Why are sat-nav walking directions always so hopeless? I stumble on a large root. At least that's what I think it is. For all I know, it could be a low fence, a rotting corpse or a very hardy badger. Some dodgy software has led me here, maybe some even dodgier software is waiting to mug me behind the next tree. It's past 10pm, the moon's just ducked behind clouds and I can't see a …
"You will reach a stream or gully and leave the forest along it."
Tried that in the Cullins once. Ended up going down a canyon and came to a point where the stream was full width, and there was a 20 foot waterfall in the way. Happily the pool at the foot of the waterfall was clearly deep enough and it was summer, so we jumped, swam, and then dripped the rest of the way home.
Edit: I've just seen TrumpSlurp the Troll's comment, a couple above this one. Yes, exactly. (Where were you on my 16th birthday?)
"If lost in a forest go always down. You will reach a stream or gully and leave the forest along it. Going up will inevitably end on a hilltop."
It depends on the local terrain. In some places if you follow a stream you'll end up stuck in some form of mire. If it's not mountainous stick to the ridge and follow that down*. A lot of pre-historic tracks were ridgeways for good reason.
*Unless the ridge ends in a sharp drop.
Can I ask how wind direction (which changes) can help with navigation? Genuinely curious!
Simple - it's pretty much guaranteed that the way you want to go will be walking into the sodding wind, rather than it helpfully blowing you from behind.
Sorry, slipped in Dabbsy-esque double-entendre there.
You can use the effect prevailing wind has on flora, for example. Trees will tend to lean with the prevailing wind and that's not effected by wind changes that will fluctuate. The drying effect on natural and man made things. Cloud direction. Clouds will move in a different way to the wind direction at lower altitudes. These things are effected by air pressure too and can be useful weather change indicators. But I'll stop there before I waffle on too much.
It's one of the ways I navigate. When I start a walk I note wind direction and relate it to compass directions. I can very roughly use this to retrace my route or know direction at any point in time. It's part of a whole package of natural navigation tools. I'd recommend reading some of the excellent books by Tristan Gooley - the Natural Navigator, for example. There are people, like me, that teach this stuff too.
A map app is a map. Why would anyone not blind need verbal instructions when he has a perfectly good map piece of modern art Google or Apple hallucinated up, rendered on a tiny screen? Anyway. It's not like you are moving at speed 130 km/h and when you miss an exit you get another chance in 30 km. You are bloody walking. Just look at the map occasionally.
@ find users who...
RE: "A map app is a map"
Yes. But people think because they have a map they can navigate. It's that reliance that will let people down. What happens when weather / terrain / power failure means that your electronic map dies? The tiny screen is an issue if you want to see distant features to establish your location. Reasons like this are why in London cabbies still have to take the knowledge.
"A map app is a map. "
Not yer average satnav app , it just says left , right , and most annoyingly " in 300 yds , go straight on"
As I dont trust these machines I'm not happy with just knowing the next step - i want to know the whole plan, but the missus refuses a) drive or b) press buttons on the satnav to reveal the route its planning , so we go step by mystery step ... or argue ....
"As I dont trust these machines I'm not happy with just knowing the next step - i want to know the whole plan... "
There's also the annoyance of overly-specific directions (in 100 feet, take exit on right.... in 50 feet take exit on right.... take exit on right.... take exit on right... now jump over two lanes to make a left turn onto the overpass (#&%*#! I'm in the wrong lane!)" versus: in 100 feet take the main street exit, then head west on Main street.
Satellite dishes point south (north in the antipodes natch)
Up to a point. Your average satellite TV dish in the UK will point sort-of southwards, but as the geostationary satellites used to cover the UK are not precisely at 0° longitude, you'll be off by a bit. For 'broad brush' navigation, that doesn't matter, but it definitely isn't precisely south.
If you take the example of the Astra 28.2° E satellites, if you are setting up a satellite dish in the UK, you won't point it directly south (180°), but somewhere between 139° and 147° degrees, depending on where you are.
If you put your location into DishPointer, and select the Astra satellites at 28.2E it'll draw a nice map showing where the satellite dish will point. It's fairly clear that it is not directly south.
I'm learning Spanish at the moment. Taught by Spanish people - Javi & Sara - varies week to week.
Anyway the reason you can't get a decent cup of tea in Spain is they haven't invented the kettle yet. They don 't have a word for it even. The concept of a device to boil water with in order to make proper tea is completely alien.
They keep raving at the genius that is the kettle in the corner of the classroom.
They are less impressed with instant Nescafe (and rightly so).
Anyway the reason you can't get a decent cup of tea in Spain is they haven't invented the kettle yet.
The Americans have also yet to invent it. Every time I go to Florida on holiday I rent a place, and it always has a filter coffee machine. But no kettle. On the one or two occasions that there has been one, it has been the "put it on the hob for 4 hours until it boils" variety.
Their lower voltage means that an electric kettle would take a lot longer to boil.
I'm no expert but but to get x amount of power out of a device you need a bowl full of volts and amps , so if you're limited on volts , just top it up with amps to make a lovely batch of kilowatts.
You just can't get the amps through a reasonable cable in the US though.
However, if you are ever required to live there, wire a socket to the 230V outlets (they have different but available plugtops) they use (often without realising) for their washer/dryer setup. Dryers need insane power of course so they use two phases.
Thus (almost) all the Brit Kit that works only on 230V happily operates near the dryer cupboard on an extension.
However, if you are ever required to live there, wire a socket to the 230V outlets (they have different but available plugtops) they use (often without realising) for their washer/dryer setup
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Very bad plan.
A circuit breaker appropriate for a dryer will provide no protection for the puny wiring of a kettle, in the event of a short, making for an 'out of design specs' fire hazard.
"Very bad plan.
A circuit breaker appropriate for a dryer will provide no protection for the puny wiring of a kettle, in the event of a short, making for an 'out of design specs' fire hazard."
Actually it wouldn't matter nor cause any fire hazard. Reason kettle is a resistive load so doesn't need overload protection, just short circuit protection. Ditto electric showers (Though as an ex spark, I have a mixer shower as standing wet on an earthed metal bath whilst under an electric shower goes against the grain somewhat....touch voltage (i.e. that required to penetrate your skin) drops from 50V AC dry down to < 25V AC when your soaking wet.)
Whether you could terminate the dryer cables into a uk socket might be another matter. Though you could just run a flex cable of carrying 13 amps from the breaker panel to a single UK socket (current then limited to 13amps.) 1.25mm2 would cover it though 1.5mm2 is more commonly found, translated to North American as 16AWG, for a longer run, use 2.5mm2 / 14AWG to reduce volt drop.
Inductive loads are a different matter however......that could go horribly wrong.
"kettle is a resistive load so doesn't need overload protection"
Some electrician you were! Overload protection on a circuit is to protect the cabling, not the appliance(s) at the end of it. Ditto short circuit protection. Maybe you were thinking of over-voltage protection as used on industrial motors?
The 50V "touch voltage" (not a technical term in the U.K. Regs) is the maximum voltage the CPC (earth wire in common parlance) or neutral is allowed to reach by design under fault conditions in a domestic installation.
It is derived from the typical surface resistance of human skin and the typical current required for a shock to be fatal to a human (many other animals are much more sensitive). Current kills you, not voltage (hence we don't die from a bit of static, unlike MOSFETs).
if you're limited on volts , just top it up with amps to make a lovely batch of kilowatts
The thing is, how many amps you can pull without melting your wiring depends on how heavy the wire is. This limits US appliances to 1.8 kw. Google suggests that the UK has kettles running anywhere up to 3 kw (twice the voltage, twice the power, using the same thickness of wire).
"The thing is, how many amps you can pull without melting your wiring depends on how heavy the wire is. This limits US appliances to 1.8 kw. "
1875 watts, actually.
Which is quite enough for a kettle, unless you are trying to boil the water in roughly the time it takes to put water in the kettle. Having 30 seconds more to contemplate tea type choices is not always a bad thing.
Which is quite enough for a kettle, unless you are trying to boil the water in roughly the time it takes to put water in the kettle.
My GF found a Teasmade at a local charity shop, labeled 'probably broken'. It wasn't, but the expectation that it would heat the water to a boil quite a bit faster than it actually did probably made them slap that label on.
I'm no expert but but to get x amount of power out of a device you need a bowl full of volts and amps , so if you're limited on volts , just top it up with amps to make a lovely batch of kilowatts.
In theory, you are of course correct. In practice a US mains outlet is fused at 15A, giving a practical limit of 1650W, a long way from the UK 3120W (240*13) or European 3520W (220*16).
In theory, you are of course correct. In practice a US mains outlet is fused at 15A, giving a practical limit of 1650W, a long way from the UK 3120W (240*13) or European 3520W (220*16).
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The actual practical limit is 1875 watts (125*15) which is the common and quite adequate specification for high powered devices like big kettles, convection ovens, and the like.
110 volts hasn't been seen on domestic feeds here for decades. Maybe in some out of the way rural services, but even there, I doubt it.
Note that, unlike UK wiring specs, modern North American wiring codes now specify a dedicated breaker and wire for each outlet in rooms like kitchens, so every single outlet can deliver the 1875 watts simultaneously... with no ring mains or the like, and no fuses that can be replaced with incorrect capacity conductors.
"modern North American wiring codes now specify a dedicated breaker and wire for each outlet in rooms like kitchens, so every single outlet can deliver the 1875 watts"
The labelling of them however is totally inaccurate (or at least in my 12 year old house), as I found out by flicking the light switch to check that half the lights were running off an upstairs plugs circuit ECB & some of the wall plugs controlled by the lighting ECB, when swapping out a light fitting.
"Their lower voltage means that an electric kettle would take a lot longer to boil. I think that's why they favour the stove-top."
Voltage is not a determining factor - it is quite irrelevant.
The key factors are power, water capacity/contents, and kettle design.
Anyway the reason you can't get a decent cup of tea in Spain is they haven't invented the kettle yet.
The Americans have also yet to invent it. Every time I go to Florida on holiday I rent a place, and it always has a filter coffee machine. But no kettle. On the one or two occasions that there has been one, it has been the "put it on the hob for 4 hours until it boils" variety.
It isn't that hard to get a kettle here in the USA. It's just not on most people's radar, as they say. Thirty-odd years ago, yes it was a challenge. The nearest approximation (from Sears, of course!) was something vaguely in the shape of a coffee percolator without an obvious heating coil in it. The bottom was a metal plate that got hot somehow. Later you could wander into a "European Kitchen" store and usually find something familiar, but often lacking that nice automatic switch that pops out to tell you it's time to pour. Now we have one of those, which I helpfully turn on in the mornings on behalf of SWMBO before trekking down the drive to pick up the increasingly mis-named "newspaper".
Much like my endeavours to buy bacon from a supermarket.
It is cut so thin that Lady Gaga would be embarrassed to wear it.
No. I buy gammon joints now and cleave wedges off.
Why, in a world that embraces choice and service do I increasingly find I have no choice but to serve myself?
I only eat bacon when I go home. Not even worth looking for it in Europe. Lidl sold something it called British bacon. As an experiment, bought a pack as it did look like bacon, was terrible all the gunk which came out of it. Dumped it in the loo. Dumped before eating, not after.
Except where said Spanish people know Brits, seen our kettles, promptly purchased a 'proper' 3kW jobbie in the UK, asked said Brit to pop down the Spanish DIY store and re-wired it to prevent plugtop burnout and happily enjoyed boiling water on demand ever since.
With 'imported' Tetley's (though they do sell it there these days) and hard-to-find 'proper' milk (they have it, one has to look hard is all), one can make almost the same tea there as here.
My trick at the Lyon's Tea house (oh, the irony) in the US was to ask the waitress (as she always was all those years ago), to 'please, please' just put the water, in the cup, in the microwave, for just maybe two minutes and not, whatever their feelings, to touch, stir or jog the cup until they gave it to me (along with continuous warnings and a signed release about how it will kill me to even approach it let alone drink it).
Placing a teabag in the cup produce instant boiling water to infuse the teabag I (obviously) brought with me. Not perfect but a revelation compared to the pitiful effort they would have produced.
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