blocked by cobwebs

mixture of cat5e and cat 6 here with a 24 port switch at one end of the house and an 8 port switch at the other (22 ports in use one end and 4 ports at the other). Servers, router and the link between the 2 switches are all cat6 Anything else is running 5e (and running 1000base t if possible but falling back to 100) for wifi we use a pair of old netgear routers set up as access points (one each end of the house) but due to the construction of the house you can be 4 feet from the access point and have no signal (same deal for phones, DECT doesn't work if you move rooms and mobiles only work on windowsills)

My prediction is that we'll see a lot more jerry cans being taken down the towpath. A canalside retailer won't have anywhere near the fuel turnover of a roadside fuel supplier and will therefore be paying a higher wholesale price (and that's ignoring the supermarket fuel) I would guess that even if a canalside retailer sold the fuel at cost without making a penny they would still be more expensive than the nearest garage. I expect to see canal diesel prices at around 20 - 30p per litre more expensive than forecourt prices making lugging 5 jerry cans to save £20 - £30 a viable proposition. The decider will be how any rebate scheme operates, if it ends up as submit receipts for diesel from anywhere declaring that it went in the boat then I expect that over time the canalside retailers will slowly vanish (partly because of not being able to compete on price but also because their tanks that now contain white diesel are now a more tempting target for thieves)

That is the reason my workhorse landcruiser was converted to LPG and de-catted before it was put to work. working (at the time) in hot air ballooning meant it spent a good amount of time pulling heavy loads in & out of stubble fields. Common vehicles (all lpg/decatted or old enough to have no cat) range rover, discovery, nissan patrol, jeep cherokee and landcruiser amazons. I know of one crew that switched vehicles mid-season (from a battered cherokee to a better looking one) and forgot to remove the cat, 3rd flight it went up in flames (total loss and heavy damage to the trailer although the balloon survived) Edited to add... The reason for lpg conversion before removing the cats is that is the easiest way of removing the requirement for having a cat on the exhaust for MOT purposes, of course the fuel cost savings running a 4.7 litre V8 make lpg conversion attractive too