Secret Scotland

The BBC usually manages to make a reasonably good effort when reporting, and descending to level where the word drivel is brought forth is generally a fairly rare occurrence, but they did manage to do it when reporting the events surrounding the rescue from Glen Etive, near Fort William, of a Danish tourist in his 60s, after he suffered acute abdominal pain.

The Beeb tells us that “A distress signal sent by a Danish tourist from a Scottish glen was picked up in Texas”, and that ” The man, who felt unwell, sent a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) text, which was picked up 4,000 miles away.”

Forgive me for being an engineering pedant, but both statements triggered the drivel alarm, and I had to go check the facts. Unfortunately, the Beeb omitted to give any details of the device involved, other than to describe it as “an emergency beacon the size of a TV remote control”, suggesting it was a PLB or Personal Locator Beacon. What they did get correct, hopefully, was the system used, known as GEOS which allows subscribers with suitable mobile phones, or satellite personal trackers, to subscribe to an emergency monitoring system. Using either the cellphone network (fine for populated areas), or a constellation of LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites for the personal trackers (which means they still work in places blessed with freedom from cellphone coverage), when an emergency alert button is pressed on them, these device send a message to the GEOS control centre using either the cellphone network, or through a data link to the LEO satellites. LEO satellites can be orbiting at a height of anywhere from 100-1,240 miles, but given we are considering small, hand held devices, the lower end seems more likely. Once triggered the device keeps sending, since the orbiting satellites can take up to 20 minutes to reach a suitable reception point.

So, that’s the first drivel alarm cancelled. Nothing was “picked up 4,000 miles away”. Our unfortunate visitor triggered a signal that either had to travel no further then the nearest cellphone mast, or to an overhead satellite, and it was managed 4,000 miles away.

I won’t dwell on the “sent a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) text” howler for too long, sufficient to say that the GPS system (currently) is owned and operatedby the United States Department of Defense, and (as far as civilians are concerned) only transmits positional data for reception by GPS or SatNav receivers. The DoD is most definitely not in the business of passing civilian text messages, and civilian GPS equipment does not, and never has, transmitted anything back to the system. I imagine anyone that tried would be considered to be engaged in GPS-spoofing, and probably find a large party of US Marines or Navy SEALs on their doorstep if they did.

Assuming it was a PLB, then what would have been sent was the data transmission mentioned above. Although they can be mated with GPS receivers to provide positional data to identify the location of the the person in distress, the system used with PLBs is able to operate in complete independence of GPS. Using sophisticated analysis of the communications signal linking the PLB to the LEO satellites, examination of the signal’s Doppler Shift allows the tracking station to identify the ground location by triangulation. At about 5 km this may not match the smaller error of around 5 m associated with GPS based system, but is still impressive given the method - apparently originally developed by the Russians.

The tourist was removed to Fort William, where he received hospital treatment.

Main thing is… everything worked.

While it was little more than a collection of woefully inadequate numbers which would need to be provided with considerably more background information before any meaningful conclusions could be drawn, this week’s story about the changing pattern and numbers of properties in the £1 million and £2 million ranges as researched by the Bank of Scotland does show that things are anything but stagnant at that end of the market.

Sales of £1 million properties made up 0.2% of all Scottish sales in 2007, which rose by 3%, but from a total of 144 sold in 2006, the number sold in 2007 rose to 343, and increase of 138%, or 2.4 times more than the previous year, if expressed sensibly.

Measured from 2003, the total here has increased by 7 times.

Looking at the £2 million plus range, the increase there was 30%.

Measured from 2003, these property sales have increased by 9 times.

The £1 million total for the whole of Great Britain was 8,257, up 36% on 2006.

In geographic terms, Edinburgh was second, after London, in terms of the number of £1 million properties sold. However, the pattern is changing, and while Edinburgh still accounts for the majority of of such property sales, its share is showing a decline, with clusters beginning to appear in places such as Glasgow, Perth, and Kinross.

We’ll never have, or see the information if it is available, but it would be interesting to see how these apparent increases fared if they were corrected for the effects of inflation and the general effects of increasing property prices, and how many of the properties were purchased by people who truly owned them through their own wealth, rather than by loans or mortgages, which are really only borrowing, until that last payment is made - of they can keep up the payments.

It’s always slightly amusing to watch English property programmes, and see homeowners sigh as they look at the soaring value of their properties, with many becoming unwitting property millionaires simply through lifetime ownership of the family home, but trapped in it as they do not have the income to support a move elsewhere, or realise that unless they move far, far away from their roots, there is no way for them to convert that increase in value into cash. If they sell and move anywhere nearby, all the other properties will have increased in price by a similar amount to their present abode.

As they say, you just can’t win.

VE, or Victory in Europe Day passed quietly this week, marking the day when German command representatives headed by Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel were invited to sign the final German Instrument of Surrender, which entered into force at 23:01 Central European Time.

I mention it after noticing some debate about whether or not it should be more publicly celebrated than it is, and comparing it to Remembrance Sunday,  the second Sunday of November, the Sunday nearest to November 11 (Remembrance Day), which is the anniversary of the end of the hostilities of the World War I at 11:00 am in 1918.

I also noticed that part of the debate observed that VE-Day meant nothing to many young people. I found that interesting after watching a news item this morning, which was exposing the apparently ineffective management of national school exam timetable, resulting in situations where pupils may be required to sit anything up to four exams in the one day, spending anything up to 7 hours under exam conditions. I’ve been there, most of have, and two would be more than enough, split between morning and afternoon. Heads should roll over something like this, as the folk collecting wages for running our exams are clearly incompetent, based on this, and  other fiascos they have have presided over recently.

Regardless of that, given the level of ignorance suggested, one is moved to ask what the surfeit of exams is aimed at, if the pupils are not even being taught basic modern history?

A Little Local Memorial

On a more positive note, I spotted some (relatively) local news of an act of remembrance for three submariners who lost their lives during a training exercise in a midget submarine in Loch Striven, just off Port Bannatyne on the Isle of Bute.

Operation of the X Craft was hazardous at best, but on March 5, 1945, even routine testing was to prove fatal. On this day, three of the crew of XE11 were lost during a routine operation.

A test dive, to calibrate the depth gauge was to be carried out. two crew would normally have been sufficient, but on this day, three extra crew were being carried to gain experience. Rising in 10 foot increments from a depth of 100 feet, the craft struck the keel of the Boom Defence vessel Norma, stationary and silent, just at the moment her screws began to turn. The craft’s pressure hull was ruptured, and she sank to 210 feet. When the hatch was opened, two crew members were swept out by the escaping air and recovered on the surface. Sadly, the remaining three crew members were unable to escape. Their bodies were recovered by divers the next day, along with the craft, and laid to rest in Rothesay cemetery.

At 210 feet, the event is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the deepest unaided ascent from a sunken submarine.

In 2005, a small memorial garden was opened during other events on the island, held to mark the 60th anniversary of VE-Day. The ceremony was attended by the surviving crew member who related the story of the escape, Bill Morrison. (His personal account is the source of the date given above, March 5.)

In 2008, for the first time, those in attendance included the widow of ERA Les Swatton.

Those remembered:

• Lieutenant Aubrey Staples SANF (V), commanding officer
• Able Seaman J J Carroll
• Stoker E Higgins

Those who survived:

• First lieutenant, Sub-Lt Bill Morrison RNVR
• ERA Les Swatton

One day I won’t be able to resist the temptation to say “I told you so”, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so, as I read the news regarding the fall of the false god of holy wind power, and rise of wave power.

One of Europe’s largest wind farms being proposed for installation on Lewis in the Western Isles was given its marching orders with some 11,000 objections from most of the islanders. The local authority and business (who one might assume wouldn’t have had to look or live with its 234 giant turbines) were fully behind the plan, and said its rejection threatened the area’s fragile economy - and the advance of Scotland’s renewables industry. The size of the development meant it was referred to the Scottish Government, who rejected the application on the basis that it failed to meet the requirements of European law regarding sensitive environments, and would have had a negative impact on the Lewis Peatlands Special Protection Area.

On the other hand, the same islanders have given their backing to a major wave power station proposal to the west of the island, and which will lie near those who would have been closest to the rejected wind farm. The station is to be built at Siardar Bay, and will require the construction of a 200 m causeway and breakwater which will house up to 40 turbines, with an installed capacity of 4 MW.

Unlike the wind farm, it seems the wave power will actually benefit those next to to it, as the breakwater will ease the passage of boats to and from the Atlantic from the bay

I don’t think I’ve ever read about a direct benefit for the locals from a wind farm. There may be a short boom as the farm is built, but the turbines are built remotely and parachuted in, and much of the related installation work is carried out by contractors, and the farms are largely automated, so there’s little lasting employment. Boom and bust comes to mind.

Can’t comment on wave power - it may be no better - we need a few years of realistic installation growth to see how it work. I suspect the harsher operating environment may result in local benefits due to the increased maintenance needs, but then again, that should be taken care of by proper design.

For my sins, I’ve been an author of sorts for most of my working life. Not a fiction or story writing author (so the world is spared the horror of at least one further Rowling), but a technical author, doomed to work through facts and figures, opinions and comments, and massage them into some sort of simplified imitation of the original that technophobes could grasp, and sign a purchase order for.

Most of this was completed without the benefit of a spell-checker, but not without a word-processor. The first arrived when I had to go and buy a WP program for myself, to run on a twin floppy PC the company acquired to run some automated laser testing equipment. This occupied it for a whole 5 minutes per day, and yours truly could see that the new ‘toy’ had a lot more potential than as the door-stop it became when packed away.

Back to the present-day, and I was writing up some notes that had to refer to military installations, and the buildings and facilities that lay both inside, and outside, its perimeter. As this proceeded, I found there were numerous occasions where I referred to subjects outwith the perimeter, and became increasingly irritated as the spell-checker kep flagging outwith as a misspelt, (or is that misspelled, mis-spelt or mis-spelled) word.

I was intrigued, as the basic dictionary informed me that outwith wasn’t a word. Having used it for years, and shared it with colleagues without comment or criticism, I decided it was time to do a little hunting, and the result was a bit of a surprise.

Having come to use the word as part of reports and presentations that were largely prepared for and together with colleagues who were very English, and relished their occasional visits north of the border, I would have expected the word to be English, as we generally used it to refer to subject items we were not able to consider in our reports or analyses - typically we would drop in a standard “Outwith the scope of this report…” when we needed to refer something which others may have considered relevant, but we did not, but still needed to show we had considered its existence.

Reading up on the background of outwith, it came as no great surprise to find that it arose from the original word without, which today means something like ‘not having’, but was originally used to describe something that was ‘outside’, which compares with within, which refers to something ‘inside’. Sometimes there are some very silly changes in language use over time - this certainly looks like one of them.

My old friend outwith, it seems, is simply a variation on the original ‘without’, but, more importantly, was the version favoured by the Scots, which may explain my affinity to the word.

While the word outwith was reported to have fallen out of favour, and general use, it was of interest to note that some further searching revealed that far from being restricted to Scotland, use of outwith outwith Scotland has been noted to be increasing, and the word may be making a wider comeback.

Perhaps my insistence on using it for years played a small part. After all, most of the reports and presentations I made using it went all the way down to London for discussion by my peers.

In any event, I now know I can ignore any ill-informed spell-checker that throws a red line under any use of outwith I care to make in future, and that I can safely add it to my own list of approved words, and perhaps spread it around a bit more as well.

Adding to the intriguing properties that fungi can demonstrate, researchers at Dundee University have found that uranium can be locked into fungi in mineral form.

Although still hazardous, using fungi to retain the nuclear material means that it is no longer mobile, and therefore less likely to make its way into water supplies, or be taken up by plants and animals, and into the food chain.

The discovery could help recover land polluted by radioactive fallout, and help in clearing up the after effects of recent conflicts that have seen the use of DU (Depleted Uranium) weapons, where the residual material does not offer the same danger from radiation as natural uranium, but is still a threat due to its toxicity. This is greater when the material has fragmented or been dispersed by burning, and become dust.

One of Scotland’s newest, most advanced, and interesting ferries is due to enter services in a few weeks.

Built to serve on the Pentland Firth route between Caithness and Orkney, the new catamaran, The Pentalina, will replace an older vessel on the same route. With a capacity of 350 passengers, 32 to 58 cars, and nine lorries, she is expected to make the crossing between St Margarets Hope, Orkney, and Gills Bay, Caithness, in around 45 minutes.

Built for Pentland Ferries, Pentalina was constructed at the FBMA Marine Yard, Cebu, in the Philipines, the new vessel is undergoing sea trials in south east Asia, and will make her own way to Scotland when these are completed, taking around 30 days to complete the journey, after which she will enter service, probably at the end of May, or shortly thereafter.

The Pentland Ferries site currently carries a news article with pre and post launch images of the ferry.

It looks as if time may be catching up with some of the artefacts that have survived from the Clyde’s shipbuilding days, with the collapse of an 80 ton crane in BAE Systems’ shipyard in Govan today.

One man received hospital treatment for minor injuries, while two others received treatment on site.

The crane, which appears on the extreme left of the photograph, was taking part in routine lifting operations, and had recently passed inspection in March.

An investigation will follow, in order to determine the cause of the failure.

Photograph by Chris Gunns.

As of May 2nd, Microsoft has released a 22 terrabyte data update to its Virtual Earth mapping system, which has included a number of Scottish areas within its Bird’s Eye views. These are:

• Aberdeen, UK
• Cumbernauld, UK
• Dundee, UK
• Dunfermline, UK
• East Kilbride, UK
• Edinburgh, UK
• Falkirk, UK
• Glasgow, UK

It’s also worth looking around the edges of the ‘official’ areas, as coverage can be found to extend further than might be assumed from the names given.

You will find these available when you use Microsoft Virtual Earth to view of our locations in the relevant areas, or their Live Search mapping service - watch for the Bird’s Eye option becoming bold, rather than greyed, when images are available.

Better still is to use Mutimap, which we recently mentioned was sharing information with Virtual Earth, or Live Search.

Using Multimap, you get the advantage of what we feel to be a better interface than that now offered by Virtual Earth - it has a proper slider to set zoom level, and doesn’t force you to zoom through every level using only + and - buttons, and has the further advantage of offering users the option of browsing areas using Ordnance Survey mapping, available when zoomed in relatively close.

Further advantages of the Multimap view are Camera and Area icons that appear over the view when in Bird’s Eye view mode, showing where the Bird’s Eye view is centred, and the extent of its coverage.

The best way to find out out about the various options is really just to play with the maps and views for a while, and notice how the various options are automatically flagged in the area around the option buttons shown to the top left corner of the map, which change to reflect the features available.

Best, however, is at best (sorry) a relative term, and from the tests we’ve tried on some of the more obscure spots we’re interested in, we’ve found that by using Live Search in 3D mode and switching to Bird’s Eye view, we can get more viewing options, and zoom in closer to the selected point. This doesn’t necessarily mean we’re winning any better resolution in the view, but does mean getting closer in to the available view, which can still be useful if the source image is good enough.

It seems that both providers have strengths and weaknesses, and it’s just a case of trying both in cases where you want to extract the most from what’s available.

Joining what used to be Scotland’s Silicon Glen, manufacturing costs in this country have driven the makers of the famous Green Hunter Wellington boot overseas.

Having survived their first brush with the administrator in 2006, the company succeeded in surviving a number of trial, but has had to yield to economics and transfer its production to places such as Serbia, China, and Brazil. The changes are expected to see its head office move from it Heathhall works near Dumfries, and result in the loss of up to 22 jobs - with only seven employed in boot manufacture. In 2006, staff numbered 101, with most involved in manufacturing, and the company ranked amongst the largest employers in Dumfries.

Beginning as the North British Rubber Company in Edinburgh in 1856, it made its place by using a new process to cure and stabilise the rubber - vulcanising. World War I saw its fortunes lift, as the War Office needed waterproof boots for troops fighting in flooded trenches, and almost 1.2 million pairs were supplied. Taking the place of another Scottish manufacturer that sadly succeeded in becoming a failure, they moved to Dumfries in 1946 after acquiring the factory of the Arroll Johnston motor company, which had gone into receivership and closed in 1931.

Your scribe has had a pair of faithful Hunters for years, and is not a member of the ‘horsey’ set. His are still as good new, despite having been across a fair number of muddy fields in search of various artefacts related to the country’s First, Second, and Cold War remains, and have survived the attentions of various noxious materials they’ve had to plough through, both animal-made and man-made in some instances, as pollution comes in numerous guises.

While that sort of crap can generally be removed with some soap and water, a splash of disinfectant and a hose, nothing can remove the embarrassment that has come to be associated with a pair of Hunters ever since ‘Celebrities’ began to consider they were ‘Kewl’ to be seen in, But, since they work (the Green Wellies, NOT the useless celebrities), they still get thrown in the back of the car when they’re needed (unlike the celebrities, who’d be thrown under the car.)