Posts

I’ve recently completed some upgrades to my gravel bike and upon realising I’ve done little SOTA activity recently, thought I’d take the opportunity to attempt an activation at the next summit closest to me which is GM/SS-236 Corse Hill at Whitelee Windfarm. Having cycled 60 miles the day prior I decided to load the bike onto the car and start from the Visitor Center car park. There are alternative ways to get to the summit that are closer, but this suited me better and allowed me to put the bike through it’s paces following the changes....

Thanks for reading my first post relating to the Summits on the Air (SOTA) part of the amateur radio hobby. On Saturday 3rd June 2023 I activated my first SOTA Summit at Blaeloch Hill in Ayrshire. This post however relates to my second activation at GM/SS-155 Hill of Stake in Renfrewshire on Saturday 17th June 2023. For those less familar with SOTA – This is an aspect of the hobby that recognises summits throughout the world, if an operator can achieve four contacts at the top of a recognised summit they have activated it and are known as activators....

Garmin released a new feature within Garmin Connect this year called Expeditions. It allows you to complete certain exercises virtually, and of course badges are awarded with various points for those who are looking to level up their profile. Want to learn more? More details from Garmin here. Want to view the list of expeditions in order, read on. Expeditions in Order I’m personally keen to knock out each of these expeditions and would like to start from the smallest to the largest but Garmin Connect doesn’t allow you to view or sort the expeditions in this manner....

I’m writing this quick post following a request from users on Facebook and Reddit. I’m not the first to conduct this modification and take no credit, but hope publishing this information will be of use to others. If you have a Volkwagen Golf MK6 with the dual zone digital climate control as seen below in my “Before” photo, it is possible to swap this out for the Passat B7 unit which features digital screens....

Introduction Each year thousands of people are exporting/importing exotic cars between various countries, I’ve always fancied owning a Honda Integra Type R (DC5) which were never sold natively in the UK but knew little about the process and costs involved. People do import them here to simply sell on with a little markup on top, but they demand a premium especially in recent years. Japan as an export location is a favourite for drivers in the UK as Japanese cars are right hand drive as they drive on the left hand side of the road....

Over the last few years I’d seen many posts from Vitality promoting their Apple Watch deal. I don’t remember the specifics but I do recall it appearing to be an attractive option and as someone who likes wearable technology and keeping fit I was interested. People often ask me how it works and going forward I’ll send them a link to this post. Hello! 👋 Important – Do you have a Vitality policy?...

Beeline is a small company based here in the UK that have created devices to make navigation easy whilst cycling or riding a motorcycle. A colleague of mines purchased the Beeline Moto and said good things about it, they also offered a Velo for cycling. Last week (7th June 2022) the second iteration of their Velo device went on sale. At the time of writing (18th June 2022) the device can only be purchased directly from Beeline themselves at a price of £79....

Last month I picked up my new “do it all” gravel bike and will be uploading my initial review and thoughts on that, I took the decision to sell the Boardman URB 8.8 that I picked up last year as I’ll not use it as much and the demand remains pretty high. I had listed the bike on Facebook Marketplace and while I had no shortage of interest there were no serious buyers, I received a message from someone in Leeds who was keen to purchase the bike at asking price and cover any delivery costs....

Overview So earlier on this week I took delivery of a new Alienware M15 R5 laptop, it’s the first Alienware laptop with an AMD Ryzen processor and this peaked my interest. Like most gaming laptops, it comes with two PCIe M.2 slots for adding additional storage. Upon delivery I opened the laptop and was surprised to see that whilst there was a vacant M.2 slot for the additional storage the laptop didn’t provide a standoff to screw it into....

Recently moved to a new street and can’t update the address of your driving license online with the DVLA? It isn’t obvious but there is a workaround. Below is an example of what you may see when changing your address. If like me you clicked “Other ways to enter your address” and got nowhere? You don’t need to do this. Simply remove the house name or number and enter a valid postcode, any postcode at all....