2014 fsuk

[mech5496]

With the FSUK competition around the corner, let's kick off the official thread. We (UoP Racing) will be there, returning after 6 years to Silverstone. Depending on wifi coverage we will try to tweet as much as possible, so I suggest to follow us! Any other sources of live feed out there?

[Z]

Also, please some links to FaceSpace sites, etc., with lots of photos? (I didn't see any of the Lincoln comp. :()

Z

(PS. Photos of the car's, ahem, private parts always turn me on. You know, ... without their clothes on... :))

[Dunk Mckay]

Will be there on Saturday and maybe Sunday with my camera, so will strive to take what photos of private parts that I can.

[Howy76]

The IMechE are making updates through various social media, check out;

www.formulastudent.com
www.facebook.com/formulastudent
www.youtube.com/fsimeche
www.flickr.com/photos/fsuk
Twitter: @FormulaStudent
The current hashtags are #formulastudent and #fsuk

If any teams require any Loctite products, please visit the University of Hertfordshire team and we have a range of adhesives etc. you are welcome to thanks to our partners at Henkel.

Howard

[BeunMan]

Lots of teams (and @fsuklive) use the #fs2014 tag.

[Kevin Hayward]

Sorry Z, I think us forum junkies are dinosaurs now. It is all twitter and facebook, and probably something else that I haven't heard about. (Our guys are putting some posts up at https://www.facebook.com/ECU.Motorsport). I am getting my info every now and then by phone, which these days seems only one step ahead of the pony express or carrier pigeons.

Our guys (Edith Cowan University) are through tech with an official weight of 186.5kg, and doing it tough on their first international comp. Not a lot of sleep, with a few unexpected surprises pre-comp. I wasn't aware that the comp was doing COG height measurements which is really cool. I was told ours came in at 180mm, which is a shade lower what they measured at home base.

Would love to see these numbers for other competitors.

On the plus side the guys were stoked at the quality of the design judging. They had a feedback session immediately after their assessment. In general from what I have heard the feedback from all the officials (and the advice offered) has been top notch and very welcome. We weren't entirely sure that the UK was the right comp for our first international attempt, but it is looking like a great choice.

Also from back here in Perth a big thanks to Hertfordshire for hosting us. Our guys felt very welcome and looked after.

On a side note ... Howard were you at Australia 2001 with Leeds? I think I may have competed against you (my first comp) and our 2001 car had a set of Leeds springs (which we had swapped for) for its long life of testing and driver training.

Kev

[BeunMan]

For everyone interested and still on the Forum I'll post info collected from the Delft guys on our 'private' fb feed + others.

Weights + scrutineering collected from now on:
Delft 154.5 Kg + Safety + Tech minus egress
Surrey 209.5 Kg + Safety + tech
TU Munchen 164 Kg + Safety + Tech + Chassis
Oxford Brookes 164.5 KG + SC done
U. Stuttart Comb. 187 Kg + SC done
Hertfordshire 195 Kg
Lund 146.5 Kg + SC Done
Zurich 170.0 Kg + SC Done minus raintest
Karlsruhe comb. 200 Kg. Noise + Chassis + tech + safety + tilt

[Fyhr]

I guess I have to stick up for my guys
http://www.racecar-engineering.com/wp-content/gallery/lund_1/zuplun0.jpg

[BeunMan]

I guess I have to stick up for my guys


I only copied what FSUK said (which is the worst excuse possible ;) ) Haven't seen a post/tweet/fb drop by yet but that might be my wrong doing.

I also heard the rain test would open half an hour early. Possibly because the energy meters weren't available on time...

[JulianH]

Yeah, Tristan, I heard the same thing. Zurich got their energy meter at noon and it had a problem with the power supply.
Rain test will start at 8 am.

Impressive light weight car of Lund! Other cars seem to be heavier than expected (Delft + 5kg, Karlsruhe +8kg, Zurich +2-3kg, Zwickau +9kg).
Strange feeling not to be at Silverstone for the first time since 2009. Hopefully an interessting competition in the next two days...

[BeunMan]

You can join us around the campfire we are making around the twitter and facebook feeds ;)

Haven't heard anything about radio silverstone (rs24/7) transmitting this weekend (they can transmit the messages/speakers from the silverstone circuit) as they did in '09/'10/'11.

[BeunMan]

Short list, please append:

Accel:
Zurich 3.439
Delft 3.468
KitC 4,871
Someone had 3.7 but don't know who
Zwickau 3.97

Skidpad:
Monash: 4.846
Delft 4.857
Zurich: 4.96
Stuttgart: 5.1~

[Kevin Hayward]

ECU with a 4.193 Accel (apparently one of the fastest combustion cars). Those electric cars just can't be beat when they let all those electrons loose.
5.068 on skidpan, but hit a cone. 5.132 time will be used.

Please keep adding to the times anyone who can. Looking forward to hearing the autocross times.

Kev

[BeunMan]

AutoX:

OxfordB 53.0, 1 cone
Zwickau 54,183
Kitc 48.27
Zurich 50.1 (possibly cone)
Delft 47.2
Chalmers: 49.958
Monash 50.3
Munchen (uas?) 53.584
TU Munchen 50.79
Stuttgart 53.288

Results:
http://events.imeche.org/formula-student/formula-student-2014/2014results
Accel + sprint official.

Design finalists:
Karlsruhe, Zürich, Delft, Oxford Brookes, Chalmers, Stuttgart

Those are also the top 7 (minus Monash) according to some calculations.

[JulianH]

Zurich ran a 48.7 with their second driver.

According to my calculation (unofficial AutoX times) it's Delft, Zurich (-2), Karlsruhe (-46), Monash (-60), Stuttgart (-78)

The combustion cars will probably lose 30-50 points in Efficiency, so they have to be very quick to catch up the two electric cars if everybody finishes Endurance.

[Kevin Hayward]

I still find it odd that they run the Electric and the Petrol in the same class at the UK. The accel times, and now the Autocross make it pretty clear that the rules currently have a huge advantage for the electric cars. High power limit and torque vectoring makes for a formidable package.

It would be a shame to try to get parity by bringing the electric cars down. At the moment the best electric cars in FS are some of the best electric cars in the world. It encourages students to want to work on them. I say don't chase parity, keep the electric cars fast and keep them separate.

Kev

[JulianH]

I think Kevin is right. Mixing the classes does not work.
Still, a bit less power for the electric cars will not hurt the overall "awesomeness" of the 4WD cars, but still they should split the classes again.
Sad thing would be that there could be only 4-5-6 electric cars running competitively at an event like Silverstone. Sadly the teams especially from the UK don't seem to ever switch to electric.

Apparently, Zurich clipped a cone in the last run, therefore Delft is leading by 19 points right now. But still, the Top 2 electric cars seem to be the best scoring out there even if they don't get the 30-40-50 points in Efficiency...

Design Top3 are Stuttgart, Zurich and Oxford Brooks. 4th Delft, 5th Karlsruhe, 6th Chalmers

[BeunMan]

missed the 48.7 from Zurich :/ shame for the cone.

The endurance won't be ran at full power like sprint. The combustion cars will have the same performance.

Before the finalists were known (the order) Jasper did some calculations and came to this (130pt design finalists, 80pt cost finalists I thought):
1. Delft 503.03
2. ETH 483.37
3. KITc 452.81
4. Stuttgart 449.44
5. OBR 430.62
6. Chalmers 410.54
7. Monash 407.08
8. Bath 398.93

With the results known it would just get closer ;) The endurance is going to be the final decider.

[BeunMan]

Running order Endurance:
http://events.imeche.org/docs/default-source/Results-2014/endurance-run-order-2014.pdf?sfvrsn=2

Weather:
https://scontent-a-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t1.0-9/10342763_743262509053053_2900191148344634895_n.jpg

[BeunMan]

Laptimes endurance at the start in the mid 70s. Expect ~48 later today of the weather stays dray.

[Tonks]

I have been updating the FSAE-A facebook page whenever possible, though the internet is a scarce find haha.
https://www.facebook.com/FSAEAustralasia

Went to the awards ceremony last night. ECU received two awards, Monash 1, DUT 1, Uni Petras 1, Zurich 1, Aberdeen 1 (and I am missing a heap of the rest). A nice spread of award receivers. The GKN award for the 'IC Lightest car and Most Cost Effective' went to Oxford Brookes, though was incorrectly given as the organisers didn't record Lund University's weight at scrutineering. (Maybe other cars might not have had their weights recorded either?) Both teams have done well and are worthy of the award though.

[Thijs]

Madeleine,

Apparently the trophy that says 'Lightest Vehicle' simply doesn't go to the lightest vehicle.
Oxford Brookes is 18 kg heavier than Lund, and Zwickau (who got the ´Lightest Electric Vehicle´ award), are 15 kg heavier than Delft, even though all these weights were surely known to the judges.

[JulianH]

Thijs,

I think just the wording on the trophy seems from. According to the Event Guide, the awards are named "GKN Award for the Lightest Weight & Best Value Electric Vehicle" and "GKN Award for the Lightest Weight & Best Value ICE".
Zwickau is a much "simpler" car compared to Delft (no wings, no 4WD, no freaky wheelhubs, no customized tires...), maybe the judges thought it was a better bang for the buck.

I can't say anything about Brooks and Lund... Brooks are in the Design Top3, they seem to be very good, maybe that was a factor...

[BeunMan]

...
I can't say anything about Brooks and Lund... Brooks are in the Design Top3, they seem to be very good, maybe that was a factor...

Brookes won design according to the results https://www.facebook.com/RennteamUniStuttgart/photos/a.310738565765.156126.288479150765/10152154654585766/?type=1&theater. The feedback for Delft was too expensive (which is absolutely true, has been since '10) what I have heard. Probably too for AMZ.

Design:
1. OxBrookes
2. Stuttgart,
3. AMZ
4. Delft
5. KITc
6. Chalmers

Scores (By Jasper) after design without cost finals:
1. Delft 520.03
2. ETH 501.37
3. KITc 468.81
4. Stuttgart 458.44 (Can get extra points on cost)
5. OBR 450.62
6. Monash 432.08
7. Chalmers 425.54
8. Bath 423.93

[M. Nader]

OBR, Delft and ETH all had problems in endurance. KIT were quick (Zurich fastest lap).

will be close this one

[JasperC]

But Zürich were also in trouble at the start of their endurance.

I have kept scores quite closely but I haven't been able to record proper laptimes. As far as I can judge it, Stuttgart is in best position for the overall win with Oxford Brookes second. But I don't know just how much time Delft lost (and how many cones Stuttgart clipped, I heard rumours that it were quite a few) plus efficiency will come into play. So with a little luck Delft might pop up on top, but they may as well end 4th or 5th...

I'm glad I'm not part of the team anymore, my heart would be racing like mad. :D

[JulianH]

Jasper, I think you are a bit wrong here ;)

If the Efficiency results are comparable to 2013, Delft will win by far. I sadly don't know any Brooks times but I think they were too far away.

According to my estimate of Efficiency the final results should be:
Delft
Karlsruhe
Stuttgart or Zurich

Delft will win by about 40 points.

[TMichaels]

@Jasper: You should be able to extract the overall Endurance times of each team form the FSUKLive Twitter channel.

[BeunMan]

Due to the slower overall times the efficiency score will also be lower.

[BeunMan]

@Jasper: You should be able to extract the overall Endurance times of each team form the FSUKLive Twitter channel.

Those times include the driver change. There is no way to know how long they took, somewhere between 2-3 minutes or longer. Unless you start counting all the laptimes which aren't all there.

And the design scores are in: http://events.imeche.org/docs/default-source/Results-2014/fs_uk_2014---design.pdf?sfvrsn=0

[JasperC]

My endurance times were quite far off what others are reporting. So I adjusted them and also looked at the efficiency scores including the rule change (FEFmin is now calculated rather than based on actual team's performance). My new estimate has Delft winning by about 14 points over KITc and Stuttgart, with ETH and Monash completing the top 5. All of those teams within 25 points.

Cones and penalties (was KITc out of order? will Delft get off-course penalties for standing still next to the track?) not included.

[BeunMan]

Top 3 overall:

1. DUT Racing Team
2. Rennteam Uni Stuttgart e.V.
3. KA-RaceIng

Rest at http://events.imeche.org/formula-student/formula-student-2014/2014results

[mech5496]

Haven't been in FSUK as a competitor since 2010 (although I was a spectator in 2012), and the competition has gone up a few levels since! Everyone was really happy to help, queues were not massive and everything was resolved quickly, and static judging slots were timed correctly. Also it was the most sunny weather I ever had in FSUK, although we got some rain in endurance (I believe we were the only group of cars that ran under rain). Also WiFi coverage was satisfying, although not particularly fast.

On low points I would add the frustration caused with energy meters. We have passed all tech/noise/tilt/brake until 11AM on Friday, but then we were informed that we had to re-pass rain test after we install the energy meter, and until then access to test area was not allowed for us. When we finally got our hands on the energy meter, installed it and re-passed rain, test area was closed.

On other news, we managed to collect a trophy (Business Plan win on Class 2), scored 113pt on design which is an all-time high score for us, and had a fair placing in all dynamics; hadn't it been for the rain in endurance we would have placed a few positions above, but 15th overall for our first ever attempt with an e-car made us all happy!

I was really impressed with the ECU car, besides originality the build quality was awesome and drivers reallly knew their game! Delft and ETH were impressive as always, and it was a pleasure having long discussions with Chalmers, Darmstadt and Scott from Monash, hope to see you guys soon again!

[Dunk Mckay]

Not a bad weekend, although the rain yesterday was a little unpleasant. Sad news is that my camera battery decided it didn't want to be a battery any more and wanted to be a brick instead. So only got a few photos, not the dozens and dozens as I had promised, my apologies.

On a self centred note, I'm proud of my universities progress with the car. We left them a good baseline to go and develop and they have done just that. Second fastest combustion time and a team record was nice. Only being rewarded half of the available points for it was not. With constantly advancing battery technologies and rule changes unrelated to powertrain type THERE IS NEVER GOING TO BE A GOOD BALANCE BETWEEN ELECTRIC AND COMBUSTION POWERED CARS! We've all said it, I don't know why the IMechE is still trying to force that down our throats unless they want to save money on trophies. Duplicating the results spreadsheets is the only bit of additional work required to split the classes up. Promoting a "greener" image is all well and good but if you start to penalise and alienate half of the very people the competition is designed to help (the students) then you're barking up the wrong tree. The fuel efficiency rules don't help, either, where it's based on time as much as it is as fuel consumed. I'm only guessing, but I reckon this was implemented so that merging E and C classes was possible. However, the cars are already assess on time, there's 300 points in it for then, plus another 150 in AutoX. Ok so you don't want cars trundling round for the sake of fuel economy, so throw a 150% of fastest time rule clause on it, but otherwise just mark it proportional to fuel used. As it stands I'm confident pretty much no-one but the teams with tons of resources are spending time on their maps and powertrain designs chasing after fuel economy, because going faster gets you far more points, even in fuel efficiency! That's not exactly promoting a green image is it?

Sorry for my rant, but I just think it's completely silly and I'm going to keep banging this drum for as long as it takes for them to de-merge the two classes.

[JasperC]

I disagree about the economy/efficiency point. The idea to include endurance time in the efficiency scoring comes from FSG and has been in use there for years (I think since 2009). The reason is, at Formula Student you are required to design a RACE car. The intent is, in my opinion, to assess your fuel usage in racing conditions, not when driving on a straight at stationary RPM in a high gear.

Fuel efficiency, like all the other events, is there to reward good engineering. Fuel economy, as it used to be, did not reward good engineering but rather slow driving.

I agree with your other point though, mixing ICE and electric cars will always be a problematic and artificial balancing exercise.

[Mbirt]

Congratulations to Hertfordshire on the Fuel Efficiency win with a first year single--88.6 points in a mixed class with e-cars is excellent considering their 123.7 point endurance score. Consuming only 2.5 l of E85 is impressive and a 90-plus point score at this competition is possible with a faster pace while not using more fuel (Berkeley, Kettering, etc have does this). It is certainly much easier to compete with e-cars under mixed classification for "fuel" efficiency (even without regenerative braking) than it is to be competitive in acceleration. Why not lower the e-car power limit to 75 kW?

What happened to Stuttgart in autox? The competition could have been theirs had they run only slightly faster than Monash.

It's cool to see KIT running E85 in the AMG GTDI twin--excellent use of the fuel's properties and a much improved fuel efficiency finish too.

[BeunMan]

...Why not lower the e-car power limit to 75 kW?
There are plans to limit it by 5kW for 2wheel and 25-35kW for 4wheel electrics in 2015. See the other threads

The consideration with E85 (and petrol for that matter) is that faster tracks use more fuel in general. Since there weren't a lot of teams who actually ran it is hard to say if they could have gone faster with the same amount. The combination of the speed/fuel rule is however, as JasperC already told, that you can win the fuel efficiency while going fast.

[Z]

Just some quick comments here (more in the General section).
~o0o~

Given the ~30 odd years that FSAE has been running, Rear-Wheel-Drive (ie. two wheels ONLY!) combustion cars should by now be down to the low 3 second times in Acceleration, if not the high-2s. If you students stop bitching and moaning about E-cars having an "unfair advantage", and STOP COPYING LAST YEAR'S CARS (ie. start thinking for yourselves!), then you might eventually figure out how to do this. (And NO, it is NOT all about horsepower!!!)

To repeat, in general a RWD-only car has an ADVANTAGE in Acceleration over 4WD. Bleeding obvious really... Stand behind a horse, make a load noise, and see what happens...
~o0o~

The current 100 point Fuel EFFICIENCY event is equivalent to having a Fuel ECONOMY event that earns much less than 100 points, with the other points given back to Enduro (ie. with more points for faster cars). So "Fuel Efficiency" is simply providing a lower-than-100-point reward for fuel economical cars.

But in the spirit of hypocrisy that pervades all officialdom, "Fuel Err...something" is given a large number of 100 points to make it look like this is an "Engineering competition" intended to produce fuel efficient cars, rather than being just another race series.

Z

[TMichaels]

There is a reason in my opinion that no other competition with a reasonable number of electric entries still has merged classes. Due to the big difference in torque and efficiency, there will always be a misbalance in my opinion.
The only thing that is being done regarding merging of classes at FSG is giving a trophy for the team performing best in the dynamics with mixed scoring. But that is just a trophy, nothing more and in 2013 it was won by a combustion time btw., but due to problems of the most competitive electrics in at least one of the dynamic events.

[Dunk Mckay]

Given the ~30 odd years that FSAE has been running, Rear-Wheel-Drive (ie. two wheels ONLY!) combustion cars should by now be down to the low 3 second times in Acceleration, if not the high-2s. If you students stop bitching and moaning about E-cars having an "unfair advantage", and STOP COPYING LAST YEAR'S CARS (ie. start thinking for yourselves!), then you might eventually figure out how to do this. (And NO, it is NOT all about horsepower!!!)

To repeat, in general a RWD-only car has an ADVANTAGE in Acceleration over 4WD. Bleeding obvious really... Stand behind a horse, make a load noise, and see what happens...
~o0o~

The current 100 point Fuel EFFICIENCY event is equivalent to having a Fuel ECONOMY event that earns much less than 100 points, with the other points given back to Enduro (ie. with more points for faster cars). So "Fuel Efficiency" is simply providing a lower-than-100-point reward for fuel economical cars.

But in the spirit of hypocrisy that pervades all officialdom, "Fuel Err...something" is given a large number of 100 points to make it look like this is an "Engineering competition" intended to produce fuel efficient cars, rather than being just another race series.


Agree with you on the fuel "eff-conomy" front, Z.

But I don't agree that 2wd is better than 4wd for accel. Purely due to the fact that the cars have more htan enough power to spin the rear wheels at launch. traction control would merely limit the power going to the road, so not making maximum use of the power available, and biasing all the mass to the rear of the car to maximise traction on the rear tyres, will not only make the cars impossible to control but also just darn terrible in every other event. if the cars are breaking traction, and the coefficient of friction cannot be increased (short of cu$tom tyre compounds) , then the only way to accelerate off the line faster is to drive all 4 wheels.

Copying last years car is an industry standard, because well it works. It means the systems you are working with are familiar and the problems you encounter should be relatively easy to solve. If you had a dream team of engineers and experts then yes, starting from the ground up is ultimately going to result in the best car. But starting from the ground up with students who don't really know what they are doing and haven't got a clue how to manage a project properly, is just going to result in a half built car and a load of bodges.
I'd like to think the reason my old team did well this year, despite only finishing the car 2 days before competition, is because they took what we did last year, made the improvements we suggested as well as a some of their own. So they didn't need tons of testing to get the setup right or to figure out what would break and what wouldn't. This resulted in the second fastest C-car in accel (7th overall), for a team that, until recently only finished 1 in 3 endurance events. One of the reasons for this probably was that after a few years of looking into it there was someone on the team with the expertise, confidence and contacts to get custom gears made and put in the engine.
We had a student investigate how to implement a CVT gearbox a while ago, but he wasn't very bright. Ultimately, all we could conclude from his work was that it wasn't easy, and short of making a custom engine it would add a lot of extra weight to the car as the existing gearbox (even emptied) would still be there.

Is it possible for the best combustion car to outperform the best electric car in acceleration under the current rules? Maybe, but doubtful. If it is it's no doubt a insurmountable amount of work for a bunch of inexperienced students to have to do in the space of 10 months. So if FSAE is in the business of setting impossible challenges then sure, merge the classes.

[Z]

Dunk,

I address some of your points above in the "2015 FSAE Rules" thread, page 3.

Please don't take it personally. :)

Z

[DMuusers]

The competition this year was really strong and I personally liked it very much. Not only the usual strong teams of Zurich, Karlsruhe, Munchen, Stuttgart, Monash, Oxford and others. Also a surprisingly great car from Trondheim (Revolve), building their 3rd car (and first electric car) with very impressive results. Also the organisation of the event itself was a lot better than previous editions.

The media team of us released 2 episodes of the Delft report, covering FSUK from our team's viewpoint.
episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuwRybh4jsY
episode 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvvjntJwxc

We lucked out a lot in winning the competition, so for us there's still a lot of hard work to do. I'm looking forward to FSG a lot because there will be an even stronger field of cars and teams, so it promises to be a great competition.

See you all in Germany

[mech5496]

I'll second what Daniel said about organization; the weather did us a favor and kept dry mosto of the time (except our endurance running group of course! :P). We are pleased with the 15th overall/ 5th in electric class, happy for being the first e-team through tech and extremely happy to finish endurance with no trouble whatsoever! Some impressions on the following video, as well as on our FB page!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY2kAbdu6_o&sns=fb

[Z]

Kevin,

I have seen some pics of your (ECU) car now on various sites, and I like it!

(I already have a long list of things I would change... :) but please keep going in that direction!)

On another thread you mentioned that at FSUK you had,
"... teething problems ... that dogged the team the whole way through ..."

Can you share what those problems were?

Z

[Kevin Hayward]

Z,

I'm not sure it is my place to share the problems, but I will anyway. The team didn't feel that it wanted to come across as making excuses for our performance. We take a view it is not about what you say you could have done, but what you did that is important. They may post something more detailed on facebook.

We had a very minor issue (and very easy to fix) that caused bent valves. The guys didn't pick it up until the UK, after we had freshened the engine ready for comp in Perth. The engine failed twice pre-comp, requiring two full rebuilds in less than 72 hours. Unfortunately the problem was misdiagnosed the first time. We had been running very well in Perth, most likely due to good fortune that we would have had just enough clearance with the head we were using. Killed any chance of testing in the UK, and the team had a very rough time of it. Unfortunately the first failure damaged cylinder 3, which ran low compression the whole event. Extreme tiredness caused a couple of extra slip-ups, but nothing that kept the team from running, but did cost speed.

The team is not too disappointed that we weren't a bit further up. We see the car as the start of a new era for us, and we are stoked that it got though everything first time out. We have a long list of changes, some of which is already well on the way. If you pm me your list I will take it to the guys. They have a pretty good idea of where they are heading, but appreciate running through different possibilities. We probably have a longer time schedule for implementation than you would approve of though :)

Kev

[Z]

...
We see the car as the start of a new era for us, ...

Kev,

My main suggestion would be to keep doing what you are doing. My list would include a lot of things that could possibly only be done on the next car anyway (eg. tilt cylinders backward so you can push driver a bit further back, etc.).

Will you be at FSAE-Oz-14? I would love to have a closer look at the car and then go through all the "Hmmm, I reckon better would be more like this...". :)

But it is definitely a good direction you are going in. Given ECU's and UWA's recent cars, I wonder what they put in that WA water?!

Z

[mech5496]

Dunk, any chance that you upload and share those "naked" pics from FSUK you talked about?

[Dunk Mckay]

Not a bad weekend, although the rain yesterday was a little unpleasant. Sad news is that my camera battery decided it didn't want to be a battery any more and wanted to be a brick instead. So only got a few photos, not the dozens and dozens as I had promised, my apologies.

When I said a few, what I meant was basically none. Took a few of my old uni's car on arrival and then my camera died. Sorry about that. I think Herts have got a reasonably sized album on their faecbook page, not so much internals though I don't think.

[mech5496]

Ooopsie! I had much less time this year to look around, but still I have some pictures taken, I will sort them out and upload them when I find the time to do so!