Visiting the Van Nats

Belgians, sideways caravans, supercharged V8s and much more...

Today I paid a visit to the 'Van Nats' event, a classic and custom van show billed as "the original hippy happy van festival" and held in the village of Akeley, just a few miles down the road from home. The long-established Van Nats is a three-day 'extra-van-ganza' featuring a lot more than just vans, including live music, a barbecue and a vintage fair, and culminating in the 'show and shine' competition on Sunday. Apparently the reason for the location is that a senior member of the Transit van club lives in the village, and although it has been held here for a few years this was the first time I was able to attend. Given the hippy-themed branding I was expecting a load of trendy 'new age' types in air-cooled Volkswagens, but the reality was pleasingly different and more akin to street van shows of the 1980s.

This day van had come all the way from Belgium for the event!

A shrine to Swedish supremacy

Gaydon Truck Show report

Thanks to waning interest in the bus and coach scene, as previously discussed on this blog, I am finding myself increasingly drawn towards trucks. As part of this conversion, I paid a visit to the Classic Truck Show at the Heritage Motor Centre in Gaydon on Sunday and found it a very interesting event, with over 200 real vehicles and countless fine models on display, so here I recount my experiences as a first-time visitor.

Stondon sale results

Following its closure at Easter, yesterday (Wednesday 10th June) marked the final end for the Stondon Motor Museum as the car and commercial vehicle collection was auctioned by Brightwells at Leominster, the motorcycles having already been sold in April. No-reserve auctions are usually interesting and unpredictable, with the possibility of a bargain but also potential for much competition between determined bidders, and that was certainly the case here. I didn't actually attend the auction for three reasons: it was on a weekday so I was at work, Leominster is a long way from here, and perhaps more importantly I would have probably ended up buying some piece of junk I have neither use nor space for! With the results now published on the auction house's website, I have crunched the numbers and present my analysis here.

Unsung heroes: Ford R-series

Today I pay tribute to a type of coach that was a familiar part of my childhood but seems to have been overlooked by many enthusiasts: the humble Ford R-series. While the heavyweight chassis built by AEC and Leyland, and later the flashy products of continental coachbuilders, got all the attention from enthusiasts, the R-series was the bread and butter, always there in the background quietly and reliably working away on less glamorous duties and no doubt earning its operator a decent income. These coaches were the mainstays of many independent operators until fairly recently, but having been discontinued in 1985, even the newest examples are now approaching thirty years old and survivors have become very rare.

One of the R-series chassis shortened to 8 metres by Tricentrol, this one still exists but hasn't been used for many years.

Best. Kit. Ever.

Having previously described the worst model kit I have ever had the misfortune to encounter, here to redress the balance is a fine example from the other end of the quality spectrum, illustrating just how high the standards can be when things are done right, but something equally obscure and unusual.

What might have been if the Minix bus was 1/76 scale.

N for 'no point'

The sad and pointless life of the Windows N versions

Browsing the operating systems available through the university’s Dreamspark account, I came across something I had never heard of before: a load of Windows versions with an N suffix in their name. I was intrigued but Dreamspark failed to explain how these differ from the normal versions, so off to Google I went, to discover a story of yet another cack-handed response to a legal challenge that eclipses even the infamous 'browser choice' app for sheer stupidity.

Kit review: BW Models RB44

BW Models kit BW324, Reynolds Boughton RB44 fire appliance in 1/76 scale (now Mid Devon Models MDM026)

The model vehicle industry in the UK is full of small cottage industry manufacturers whose products are relatively little-known but cover a wide range of interesting subjects. One such example was BW Models, who sadly closed down on the proprietor's retirement last year, having built up a vast range of over 300 different kits of civilian emergency and post-war 'softskin' military vehicles. Some of the moulds have been sold in batches to various other cottage industry firms and this particular kit is one of those recently reintroduced by a new entrant to the market, Mid Devon Models. Although many kit producers have now turned to resin casting, BW Models continued to favour the traditional white metal approach, and this is the first metal kit I have built for a while.

The trouble with Facebook groups

Facebook groups are great. They bring together people with common interests, no matter how obscure, and are a fantastic way to share things with like-minded individuals, and if there isn't a group for your interest you can easily set one up. That's the theory anyway, but unfortunately there are a few problems with the way Facebook have decided to implement the group system that make it a rather less pleasant experience than it should be.

Databases and Digital Democracy

Modernising the voting system

Thursday's General Election highlighted to me just how antiquated and inefficient the voting system is in this country, requiring huge amounts of manpower and paperwork to administer with so much potential for mistakes. It's the 21st century so why are our election results still being determined by people counting marks on pieces of paper? As a computer scientist with a particular interest in databases, this seems an ideal use of such a system to me and having given it some thought, from a technical viewpoint this is actually a very simple problem that can easily be solved with current technology.

An unusual election

No votes for the big three here...

Politics is one of those controversial subjects, along with religion, that I normally refuse to discuss, partly because I have little interest and partly because there are so many strong and opposing views that it invariably ends in an argument. I'm making a rare exception however, having just been through the General Election in a rather unusual constituency: my home town of Buckingham is the seat of John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons. An established convention dictates that the three major parties don't stand against the Speaker, so the complete absence of Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem candidates means the people of Buckingham realistically have little influence on the national government and tend to focus more on local issues. This post is therefore written from a purely local and somewhat personal perspective; I am perhaps unusual in having no allegiance to any particular party but I consider each of the local candidates on their own merit as individuals and their ability to serve the community, regardless of their affiliation.