They state that most other foreign bureaus no longer except any other type or size of cards anyway, and they will be one of the last to implement this change.

So basically, the card types that will NOT be excepted are ‘Paper’ ones, as printed from your computer unless on to the appropriate size card (140mm x 90mm) , ‘Folding Cards’, and ‘Over Sized’ cards.

www.MD0MDI.com

Please check it out but don’t expect too much!

5 days later and a dead brain I managed to get the project finished along with pre-testing, all voltages and resistances checked out OK, so now just have to find a case and get the radio connected up and running.

The Softrock itself has a great following, and thankfully there are some very good sites out there that offer a lot of help, which is very useful as the documentation from the manufacturer is very lacking and lots of vital information is actually missing!

I will be posting a step by step guide on the main website in the soon with loads of photos and other hopefully useful information.

Take care and all the best…

I thought that I would give it a go to see if it was easy to use, and I am pleasantly surprised, Not only will it connect to nearly all of the blog engines out there, but it even connects to locally run blog sites as well.

Well worth a look and a purchase if you run a blog…

More on this later, just got to park the car first!

Chris Bradshaw, 39, a Traffic Police Officer from Tamworth in Birmingham was taken to Nobles Hospital by airmed but was declared dead at the Hospital. Chris first competed on the Isle of Man in 2004 and finished 37th in last year’s Senior MGP race.

Chris Bradshaw coming through Greeba Bridge.

James Adam, 28, a serving officer in the Royal Navy, from Prestwick in Scotland who was also involved in the incident was attended to by the air med team but was declared dead at the scene. James first competed on the Isle of Man in 2009, finishing 9th in the Newcomers race and 27th in the Senior MGP.

I purchased the AvMap Geosat5 Blu well over a year ago when they just released the road maps of the Isle of Man, on first look they were great, quite accurate in fact, but problems soon became apparent, the major issue with the Isle of Man map coverage by TeleAtlas was that it did not include the facility to look up Post Codes, even though when you were parked outside of a known address, the information displayed upon the screen would display the correct Post Code.

Foxglove Close being displayed as Foxglove Croft

There were (and still are) issues with road names either being incorrectly spelt or not even existing at all, details of these were passed on AvMap and even after over a year, TeleAtlas have not sorted out these issues, that aside, the AvMap is a superb device, not only enabling clear reading of the roads ahead, but with its built in APRS mapping, this is a real must for those RayNet people, as it clearly displays where other mobile stations are (providing they are also using APRS equipment) and also including such information as the call sign of the operator within the vehicle, where they are heading to, present speed and direction and any other information that you wish to transmit.

Where it really comes into its own, is that an operator can not only view where another APRS station is, but he can then ask the AvMap to plot a route for the other operation and then using the Kenwood Radio you could tell the operator where to turn and which way to go to reach their destination, thus help guiding them into a location that they do not know that well, and if they do not own a SatNav device such as the AvMap, as long as they have a radio that will transmit APRS then they can be guided to any location. It is also possible to plot a course to the other operator, and whilst driving to their location the display on the AvMap will display both your location and that of the other APRS contact that you are driving towards with a very high level of accuracy.

AvMap displaying the location of 2E0TGS

As of the 20th February 2010 AvMap finally got an up to date map information from TeleAtlas, this included the long awaited Post Code search facility that every other SatNav device takes for granted, and sure enough it was tested with as many known Post Codes that I knew, and although after a shaky start, and a few rushed updates, it works, most of the Isle of Man is supported to a full 6 digit Post Code, but for some reason a few addresses would not allow more than 5 digits’ to be entered, but even this would at least put you at the end of the relevant road or at least very close by.

I must admit that I had actually re-boxed the unit and was using a Garmin device instead for some time, mainly because there mapping included Post Code lookup as standard to the Isle of Man (and 6 digit lookup throughout the Island) and also the odd road name that was either miss-spelt, Croft instead of Close, or missing entirely, was not a problem on the Garmin device, and I still have to say that as far as the road names and the postcodes, the Garmin devices are much more accurate, but are a pain to get working with APRS equipment, with only a few of the more costly units achieving this, and because of this you are limited in regards to screen sizes and displays. The AvMap has something that the Garmin devices does not even come close to, and that is its display, it really does put the Garmin or Tom-Tom SatNav’s to shame. It’s display, and menu system is so faultless and very easy to master and customise. If you needed to choose between the two makes, the AvMap certainly have the edge as far as Big Screen with loads of features.

You can feed Video into the unit, such as a reversing Camera or a DVD Player for instance. It does come with Bluetooth as standard but to be honest this is a total waist of space, the unit does not come with the ability to plug in and external microphone, and when tested with the built in microphone, although the unit was very easy to use with your mobile, the reports of all they could hear was the engine noise and to get then to hear me over the background noise you would have to lean forward so that you were about 2″ from the unit, thus meaning it was verging on dangerous whilst driving. I think the unit could have least had an external socket for this and to be supplied with a good quality noise cancelling microphone would have really pushed this above any of it’s competitors, but it is only a small feature.

Another minor gripe with the unit is that somedays it will take around 5-10 minutes to lock into enough satellites’ to start plotting your course on the unit, and other days it is instant, There are no reasons for this as the unit is not moved around in the car, and the only thing that I can think is that the device does not like the bad weather that we have on the Isle of Man, as the days that it does play up, they are normally overcast, i.e. normal weather the Isle of Man… I am hoping that an External GPS Antenna from AvMap will sort this out, but about 1 month on my supplier is still waiting to get them in.

The only BIG issue with the unit is it’s battery life, this is totally pathetic, the unit will count down to 30 seconds when you switch off the engine, this is a normal power save feature and it is really useful, if you then remove the unit from the car and take it say into the house to show to someone, when you switch the unit on and start to use it, it will completely die on you after around 47 seconds (give or take 2 seconds either way), and this is after the unit has been in the car and connected to a 12V supply for over a hour. I have asked AvMap about this but it looks like they don’t have an answer for this as I have not yet had a response on this.

HF, VHF, UHF and AvMap

My conclusion is that after well over a year, the AvMap GeoSat5 Blu now is what I term as a very useable SatNav unit, the ability to seamlessly link this to a Kenwood TM-D710E and use to plot other APRS stations, including information on them really is a great feature, easy to configure and great to use. It does still have issues, but most of these are because of TeleAtlas regarding wrong names, and missing road names, even when they exist. It is so worth the cost though, for RayNet it is invaluable, and I would go so far to say that they could not really be serious without it, at least for the mobile units, APRS offers so many features for use by RayNet and even other organisations, I have seen it used to log runners on a marathon at a checkpoint and transmit not only that the runner has travelled through a checkpoint but also the time that the passed the checkpoint. There are endless uses for APRS, and Civil Defence, Support for Coast Guard and Police Searches of large areas of coastlines, and as seen in other countries where Disasters can very real indeed, APRS communications and Mapping comes into it’s own, and Kenwood and AvMap are certainly a very gifted combination.

The Radios hidden underneath a false floor.

Click on any of the images below to see some full size previews:

It was this very bible that belonged to and was used in many sermons by the ‘Rt. Rev. Charles Leonard Thornton-Duesbury’, and for those that might of heard of the name but could not exactly pin point it, he was the Lord Bishop of the Sodor and Man between 1925 and 1928 when he passed away.

The Bible is actually called ‘The Imperial Family Bible‘ and this one was printed in 1844 by the famous Bible printers of the day ‘Blackie and Son, Glasgow’. and includes engravings from the very best engravers of this time, such as William Miller and Henry Cook. There are many copies of the two volume edition which is dated 1846, but the 1844 version was released as a single version, with a very small print run of around 500 copies, and this copy is remarkably well preserved with very little discolouration and the binding is solid even though it shows a bit of wear, which you would expect from a book that has been used quite a bit throughout the years. I have come across a few versions of this book, but none in this condition and none with this history.

It has an inscription  in the front pages from his wife, ‘Ethel Nixon Thornton-Duesbury’ which is:

Presented to

The congregation of St. Marks Sodor and Man

In Remembrance of the late Lord Bishop

Charles Thornton-Duesbury

From his wife

1928

Charles Leonard Thornton-Duesbury was born on the Isle of Man in Glen Helen in 1867 and was the son of the late Captain W. Thornton-Duesbury, of Ballacosnahan, Patrick, and a brother of Mr. Hugh Thornton-Duesbury, of Ballaveare, Port Soderick.

He was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and after being ordained at St. Paul’s Cathedral, held a curacy at St. George’s-in-the-East, London-where one of his fellow-curates was the Rev. R. D. Kermode, who was the vicar of Lezayre here in the Isle of Man.

Prior to taking up holy orders, he was for a number of years a lay worker at St. George’s, Douglas.

He lived for a while at St. Mark’s in Barrow upon Furness; St. Peter’s in Islington ; Leyton in Essex and also in Marylebone before he became the Bishop of Sodor and Man (which use to be the term for the Diocese of the Isle of Man).

Besides being a gifted preacher, he had a marked capacity for organisation ; he was chairman of the Sunday School Institute, chairman of the Home Committee of the Church Missionary Society, and vice-chairman of the Church of England Temperance Society in the London diocese, He was unmistakably an Evangelical.

He is well-remembered in the Isle of Man as a fine exponent of Rugby football.

He died, aged 61 on the 11th March 1928 leaving a son ‘Julian Percy Thornton-Duesbury’ who was the staunchly evangelical Master of St. Peters College, Oxford, and the principal of Whycliffe Hall, he also left a daughter called ‘Jean Constance Thornton-Duesbury‘ who moved back to the Isle of Man in 1939 and who was a very prominent member of the House of Keys between 1966 and 1976, she passed away late November 1997.

I have come across, this very edition on the internet for over £1700, and that is without the history that this one has… Though I am not looking for that much for this one.