However for the Saturday Cairngorm would be even busier and the forecast looked better in the South, so we headed of to Glenshee. Glenshee was the last Scottish resort that we hadn’t been to, as unlike Nevis and Glencoe that are within 20 mins and 45 mins of Fort William, and likewise Cairngorm and the Lecht for Aviemore, Glenshee is in the middle of nowhere. There are some towns not too far away, but whilst Aviemore and Fort William are quiet, Pitlochry and Blairgowrie have nothing at all!  In reality it’s only 25 miles south east of Aviemore, but the road journey is 80 miles and takes 1h 45m – however it if you hold the map just right, Glenshee is almost on the way back to Ayrshire from Aviemore.

It was an excellent day with relatively low winds when away from the north west faces, and blue skies all day. It was probably one of the best days skiing we’ve had in Scotland with excellent snow conditions, some wind-blown powder and almost all the rocks covered. We explored Cairnwell, Carn Aosda and Sunnyside with the best conditions at Bucharts Coire. Some pictures from the day at Glenshee:

We’re now back to looking at Banff for March. Fingers crossed we’ll be able to sort something out as I’m really looking forward to going back to Sunshine Village. I’d like to get back on a board too for a day or so, though I probably really need some more lessons. Maybe.

However, I’ve always wanted to go skiing in Scotland before Christmas, just to prove it can actually be done! So despite only arriving in Ayrshire at 03:30, we set off for Aviemore and Cairngorm at 06:15 departing the same fog that had been present on the trip up from Lancashire. Fortunately the weather forecast was accurate and north of Pitlochry we broke out into a beautiful crisp, clear winter morning. Arriving at Aviemore just after 10:00, we headed straight to the ski centre.

The conditions were reasonable on the Ciste fairway, but the ice made the ptarmigan bowl unpleasant and the Cas out of our personal limits. However, we had a great time skiing on the fairway, despite having only had 2.5hrs sleep since 08:00 the previous day. Fortunately there were very few skiers and boarders out on Friday, so despite the relatively limited terrain and lifts, there was no need to queue all day.

Rather than head back to Ayrshire that evening, we decided to stay overnight at the Hilton in Coylumbridge. The next day we went to see the Cairngorm reindeer, then back down the A9 re-entering the fog just north of Perth.

It was an excellent weekend, and just goes to show that Scottish skiing is still a very viable option for anybody in the UK – it’s just a case of making use of it when the conditions are good. Hopefully we can squeeze another weekend in sometime in late January.

One thing is for sure – all the best Sci-Fi spaceships have very little in common with real life rockets. The nature of real life rocket launch operations is a far cry from Mos Eisley spaceport, with the process being controlled by scientists, mathematicians, engineers and computers. With the Shuttle retiring, pure rockets were all we had left.

Until yesterday however, when Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo was unveiled.

Five years ago SpaceShipOne became the first commercial space ship designed for humans rather than satellites and science. But at that point, space tourism still sounded like the stuff of science fiction, right up there with moon biodomes and orbiting hotels.

Yet today we’ve got a suborbital system based on a platform that, whilst not exactly proven, is at least a real life system that has been demonstrated to work. Commercial launches may only be a couple of years away.

The best bit is SpaceShipTwo is a proper space ship!  She’s flown by two pilots, with joysticks, from a spaceport in the desert, and though I guess it would be asking too much to have a smuggler and a wookie up front, we’re on the right track.

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Finland is a beautiful country, and we had great weather for the few days we were there. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see Helsinki, but we spent some time in Hameenlinna before going on to Tampere.

London on the other hand is not so nice. It’s been a few years since we were last there, but last time Oxford street didn’t look like a 99p tat bazaar… The skyline is littered with cranes and the whole place has a work-in-progress feel to it. Perhaps in another couple of years it will be better. Still, every time I go there I remind myself how nice it is not to live in a city.

We had a bumpy trip back on the ATR 72, but really good service with Aer Arann which makes all the difference.

However the mobile web browsing is very good, and there are some good apps available. So, for my birthday Catherine got me an iPod Touch 64Gb. The iPod Touch is essentially an iPhone without cellular data, gps, or camera. I’m not fussed about the camera, but the GPS would have been nice. I understand the iPhone uses an integrated Cell/WiFi/GPS chipset so that probably explains the absense.

One immediate problem I didn’t expect is that disk mode is no longer available meaning I can’t use the device as a backup for my Aperture data – so a 32Gb device would have been more suitable. However it’s unlikely I’ll run out of storage space before the battery dies. I’ve got over 6000 photos and all my music and still have 50Gb free.

Happily I can share purchased apps with Catherine too so the apps I bought for her iPhone will work on my iPod.

So it turns out I’m happy with the iPod, and this post was written on the Wordpress App!

The email issues with the iPhone are mostly resolved as gmail now supports push mail, it’s not reliable yet but it’s getting there. I do wish it showed the number of new messages somewhere on the lock screen though.

The last no-go problem with the iPhone is the fact that Manx Telecom don’t offer a UK data roaming bolt on like they do with the Blackberry. Not getting email is an inconvenience, but not getting up to date weather data for flying or skiing is a big deal. The data can be used in the UK but costs are excessive.

The UK cell network “Three” now offer a wireless 3G dongle called the MiFi that would allow all my wireless devices including the Blackberry, iPod, Netbook and iPhone to use a shared data connection, and it’s available on pay as you go. Hopefully once the cost drops a bit it will be an ideal solution for trips to the UK. A portable WiFi access point has really interesting potential.

Maybe there will be a new iPhone software version fixing the other issues before my Blackberry contract finishes in December 2010, but then maybe the Palm Pre will be a better phone….

(sore thumbs)

The media features are, as you would expect from an iPod derivative, excellent. Music and Videos can be selected easily using the touch screen and the screen itself is excellent once you’ve accepted the fingerprints as inevitable.

That’s where the positives end I’m afraid.

As a mobile phone, and mobile email device, the Blackberry is vastly superior to the iPhone. For example, to make a call to Catherine on the Blackberry I take the phone out of the cover (automatically unlocking the keyboard), then press and hold C and the speeddial happens. With the iPhone, remove from case, manually unlock, click on Phone, Click on Favourites, Click on Catherine.

It’s worse if I have to dial a number or choose from the contacts. With the Blackberry I can just start typing from the home screen, the Blackberry will automatically display a list of matching names, and will also present the potential number to dial should any of they keys pressed also be number buttons. For example, if I push the D/5 button, then E/2, then R/3 it will offer to dial 523 and present a list of all names with DER in them. I just choose what I want from this list and it dials. The iPhone doesn’t have this ability so I have to go into Phone, then either choose keypad, contacts, favourites, recent, then on contacts I’ve got to scroll through the list.  It’s totally backwards compared to the elegant simplicity of the Blackberry. Single handed operation of the iPhone may be possible with some practice, but it’s still harder to use than the Blackberry.

Email is very poor too on the iPhone. No push email from Gmail, and no way of seeing if a message has been recieved without unlocking the phone. The Blackberry has a flashing alert light. The iPhone can try and recieve emails once every 15 minutes, but after having near instant Blackberry email, this seems like a backwards step, and also appears to eat the battery.

One other immediate weakness came to light, and that is the iPhone has no apparent support for ring profiles. My Blackberry has profiles for Quiet, Normal, Phone Only (no email alerts, just sms and phone calls), Off and Vibrate.  The iPhone has none of this, just a ring / don’t ring option.

I leave my phone on overnight by my bedside incase any our systems at work have a failure (we have automatic SMS notification), but by using “Phone Only” profile, the automatic emails from my bank, and the occasional spam message don’t give an audio alert.  To change profile in the Blackberry is a single click, to accomplish the same thing on the iPhone only acheivable through the settings menu.

I’m sure the iPhone is as good a device as is possible without a keyboard. It is certainly much better than the Windows Mobile smartphones, but the problem is a mobile phone needs a keyboard, and if it’s a full qwerty keyboard, so much the better.

I should point out I do actually like Apple products. We have had three OS X computers and I think OS X is a fantastic operating system. Aperture 2 is one program I probably couldn’t do without now. Some of the apps for the iPhone look really good too.

I just really wish the iPhone was better at being a phone.

This year was made extra-special by being there for the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. We went out to the Kennedy Space Centre on 4 separate days. First on the Satuday to see the visitor centre and the launch, but this was scrubbed due to lightning striking the pad the previous evening. The launch was put back 24 hours, so on Sunday we went our again only for the proximity of thunderstorms to cancel the launch at less than 20 minutes to go. Monday was almost exactly a repeat performance with a 48 hour delay. Finally on Wednesday everything went according to plan and Endeavour lifted off just after 18:00 EDT.

After all the cancellations (STS-127 had also scrubbed twice in June) I spent most of Wednesday convinced she wasn’t going to go, and the launch window would be over so I’d not get to see it. Given the shuttle program is finishing next year, I’d probably never get another chance to see a shuttle launch. Even at 30 seconds to go, when the auto-sequence had started with Endeavour’s own computers monitoring the launch I didn’t think she would launch. Five shuttle launches have been aborted by the launch sequencer between the main engine start at 6.6 seconds to go, and booster ignition. 5 seconds to go and I still didn’t believe it would happen.

At two seconds to go my mind changed from not thinking it was going to happen, to not wanting to see anything bad happen.

The big screen at the visitor centre showed the boosters ignite, followed shortly by Endeavour clearing the tower at LC39A. 10 seconds later she was visible above the tree line. A few more seconds passed and then we heard the noise too. I wasn’t even looking through the camera, just pointing it in the approximate direction with a finger squeezing the motordrive.

I heard the audio feed in the background: “Endeavour – go at throttle-up”.  It was just after that point on the 28th of January 1986 that the Space Shuttle Challenger was lost. Judging by the reaction of the crowd, everybody knew that too.

We stood there watching the trail, and at 2m 5s into the launch we saw the boosters separate on the big screen, and the separation was just barely visible directly. A wave of euphoria swept over the crowd at that point. In what seems like a few seconds later we heard that the external tank had separated, and Endeavour was safely in orbit.

It was an awesome experience. I’ve been interested in the Space Shuttle for as long as I can remember, and with the pending termination of the programme coupled with the tight launch windows related to the ISS mission launches I never thought I would get to see a launch. I got really lucky, and Catherine was fine about 3 extra days of the holiday being interrupted. Secretly I think she really enjoyed seeing it too.

Anyway, here’s the pictures:-

(There are only a couple of the launch – I wanted to watch it for real, not through the viewfinder! Try Youtube for a Video)

Anyway, I don’t go in for holiday souveners much, so I only got two STS-127 t-shirts, a STS-127 mug, a STS-127 baseball cap and an STS-127 pin badge…

Tailwheel aeroplanes fly just like any other aeroplane, but landing and taking off is different due to the main gear being forward from the centre of gravity. The aircraft needs more attention to the rudder than a nosewheel aeroplane. (Similar problem with those flat trolleys at B&Q when you push them instead of pulling!)

I did the conversion on a Citabria, and it was a fun aircraft to fly. Unlike the other powered aircraft I’ve flown the Citabria is a tandem aircraft, meaning the instructor or passenger sits behind the pilot. Getting into the front seat would have been easier had I been a few inches shorter (or a lot more flexible) but once in it the vision over the nose and down both sides is excellent. It’s got a stick instead of a control yoke, and the throttle is mounted on the side wall of the cockpit.

Total time to convert was 4h 50m, and I flew the aircraft solo after 2h 5m. I did a session of circuits at Shobdon on Saturday morning, then we visited a private strip 15 minutes away from Shobdon. Back at Shobdon I did a solo circuit then we headed over to Welshpool looking for some crosswinds.
Finally on Sunday morning I did an hour of solo consolidation. It wasn’t cheap, but a great experience as I was able to operate from tarmac and grass runways at Shobdon, and fly into a private strip, and do some cross county flying too. Shobdon successfully mixes powered aircraft, microlights, helicopters and gliders, a really busy airfield. There’s a cafe and camping site there too. No hassles with liferafts, lifejackets, flight plans or special branch notification either. Fantastic!

In combination with my Aboyne trip two weeks ago I’ve flown about 16 hours this month, and I’m feeling better for it too – currency really does make a difference.

Finally this afternoon I went to see the gliding club on the airfield. Unfortunately they didn’t have an instructor available so I couldn’t get checked out to fly their SZD Junior, but an afternoon in the sun watching the aircraft come and go was a nice way to finish off the weekend there, I even got sunburned in the car on the way back to liverpool…

J341ESL had obviously had a turbulent past, with extensive damage that was apparently undetected by the MOT testers. Perhaps she had been a minicab, or used as a van, or a skip. I guess she had seen over 250k miles. She was bought unseen, and I was going to just sell her on and forget about it, but I’m a sucker for the underdog and decided we could save her.

Intended as a canine transport that could donate parts to the Sapphire when her useful life was finished, far more expense was lavished on her to make her properly roadworthy than first envisaged. Yet she was always fragile, troublesome, recalcitrant. Perhaps that’s why I kept her for so long…

As well as transporting the dogs around, she accompanied us to Fort William in 2005 for our first ski trip. When we arrived at the Travel Inn car park one morning, we had been left a note by “Kieran” offering to buy her. All polished up under a stormy highland sky far from home, she must have looked 10 years younger. I grinned about that for a long time.

Sadly I don’t have too many pictures of her, but here are the best:

At the start of the year, she fulfulled her original, final job – most useful components were removed as spares stock for the white Sapphire.  She was lifted unceremoniously onto a Ford Cargo by Hyab, and then she was gone.