Oooooohh whatcha going to get HtS? £400 is a great budget!

Santa DID bring me the Tamiya Unimog I’d asked him for which kept me busy all over Christmas. I really enjoyed the mechanical build – only a mishap where I’d used the wrong track rod ends on the rear shocks and then couldn’t get the servo link rod to line up properly as they were too short. Easily fixed once I’d worked out what I’d done wrong. It was very satisfying fettling it, great fun. I’d bought a set of upgraded bearings when I was buying the paint etc too.

Took a while to get the receiver and transmitter paired up but the instructions weren’t great and I’d never done it before. The last time I played with an RC car was probably in the very early 80s!

I found that cutting out / masking / painting the body was really tedious and I didn’t make a great job of it. I think the cutting out might have been a little easier with a Dremel on the wheelarches. I neglected to wipe down the interior of the shell between colours so I’ve got a bit of black overspray on the shell before the orange went on. Looks ‘dirty’ which is probably a good look on a Unimog. There was also some bleeding under the window masks and under some of the masking tape I’d used. So if I did it another one then it’s something I would spend more time and care over. Looks OK finished with the decals on etc but it’s a bit rough and ready.

I did fit the clear unpainted body to the chassis on a very frosty day to try it out and it was much quicker than I was expecting doing donuts in front of the house. The propshaft came loose at one stage which meant I only had front wheel drive. Again easily fixed and it was good fun in 2wd too.

When it was all finally finished I charged the battery and took it out for a blast in the snow on Saturday gone. Brilliant 4 wheel drifts with snow flying from the tyres, was ace. Until it wasn’t – think I knackered the cheap plastic geared steering servo. It works intermittently, just makes noise the rest of the time. I took it apart but couldn’t see any stripped gears so I’ve ordered a new metal geared one and hopefully that should sort it.

If I get another one I’m torn between the 2CV rally or the 911 RSR. Any thoughts oh wise ones? I like the look of both. Think someone has started a 2CV further up the thread?

You can probably get the Kangoo version of the Citan a chunk cheaper. The crew vans are rare beasties though.

It’s Black Eye Friday up in the NE not Mad Friday.

And I’ll be…… watching my rugby team on the tellybox. Maybe there’ll be some black eyes on the pitch tonight to make up for not going out?

I think Simon G and I have the same laser printer. Bought a Brother HL-3140CW last year, was about £100. It takes compatible cartridges which I ordered at the same time but haven’t actually used them yet…. Which appeals to my inerrant tightness. Gets a reasonable amount of use, probably more since May when I’ve been working more from home.

I’m assuming the newer version is similar: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07FXY8VW8/ref=dp_prsubs_1

It’s quite big and heavy but just works. Can print from anywhere in the house from phone / tablet / laptop whatever. The print quality for photos using thicker paper and upping the settings is acceptable too. It’s not a photo printer but it’s OK.

I see your George Forman grille – or the George Formby as my ex used to call it – and take pleasure in introducing you to the:

https://www.tefal.co.uk/optigrill

Similar to a Formby but you can take the grill plates off and chuck them in the washer and (crucially for me) it tells you when the food is cooked. Great for chicken / steaks / etc (especially if you’re a rubbish cook like me) and superb for a toasty.

Ham and cheese for the win naturally but try it with a bit of continental influence by making it as an eggy bread ham n cheese toasty. Croque Monsieur if you will. It’s the future, nothing sorts out a bad night’s sleep quicker than one for breakfast. You’re welcome! Enjoy them while you can, anything as knowingly non British may be banned post brexit…..

Ah, that’s a bit rubbish. Time for a new phone then if you can’t get the place who fitted the screen to replace it?

Do you keep your phone in any kind of case?

My Moto G6 is still going strong, I’ve had it since Feb ’19 and dropped it loads. It came with one of those gel cases which seems to have really helped.

I quite like the look of the Motorola Moto G pro for when the G6 expires, think they’re just over £200.

Well, England vs France was a lot more exiting than I gave it credit for before the game. Great performance by the French kids, they managed to prove their worth convincingly for me and England were lucky to pull the win out of the bag.

Another cracking result by the Falcons against Wasps on Saturday. We’ve definitely lost the element of surprise against the Premiership big boys but our awesome lineout (100% on our own throw yet again, couple of Wasps throws stolen), strong scrum and hunger to win making the difference yet again. With a good kicking performance from Toby Flood this week adding the points we’ve got a really strong package. Who’d have thought we’d be 3 for 3 after playing Bath, Sale and Wasps? Next game on Friday for us is against Cardiff Blues in the ECC. Our next Premiership game isn’t until we play Leicester on Boxing day at ‘home’. What chance of a crowd at Kingston Park? We’re in tier 3 at the moment so no hope of even the limited numbers that other teams will be enjoying – reviewed on the 16th I think.

How about your teams? Good weekend? Who’ve you got next?

You could always go a little further down the d5 range and spend some money on lenses instead….

https://cameradecision.com/compare/Nikon-D5600-vs-Nikon-D5300

Oh mah gahd. At the ripe old age of 51 I’ve turned into my Dad. All the gear and no idea.

So, my posh Sony surround amp that I’ve had for well over a year has a ‘Dynamic’ mode to equalise music / sfx / speech. Who knew? Well not me, but thanks for the folk up the thread that did.

And “justwatch.com/uk”? What an utterly brilliant idea! We’ve got Sky, Nflix & Amazon can sometimes be frustrating trying to find where a movie is. Thanks for that!

There’s a great calculator and comparison tool here:

https://www.dittomusic.com/blog/how-much-do-music-streaming-services-pay-musicians

It’s interesting to see how much you’d get over the various platforms and has a calculator to monetise it. I’m a 51yo Amazon music user here. Like most folk of my age I’ve been through cassettes, vinyl, CDs, minidiscs, iPods, etc. I used to listen to a lot of music in the car but we haven’t got a car with a CD player in now and haven’t for years. Spent plenty of money on music over the years and now (when I can) I go to gigs and buy t shirts and stream. Including Peat & Diesels fab new “cancelled due to the Rhona” t shirt to commemorate not being able to see them last week in Newcastle.

I guess like some I always think now that they might not get (their small proportion of) the tenner I’d spend on a CD but at least if I keep listening they’ll get something from the repeated plays. The world’s changing, there won’t be new Pink Floyds or Rolling Stones but that’s not necessarily a terrible thing.

That looks right up our street – so to speak – but disappointingly you can only get the last few episodes on catchup? I’ll have to keep my eyes open for it coming back on More4.

Interesting start to the Gallagher Premiership this weekend with wins for Falcons (my team), Exeter, Tiger, Sale, Worcester & Wasps. I think the boys at Bath were probably a little surprised – and I would have backed Bristol to turn Wasps over. Didn’t see the Bristol / Wasps game but the score suggests it was a close one. Bring on round 2 and Sale up at Kingston Park!

RIP to the Worcester boys.

I’m looking forward to the new season. My team (Falcons) are back into the top flight although as we’ve just lost Sinoti Sinoti I don’t really fancy our chances so much. I’ve been struggling over the last few weeks watching the internationals – I’m not a fan of the atmosphere without a crowd! I will be watching BT Sport on Saturday to see them play Bath at the Rec, hoping we can pull off a result like we did at the start of the 97/98 season, won our first game away and went on to win the Premiership! Unlikely I know but I hold onto the possibility however distant. And I cling on to the fact that we’ve won our last 3 against Bath too.

I think Exeter have to be favourites but I’ve got a soft spot for Bristol, Pat Lam was a great player for us and I think he makes a fantastic coach.

Think you can just cancel their bid if you like? Remember doing that the last time I had some camera equipment on there.

It’s a difficult price point if you’re looking at new and want something with more to it.

Would it not be an idea to buy whatever cables you need to plug your old camera into the ipad? Or plug the SD card in? And maybe buy her a new 35mm lens (assuming your Canon is a crop sensor) to giver her the old film camera ‘nifty fifty’ feel?

New cameras at that sort of price seem to be more point and click. My gig camera’s a good case in point, it’s a neat little Sony HX80 with a cracking 30* zoom but comes in at around £250 (so over budget) and although it’s possible to play with the settings it’s far too fiddly to mess about with much. An old DLSR is a much better toy to learn about photography.

Can I have Roger Clark (Arthur Morgan from RDR2 rather than the rallyist) reading Arthur the Kid by Alan Coren?

Great PSA, thank you :-)

Wow…. I was going to recommend the Brother HL-3140CW that I bought last year when I changed jobs…. But as it’s now £320 rather than the slightly better £114 it was back in Feb ’19 I’m not sure I can. Seems like a huge chunk of money. Anyway, you can get pattern cartridges for it and it’s still on the original ones but just works whenever I need it. Just shows how many more people are looking for home printing this year!

Ah, missed this. I’ll add mine in now. Q3 worked out OK for me, I had a target of 18lb which I missed but still managed a 13lb loss. Time to see if I can do better than a turkey before Xmas!

Peat & Diesel have cancelled their Winter tour, so that’s another one bitten the dust since I started this thread.

I have got the Bluetones on Saturday night this weekend – streamed from London rather than in person. And Daniel Kitson streamed live from an empty theatre in Liverpool at the end of the month. Maybe this is going to be the new normal?

I’m going to try and get my Mrs to overcharge me for beer and spill some around and stand in front of me to try and get the full gig experience on Saturday. And for the Daniel Kitson show I’m going to ban myself from coming back into the room if I need to nip for a pee – again, will just make it seem more like I’m there in person……

Hmmmm It has to be the lineup for REM’s Monster tour in ’95. We saw them at MK Bowl and had the pleasure of Sleeper, The Cranberries and Radiohead before REM came on. I liked all of them at the time, it was Louise Werner’s birthday, we had a brilliant time!

Ah, so no jumps. Boo. But still, Unimog. So on balance, yay!

I’m really looking forward to the build. Missed out on the Lego Unimog a couple of years ago and at least this one moves.

Do it! It’s so nice up in the far NW of Scotland. Some nice hotels, amazing roads, fantastic views. Any time between May and Sept is good in my experience. Single track road congestion is never really a problem on a bike, most folk are pretty good about letting you past at the next passing place etc. The only irritant I found last time I was up was a great big queue of cars travelling together on the Applecross peninsula. Obviously when you travel as a bunch of 4+ cars then passing places don’t really work very well.

When folk talk about ‘learning how to drive on singletrack roads’ I always assume that they’re talking about car or motorhome drivers rather than motorcyclists – although I could be wrong. It’s easy to forget that there are singletrack roads all over the country it’s just that in the NW of Scotland they’re the rule rather than the exception. Take your time and be courteous, that always works for me.

If you’re taking your better half I can recommend booking in at the Kylesku Bridge hotel for one of your nights, nice rooms and lovely seafood. The food at the Applecross Inn is great too.

As mentioned further up the thread you don’t need to follow the route slavishly, there are other brilliant places to ride up there too. The road from Tongue down to Lairg is particularly amazing.

Don’t pass a filling station without stopping is a good rule to follow.

As you’re retired it might be nice to spend a few days over the trip. It’s perfectly possible (and fun and not at all antisocial speedwise) to get from Inverness to Kylesku in a day then Kylesku to Fort William the next on a bike. But you might not get the opportunity to stop at a lovely looking beach or somewhere nice to have lunch if you do.

Bear in mind that you will get rained on at some point…..

Some verrrryy nice models up the thread, thanks for the entertainment. Especially the Delta, looks awesome.

I’ve just ordered myself a Tamiya Unimog 425, really looking forward to getting stuck in over the Xmas hols. My last Tamiya was a second hand dune buggy when I was in my teens.

I ordered it based on the fact that it’s a Unimog (and I had a ride in one back in ’88 that was memorable) – but didn’t really understand what ‘crawler’ means. Does that mean that it’s slower than a slow thing? Or will it still do jumps??

So where do we stick our deposit account money now?? I’d only opened a direct saver earlier in the year when RCI Bank dropped their rate to .57%… So I know I need to move my Direct Saver in November now that’s dropping to bugger all too but I don’t know where to put it. Any ideas?

I’ve booked in for mine at a Lloyds pharmacy later this month. I started getting them about 6 years ago when it was free with work and I’ve happily paid £12 or £13 the last 3 years since I’ve changed jobs.

I’m over 50 so could get a free one through my doctors surgery but I wouldn’t get it until December. I figure it’s best to pay for it and have it early.

What do you mean, it’s surely not trolling. It happened to me too! *

* Obviously it really didn’t. However I do remember going to the shortest queue in a supermarket and being asked if there was any booze in my trolly. There wasn’t but the young lass on the till was only 17 and wouldn’t have been able to serve me if there had been. Not upsetting at all!

DavidB
Subscriber
Let’s return to how great an idea it is to ride on a possibly lapsed cbt forever.

Should we be handing out 2 year driving licences to anyone who can identify what the controls do and has driven around an empty car park without crashing?

No we shouldn’t in the same way that those who swerved round a few cones and then did 4 laps of a street 30 years ago should also have their licenses revoked (raises hand). Where do over 50 bikers stand? They passed a piss easy test on a 125 which needed ne
]t to no training at all. I had zero lessons same as most of my mates. The whole test system was an utter joke and has only recently been improved. The advanced test should be mandatory for both bikers and car drivers. A mate of mine was forced to take it by his biking mates as they refused to have him on their runs till he did. I don’t have the answer but I do know that there are those able to learn roadcraft and the vast majority of the rest of the population. Like it or not my wife is a great driver, cautious cyclist and I’m confident that she’d be safe on a motorbike. I’m not sure I can say that of the ****ts with full licenses I see riding round here in Devon at full pelt in towns and tiny roads.

This licence stuff is interesting isn’t it? I’m 51, I passed my car test in ’86 when I was 17. I took my bike test in 2000 when I was 30. Getting my car licence when I did means that I’ve got all sorts of crazy stuff on my licence, 7.5t vans, trailers, 50cc mopeds without L plates etc.

When I did my bike test I had to do a theory and accompanied riding test. Was fairly stringent I thought but I’d agree that the current bike test is more intense as it’s in 2 parts.

Problem is, it doesn’t matter when you pass your test – you’re still able to ride or drive like an utter bastard if that’s the sort of person you are. I’ve been out on the motorbikes with some great riders that passed the ‘ride around the block’ test and some right numpties that have done the latest 2 part test. And vice versa.

Anyway, if the OP fancies a 50cc bike for their other half – and they’ve had experience of 50cc peds – then there’s no problem getting another one. I’d be interested in electric if it was me, but they seem a bit pricey at the moment.

I find it easier to type the destination

How very 20th Century of you.

Posted 23 hours ago

You’re right! I should use the voice recognition thingy, not sure why I don’t.

I’ve thought of another annoyance though. Dual SIM phones aren’t very well supported at the mo. You can’t dial from the car as the call doesn’t connect. When you do the same thing on your phone it asks you which SIM you want to use, which I guess is where it screws up. That would be a good fix for me – any ideas?

To echo what’s said above – Android Auto is really good, much better than any factory nav. That includes Mrs C’s swanky new E Class Coupe with it’s widescreen display – the actual navigation is better on Googlemaps especially the traffic info and route choices.

As mentioned a couple of times, having a good cable is important. The one in my car is on it’s way out so will disconnect if the phone’s jostled.

I find it easier to type the destination in before I plug the phone in, find it easier on the phone.

You will use a little data on your phone if you’re using Googlemaps, playing music etc.

Neither of our cars have CD players so using Android auto is the best way of listening to music for us.

They’ve rallied a little now to £2.41 – you’re on your way back to BIG PROFITS! :-D

I’ve lived most of my life in County Durham and absolutely love it. There are pretty places all over the country but I do feel lucky to live in the North East. Teesdale and Weardale are particularly nice but as said further up the thread Northumberland (esp the coast) is gorgeous. And of course Teesdale is home to the best eye tests a man can get!

The Jimmy Carr one will be really interesting – as I’m assuming he usually sells out and is usually on in theatres I can’t imagine how they’d manage to social distance under the current rules. Would be rubbish for the performer not to see folks faces if they’re wearing masks too!

If you can stand the pain FB marketplace is probably a good place to start.

The Citans and Kangoos – and also the new Nissan NV250 – all come out of Renault’s factory in Maubeurge France. They’re all the same so unlikely to be quieter than the other. There are a couple of changes to the interior and the grille and standard spec but they are the same van. NV200 also uses the Renault / Nissan 1.5dCi engine.

There are plenty of 2.8t vans out there – Vivaro, Trafic, Transporter etc. Most with approx 1,000kg payload when empty.

It’s a smaller than a ‘big’ transit, it’s the equivalent of a new Transit Custom.

Back in the day Ford didn’t make it easy for consumers calling everything Transit because it’s easy to think you’re getting a big 3.5t van rather than a mid size, 1t payload van.

Stealer? Car dealers are a business like any others. Yup, they’ll try and make a little profit out of you but on the flip side you’ve got a bit of backup from them if things go wrong.

You don’t want to pay PCP levels of interest? PCP rates are usually comparable with personal loans aren’t they? And you can own it / pay off the balloon at the end should you want to.

Personally I probably would buy a Cat S car – but it would need to be around half the value of a comparable one.

I’ve just got one of these for Mrs C’s new car, dead cheap and seems OK so far.

It’s teeny tiny which means it doesn’t obscure the screen. Going to got it wired in at a garage but I’ve got it plugged into the USB for the time being. Just need to be patient running the wire around.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07GFGHKW8/

Tartiflette = lardy deliciousness.

Oh mah gahd fellow chubbsters, it’s Friday again already! Step on the scales please, one at a time…