A moment of inner peace.

[xaphod]

There are times in my life when all is at peace with the world. On a bright sunny morning a couple of days ago, I came down to the kitchen for breakfast. On the worktop were a couple of 5 gallon (23 litre) carboys with this season's home-made wine fermenting. Alone, the picking of the fruit represents about 20 hours' work, so when all is finished, it gives me a sense of achievement. The blackberry wine carboy was still not full, but I had picked the necessary fruit the evening before to make the remaining gallon of juice. The remaining work is not arduous. All I have to do is to put the 6 lb (2.7 Kg) of blackberries in a pot, add a gallon of water and bring to the boil, so I reached for my big cooking pot which sits on the top of the kitchen cupboards. Up there, it's bit hard to get at .... but not when I'm wearing 5" heels .... HEH HEH. Xa BTW, all you alcohol guzzlers, you can't come round to drink it yet. Fruit wines take at least a year to make, which is conveniently at the time the blackberries are in season again, so before you drink 'em, you pick 'em !

[sendra45]

Me too, Just using demijohns to ferment my wine and cider(the cider is quicker to make for those of us that cant wait), I will take a pic and show you what it looks like. last night I drank some of last years brew whilst watching an Iridium flare. It does not get much better than that, dispite the the line in the Kirsty MacColl song where it is wrong to wish on space hardware.

[xaphod]

Hi, Nigel, I took a pic of the wine fermenting, so I will get around to posting it sometime. I was moving last year, so didn't make any wine. I have only about a gallon of damson '04 left, so I'm keeping it for special occasions. I seem to have gone a bit over the top this year, by way of compensation. Funnily enough, I was thinking of putting up a topic in 'General Discussion', illustrating other hobbies we do. I can't say that wine-making is a hobby of mine, but something I do when the mood takes me. Xa PS, When you say an Iridium flare, I presume you mean the re-entry of one of 77 satellites in the ill-fated 'Iridium' communications system. Are the re-entry times documented somewhere (presumably on the net); otherwise, how did you know where and when to look, just out of my geeky tecchie interest ?

[sendra45]

Ahh,

ill fated? okay, go to http://www.heavens-above.com/ and have a look for them there.

As for a re-entry of one of 77 satellites in the 'Iridium' communications systems, no, they are still up there, but they reflect the sun down to earth and are one of those things that are worth watching once, along with the ISS when it flys over us here in Blighty.

Nigel

[sendra45]

too nerdy then!

[xaphod]

too nerdy then!

No .... just interesting.

I always thought that the Iridium system was an 'all or nothing' system. If you didn't have all 77 satellites in the constellation, there was always a risk that your mobile phone conversation would be cut off because there wouldn't be one of the missing satellites to hand over to as the low-earth-orbit satellites passed overhead.

(For others reading, satellite TV is sent from geostationary satellites at an altitude of about 23000 miles where their orbit time is 24 hours, which co-incides with the passing of a day, thus making the satellite appear stationary in the sky. For low power mobile phone signal, this distance is a bit of a long haul, although not impossible, yours truly having worked on a geostationary mobile system. The Iridium system worked on a lot of satellites, one of which would be in view at all times.)

Therein lay the problem, that until you got all 77 satellites in orbit, there was always the possibility of holes in the coverage. Now 77 satellites aint cheap, and the production methods certainly are not 'mass production'. Actually, having worked in a satellite making company, the production methods are best described as 'hand built in the lab'. This is a bit mean, and I would get a hell of a lot of censure from the guys with MBAs (master of bullshit augmentation) who run the place.

From what I understand, before I retired, the finances and logistics never came together to get the system to work properly, although a reduced coverage system did stagger into service.

Xa

[dr1819]

...so, before you drink 'em, you pick 'em !

Gladly!

Used to pick blackberries when I was a wee lad. Probably picked about 100 gallons over a five year period. Some were made into cobbler. The rest were sold at market.

These days I'd rather drink my pickings...