20th & 21st September
We woke to weather that had resumed the classic warm wet westerly pattern, so no need for the stove. After trolling off to the shops to get a paper, a copy of this month’s Waterways World and a few bits and bobs, we set off for Whittington.
On the way we passed Scarweather, Braidbar number 54. She was moored at Streethay, but they are relocating to Weedon.
We tied in the centre of Whittington by lunchtime, and used a bit of time in the drier afternoon to rinse down the starboard side again, and to polish the portholes on that side. Despite washing her at Hartshill, the side had got very dusty again, whether from the limestone BW now uses for towpath surfacing, or from the bonemeal factory nearby, we’re not sure.
In the evening we had a meal with Des and Gill Barnard, who live in Whittington and moor Farne, Braidbar number 82, at Lichfield Cruising Club, Huddlesford, where we are going for the Boat Gathering this weekend.
An excellent evening was had, with good fod, pleasant wine and chat ranging over a lot of shared interests.
Today we had all of half an hours boating to do, so had a very lazy start, eventually chugging round to Huddlesford at 9.30 or so. After tying, we went round to the club. Last night we’d said how nice it would be to be just punters visiting a boating event, but when we got there, there were a couple of marquees to put up, and it was very windy, and they needed all the help they could get...
LCC proves to be a very friendly club, with a lot of moorings on the stump of the Lichfield canal (focus of restoration by the Lichfield and Hatherton Canal Trust), a clubhouse in the old toll cottages that they rent from BW, and that great atmosphere of a club that relies on its members’ work to maintain itself.
They’ve got plans for a mooring basin when the L&H is restored, and have already bought a field to use for the purpose. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow's event.
Phone Connectors
The other month I said we were trying out a new type of connector from our mobile to the Boaters Phone Company aerial. It’s attached by a Velcro pad to the back of the phone, and works by induction between the connector and the phone’s internal aerial.
I have to say that it’s been a disappointment on our Nokia 6234. The Velcro is very feeble, and falls off at the least excuse, and the gain in signal is poor, much worse than the plug in connectors we use on the old Nokia 6310i (now well past its prime) and the Sony Ericsson K700i (still functional but not such a nice phone as either Nokia).
We’ve gone back to using the Sony as the main boat phone, as the 6234 was just too feeble in poor signal strength areas, so that I had to keep swapping the SIM card out of it into one of the others. It’s a pity, but I don’t think I would recommend the Velcro type connector, and at £20 it’s not cheap.
Probably better would be to buy a phone cradle of the type meant for in-car installations, if you can find one for your phone which takes the FME connector on the downlead from the aerial.
2 comments:
Same story with our Nokia 6233s as far as the BPC connector is concerned. We got a refund becasue it didn't do anything for our signal, despite the fact that BPC said it would. Fortunately a fall back is to put the phones in the cratch when using bluetooth with the laptop
That's very interesting, especially as they are currently recommending the 6233 + Velcro connector as the optimum buy.
We are also irritated by our 6234's backlight, which turns off after 10 seconds, nothing like enough time to do stuff.
Post a Comment