![\"null\"](\"http:\/\/micro-trike.co.uk\/images\/lumix.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI got it from Ebay UK and after being sent on to me, it arrived on Friday. I’ve done a few shots to test it out, no flying ones yet of course, because of the weather, and the initial results look very promising, so I can’t wait to get it up into the air.<\/p>\n
With my wood burner hopefully soon to be installed, I need to turn my thoughts to how I’ll fuel it. I’ve been collecting suitable wood in a piecemeal way but I’ll have to start doing what everyone else does, which is buying it in in quantity, and that means that a chainsaw will be an essential item to have. Although my stove will take 50cm long logs, they are usually delivered in lengths longer than that and so will need cutting down, plus you always need smaller lengths anyway, to bank the fire up and to start it, of course. To cut a long story short, Brico Depot recently announced a special offer – a chainsaw with a 45.4cc 2-stroke engine, ‘Oregon’ blade and guard with a 42cm cut and a 2-year warranty, all for only 69.90\u20ac. The way I look at it, even if it only lasts for just a bit longer than the warranty period, it has to be a good buy compared to the ‘big-name-brands’ that start at around 3 times the price with shorter length cut, so I picked one up at the end of last week.<\/p>\n
Like everything you buy nowadays, there was a certain amount of self-assembly necessary (OK, just fitting the guard and chain, actually, so no big deal I suppose) but then it just had to sit there with me unable to test it out as the rain fell down outside. For a couple of days – until yesterday. Then it stopped just long enough for me to go into my back garden and cut up an old fallen tree that up to now I’d had no idea what to do with. Well, what was originally a pain in the backside was soon turned into a useful resource – a nice little pile of chopped logs all ready to go onto my wood burner when the time comes. Before I’d finished, the rain started up again and I ended up getting drenched while I grabbed one of MYRO’s old covers to put over the pile to keep it dry, but it was worth it. I’ve never before either owned or even operated a chain saw, but I was amazed what a dream it was to use. It made mincemeat (or more accurately, logs…) of that tree in no time at all, and was out of sight compared to doing the job by hand. So I think my new ‘tron\u00e7oneuse’ will turn out to be a good buy and a useful asset in the future. I doubt that I’ll be exactly over-working it as I’ll only be chopping logs and taking off the odd tree branch, so I doubt that it will fall to bits in the next two years, hope not anyway. After I’d finished, I found that the chain had slackened off a bit, but it only took a few moments to tension it up again today, so it’ll be interesting to see if it stretches again the next time I use it. ‘Oregon’ isn’t the top<\/em> brand in the world by far, but it’s pretty well known so I hope that the chain and guard will give some reasonable service. Here are a few pics that I took of the saw this morning with my new Lumix camera after I’d re-tensioned the chain.<\/p>\n But hey, that’s not the end of it! Just after lunch today, the phone rang and it was a delivery driver asking for directions to my house. I knew immediately that it had to be my new ‘echelle de toit’, my roof ladder. Glory glory, so not another ‘microwave’ incident after all – they really did need two weeks to deliver it, according to the attached label (despatched on 2nd October). I can only surmise that they’d looked for the most economical form of shipment, and presumably if they’d found a bloke on a bike who’d have done it for less, I’d still be waiting. But no matter, it’s here at last. Here it is on my lawn with the ‘accrochement’ attachment that allows it to hang from the roof ridge next to it.<\/p>\n It took me half an hour or so to attach the ‘accrochement’ which fortunately was of exactly the correct dimensions, and then I was able to put it up onto the roof and try it out. To give you some idea of the scale, the ladder is 5.85 metres long.<\/p>\n And then, yes, I did nip up it to give it a go. OK, I did have some minor reservations to start off with as I’ve not done that kind of thing for a few years (ahem… quite a few actually) but in no time at all I was giving my chimney a close inspection for the first time. While I was doing so the sky was already beginning to cloud over again, so no time for any pictures, but I did manage to move what remains of the broken capping tiles in the hope of stopping the rain coming down my chimney. Then it was time to get down quickly and move the ladder under the eaves of the house to stop it getting (too) wet – there’s nowhere I have that’s completely under-cover that will take it. The rain is only falling quite lightly at the moment, but it’ll be nice if, when it does start up more heavily again, I don’t have it coming down my chimney any more until I can do the job properly. I’ll just have to wait and see – and now I think that after all today’s activities, I deserve another cup of tea. Or maybe something a little bit stronger as the sun, if it was out, would by now be well over the yard-arm \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Isn’t it strange how when you’ve been waiting for several things to come together, they all do so at the same time! I decided that now I’m flying regularly again, it was time for me to upgrade my trusty little old Pentax Optio digital camera. It’s served me well for several years and is still … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5367"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5373,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5367\/revisions\/5373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n