Tag: cars

Cruising car

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November 30, 2023

10:57 pm

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Hello everyone,

I kinda got out of the habit with the blogging since I got back on shore ! Don’t worry, the cruise posts will start up again next time, I just need to talk about some after cruise stuff … and maybe get back to a little cruisey summary too for some good vibes at the end.

Picture. We're looking at a cute little green dragon, curled up asleep with head resting on their front paws.

This is skipping ahead a little bit with cruise stuff but the not too spoilery summary is : storms happened ! They were looking pretty serious, so our return was delayed a day with that day being spent sheltering in a fjord. More on that in a future post. But it did mean that instead of me returning on Saturday and having a sleep day on the Sunday, we got back on Sunday and then I was up the road again for a car service on Monday before restarting work on Tuesday.

I’ll be either for a bit of quiet over the coming weekend.

The car service is drawing a bit of a rant actually … It could well be Strike 3 for the Lexus organisation. They make wonderful cars but I’ve had them delivered with pre-delivery defects that in two cases, should have been picked up in the 150 point pre delivery quality and safety inspections they talk about for the used cars.

The least bad one was the IS with the battery terminal that popped off leaving me with a dead car incident. I think this would have happened as a consequence of the cars probably being shipped (by ship) with the batteries disconnected … and then all the predelivery configuration gets done and the battery’s connected. It was just bad luck that it wasn’t tightened up enough, but also careless.

The serious one was my last car, I think it was shipped with a fault in the back suspension which led to massive understeer and excessive body roll. This would have been picked up in a test drive and it would have been a factory defect. It also wasn’t picked up in two services.

And I got a £700 service bill for my latest car. The extra cost was for wheel alignment and a new tyre because the old one had excessive wear due to the poor wheel alignment. Red’s a 68 plate car, which means it was registered in the second half of 2018. When a UK car is 3 years old, it has to start having annual road worthiness checks, which is how stuff like bald tyres and faulty wheel alignment get discovered.

So when it comes to having a car delivered 3 months after one of these checks, with faults like that … you could call me rather ticked off about it. I don’t think it was anything I’d done post delivery, I can’t remember whacking anything. (Although I had another bout of covid not long after getting the car) Especially as it had the wobble vibration kicking in between 35 and 50mph which is indicative of either alignment or balancing. (Or a faulty wheel bearing)

Yeah, I’m decidedly unhappy about it. But it’s not something to immediately change the car about, like what it was with the Blue car with suspected suspension fault and the Silver one which had a power steering fault which was also skipped over in a service. My impression of both those was pretty much “Ok, you’re not finding and discovering these obvious faults, so I’m not going to tell you about them as part of the negotiations for me changing to the next car.”

This might be giving a bad impression of the brand though … The 6 Lexii I’ve had so far have been fantastic cars. Their drive by wire behaviour fits exactly the behaviour I want from the cars I drive. I like to be able to settle into a chilled out essentially autopilot for cruising, with the option of going very quick when I need to. The CT200h (aka Posh Prius) is on the low side for power for me (10 sec to 60, 134bhp system power) but when you ask it to, it cheerfully gives you everything it’s got. And what it had was far more effective at getting down the road quickly than the performance Focus ST170 I had before.

The toys are great too. I’d like to keep going with the brand, except they’ve caught the marketing urge to move everyone into SUVs … which is not something that I can support. They get a lot of things right though, with no design stupidity like you’d get with Ford or dodgy electronics which you’d have with the French cars. Or cars which just disintegrate like certain other EU cars, cars which have special modes to cheat emissions and economy figures, or cars which are excessively difficult to repair by design.

Toyota (and Lexus) make excellent cars. Maybe it’s a Corolla next.

Book stuff ! I read two books while off on the holiday :

Erebus by Michael Palin. It’s tagline is that it’s the story of a ship. Essentially, two ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. They were special Napoleonic War ships, with the war ending before they could actually do their purpose. So after being mothballed for a while, visionary people saw their potential as extreme exploration ships with them being dispatched to the Antarctic and later the Northwest Passage. This book is the story of the ships and what we know of their expeditions. It’s well worth a peek as a look into life on the ships and the discoveries that were made when so much of the map was Terra Incognita with “Here Be Dragons” labels on it.

It was a bit of a slow one though, perhaps a bit too much in there and it felt like a bit of a slog. Still worth checking out though.

Next up was Winter World by A G Riddle. This one’s set in a near future Earth, which is becoming steadily colder. It’s like an Ice Age is coming but it’s not from planetary conditions, it’s ALIENS blocking out the sun. Good book too and it sets up a trilogy. I’ll be looking forward to reading the next two in a while when the book 2 is on offer. (Bought book 3 in a 99p offer)

Ref the cruise though, there will be more posts with pictures to come there but the quick summary is :

It was a Hurtigruten Expeditions cruise on MS Maud. She’s a small cruise ship accommodating around 300 guests. Cozy. The crew were amazing, making it a lovely experience from start to finish. The expeditions team were fun, super motivated, friendly people with an infectious spirit that got us massively looking forwards to what was coming up to see. And Norway supremely delivered on that promise of good things to see.

I’d thoroughly recommend them, when I do more cruising (and that’s a definite), I’ll be looking at Hurtigruten again. You see cruise ship and you think Party Boat. It was a fun atmosphere but it was much more about the getting out there and seeing great things than a dress up for dinner party ship. Just what I wanted and what I didn’t realise I needed.

Economical too, I was able to book less than 5 days before the sailing date with a nice little discount and … there is no solo traveller supplement like pretty much everything else applies to the cost of going away. The atmosphere on board totally supported solo travelling as well. You’d be placed with other people in the main restaurant for food but the guests were lovely too and meal conversations were very pleasant. I could have picked up a collection of great new friends on the trip. (I hope some of you remember me and are reading this – you’re amazing and made the trip much better !)

Disclosure note time – I paid fully for the cruise, the only freebies were what every traveller with them gets : free coffee, cookies, wifi, food, selected expedition things. There was absolutely no nickel and dime behaviour here (like you might remember me complaining about with Novotel)

It was a very rewarding, informative, pleasant, educational (camera, science, people) trip. And it was the getting away from the world that I desperately needed, even though I didn’t know ho much I needed it.

Last message ? Sometimes we need to get away from the world for a little while and do something different. The world can get you down. I hope you all get that chance to escape from it for a little while. I was having lots of fun out there and I hope the posts here about the trip and the pictures I was sending around the various parts of the internet brought out smiles.

Talking about hybrids again

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August 29, 2023

9:38 pm

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Hello everyone,

Oops I blinked and a couple of weeks went by again. I think I nearly posted a week or so ago but may have got distracted by a) a flare up and b) a game again. Oh well.

Picture. We're looking at a white fluffy dog that's looking at the camera with an open mouth. They're riding in a small red fire truck model. The caption is "No time to explain just get in."

Yep. Had a flare up again, which got my legs a bit miffed with me (but not badly) and my arms quite angry with me. Enough for me to get a bit worried about it, sufficient that if the measures taken hadn’t addressed it I might have actually gone to the doctor. But using a tubigrip to protect it at night and more of the topical steroid gunk helped it out a huge amount and it quickly turned course into becoming much better almost immediately. It isn’t fixed yet but it’s not uncontrolled leaking now. (Too much info ? Maybe !)

I’ve been wanting to talk about cars for a while and specifically, developments with the hybrids and electric cars … Actually electric cars is a new one on that and it’s come from watching a The Car Care Nut video looking at a Tesla (youtube link). They have some stunningly amazing tech in those cars. And apparently atrocious build quality. I’d recommend that Car Care Nut video, he talks a huge amount of sense and can explain everything in a way that’s very easy to understand.

He’s mostly about Toyotas, from learning his trade in the Toyota system looking after their cars. As regular readers will know, I’m a firm convert to the Posh Toyotas aka Lexus cars. I like their hybrid system, the tech appeals to the geek in me and the way they drive aligns with how I want to drive instead of taking a few minutes to figure out what you want to have happen like that one Volvo.

So … Hybrids. When I started driving them in 2011, it was pretty much a choice between Toyota and Honda with a bunch of other expensive ones in the Coming Soon bracket. There are a lot more now … I’m back in a similar car to the 2011 one now with Red being a Lexus CT200h. A few of the myths and legends are things like they weigh more so they can’t be as good. Reliability is in question as well. The truth there is that they’re Different, some of those reliability and weight things just don’t apply. I’ve had multiple alternators and starter motors die on cars over the years, there is no alternator or starter on the Toyota system. There’s no gearbox, no clutch. The air con pump doesn’t work off the engine, so it doesn’t take 10% of your engine power when you turn on the chill.

Instead of alternator, starter and gearbox, you’ve got the two motor generators that work together to make the car go. Plus an invertor and battery placed around the centre of gravity of the car. (Which means it makes the weight balance better). The electric part is also pretty well balanced. The 1.8 litre engine gives 97bhp and the electric gives 71bhp for a combined total of 134bhp (they don’t add), so the electric can easily take the car up to 40mph on its own. The torque combines to give the car 300Nm of torque. The 0 to 60 is slower at 10secs but the car is much more flexible than the performance orientated Focus ST170 I had before (170bhp/195Nm torque). The driveability in traffic is outstanding.

So how come this idea popped into the head ? Mostly because an advert from another car company was annoying me enough to check out what they have.

(Ok it’s the Renault)

What are Renault doing now ? It takes a bit of digging to get to their actual tech specs but they’re saying 96kW for the engine (128bhp) and 50kW (67bhp) and claiming 200bhp for the advert. Oh dear, that’s a red flag. Firstly because you can’t add the power together because the power doesn’t come at the same time (motor power is max at 0rpm, engine power is max at high rpm) but they got their sums wrong there. Most people would call that misrepresentation. The torque is actually really good at 205+205.

On the surface, that looks like a pretty decent combination, with a turbo charged petrol engine combining with the motors for good performance (as good as my IS300h’s) and economy.

A very good friend is getting a Hyundai hybrid soon, that’s got a 105bhp engine and a 44bhp motor. Not so sure about that one, the motor might be a bit small. But … I’m not sure that my bigger motor combination is being driven at 71bhp all the time, I’m very curious to see what she thinks of the Hyundai set up. I hope it works out well. One thing about the CT hybrid is that it gives you everything it has when you ask it to, so a 10 second to 60 time works out similarly rapid to the 9 second to 60 time of the old Puma sport coupe.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at several dogs looking out of a car window. One is looking very shocked at us. The caption is "It was then that Carl realised they were going to the vet."
It’s ok Carl

Talking of vets … or mechanics … and Pumas. What’s Ford giving us now with the Abomination Puma ? Firstly, don’t buy one. The engine has so much designed in self detonation potential I’d be surprised if one lasted 50,000 miles. Nice range of engines and specs though but I’m not seeing anything about how big the electric part is outside of it being 48V. The Lexus system is a 220V battery that runs the motors at up to 650V. Higher volts are a good thing, they mean less Amps for the same Power. Less amps means less heat and less losses in the cables. Low volts is bad. 😀 It’s why a kettle takes twice as long to boil in a 115V country compared to how quick we can make tea with 230V kettles.

Don’t buy the Ford. (Also, don’t buy the Renault but I’ll come back to that).

I’ve had several Vauxhalls before but I’m not counting them or the other Plug in Hybrids here because I’ve got no way to support plugging in a car.

I’m struggling to think of more though (bit out of touch with the market) but Auto Express has an article recommending the Kia hybrids. No idea on the motor size again but it’s another 48V system. Sure, if they’ve made it work … that’s great but the numbers work against it. Heat is very much the enemy in electrics and lower volts means higher amps means heat.

Picture. We're looking at the front dashboard area of a car. There's a big screen area, except we can't see the screen, it's being used as a bed by a cute fluffy doggo.
Sleep well Fido

I better close up there … The specifications aren’t important though at the end of the day. What’s really important is what you think of the car on the test drive. How does it handle ? Is it comfortable ? Does it have the speed and flexibility you want in a car ? Does it have enough space ? What toys does it have and are you ok with how you can interact with them on the road ?

There are cars that have gone through the family which I’ve refused to drive more than once. Like the VW Golf TDI which had its weight distribution so bad, it would plough straight on instead of rotating through corners. Like the Volvo which had the complete opposite vibe to how I wanted to drive a car. We didn’t get on.

The IS300h powertrains were great in specification but it took a few iterations before Toyota/Lexus got it right. And the software in the car felt like it was constantly being tweaked between versions of the car with varying levels of success. The mouse like pointer in the CT looks like a great idea but the dial selector in the IS was actually easier and quicker to use. The ES didn’t have a pause button for the hifi. This doesn’t feel like much but when you’re pulling up to a gate person who you need to talk to, it’s really handy to have an actual pause button.

And that’s without getting into reliability. Toyota and Lexus built their brand on reliability and outside of damage (stone in the power steering pump, pandemic induced 12V battery death and a couple of on build defects), the 6 Lexus so far have been top notch reliability. I wouldn’t trust a Renault for electrics … even before considering the extra complexity of drive by wire hybridness. I wouldn’t trust anything in the Ford.

I’m very curious about that Hyundai though, I hope they’ve cracked it with the car my friend is getting.

I haven’t looked back since getting the hybrids, they work extremely well for how I want to drive. (50+mpg is great too) One legacy from the cricket is a lower back injury which affects my left leg. Driving the ST170 in traffic with its clutch would lead to actual high degrees of pain. That’s completely gone with the hybrid autos.

I’d definitely recommend the hybrids. But … as always with cars, make sure you know what you’re getting. If they’re being cagey about specs, like with the Kia and the Ford, then walk away. If you don’t like the driving experience, then walk away. If you’re suspicious about certain “CVTs are the bane of car existence” reviewers, pay attention to different ones. Yep, CVTs send the engine revs up high when you ask for speed … they’ll also send the revs high on part throttle, which those reviewers know full well about and they post the footage to let them grind their axes. How good the electronic brain is determines how quickly the CVT figures out that you want to go fast, you’ll be able to check that on a test drive.

What’s under the hood is pretty irrelevant. What really matters is whether you connect with the car, in all facets of how you interact with it. I like little cars that go round corners quick and quickly go fast with a nice noise when you ask them to. I like good sounds from the sound system too.

But that’s just me, other people want different things from their cars, like being able to freely rev the engine or make the gearbox go crunch. I prefer seat heaters and the simplicity of Left Pedal Made Stop, Right Pedal Make Go.

Must check under the hood some time.

PS The game was called One Military Camp, nice little base builder game with a strategic aspect to it as well. Would recommend.

Watching racing, thinking cars

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May 30, 2022

3:35 pm

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Hello everyone,

I enjoyed watching quite a bit of the Nurburgring 24 hours race this weekend …

Picture. We're looking at the tarmac of a racetack snaking a route through grassy banks to the sides. There are quite a few race cars in diverse colours making their way through, all with headlights on. We can see a few spots of rain on the camera. The caption to the top right is "Total 24 Nurburgring Formation Lap".
Brrrmm

This was actually from the race held in September 2020. It’s normally held a couple of weeks before the Le Mans 24 hour race which aims for the longest days of the year with a little bit of separation to allow drivers and cars to compete in both if able to. The weather this year was far better … previous years have seen the race suspended overnight due to fog or just too dangerous conditions but they got a full uninterrupted 24 hours of running in this year.

It’s a classic race, I enjoyed watching it a lot this time around. And there’s something I find way too fascinating about having the timing screen up instead of the actual cars and watching the sector time numbers steadily collect there. Especially if a faster car has had a problem, got repaired and is catching up through the field again. Or a slower car is steadily gobbling up fast cars that have retired from the race several hours before.

Stats ! It’s run on the Nurburgring Nordschlieffe course which is in the various racing games. I tried it when I played Forza Motorsport way back. Here’s a wiki link. The 24 hour race is held on a layout that includes the 3.2 mile (5.1km) Grand Prix circuit for a total of 15.77 miles or 25.378km. It’ll take the fast GT3 cars 8 minutes 15 seconds to cover that on a fastest lap, or the Dacia Logan taking 11 minutes 46 seconds on their fastest lap.

I like it more when I can adopt? a car to follow for the race and see how its doing throughout the race. Sure, the racing at the top is pretty close and spectacular, like when the Van Thoor Manthey Porsche slightly tapped another car on a fast part of the circuit and pirouetted itself a heap of times before hammering into the barriers. It bounced off a car driven by the other Van Thoor brother too so the commentators were speculating for a while about christmas card lists in the Van Thoor family :-D. But I think I connect more with the little guys, the underdogs, the ones that people write off as having no chance but they’ll keep on punching on reminding you that they’re there waiting to slip ahead when you make a mistake.

And the little Dacia Logan outdid super fast cars like this :

Picture. We're looking at the grass run off area beside a race track on the left edge of the screen. There is a car, stopped, with the back end engulfed in flame with black smoke rising to the left. The caption is "KTM X-Bow GTX".
Toast is good. Toasty cars … not so much

This was one of the oddest things I’ve seen in racing for quite a few years. Before I go on – driver escaped fine and the only things hurt were the grass, several bits of barrier and the car itself. What happened ? The cameras caught the KTM car on fire with the driver looking for a good spot to abandon it. The flames were pretty much out as the car was stopped and the driver jumped out. However … this is where the weird comes in.

Apparently the car wanted to continue racing and set off again, sans driver, down the steep hill. The flames then reignited … Several more cars came through and avoided the fireball before it took an early left and embedded itself in a roadside barrier. The marshals quickly got the fire under control again and the incident was pretty much done again.

Most races would see this being handled under a full course yellow or safety car but this isn’t really practical or sensible for a nearly 16 mile race track. So what they do instead is to have the area with marshals under a Code 60 protocol with a strict 60km/h speed limit. They’ll have a Slow Zone before with a strict 120km/h limit and waved yellow flags before to make it safe for the track marshals to work and return the track to a safe state for racing. I.e. a small portion of the track under a local speed control with the rest of the track under green flag unrestricted racing.

Yep. Enjoyed the race again this year and it was good to see excellent conditions throughout with occasional rain to add even more interesting times for the teams during the second half.

Post Part 2 time !

One thing about the race is the variation in cars taking place. The fastest cars are GT3 standard, so road going race cars like the Porsche cars, the fast Mercs, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and even the hideous BMW M4. Hopefully the Lexus cars will be back as well, they’ve brought the RC F variant of the IS cars I had before. That’s like … a 2 door coupe version of this car :

Picture. We're looking at two saloon cars with swept back aerodynamic roofs. The one behind is red, the foreground and to the right one is silver grey.
Yesterday’s Shinies

Whereas those had 220bhp and a hybrid electric drive, the RC F loses a couple of doors, goes a bit lower, they swap out the powertrain for a 460hp V8 cylinder 5 litre engine and send it round a racetrack. Bit like what BMW will do with their higher spec M cars. The N24 race also includes cars more like what we’d have though, like Hyundai i30N’s, Toyota Corollas, there were a collection of VW Golfs of various ages, Opel Astras and … the Dacia Logan. The Dacia was being a bit of a running joke because it was taking 50% longer to go round the course than the fast cars but … it kept going and came 98th out of the 135 cars taking part despite losing about 90 minutes that would have kept it competitive with the other 4 cars in its class. The two Corolla Altis were doing better than the GT86 car that was also in their class.

So … post part 2 ? I’m warming up the thinking to what the next car I get will be. It’ll be a Toyota again for a bit because I put myself on a multi year servicing deal (might have oopsed there) but Lexus don’t make a car I want to buy any more so I’ll be moving away from that brand. The UX is their small car now and its SUV doesn’t have much sport and little utility. The ES that I have now is too big, as are the other cars in their range since they put the CT/Prius and the IS in the bin.

To be honest though, I’d rather drop a size and cost level and go for the highest spec in a cheaper range than read the manual, see shiny features (even down to a kick open boot release) that aren’t included in the car I get.

Because I like shiny things and I was sad when nothing happened when I waved my foot under the back of the car as well as other things in the manual that weren’t in my car this time. So one thing that might happen next is go for a top spec Lexus CT from the last year they were sold, instead of having something new.

One thing I find odd though is that manufacturers look as if they’re tuning their ranges … SUVs are taking over (I’m not a fan of SUVs) and car makers are either going small or big. Vauxhall don’t sell the Cavalier any more. The Dacia Logan from N24 isn’t for sale any more. Honda aren’t bringing the Integra to the UK.

It feels like an odd trend. Perhaps they’re looking forwards in time to when petrol and diesel cars are stopped from sales. Or they’re recovering from the Dieselgate scandals. One huge consideration for me though is what car I’ll find myself in at the end of the decade … because unless politics change, it’ll be the last car I get due to electric not being a good option for me. I’d have to charge it on a public road with a cable going across a pavement – that ain’t an option and I bet I’m pretty common with that consideration. If you live in a flat, where are you supposed to charge the car up ?

What am I looking at as the options at the moment ? Considerations are : Speed but economical. Toys. Comfort. Size bracket. Being able to put shopping supplies in the boot. The Lexus UX fails utterly on the boot.

I’m actually looking at the latest Puma, even if it is an SUV style. It would feel weird to be back in a Ford after the horrid 2002 Focus ST … but I wouldn’t be captive to an emergency buy this time. The original Puma sports coupe was a lovely little car.

There’s also the latest Corolla hybrid, Lexus should really be looking at bringing a posh version of this out like they did with the CT / Prius. They did a wonderful job with the CT, delivering a solid ultra high quality conversion of the Prius which had them break through into the UK market which was continued with the faster IS300h that I was seeing in work’s car park a lot. It’s weird that they discontinued both CT and IS.

Audi looked ok until you started adding in the options. Similar with BMW and Merc. Vauxhall were a nope (plug in hybrid isn’t an option). And I wouldn’t touch a French car unless thoroughly convinced otherwise. Mazda are a curious one. I wonder why the MX-5 Miata isn’t at Nurburgring … perhaps they can’t fit the safety stuff into them.

Volvo are off the list because their cars are too big. Will have to expand the research a bit while being careful about what any magazines I get say.

Last bit – we had a work trip last week that allowed a bit more research … I’ve enjoyed having decent satnavs in the Lexii, although the last two have had deficiencies come in. (The last IS was an utter failure at last mile navigation, i.e. the most important bit, the destination point can be difficult to set on the ES satnav). This time, we used Android Auto as the satnav. It actually worked really well, with two phones connected to the car quickly and the signal staying good throughout.

However … the reason we used two phones is that sending the signal continuously through Bluetooth murders the battery and we didn’t have charging facilities. My impression was that Android Auto is very viable as a satnav … but I won’t be using it because it connects to one phone only, so I’d have to think of something to allow my music to be used. I wonder if I’d be able to satnav off the old iPodPhone I have, that might sort out that one.

(My main phone is a Pixel 4. Is good phone. My music comes off an iPhone 5, which is staying on an ancient version of iOS so that it talks to an equally ancient version of iTunes. I can’t update them. Similarly, I can’t allow the iPodPhone to connect to the internet because it’s hilariously exposed on security.)

So there’s another big consideration – getting satnav and music via two different devices.

I think that’s it for now though. Time to have a little diversion looking at Mazda’s site to see what they got :-D.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Mining for bugs, chaotically

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May 16, 2022

9:36 pm

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Hello everyone,

I need to hit that “Add post” button more often ! Things are in my head that aren’t getting chance to escape. First though, one of my more weird thumbnail pics …

Picture. There is a blue implement with handles at the top and some black fittings between. There are a pair of arms below a hinge in the centre. The arms curl round to a couple of yellow pads facing each other. (It's a clamp) Two green dragons with flying goggles are on either side of the handles.
Get it good and tight boys

I got that a few weeks ago but hadn’t applied it to its given purpose since acquiring it. What’s it for ? My flightstick and throttle are a bit chunky … Let’s see :

Picture. We're looking at my red fluffy dwagon sitting on a very chunky joystick. The stick itself is about 8 inches tall, slightly taller than the dragon. It is covered in switches, most of which have lights.
Dwagon at 9 o’clock !

If you pull back on that, you’re giving it a fair bit of leverage. I had the joystick and throttle on a wooden (chopping!) board to extend the reach on my desk so that I could push the throttle all the way forwards without it clashing on the upper deck of my desk. Trouble was, pulling back on the stick put in all that leverage which made the board come with the stick. The clamp stops that.

Which means …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at the back of a spaceship with several engines firing away. The paint scheme is dark purple at the back, light blue at the front. We're in the midst of a dimly lit rock field and above the ship and to the left, we see a light orange yellow planet which the ring system is orbiting.
Awaiting an unsuspecting asteroid

Yep. Been back in Elite Dangerous again, with a new ship. This one is another tribute ship, the Dances with Snowmen. The callsign there is -K1R1-, for 2dKiri, who is a lovely Austrian lady who streams games in the afternoon. A happy soul who will make you feel better as she’s playing through the games. And I managed to catch up with one of the names on my ever expanding names list there with a miner. The Dancer has just been molesting rock type rocks so far but I think I’ll take it into ice belts at some point to do core mining. That’s where you blow up ice balls to get the very precious Void Opals inside.

It was good being back in … although Elite is a hard game to love at the moment. There are a few too many bugs in the game right now that just aren’t being fixed. So on Saturday, the bugs list started at not being able to see the good bits of the belt (didn’t matter), through to the market bug and topping off with my first trip through hyperspace from the carrier bridge ending up with :

Screenshot. We're looking at a Crash Reporting dialogue window with a browser window hiding behind it.
Yep. It’s the crash reporting tool

Yep. Crash to desktop. Everything was ok when I logged back in again and I got enough mining done to pay for the new ship and a selection of new services that went to the carrier. That is, before another bug stopped me checking out any rocks for the remainder of that session. (You use a prospector to see what’s in the rock and then mine the best ones – the prospector bugged out).

But yeah. First time back in for a while, I enjoyed chilling out blasting at the rocks for a while.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're inside a hangar, looking at our pilot who is wearing a mostly white flight suit. Our ship is in the distance, somewhat dimly lit but we can make out a slim side profile with the dark colour at the back and light purple at the front to the right.
Keep ‘er warm, back soon

Today’s jump through hyperspace actually worked ok as well. Ok so … explanation time – Elite does its travel between stars using hyperspace. The main ships you fly typically make jumps of 20 light years or so, although you can shove that up to 75 or more light years with special stripped down fits. But 20 light years is good for a fully laden trading ship. It takes them about 50 seconds to go from star to star. (4th wall explanation – it’s taking that time to load in the info for the system you’re jumping to). The fleet carriers can jump 500 light years at a time … but it’s a special system that takes 15 minutes from command to execution and you need to specially mine the fuel.

Yep. Good being back in, there are a few too many bugs still in the game though that should have been eliminated by now.

Going from one Frontier developed game and a Frontier published game, you can tell the difference with the new Chaos Gate game. I’ve enjoyed 6 hours of that so far, although I think I’m going to restart a bit easier with lessons from the first play through. Oh, the developers have been listening to the player base and actively adjusting the game to the feedback since launch. What’s Chaos Gate ? I think it’s a remake but I didn’t play the original so I have no knowledge there.

It’s been described as an XCom game with Space Marines. You have your 4 high powered super human marines, being sent into missions against followers of Nurgle. That’s the Chaos God for plagues. Nurgle is looking to eat a sector with a plague and your people are recruited by an Inquisitor lady to stop it. Easy to play, really tough to win.

Last thought before today’s closing picture … I mentioned small cars last time. Not got one of those yet although this vintage Escort Mk II rally car is very promising. (Modelsport link) (Tamiya Link).

Nah. This time it’s big cars. I’ll need to make a Decision there in the somewhat near future. What’s next ? Lexus aren’t selling a car I want any more, plus I’ve kinda fallen out of love with their offerings due to the quirkiness and other issues. When the carpocalypse comes around 2030 and petrol cars stop getting made (I honestly don’t think this will happen then), I’ll need to find a petrol car to keep around. That is, unless I move to a place that’s compatible with electric charging or electric car charging becomes actually convenient.

What’s the thinking at the moment ? There are 3 cars on the radar … first is the Ford Puma hybrid. Yep, a return to the cars I used to own quite a bit. Calling the SUV a Puma is a bit of an abomination to this previous owner of the old Puma sports car but it feels like this one is a good balanced car worth checking out.

Second up is the Toyota Corolla 2.0 hybrid. It’s back to a smaller car (the ES300h is way too big) with a good balance between going quick, having space and being frugal. The last one would be going backwards a bit … the blue 2011 Lexus CT I had is quite probably the best car I’ve owned. The build quality was stunningly good, it had bundles of space inside, it just wasn’t as fast as I’d have liked. But if you just go for chilled out motoring, the CT was an incredible car for that. And going used (they stopped importing them to UK a few years ago), you could get a top of the range version with more toys than mine had for an acceptable cost. (Linky)

Time to close up, one more Elite picture … Found this guy on the carrier.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're inside a spaceship, looking at a couch against the wall. 2 people are sitting on the couch, on the right is a fella in a green and grey uniform suit. One the left, is a fella in a blue uniform. He is asleep. There is also a potted plant to the left.
Bosun ! Prepare the airlock

Yep. Totally going out the airlock. Crime – drooling on the upholstery. Sleeping on board is indeed, permitted. We have cabins. Sleeping in front of the command deck door … No. Drooling on the upholstery, you know what’s coming …

😀

Stay safe, be well, don’t drool on upholstery that isn’t yours.

Sleepy Cars

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May 22, 2021

6:50 pm

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Hello everyone,

I’ve been half watching Wheeler Dealer episodes after the F1 qualifying finished and that with another thing gave me the idea for a non Internet Spaceship post ! To be honest, I haven’t been in the internet spaceship since Sunday and game’s got so many issues that the Steam owners have affixed the “Early access” tag to it.

I’m going to go from worst cars owned to best and there is going to be a big Lexus vs The Rest split in here. They’re just well sorted cars that tick all the boxes and set out to do what they were supposed to do. Disclosure note – no inducements of any kind involved, save the things like free servicing and repeat customer discounts. I do feel that I need to pop in a different picture though so that the absolute worst doesn’t get the thumbnail !

Picture. A green dwagon is squeezed into a little red car with a clockwork winder on the back. The car is pointing to the left and the dwagon looks quite excited to be about to drive it.
Brrm brrrm

The absolute worst – a 1992 Rover 420 “Exec Limited Edition”.

Picture. A Green saloon car parked on gravel, pointing to the left of shot.Lush greenery is behind.
Oh it’s broken again

This was a 2 litre engine variant that gave about 140bhp. It wasn’t slow and was actually fairly decent around the corners. It supported me through my early working days and did a decent amount of miles for me. It handled my early hifi and computer gear which were far more bulky than what I have now. But … 30ish mpg was poor for the performance and it broke CONSTANTLY. Reliability is by far, the most important criteria for me in a car with repairability coming second. For a car that was marked Exec Limited Edition, the interior trim was cheap. Dredging up from memory, this car broke the alternator with no warning save for not starting up the next morning. The engine developed a coolant leak which later most likely turned into burnt valves (4 cylinders down to something like 2.5). The alternator broke again. Expensive servicing. And I’ve banished the rest from memory. The car wasn’t great to start with and was constantly breaking.

Other cars I’ve owned have had major mechanical issues but those were usually one hit things like the broken inlet throttle body on the next car. I’ll forgive one thing breaking … but not the repeated breakages of the Rover.

Car 2 – not quite the worst … but nearly. 2002 Ford Focus ST170.

Picture. Rear end of a silver car. The rear window is covered in snow, with a smiley face drawn in that snow.
You wouldn’t be smiling if you owned one of these

One of the considerations with this list is : Does the car do what it is supposed to do ? So a later one will get a free pass on performance that this one definitely doesn’t. This car is a Focus ST170, a 2 litre performance oriented variant of the early Focus designs. It was medium weight, without any real effort in lightening the car to get more speed. Or maybe they did and it wasn’t noticeable.

A minor sin was that it wasn’t nearly as good handling as the Puma I had before. But the biggest one is that to fit an extra gear in to give this car 6 gears, far too many compromises had been made. The 3rd gear had a design weakness that led to awkwardness in engaging the gear, plus there was a big gap between the 2nd and 3rd gear ratios. If you changed up at the wrong time, you had absolutely zero power available. The engine also had a very over protective heating sequence, where engine power was limited to what felt like 50% until the car reached operating temperature.

All that together and it didn’t just lose its Performance Car feeling, the driveability was shocking. It also had very cheap trim that was increasingly becoming detached.

So that’s the really bad cars … The rest have been pretty good ! Well. Maybe this one’s on the verge :

Picture. A little red hatchback car from the 80s. It's a Ford FIesta parked in a field.
Ready to roll, slowly

It’s a Ford Fiesta Mk2 and the one I had was a 1982 950cc Popular Plus. I’m not sure what the Plus meant because the car didn’t have very much included outside the little 4 cylinder engine. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. It’s an entry level car that goes from A to B without the rain getting in and you could bring back a bit of shopping in it. Cheap and cheerful. Don’t ask about the 0 to 60 or the top speed ! Things did break on it, including the brake master cylinder on the way home. But parts are cheap and somewhat easy to replace. Oh and it wasn’t a car for going round corners fast.

Not in the same league as any of the other cars in this list for performance, practicality, comfort or toys … but it did exactly what it was supposed to do and was great value. I denigrate this car a lot but it really doesn’t deserve that. Good little car and it owed us nothing when we traded it in for …

Picture. A 1980s hatchback. It's a Vauxhall Astra Mk1 viewed from the right hand side and the front. It's in a curious shade of orange red.
Notify the mechanic ! Something’s fallen off again

The car that replaced my Fiesta was a 1.6 litre Astra Mk1 from 1982 that was the original Buggy. This one had its mechanical issues, like broken springs at the front, headlight glass and a few ignition things but all those got replaced very quickly for minimal monies. Oh and it developed an oil leak at the back that damaged the starter motor. (I think I caused that by overfilling the oil). This is a case where things breaking get forgiven because the car keeps on ticking (oh – alternator failure as well) and fixes were easy and cheap.

It’s a car of its time, which means the 90bhp was in a very lightweight car giving about the same power to weight as the Rover and the Focus. However, because it didn’t have the complex computer control of those later cars, the power is inconsistent. Some days it’s good, other days the carburettor isn’t quite as well sorted and it takes time to get happy. The radio was a thing I put in and I really should have bolted down the speakers behind the back seats.

But ! This car got adopted as our university hall shop van for my second year and was happy lugging deliveries of £500 ish of Stuff from the cash and carry place. It handled pretty much everything I threw at it but it was getting really tired by the end. I joked that it had a beard, this was a vast array of corrosion under the front bumper. Plus it was down on power, perhaps it hadn’t been as adapted to lead free petrol as I thought.

Great little car, this one got me through university.

Picture. 2 very modern and streamlined saloon cars are lined up. The one behind is in red, the closer one is a darker silver.
Shiny in red and grey

On to the Lexuses … The big thing to note with these is higher cost and available technology brings with it far higher expectations. Whereas the Fiesta and the Astra had minimal technology because it wasn’t available, the 2010 onwards cars have to be judged on how they put their technology into practice on the road.

And there are shortcomings with the IS300h’s which is another reason why I was content to switch to a different car and held off when I was being offered to switch to one of the last of the IS’s in the middle of last year. Before I dive into the shortcomings, the IS300h is a very special car. But it could be better ! The handling is excellent and the power train is the hybrid system that combines great power, massive amounts of torque with driveability and economy. I had no issues with the boot and it was lovely having all that technology on the inside like seat heaters and coolers, and bluetooth connections to the rather good hifi. Reversing cameras and parking sensors are also something I would demand in all future cars and the adaptive cruise control is fantastic when on the motorway.

But … the 2013 car had driveability issues with the software. Pulling up to traffic lights in Normal mode would lead to kangaroo hopping as the mechanical and electrical brakes started fighting with each other. The 2016 car was the best of them and fixed that issue. I moved on to the 2019 car because the previous one had a suspected broken power steering pump (also offer that couldn’t be refused). The last one had a definite step backwards with its satnav and it was a victim of plague lockdown with its battery.

The level of technology in the 2010 and onwards cars would have been undreamed of even in concept cars to the 17 year old Sleepy who had just got his driving licence. That technology HAS to work though and it HAS to be sorted out before the customer sees it. Breakages like the battery and the power steering are ok, that’s not a design issue. But issues like the drive by wire software and the satnav giving up before the crucial last mile have to be 100% done.

Picture. A white saloon car points to the right of shot. It has a spoiler on the back and the letters "SRi" on the door. It looks poised ...
Buckle up

I have fond memories of this car, despite not having it for that long ! It’s a Vauxhall Belmont SRi and I got this one as a result of a bit of a shuffle of cars in the family. Before it was mine, it was Mum’s Rocket. And it definitely shifted along. What happened ? My sister’s Astra GTE blew up as a result of faulty maintenance from a garage (a new cambelt broke – engine go byebye), so she got my Astra Mk1 Buggy until a replacement could arrive. The Belmont had really heavy steering (no power assistance) that was hurting my mum, so I got the Belmont and my mum got the short straw of a nasty little Peugeot 205.

I can’t remember why I moved on to another car but it could have been a combination of that lack of power assistance on the steering coupled with me recovering from the dislocated shoulder. It was also still my mum’s car in my mind. I’d have been much better to keep it to be honest as this was one of the last pre-catalytic convertor cars. It was lighter and a little more powerful than the Rover 420 that replaced it. I think it gave around 45 mpg too on the motorway heavy driving I was doing.

It did need to have the fuel pipes replaced and the oil cooler took about 5 Vauxhall garages in Lincolnshire to fix (bad garages saying they had done work that they hadn’t) but with its issues sorted out, this was a splendid car, albeit getting a bit tired on 130k miles. With hindsight, I should have kept it because the Rover that followed it was a shocker.

Picture. Several cars are parked. My old silver Puma hatchback is closest to camera, pointing to the left with a dusting of snow on the bonnet. A white BMW saloon and white Astra hatchback are behind.
Spaceship !

This is the 1998 Ford Puma that I had for maybe 7 years before it started disintegrating on me. This was a spectacularly good little car. It starts as a Fiesta, which then has an uprated engine and improved suspension systems. The result was a little rocket ship that was a dream to drive. It’s a toss up as to whether this should be actually number 1 in this list because it does what it’s there to do in a wonderful style of its own.

The engine is a 1.7 litre engine with a “VVT” or “VCT” label on it, which stands for Variable Valve Timing or Variable Cam Timing. What that means is that with the 1.7 litre engine in a little body, it’s a fast car. When you floor it, the engine changes the timings of when petrol and air go into the cylinder and it becomes a ludicrous car. This was such a fun car to drive, with a well sorted gearbox and handling that had power oversteer, which was brilliant when doing daft things when going round corners.

I think the next two are just Better though.

Picture. We see a dark blue saloon car, parked up. We're looking at the front right corner.
Shiny in waiting

This one is a bit of a floating selection. I haven’t really had the car long enough yet to properly place it in this list but I’ve been greatly appreciating what I’ve seen on it so far. It’s the 2020/2021 Lexus ES300h and although it shares most of the powertrain goodies from the IS300h, the big difference is that it’s been turned through 90 degrees and drives the front wheels.

This gives it a bit of a skittish tendency when going over broken up pieces of the road, like railway lines or joins in the tarmac. Still goes round corners pretty well though.

So – easy to drive, cavern of a boot and the toys are all working very nicely indeed so far. The selection of trips so far have been very easy and it’s nice having a sun roof again. One other thing that puts this above the IS and definitely the Belmont is that the steering is incredibly light at parking speeds. The Belmont’s lack of power steering really hurt it in car parking.

So … what’s the best car I’ve owned ?

Picture. A medium blue hatchback, in a car park. We're looking at it from the front left.
Tardis blue ?

Yep ! It’s my first Lexus, a Tardis Blue CT. This one gets the nod because the hybrid bits made this ridiculously easy to drive, which I desperately needed because the heavy clutch and nasty gearbox of the Focus that preceded it were causing my definite pain in my left leg. That was gone with this car because … no clutch work !

The drawbacks on this one were the limitations of the Prius powertrain that it inherited. It didn’t really have enough power to keep me happy, which led to switching to the IS300h’s. However … the system meant that whenever you asked it the question, this car would give it absolutely everything that it had. Off the line from traffic lights, this car would beat pretty much anything else due to the electric motors, up to around 40mph. It was definitely far more flexible than the Focus with its dodgy gearbox.

Splendid car. Could have done with more power but it more than made up for that with lovely comfort, great start on the technology toys (first car with reversing camera and smart entry) and the more mundane but utterly critical thing of a flat boot floor when the back seats were down. You could probably fit more in there than can go in SUVs.

Gosh, long post ! As a little recap of the order :

Nasty – Rover 420 and Focus ST170.

Cheap and cheerful – Fiesta Mk2 and Astra Mk1

Not quite there – IS from 2013, IS from 2019, IS from 2016.

Best of the older ones – Belmont SRi, Puma

Favourite cars – Lexus ES and 2011 CT.

The family had a bunch of other cars that I drove from time to time … and a couple I refused to (Golf TDi was dangerous and I would refuse to drive it). I can’t remember those too much though. I didn’t like the Volvo because I didn’t get on with its gearbox brain, the MX-5 was lovely, sister’s Saab was another rocket ship and the Mondeo Mundanos did their job well. I missed out on the Mk3 Spitfire that we had.

That’s all for me for today – stay safe, drive safe, have safe fun on the roads, be well.

Cars, racing cars and sweet things

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February 10, 2021

5:10 pm

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,

Hello everyone,

I might be changing cars again soon … It’s only a “might” at the moment but there are a few compelling arguments either way. The “No Change” route would mean keeping what I have and paying off the remaining finance on it when the PCP* period finishes next year.

*PCP is Personal Contract Purchase. It splits the cost of the car three ways. There’s a deposit at the start and the value remaining at the end is engineered to be the same as the expected future value of the car. So on a car costing £35,000, the up front would be anything from £2,000 to £10,000 and they’d expect the value after 3 years to be around £10,000. And then the finance is for the difference.

The other way would be to hand mine back in early and jump into a different car after delivery.

Erm … we interrupt this post for a very important thumbnail.

Picture. My fuzzy red dwagon and the thin, tall green dwagon are buried in a collection of sweets. There are two small bags of strawberry bonbons, one bag of kola kubes, one bag of lemon sherbets, a bag of chocolate mice, a small number of chocolate brownies and a bag of fudge.
Beware entering food shops while hungry

More on this later.

It’s a curious choice this time around because Lexus have been busy rejigging their range for the UK … You can still buy the CT for now :

Picture. A deep blue hatchback car sitting at idle in a car park. (Lexus CT)
A fine steed

This was my first Lexus, the Tardis Blue Car CT. (That was a shameless attempt at invoking search engine optimisation 😀 ). It was a lovely car too, very well put together, probably as close to perfection as I’ve had in a car and extremely practical besides that too. It had only one problem, under the bonnet there was the Prius hybrid powertrain that struggled somewhat for power. The electric motors give it excellent starting speed but it ran out of puff fairly quickly. It also had to be worked a little harder than the IS300h, which meant the fuel economy while great on paper, would suffer.

I’ve enjoyed my last 3 cars, all three of them being IS300h’s. That’s a saloon shell with more power. It’s a bit sad but there’s been issues with these … they haven’t been the image of perfection that the CT was. I’ll leave the issues I may or may not have with the current one until after it’s gone but … Car 1 had drive by wire issues where it would kangaroo hop into traffic light stops where it should have been smooth. And Car 2 had what I believe was a broken power steering pump. So that was another reason for jumping on the Offer I Couldn’t Refuse last time. Oh and Car 1 had the dead car incident caused by someone in the delivery chain not bolting the battery terminal on correctly.

I know, hard to believe that last one isn’t it. Anyway, both the CT, the IS and the RC coupe version of the IS are being discontinued in the UK. If I change, it’d either be an SUV shell (I don’t like these, too much metal) or the bigger ES saloon. I’ll be pondering on it for a few days.

One thing for this post is racing cars … I have the Steve McQueen Le Mans film on at the moment …

Picture. A Lego Le Mans endurance racing car sitting on a sofa. The centre of the car is white, the outer bodywork and front aero wing is green,
Zoom !

And EEK. Crash time. We’ve had a car spin and the next car through following went out of control and off the road, landing off the track and exploding into flames as the driver attempts to run away. And then another crash with one of the Porsches which also hit the barriers out of control.

The picture and cinematography work is incredible. They’re doing a lot of slow motion and freeze frame to capture the heavy drama of what’s going on.

I saw the film a while ago and was impressed back then. Both this Le Mans and the more recent Ford vs Ferrari (Le Mans 66) are well worth a watch. They’re both remarkable films.

Things I have been noticing from both though is the differences between racing then and racing now. I’ll get to the Follow The Race stuff later but the opening sequences of the Steve McQueen movie shows the drivers getting set up for the start of the race. They’re wrapping what are essentially bandannas around their mouths and neck before putting on open face crash helmets. Yep. That’s moved on since. Full face helmets, balaclavas and the HANS (Head And Neck System) are mandatory now and have saved many lives. There is also communications between driver and team which can warn the driver if they’re approaching an incident.

The pit stop sequences shown in both movies show the cars moving a little off the main straight and into the service areas. The cars are being refuelled about 10 feet away from where the racing is happening. And it’s side of the road stuff, they have a proper pit complex now with garages. Curiously, a lot of the IMSA races still operate with pit boxes without garages, although these are a long way away from the race track. If an IMSA car has a serious issue, it’s said to be “going behind the wall” to where the garage is.

Another huge difference is the cars. Ford vs Ferrari was in the time of the GT40. It was the story of the 1966 Le Mans when cars looked like :

Picture. A dark green or black racing car with a 2 on the side. It's a closed wheel supercar type, streamlined with a high tail.
Ford’s GT40

Picture is from this Motorsport Magazine article (Link). It’s from the days when streamlining and aerodynamics were just starting to be thought about. They knew to smooth out the cars to get more speed and maybe a little about downforce with that lip spoiler at the back but they understood very little about the more subtle aerodynamic efforts. Developments continued and designers looked more and more at this thing called Downforce, where if they engineered an extra force pushing down on the car, it would mean the drivers could push them harder through corners.

The Steve McQueen film features the Porsche 917 from 1970 :

Picture. Racing car from the 1970s. It's a Porsche 917 closed wheel sports car in the Gulf livery of light blue on top and orange below the door.
Steve McQueen’s racer

Picture taken from a Road And Track article (Linky). See the extended bodywork at the back ? It was intended to improve the downforce, which apparently it did. However … it also led to instability and a likelihood of the car going end over end.

That’s been one issue with racing cars over the years … They’re great going forwards and around corners but if something disrupts that like a crash, then they can quickly turn from racing machine into a sail that catches the air, taking the car out of control. The tolerances were so fine that the Mercedes cars ended up flipping at 200+mph as they went over the Mulsanne Hump, the crest allowed enough air to get under the car and catastrophically disrupt the airflow, after which the driver would be just a passenger.

(Don’t worry about this for road cars, we don’t go fast enough although sidewinds can make driving into Interesting Times sometimes).

Things have improved a lot … The endurance racing fraternity took a look at why the crashes were happening and enforced design changes like the shark fin that acts like an airbrake if the car goes sufficiently sideways to get in trouble. (It also pivots the car back up the right way). The endurance cars also have cut outs above the wheel arches which counter the tendency to flip before it happens.

(Rabbiting on detector alarm is going off).

I think that’s enough from me about the racing cars for now.

Steve McQueen’s Le Mans and Ford vs Ferrari (Le Mans 66) are both excellent movies and I’d thoroughly recommend a watching. They have more than their share of tragedy though amongst the drama.

Before I close up though, the information around the races is SO MUCH BETTER now. In the movies, there’s an announcer that also acts as a narrator for the audience and the people in the pits are using stopwatches to time their cars. Nowadays, we have streaming video services covering the races that usually offer extra feeds as well as the main feed. The official timings are available and in races like Le Mans and Nurburgrings with their very long tracks, the timings get split up for the various parts of the course. There are also the twitter feeds for the teams and organisers keeping you up to date.

Yep, close time …

But first … today’s out among people job was the car service and on the way back there is the farm shop service station … It’s at a lower level of service at the moment due to Pandemic Things but they’re still offering hot sandwiches (no running to the loo this year – hurrah!) and drinks and the farm shop is mostly open.

I may have visited the farm shop while I was very hungry, hence the opening picture and thumbnail. Alas though,

Picture. A chocolate dwagonsaur is perched on top of a box., It is mostly milk chocolate but there are white dots in there as well.
This one from last year didn’t last long

Gosh that film flew by. (Steve McQueen’s Le Mans). Almost at the end, the race is over and we’re getting long lingering looks between two of the stars.

Munchies ? Yep. Munchies happened. Sadly no chocolate dwagonsaur yet this year. Maybe later. They only had minimal Easter Stuff out there earlier. That’s pretty understandable given the current times. Hopefully later :-).

In the meantime, time for the traditional send off : Stay safe, be well.

New Toy, Getting Used to It

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September 20, 2020

10:07 pm

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, , ,

Hello everyone,

I’ve been buying a couple of things …

There’s one. Hoping it’ll be good, haven’t put it together yet. Been a rough feeling few days, although I think some of that is due to pressure around my head from my poorly ear. Yesterday was headache time, not quite sure why I don’t have the headache now !

It was the Le Mans race this weekend, although it was a little different from usual. The race was being run to the same rules, although there were less practice and qualifying sessions. We were also missing some of the competitors in the GTE classes as Ford have pulled out and Corvette couldn’t come over due to pandemic. I did get some sleep this morning though and then watched the rest of the race on time delay. It was a good race too, with incidents happening typically when things had settled down.

There was a bit of an end of an era feel about it too … This was the last Le Mans with the LMP Le Mans Prototype cars before LMDh (Le Mans Daytona hypercar) takes over. It should lead to better racing, with more manufacturers coming in. LMP got a bit too expensive in the last few years, with the hybrid systems coming in and manufacturers pulling out. LMDh should be a good reset.

Nurburgring next weekend should be interesting and there will be many more cars on the much longer circuit.

Oh, I did a start of a Stellaris game overnight as well, I haven’t been impressed with what they’ve been doing in the game lately. The changes brought in intentionally don’t seem great and the bugs being introduced just don’t get fixed. That’s the disappointing thing. But it was good to be in there again with the Nomnivorian Swarm having a good start eating one of the nearby races. Hey ! They declared war on me … We just bit back. Literally.

What’s the new toy ?

There we go, it’s an X52 Pro flightstick and throttle unit.

Dwagon included for scale. They’re a chunky pair … So chunky, I think I’ll be acquiring a board to put them on like an extender to the keyboard tray they get put on. When the throttle is full forwards, the 4 way switch clashes with the main deck of my desk. The mounting board will let me pull it backwards a bit to give access.

It’s got lots of buttons … and lights too. I’ll be looking into how to get useful information out of a little multi function display that’s on the throttle. Thoughts so far … and this may read like a mini review so :

Disclosure note – bought from Logitech, not a free product.

Main flight stick has a really smooth nice action and that wrist rest you see there is moveable upwards for different sized hands. I’ve had to lift it up so I can access the switches and buttons on top. There’s a lovely two stage firing trigger but I wasn’t getting on with the lower pinkie trigger that’s at the bottom of the stick. Felt like it was getting in the way. The disc at the bottom of the stick also interferes a little with moving the stick off the centre, although that might be a New Thing thing. The obstruction relieves if you rotate the disc, so it’s an interaction with the spring.

Throttle is similarly sensitive with moving off the centre, although that could be New Thing thing. It’s useful to set up a little dead zone.

There’s a nice little thumb mouse on the throttle too, with button and scroll wheel too. I thought this would be great for the discovery scanner system in Elite, where I think stretching to use my main mouse there is damaging me. Having a mouse on the throttle is an amazing concept but I wasn’t getting the wiring in my brain to match up with using it effectively. Perhaps it would have worked with more training but I just went “Nah, can’t be bothered, ditch it for old method”.

On the whole, positive. It feels solid and well made, although oddly it isn’t holding to the desk like the Thrustmaster Hotas X did. Perhaps that’s because the bases are a little shorter and the controls are bigger, so there’s more leverage compared to the base. This should improve when I acquire the board to put them on.

Oh and it’s giving me some more options I didn’t have before to get better screenshots. Before, I’d have to pose the ship and then move the camera, I wouldn’t be able to go back to moving the ship. I can do that now :-D.

Talking of screenshots …

I left things last week at the Dryau Awesomes and a short hop happened on Thursday taking me to the Keelback Rings. That’s a pair of ringed planets that orbit each other quite closely, with distinctive colouration on the rings. Pretty.

Same place, at log in when I returned today. One thing that’s simulated is the orbital period of the planets and moons. So when I land, I’ll look for a good landing spot that’s got interesting surface features … plus a backlighting sun to bring out the colours of the ship.

Sometimes there isn’t a sun around to provide the backlight, you can just see the ship there on the left, with a nebula being lensed around the black hole.

It was a good little session actually, whereas I’ve been tiring quickly on other runs, I did a few hops tonight via one of the XTE black holes above, finding this ringed waterworld :

I am definitely liking the blue and orange colouration of Zoomnarr. The pop much better than I thought they would.

And my destination tonight was Neon Beacon, one of a few very rare gas giants that has neon green colouration.

I found a very rugged moon to perch upon too. (Although for some reason didn’t F10 to save the screenshot of me looking at the gas giant from there ! Oops, next time).

Promising start, took a while to figure out what the new buttons did … and remap where I wasn’t going to get on with them !

More screenshots later and I’ll put the Marble Parkour and Lego things together as well at some point. That’s going to be waiting for hands …

I’m feeling my right wrist a bit, although that might be an impact of getting my hand in around that pinkie switch. I’ve also had the pain again on my left hand, where the knuckles were damaged by over aggressive practice in cricket. That’s something that comes and goes, when they bad, the insides of my knuckles feels like there’s a broken bone in there … that was yesterday, they’re ok today.

We’ll see how those go.

In the meantime though, those virus numbers are going up again here in the UK … Stay safe everyone, avoid the idiots, wear the masks, hope you and yours stay well.

Venturing Out

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July 13, 2020

9:25 pm

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I’ve been out of the house ! Even further than the local supermarket place !

It was work though. Not sure if that really counts. It was good to see and talk to people I know in person again instead of just over the phone and Skype. Can’t say what I was getting up to though cos … work.

I’ll be ending with more Internet Spaceship pics but before I get to that :

Being out and about more ? I’ll wait a bit longer there I think. This current situation isn’t over yet. I think I may actually have been lightly touched by the virus because I wasn’t particularly well back in April. It wasn’t serious enough to think about contacting for aid but I did have numerous symptoms that I put down to other things like : April allergies, dust, bad buns from a service station and otherwise adjusting to the new situation. I’m still incredibly lacking in energy though but that could also partly due to not doing much.

But yep. I need to be getting a few things sorted out, like new glasses in particular and a few other things as well. Plus I want to do one of those city centre wanders that tends to see me going past book caves, Lego shops and places that sell music.

I think I might have to look at alternatives for my next car … I’m on my third Lexus IS300h at the moment. I’m not planning on changing it but they do keep trying to tempt me into changing. At the moment, it’s to get one of the last ones to come into the UK. They’re discontinuing it … which feels mad because it was becoming an increasingly popular car in the car park. Looks like they’re looking to move in to SUV type cars and are abandoning that particular part of the market. I’m not a fan of SUVs, I can see why people might like them but for me, all that extra metal isn’t doing anything for me so it’s just slowing things down.

What would I get if I had to change now ? It’d be between the bigger Lexus ES or quite possibly a Toyota Corolla … they have a 2.0litre hybrid which looks fast and efficient. The Prius is efficient but slow and the CT I had was a wonderful little car but … slow and less efficient.

We’ll see ! But yeah, not planning to change any time soon.

Internet spaceships ? I’ve been continuing the tour. I’m hoping to catch up to one of the live streams, which is a definite possibility and might actually lead to some hanging around not doing very much. I think I’ve been burning out on the game again, or it might be a case of needing to do something different.

I’ve actually been in different games as well, courtesy of Steam sales.

That’s Gear City, which I found while looking into a different game. This one sees you set up a car manufacturer and try to survive and thrive. I’ve been starting off in 1900, the era of vintage cars. We’ll see where it goes.

I picked up the DLC for Battletech and have an early campaign game going there … It started pretty well but then turned a bit rough. I’ve got a pretty firm handle on the tactics there now, basically speed is life and concentration of firepower is the way to go. Get guns off the field is a strong theory to run with.

I’ve also acquired Oxygen Not Included (CK loves that), Knights of Pen and Paper 2, Reassembly and Hardspace Shipbreaker. I still need to try those ones. I’ve managed to bin the Idle Champions addiction, that’s a curious one. You barely interact with the game, outside of figuring out the strategy you’re going to go with but you feel like you have to keep monitoring it.

Still doing the miles in Elite though. I left it last time at Tau Ceti. The next step in the tour was to visit Achenar, home of the Empire.

But first, that’s the latest ship in the fleet. The name is Maverick, callsign GO-05E. Some of you may catch the reference. She’s built for speed.

Speed and fly bys of towers. I built this one to go really, really fast (we’ll get to that) and to zoom around the features both in space and on planets.

Back to the tour though. The first place to visit was the Homestead, close to the home star.

I couldn’t resist a closer look at the farm.

Quick peek at one of the planets too.

The Imperials have their own capital ships. Far more stylish than the very functional Federation capital ship design.

Coming in to dock at Dawes Hub. One of the things I wanted to try out in the Achenar system was a gravity dive. This is where you start at altitude at a high gravity planet and see how fast you can go, preferably without needing to lithobrake (ground assisted braking, usually involves dents).

The dive started out at 1000km up and the gravity meter is already showing 5.94g. That’s a lot of weight. The technique is to start off at the ship’s top speed, point slightly downwards and thrust “up”. Oh and you turn the flight assist off so that you go more like Newtonian physics instead of the ship trying to keep you to your maximum speed.

After dropping around 250km, the speed is up to 3,817m/s. The ship is already a fast one, as seen in that first screenshot. The normal maximum speed is about 700m/s.

I thought about doing a tower flyby but … kinda missed it, shooting over the top at an altitude of 375km.

This is where I thought I’d just about hit the top speed I was going to get, with me pulling the brakes on at 7,500m/s. The altitude was a mere 34.7km up (I wanted to leave some room in case levelling out wasn’t simple) and the gravity at this point is 6.7g.

Pretty good for a first attempt at doing a gravity dive. Speeds of above 10km/s are possible.

I didn’t go for a landing this time (6.7g is heavy !) but it was a fun little thing to do.

Bit like getting out of the house and on the road again ! I’m still pretty tired from all that though, so gaming sessions have been short and I haven’t opened a book since finishing Murderbot 2 either.

Hope you’re all good out there as well.

Be well, stay safe, have fun !