Ben B

The majority of drops used post surgery will cause blurred vision so at this point it's just too early to tell if any longstanding visual damage. Unless massive detachment or in crucial area unlikely. Even if one eye is damaged the other eye takes over most roles and becomes more dominant so I very much doubt you're grounded indefinitely. It's just a waiting game. I remember once doing a joint consult for a patient who was about two weeks post heart bypass. The other doctor asked at the end if the patient had any questions. He asked when was the right time to "resume relations" with his wife to which my colleague inadvertently replied "just wait until you're feeling yourself again and it will be fine". Which actually was kind of correct- there's no set timescale for recovery post surgery, just take it slowly and the body makes it obvious when things are possible again.

I still don't understand the FPV clauses "When flying FPV the remote pilot cannot monitor the flight path in relation to other aircraft, persons, vehicles, vessels and structures for the purpose of avoiding collisions to the same extent as a remote pilot maintaining external direct, unaided visual contact with the aircraft." I think when flying FPV it's possible to have better awareness because depth perception isn't a problem and you have a really nice view of what you're flying towards. If I'm flying trad LOS r/c and a dog walker walks onto the runway (as they seem to love doing) I'm only going to know when I look away from the plane. This has associated risks (in terms of disorientation / losing control / looking back up and "taking control" of the wrong plane etc etc). So I do it when I need to but don't when I don't. With FPV I have a much better idea of what is going on around me because I can see it. If I was flying backwards I would agree that there is an issue but flying FPV backwards tends to be quite a short hobby.... I know we should be grateful for Article16, I just can't fathom the logic applied re FPV. It's difficult to quantify "situational awareness" but I'd say my ability to monitor the flight path in relation to the above and therein avoid crashing into them is significantly enhanced by FPV, yet the stance is that it's worse. When I'm flying my micro foamies at the park I often find (after landing) that someone has quietly strolled up to watch and has been standing behind me. With FPV that just doesn't happen because I see them. Oh well we just have to be grateful that we don't have the French system were before flying you have to check an online map and there are multiple different height limits and great swathes were it's prohibited (including large amounts of the Cote d'Azur)! To make matters worse the areas seem to be fairly arbitarily chosen- last summer we did a road trip down France. We stayed in a nice hotel with a big field to one side and to the rear so I got approval to do a little FPV with a 2" FPV quadcopter. The rear of the property was fine but half way down the side bit of the field for no apparent reason it suddenly became prohibited. The hotel was visible on the online map so I was able to work out the approximate bit of the field were it became banned but it seemed v odd- there seemed to be no logic to how / why the area boundaries were chosen. Edited By Ben B on 04/02/2021 16:58:59

There's no need to go excessive. The charging lead will be short (so low voltage drop) and most people charge relatively modestly. If you start charging packs in parallel or crazy current then fair be it but otherwise even AWG14 would be adequate (24 amps).

What proportion of flying clubs encourage / allow FPV quadcopter pilots / races? Perhaps it's just my impression but it feels like there's a bit of "us and them" mentality which seems a shame especially as FPV flyers tend to be younger. Currently I'm mostly flying quads but have a shed and garage full of r/c planes and strongly suspect that in a few years I'll gravitate away from frenetic racing and fly more traditional r/c. My concern is that all the flying clubs will have closed by then!

We're vaccinating group 4 and even some higher risk group 5 patients. We've just been told we're likely to get a Pfizer drop this weekend so that's my free time up the swanny. Still not much else more important right now.... We're achieving this despite the "computer says no" philosophy of middle management. E.g. the Pfizer vial was supposed to contain 5 doses. In reality it contained 6. NHS England gave the green light to use the sixth dose but our local administrators said they were refusing to let us use those sixth doses (i.e. instructing us to throw away 200 doses [people vaccinated] / £3000 cost) unless we could source the same *brand* hypodermic needle that the DOH supplied with the vaccines. Its a standard 1ml syringe and needle. Same size, same spec. It's sharp and pointy.... But they were knowingly going to throw away such a precious resource unless we could somehow find the same brand (despite the government having bought up the entire stock). Which was basically impossible. And ridiculous. Amazingly we were able to confirm to them that we somehow managed to find them and the clinic went ahead. I'll say no more....

Michael- does your GP practice have an online consultation portal like eConsult? I'm a GP and the online portals are really helpful for this kind of query. It allows the problem to be looked at in a quieter moment. A GP with access to your medical record would be able to rapidly assess whether it's safe for you to have the Covid vaccine. Generally speaking the only concerns are if someone has had an anaphylactic reaction to an ingredient in the vaccine. So it really depends on the nature of the adverse reaction to the flu vaccine. It sounds like you've still had it despite the adverse reactions so it sounds like it's not a severe reaction. There's never no risk but there's certainly the opposite of no risk from Covid!!! If they don't have an online / digital offering then a telephone consultation would likely do the trick. Before giving the vaccine we do discuss it anyway however a prolonged discussion or one that requires access to the medical record is inevitably going to be safer over the phone / online. Right, cup of tea finished, back to vaccinating!!!

I'm certainly not complaining about upgradable firmware. One of my previous Spektrum receivers was basically just a receiver when I bought it. Due to firmware upgrades it could report RSSI back to my Tx through telemetry and (more importantly) show the RSSI signal on the FPV screen. Really helpful and certainly worth the upgrade. I just wish it was easier. Or at the very least wish they included yet another adapter. Forcing the end user to cut up and re-wire an old one (looking up the pin-out through various google searches) is just a bit much IMHO. Okay, including hardware is always going to come at a cost but for basically zero cost they could list firware updates so I could make a semi-educated guess an update was available. Oh well, still like the receiver, just seems unecessarily difficult to do something fairly simple. It's a shame when you bind it can't display the Rx firmware version through telemetry. That would be kind of logical.

I know some people make a sport of knocking Spektrum but I must say I've never had any issues at all with them. But by 'eck they don't half make standing up for them hard. I just bought a new srxl2 microreceiver for an upcoming quadcopter build. I wanted to see if there was a new firmware available. Unfortunately to do this I have to register my receiver and to do this I have to enter the serial number for the receiver. Is it printed on the packet? Nope. Is it included on a slip of paper in the box? No. Did they just put a sticker on the box saying which firmware it's got? No. Do they just let you see online what updates are available without registering the device? No. So I now have to use a Spektrum receiver programmer (USB to servo connector) to program it except to that I have to connect a servo to ZH1.5mm connector adapter to connect to the receiver. Except the new receiver has direct solder holes and most people flying quads will just use that. So I now have to solder on a temporary ZH1.5mm socket. Except it transpires Spektrum have used the same ZH1.5mm connector on a few different quadcopter receivers historically and they've changed the pinout so I now have to hackup a Spektrum servo to ZH1.5mm connector adapter (which means I can't use it on my legacy receivers). All in order to find there isn't a firmware update after all. All sounds very sensible!!!

The one and only thing I made with a lathe was a starter cup for small motors. Based around a 540 motor it took me ages to finish on the school lathe. Now I'd likely just 3d print one.... Instead of a proper rubber cup I just used a short section of silicon tubing inside the cup.

I don't think updating via sd card is bad. What I do think is bad is how some cars are now being made with heated seats throughout but you have to pay to use them (BMW). To me that crosses a line. I'm buying a car, it has bits, but I'm not allowed to use it without paying extra? Software functionality is one thing but inhibiting hardware? Though I can see it happening in r/c Tx has 16 channels and you just pay for the channels you need.

The B6 is a reasonable basic choice (I've had two so far and still use one of them). It'll do most of what you want to being with Pros 1) Covers most basis 2) Silent Cons 1) Really old design (I think Noah used one to charge the battery bank in the Arc) 2) Market flooded with fakes of dubious quality 3) Not that reliable (I've had 2- the first one let out the magic smoke during a fully rated discharge, the 2nd, which I still use, the backlight failed). Perhaps I got fakes even though both were supposed to be "real" 4) 50W charging is okay until you start parallel charging / charging bigger batteries 5) It's silent because it doesn't have a fan to dissipate heat but that also makes discharging a bit iffy 6) The metal body (used to dissipate heat) has an interesting "feature" on my one in that when you touch it you get a not unpleasant humming/buzzy feeling in your finger. I suspect this is due to the charger that I bought for it having a semi-sleeved earth pin on the plug (which should never be the case) meaning that it's unearthed. It really depends on future use case. If you're only going to be charging 2200mAh 3S batteries in low single figure numbers it's fine. Though personally I'd still go for something like a ISDT Q8 as it's smaller, more powerful, plastic body not metal, has a fan so runs cooler and uses a standard XT30 plug so it's easier to use in the field to charge up batteries / easier to make up or get leads to power the charger. Ultimately it's personal choice. I fly FPV quads so tends to land with the batteries at the same voltage and am not using big capacity packs so parallel charge using a balance board on a 200W charger and then have a separate ISQT discharger (FD100) for parallel discharging. Even if you don't parallel charge (on the basis that you might start with all the packs at different voltages), parallel discharging is something to consider for the future (in that all the packs will be fully charged so the same voltage). Trouble is recommendation depends very much on use case. For the moment running 2-3 3s 2200maH packs a B6 could be okay if you can get one cheap. Meanwhile a Q8 and FD100 is going to cost about 60 quid all in. But then it has much more scope for future because you can then charge at 500W instead of 50W and discharge at 80W reliably (and without the magic smoke escaping like my B6 at full discharge rate).

Dale- while unplugging a pc is exactly what happens in a power cut it's still a bad idea. 1. If you're using a mechanical hard disk the arms on the platters won't have a chance to safely park so there's a good chance of damaging the disc (particularly if you move the pc but it's never a great idea) 2. If your computer has a ssd you risk data loss also. SSD chips only write a finite number of times so the associated controllers keep data in volatile mentions and only write when there is a whole page to write. If you abruptly remove power without signaling a shutdown you risk losing this data.

It'll still be paid. Just in the country of sale and most of Europe has a vat rate of 21.5% so not really an advantage https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/changes-to-vat-treatment-of-overseas-goods-sold-to-customers-from-1-january-2021/changes-to-vat-treatment-of-overseas-goods-sold-to-customers-from-1-january-2021

If wmp is trying to open it you have selected to open it rather than save it. This is not Spektrum's fault. Classic PEBCAK issue. Right click, save-as, copy to sd card, insert sd card, switch on. Or let's go through this really slowly. Ps it does work straight out of the box. But can be made better through updates. It's not complicated. They supposed to come round to upgrade personally? With modern tech comes a requirement to learn how to use it. It's like my wife, hasn't learnt how to use the iPhone she insisted on then screams at me when it's "not doing what it's supposed to". Same answer: Tardis to the 1960s and go back to land- line.

I forgot to add you can tell whether you have a magnetic or electronic ballast very simply: Ballast mobile phone trick