Senior Citizens driving licence.

 When I hit 70 years of age, I need a new reduced range driving licence. My current paper licence allows me to drive all but HGV vehicles and that is all to change.  I have 90 days in which to make my application and it goes a bit like this.

1. Fill out the form on the DVLC website for an application.  This can only be done within 90 days prior to your 70th Birthday.  The DVLC will send you an application form by post.

2. The application pack arrived in 6 days and it contained a form, a return envelope and an instruction sheet.

a. Fill in the form with my personal details - easy.

b. Take a current new passport size photograph of myself as specified in the form. Done.

c. Include evidence of original identity documents as specified on the form.  Done.

d. Have a witness sign my photograph and enter their personal details.

Now that last point was a challenge as the witness must be a current UK licence holder with a full photo driving licence.  Most of the people I know have a paper driving licence. My next door neighbours daughter kindly stepped up to the mark, so that is also done.

e. Return my current licence, cut in half (unless it has been declared lost).

f. Sign and date the form and submit it to DVLC by post.

3. The wait is now on to see if the DVLC can process my form within the specified time and deliver me a new photo card driving licence which will allow me to drive only vehicles within categories A and B on my old licence.  That is over 2 months away.

"Is it done yet"

Carsington Water

 We ventured a little way out of stoke to do some shopping. Popped into the RSPB shop at Carsington to pick up some bird food.  Then we popped down to the hides to take a few photos.

Great Crested Grebe

Little Grebe

Slovenian Grebe

Song Thrush

Redshank

This was just a sample of the interesting birds we spotted from the Hide.

Flying a Rally

I have just downloaded a Socata MS 893a Rallye to my X-Plane 12 flight simulator.  This is a new type to me so I am looking forward to a short Flight from Nottingham to Humberside.

This is a 1970's aircraft developed from a 1050's design for a small utility plane. It has basic instruments and a simple autopilot and navigation aids.

The instruments are basically the same as those found in a Cessna 172 of the same age.  Oops!  The altimeter setting is off the scale - the sim is remembering the settings from  my last flight in South Africa. Checks show everything else is running normally so off we go.

Climbing off of the runway in a north-easterly direction, the sky is clear and the sun is low in the sky over my shoulder.  I need to climb to 1500 feet and adjust my course to the required heading for my destination.

This is the view over Nottingham as I head north.  Once the autopilot is set, the main job is to watch out for other aircraft and make sure the aircraft is running efficiently.  This little plane is an easy one to fly.

After a simple cruise, the destination airport comes into view.  I need to contact the controller and make sure it is OK to fly the approach Circuit and turn in to land.  This is when the autopilot is turned off and manual instrument flying resumes.  The aircraft need to decelerate to around 100kts for approach and the crosswind turn before turning into the final approach.

On final approach with  runway alignment.  I am a bit low in the approach, but in a small aircraft it is just a case of flying over the runway and reducing speed until the wheels touch the tarmac.  Airspeed is the critical thing to watch and on a long runway there is little need for full flaps down in such a small aircraft.

Taxi to the allocated parking spot and shut down all systems. This is a nice aircraft model which flies very well in X-Plane 12.

https://xpfr.org/index.php?body=aero_accueil&av=82

This model was adapted to X-Plane 10 in 2013 and for X-Plane 12 by Antonio Fernandez Navarro in 2024.

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Rosie said "What's that bird?" - I was looking at a pigeon on the lawn from the kitchen. "No the one on the Fat Ball". OK! I had my big lens nearby, waiting to be put away, so I extracted it from its case, opened the associated camera body case and mounter the camera body onto the lens, removed the locks and caps, set the focus and switched on the camera. The woodpecker was still on the fat ball.

I did not expect to be able to take this picture. It is hand held from the kitchen, through the length of the conservatory and a double glazed window and onto the top lawn.  600mm focal length on a half frame camera is more like an 850 mm lens on a full frame camera.

This super-zoom will go down to 150mm, so I turned around and took a photograph of the bread I had just baked, across the other side of the kitchen.

I do like this camera/lens combination.

Bird Spotting

The local Magpies have learned to use the fat-ball feeders. Now the squirrels have competition.

These Herring Gulls were seen at Westport Lake in the city.  They have been a common bird on this lake for some years now.

The Little Grebes (Dabchicks) are arriving and this is my first sighting this year.

I am always pleased to see s Song Thrush.  This one was one of a pair, hunting for worms and bugs on the Canal-side at Longport.

Now that the weather is warming, we are starting to see different bird activity in the UK. It will not be long before all of the Spring migrant species are around again.

SuperZoom

 I have just received delivery of a used Tamron 150-600mm lens with a Nikon F mount fitting.  I have not owned a lens with this range before and have not had this magnifying power since the 1970's

This lens is on my Nikon D5000 camera and it replaces my Nikkor 33-300mm lens for the time being. The weight of the lens will need the camera shoulder strap removing and  I will eventually get a shoulder harness for the lens.

This is one of my test images.  It is of the island on Trentham Lake, showing 2 Canada Geese.  My 300mm lens would have captured almost half of the island.  Notice the Beaver gnawed tree to the left of the geese.

The original image is too large to load to the blog, but this cut-out and reduced section just about shows the beaver tooth marks in the wood.

I seldom manage to taker a good picture of a crow. This one worked out OK.

Nice lens!

Potholes

 This is our local pot hole. It sits in the middle of the road next to the entrance to our street and has been there since last year.  It is now an old friend and all of the local drivers take care to drive around it.  If a small car tyre goes into this pothole, the axle will hit the road surface.

Yesterday when I was driving around in the rain, the potholes on the local roads were full of water.  I realised that I knew the location of all of them and was able to take evasive action to avoid any issues or damage to our car.

Despite the funds that drivers pay to the revenue in petrol duty, road tax and VAT, it seems that the lack of funding for basic maintenance is now a serious national issue rather than an irritation. Poor road surfaces are the norm.

It seems that the government has been running its services down and roads are not an issue worthy of concern.  This pothole cannot be due to heavy vehicle damage as  there are no HGV transits on this road and all buses to this area were cancelled some years ago.  The largest vehicles we see down here area the dustbin wagons and they are travelling very slowly.

Perhaps a change of government will help fix the problems on our roads?

Footnote 8 Mar 2024:

The pothole has now been repaired with a rough patch of tarmac.