Bristol Knife Show

Well it's been quite a while since I last posted anything. I have been very busy with work recently doing all my other jobs (media and IT). However I did manage to go to the Bristol Knife show last week!

It was a nice little show - all contained in one room at the Aztec Hotel. There were plenty of sharp and shiny things on display and I nearly managed to get away without spending money but I failed miserably. I ended buying a couple of knives of which I will post pictures later.

Overall, I'm glad I had a look at the show but I did fee that it was a bit expensive for what it was. There were not a huge number of exhibitors there but it was a great atmosphere and it was fantastic to have such a show in this day and age of paranoid press hysteria about knives.

Chop, chop!

Well I have just recently taken posession of a lovely new and shiny axe. It is a custom jobbie made by a guy, using the screen name of Cegga. It is very well made, has a lovely balance and beautifully finished. All in all it is a lovely piece of kit.

This is a picture by itself showing how well it has been polished and finished. The next picture shows the Cegga axe next to my Gransfor Wildlife Hatchet - which is a more mass produced beastie and has a much rougher looking finish to it.

Sand

A couple of days ago I went for a walk on the beach. This was too good an opportunity to miss when it came to some easy tracking. As always there was lots of dog and human tracks but in amongst them were a few gems like this Crow.

I love it when it is as easy as this - just the lazy side of me talking! Tracking is often very challenging but that really is half the fun.

Action Indicators

I came across this great example of an action indicator the other day. It is one of my cats (and not the Beast of Exmoor). An action indicator is pretty much what it sounds like - it is an indicator of an action. In this case the print on the right shows a turning motion indicating a change in direction.

I think it is clear that the print on the right looks as if it has been twisted in the mud - which is of course exactly what it has done! Any questions just post a comment!

Exmoor badgers

It has been a while since I posted anything so I thought I ought to get something down in writing. I have been quite busy but I did manage to get out a few days ago for a walk around the local patch.

It was very nice to come across new activity at a badger sett entrance. There was fresh earth liberally scattered around as well as some nice compression shapes in the soil.

I walked further down the valley and in amongst the human and dog prints I found a particularly nice badger compression shape. It was great to be able to follow this particular badger for about 40yds before it turned off into private land. You can also see an indirect registration with another foot.

Fenix L0D CE

I recently became the proud owner of a new gadget! They do say that small ones are more juicy and this is definitely the case with the rather diminutive Fenix. Now I have said that this is a review - perhaps a grand term for some ramblings by me, so please bear with me.

First of all I would like to to say that the service from Quality Flashlights (from whom I got the torch) was superb and the price was competitive at £25.95.The tech specs are taken directly from the web site:

Utilizes a Cree 7090 XR-E LED with a life of 50,000 hours

- Five output types: 20 Lumens(3.5hrs)

-> 7.5 Lumens(8.5hrs)

-> 50 Lumens(1hrs)

->Strobe

-> SOS

- Uses one 1.5V AAA battery, inexpensive and widely available

- 7.35cm (L) x 1.4cm (D)

- Input voltage: 0.8V~3.3V

- Made of aircraft grade aluminum

- Durable Type III hard anodized finish

- 14.5-gram weight (excluding batteries)

- Water-resistant (dunkable)

- Toughened ultra clear glass lens with AR coating

The specs don't do it justice - it is just quite awesome for such a small light. I decided to test it against a couple of my other torches, namely a Maglite 2 D cell and a Stormlite pocket torch. As I said, this is not a comprehensive or very technical review, in fact it is quite subjective, so here goes.

Much to the dismay of my family I disapperared off to a darkened room with a handful of torches. I lined up the torches so they were shining on to the same bit of wall giving me my start point:

The Fenix gave the purest whitest light, the Maglite was quite yellow and the Stormlite had a purplish-pink tinge to it.The Fenix had the widest 'spot' (set on max brightness for all tests), the Stormlite second and the Maglite third (set on spot throughout the comparisons).

The Fenix had the most even spill from around the spot and the widest, next was the Maglite with a more uneven spill and the least spill was from the Stormlite.

I staggered out of the dark room into a dark paddock for the next test - the distance test. This is where the Maglite shone (pardon the pun!). It maintained its spot over the longest distance (50m+), next was the Fenix which wasn't exactly a spot but threw a usable (but diffuse) light out to about 40-50m and then the Stormlite only managed about 30m of usable diffuse light.

Pros and Cons:

Pros - very small, lightweight, runs on AAA batteries, excellent light output, robust, cheap for the amount of lumens

Cons - relatively poor runtime (Stormlite claims 80+ hours on 1 AA)

I am mightily impressed with the Fenix. It produces a phenomonal amount of light from a very small package. It makes for an excellent EDC or in survival kit. Batteries are cheap. The different running options are very good - the strobe is very eye catching over distance as is the SOS strobe. I may do a distance experiment if 'er indoors is willing to stand outside, as I drive up the beacon increasing the distance from about 1 mile to 1.5 miles, to see how visible it is.

Having said all that, one of the most impressive features of the Fenix is the lanyard ring . What, I hear you cry! The clever people at Fenix have cut a small section out of the base ring so that the lanyard ring can fit into it making sure that the torch can stand upright and act as a candle!

Well thank you for reading this rambling 'review' and I hope you find it useful. All I have to do now is justify buying the L1D which has almost double the maximum lumens output and about 3 times the runtime (at lowest setting) for only £5 more than the L0D.

Tracks4life is up!

Yesterday, I posted up the majority of my new website (www.tracks4life.com). There are still a few things left to do on it, like fix some dates of courses but it is there for the world to see.

I hope you go have a look and enjoy it.

PS I must start posting some more interesting things :)