Another Place (Again)

Brother, his family and Sister paid us a visit yesterday - prior to Samwise' Birthday. We went for a trip to Crosby beach for another viewing of Antony Gormley's Another Place (we've seen it before, but they hadn't".

Despite the day starting with a couple of showers of hail, the sun came out by the time we got to the beach in the afternoon.

Took a couple of snaps of Brother, Sister and an Iron Man (plus an artistically placed branch, that someone else had planted earlier). Brother and Sister are the one's who look like they're dressed for an expedition to the Gobi Desert.



They insisted on posing for the second snap, but I think I prefer the first one.



The kids enjoyed the beach - despite the big windmills in the sea that were making the wind blow - at least that's what I told them ;-)



Samwise' cousins gave him a remote controlled crane for his Birthday present.



It has a working winch which can be moved back and forth along the gantry, it also rotates. You also need to add counterweight ballast, as with a real crane, to stop it from toppling over with a heavy load.

Samwise, Frodo and his cousins quickly got the hang of it, but they must have been giving it some abuse because today the winch stopped moving back and forth along the gantry. Frodo initially got the blame for this, since he'd tried to move the winch along the gantry - had to apologise to him later as although he'd done the wrong thing, it wasn't his fault.

I spent about 3.5 hours this afternoon dismantling various pieces, and tracing the fault. I discovered that a weak solder joint on a connector in the rotating base had caused a wire to snap off from the connector.

I took my trusty soldering iron to the rescue, and now it's fully functional again.
I can now add crane repair man to my skill set :)