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markbt73

Plans and goals for 2020

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1 hour ago, Badcrumble said:

@jonboy1, @Wooders28 That's not my desk!!! I'm more of a Twinings Everyday man :ph34r:

what do you think we are more likely to believe; that that's NOT your desk you took pictures of your miniature ikea bookshelf you made on, or that you drink Twinings? <_<

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On 1/9/2020 at 9:20 PM, Baddon said:

Finish and detail all the buggies I have and see if I can find that one buggy I want to fill the last gap in my display cabinet.

got the bodies done by outsourcing as I realised I would NEVER get to them as hated the last batch I did so much.

Bough the buggy to fill the last space and body done as above, just need to repair the buggy ( I have the parts I hope I dont need anything else) and then its just small items (except for my old boomerang which needs a total tear down and rebuild and clean)

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Wow!  When I wrote the below on 6th Feb, the world was just beginning to wake up to the idea that something was going on in Wuhan and some people in Italy were getting sick.  I was still preparing for a totally crazy year of RC events, birthday parties, live gigs and family holidays.

I allowed myself to imagine, when the UK went into lockdown, that we'd look back on 2020 and talk about how quickly everything changed.  I kind of imagined that if I was doing this in October, it would be to look back on a crazy half-year that we were finally able to put behind us.  Alas, the experts were right and I was wrong - we're still right in the thick of it.  Looking back at it now somehow feels like an anticlimax, and now I'm imagining that we'll be looking back not just on 2020 but on the next few years, from whatever world we happen to live in in a few years time, when we can finally say "OK, this is done", or "OK, this is how we live now" - whichever that may be.

Get more motivated - working.  I've been getting up at 6am again so I can work on my novel before work.  That means I can spend a night in the workshop without worrying about my other hobbies slipping behind.

-> Mornings are getting darker again and I've had trouble waking up.  Last night I looked out my SAD lamp, this morning I was out of bed at 5:59.  However the evenings are now cold, so working on RC projects in the evenings is less comfortable.  OTOH, I have been hugely motivated to work on some RC projects this year - I've done way more custom builds than I thought I'd manage back in February, and I've got plenty of projects, parts and ideas to take me through winter.

Do more events - yes.

-> Well - I had loads of RC events (as well as other stuff) booked for April to July, but it was all cancelled.  No Iconic Cup, no G6 Recon, no 40th birthday gig, no Dirt3D weekend race meet, no birthday weekend in Brighton.  No family holiday.  Buggython didn't take place this year.  I managed 2 Tamiya Junkies meets (Feb and March) before lockdown.  OTOH, between July and September I did two club meets in Frontie at Cotswold in July, two classic rounds of TORC at Stafford, an Iconic touring race at West London and the belated Revival.  In fact there were enough events on that I didn't have time to do them all, and even as we move into winter and face further restrictions, local and national clubs have still got events on their calendar and with a bit of luck (and if some elements of our society can stop behaving irresponsibly) maybe I can keep racing outdoors over the winter.

Things I haven't done - drifting and big rig meets.  Big rig meets have been too hard to organise due to sharing indoor space with vulnerable groups.  My preferred drift club hasn't been able to run since the Rule of 6 was implemented.  There's another local club that I haven't been to before, but spaces are limited and as my drifting skills are rather poor, I'd rather leave the space for more dedicated drifters and look forward to coming back to drifting when things are a bit easier (whenever that may be).

Rebuild my big rigs

-> I started working on my Globe Liner earlier this year and it could be a good project going into winter, as lots of it I can do in my (insulated and heated) studio instead of into the (cold and draughty) workshop.  I rebuilt my pole trailer and started on my Grand Hauler tipper.  I need to get more parts to keep up momentum on my rig builds and it's a lot of money to spend on stuff that can't be run, so I'm holding out on spending the cash right now.  It would be nice to finish the Globe properly, then get a second Beier unit for the MAN TGX and make it as good as it deserves to be.  The race trailer could be a brilliant custom build project if I can maintain the patience.

I've had so much fun rebuilding my Mod Clod and customising my WT-01 so far this year that I've decided to rebuild my TXT also.

-> The TXT got rebuilt, and I also rebuilt a TLT-axled crawler into a neat little monster truck.  Also got an SMT10 to build whenever JConcepts parts start filtering back into the country.

Only a month in but this really has turned into a non-stop year for RC projects.

-> 10 months in and it really has been a non-stop year for RC projects!

Oh, it's my 40th this month - my wife is going to get me a new camera.  Correction, she's going to get herself a new camera, and give me her old one.

-> So she gave me her Olympus TG-3, and I love it!  She spent some money (that I gave her, incidentally) on a used TG-5, which is newer and has more features and is better in low light (e.g. when she goes caving).  Unfortunately on her first trip she got muck on the lens and wiped it off with her caving suit, damaging the coating.  Despite the Tough Guy name, the TG-5 has a seriously weak coating on the lens (and doesn't come with a lens cap!!).  A new lens might not have been a bank-breaker but also the camera got water behind the screen on its first outing - it's supposed to be waterproof, we can only guess the previous owner damaged it and decided to get shot before the problem became apparent.  It was deemed uneconomical for repair.

So, in short, I gave my wife some money so she could pay off some debts and so she could afford to buy me a birthday present; instead she spent it on a new (used) camera and gave me her old one.  Then her new camera got broke so now she steals back the TG-3 whenever she goes caving.  We still have the TG-5 as a dry-weather spare - I really need to do some A/B comparisons with it to see if the damaged coating actually affects the image quality (I have a suspicion it will be fine unless there's a lot of light coming across the lens).

I used the Coolpix P530 for some videos in the workshop, which it did admirably, but despite having a longer telephoto lens (the TG-3 has very limited zoom) it is flipping useless as an RC action camera - it takes far too long to focus on moving objects, can only shoot a few frames per second, and takes an age to process shot images before being able to take further shots.  I need to try a different memory card to see if that helps it.

Phew.  What a year!

-> You can say that again, Mr. Garrison!

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