What did the postman bring today?

[Bad Raven]

What did the postman bring today?  Or yesterday?

Sod All, as he's on strike. Again.

I now have at least four orders, two being China arrivals, trapped somewhere in the system now, one first class tomorrow being a week "late", and its a strike day today. 

OK, only a club, but special needs kids demand stability so it matters even to me/us, and I feel for anyone who's business is teetering in the face of energy rises, etc, etc.

If they carry out the threat of December 9/11/14/15/23 and 24, many likely won't get the Christmas they desire.

[Bad Raven]

OK, so yesterday two packages arrived, one from China (Economy Shipping), one from Fleetwood (First class)

Guess which one was faster.............by three days...............    

[ched]

OK, so yesterday two packages arrived, one from China (Economy Shipping), one from Fleetwood (First class)

Guess which one was faster.............by three days...............    

China faster.
I was in Fleetwood today, just round the corner from the sender

[Bad Raven]

Royal Mail have announced they are awaiting a package from China.

Evri (My Hermes) have announced they are awaiting a pcakage from China.

Pre stirikes, RMo would be guaranteed quicker, but now???

My neighbour went to S.O. and picked up their mail, and also picked up ours.

There were people there collecting mail that had not had a single delivery in five weeks.

One of ours was an important local mail from 4 miles away.  Its taken a MONTH to get here and only then by collection, and we are urban London. And we HAVE had mail by postman in that time, possibly once a week.

[ched]

That does sound bad. We seem to have a few days without seeing a post person but no real delays that I'm aware of. We seem to get post a few times a week.

[Bad Raven]

Well, the postman has not brought it, but Mr Online supported by Mr PayPal has............

Drone Champions League is on Steam Winter Sale for 75% discount, so £6.24

Thought it'd be rude not to.............   

[Bad Raven]

Well, the postman brought us a large batch of mail today, near broke the doormat.......... its 28th Dec, mail dating from 2nd Dec......... 26 days..........

Only good news it included a Bond, no, not James Bond, Mr Premium Bond.

Meanwhile, not a quad related item, but a multi LED driver/brilliance control board complete with a whole load of pre-wired connectors, spare leads, etc from AliExpress ordered late on 20th December from deepest China arrived today 28th.  Less than 8 days. £13 inc shipping. Nicely made, good clear well written English instructions 

Whilst I stil currently after 13 days have a failed 10 month old CH boiler so no heat and no sign of the company getting parts let alone fixing it, and now we have a major burst water main round the corner that has washed the road away so no water supply and solid traffic jammed up everywhere.

If I claim I'm an illegal immigrant can I have a nice heated hotel suite please? I'll bring my own prayer mat............. honest................

[Bad Raven]

A courier has just brought a second order for large "masking tape" rectangles for 3D printer heat beds.

The first order was good, so I re-ordered.

These have come neatly and distortingly sharply folded in two, completely negating the purpose of having a one piece flat adhesion base layer to apply filament to.

Does ANYONE have a brain left?????     

[ched]

A courier has just brought a second order for large "masking tape" rectangles for 3D printer heat beds.

The first order was good, so I re-ordered.

These have come neatly and distortingly sharply folded in two, completely negating the purpose of having a one piece flat adhesion base layer to apply filament to.

Does ANYONE have a brain left?????     

How stupid can they be. As you say whole point is to get a flat surface! Have a Great 2023.

[Bad Raven]

Having bought a few Eachine TX01 micro combo cameras, all of which have worked to spec, I decided to try one of these:-

https://imgaz3.staticbg.com/thumb/large/oaupload/banggood/images/2A/22/4d4307ee-0eaf-4caf-9ad8-1602c4f4ec00.jpg.webp

Reason? Lighter, smaller, and a twig antenna less likely to get caught in things.

It arrived yesterday from China.  7 Days.   

Loose in a plastic bag far bigger than its inner tiny anti-static bag, both of which it had been trying hard to escape from. And crushed. NO foam/bubble protection at all. 

REALLY??    

How on earth do these people think that's adequate?    

Surprisingly it does still power up, and change channel, but it flickers whenever moved so there's PCB damage between the two layers connections and the lens is jammed well out of focus.

And all it needed was a couple of grams of foam.

Now starts the support aggro........... and its New Year for them..............

 

[Bad Raven]

SO, today, only five normal working days later, I received a PayPal refund for the whole amount of the Camera AIO that arrived crushed because it was sent halfway around the world with only a plastic bag for protection.

Credit to them for doing so promptly and in their New Year break, but SO frustrating that whatever their supply chain system is, it seems to be incapable of improving such stupid behaviour.

There's a sadly increasing trend, or am I just unlucky?

As well as this there was the 3D printer tape sheets supplied  with some flat but loose in bag so crumpled, and some deliberately folded singly into a trans bag with SKU label,and batteries arriving with inadequate protection to prevent shorting at the termination plate. Then the THREE times recently various suppliers have accepted orders for items that later were stated as either out of stock or only partial order sent as stock low. All this AND being able to get a fair number of other things as nobody has any, remaining nil stock for many months.

I needed some batteries of a specific type/size, impractical to even attempt any alternative. The single supplier does not allow pre-order. And yes, despite "backm in stock" warning and frequent site visits, by the time I found out that stock had appeared, and rushed to do an order, stock had fallen back to nil again.   GGGGRRRR!

[ched]

The issues kick around don't seem to be 'post covid' issues. It almost seems like the world lost a lot more people than anyone is saying and there is a world wide shortage of people.

Just looking at getting solar PV fitted and found a company that responded well and with the sort of system we wanted. Initially they said 12 week wait for install which is OK - not ideal. Then next day new quote with bird protection and the wait jumped to 24 weeks! Then bit more checking and found sales team very responsive but after that communications is terrible and people reporting lots of cancelled installs day before or just not turning up when they say.....

I bet they are loosing a lot of business... When will companies realise doing things correctly actually makes them more money!

Hope you get some batts soon.

[Bad Raven]

Completing the damaged camera AIO story, having been refunded, I attacked the unit kill or cure.

Found as suspected a fractured solder joint between boards (I should have been a gynacologist not an engineer!), then taking its life in my hands used a pipe wrench (yes, it took that much force!) and freed the camera lens from its jammed at the inner end thread distorted position, squeezing it enough to get it back circular enough to run back on the adjustment thread.

Then made a correct connector for it (it was sold with reversed power connector, the standard of battery male housing, female connector to the camera, the numbnuts!)

THEN found that while the channel and frequency single button two LED system worked, it was not standard AT ALL, A1 5865 perfect tune on the VRX screen being indicated as B2 5752 in their website frequency table, nothing AT ALL being provided wih the AIO in its plastic bag...

Two "old man" hours later, its sitting on my window ledge giving a lovely sharp wide angle image of the street at maximum bars signal to the screen, and has been for the last 20 minutes plus on a 200mAh 1S grotty old Nano-Tech. 

[Bad Raven]

HDZero notified on Monday that my goggles had been shipped, and the tracking number in that post for UPS showed it would be delivered today Tuesday!! (So they didn't notify until they were in UK)

AND.........the ever useless UPS did deliver the HDZero goggles today, but beyond the four hour 1100-1500 time slot that is the best they can manage to state, and then fail to deliver within...again....... that's every time so far for them! 

It then took me near an hour to carefully unbox and assemble the Goggles with their TrueRC bought four antenna, two stubby and two patch, which fit onto slide slotted housings I'd previously 3D printed to be ready for delivery as the ones TrueRC supplied with the patches were notified by them as being the wrong size. 

Most of that "assembly" time was the faceplate foam fixing though as it came without the Velcro grip on the housing(s) or foam and that is fiddly to align.  You are sent two housings for differing face shapes, two Velcro fixings, but only one foam, a surprising bit of penny pinching given the general quality of the product. 

So far all I have done is assembled, turned them on, done the easy to use adjustments for Focus and IPD, and used them, so I have no idea what resolution setting they are on, but straight off the improvement over the EMax Transporter2 HDZero screen I have been running with while waiting is probably as marked as the difference between those and Analogue, it was easy to set for good focus and the image is staggeringly clear. 

Just flown the Mobula7 around the house using them, and its mind blowing!  What they will look like with a better camera than the tiny nano camera lens on the Mob7 is a mouth watering prospect. 

[Bad Raven]

So, many like to knock Banggood as being slow, but seems to me the various couriers do their best to ****** things up.   

Saw the quad type I use for the school club on "cheapest for 365 days" offer (genuine, too), and less than 50% what alternative suppliers are currently selling (at best, some are a staggering FIVE times more expensive!!    ), so ordered four and got free shipping.

Shipped internally China, flight to UK and cleared for collection from UK customs in THREE DAYS.

That was last Thursday afternoon, and yet Royal Mail STILL have not collected from Heathrow, now into the fourth working day of their inaction.   

[Bad Raven]

So, the four quads finally arrived. Seems RM took as long to carry them the final 10 miles as the time it took to get them half way around the world.

AND......  the radio protocol has changed yet again. None of the previous five iterations or any of the last batch of JJRC H36 Transmitters will bind to them.

Which means the multi protocol modules won't work, and if a Eachine supplied Tx fault occurs, the model is unable to be used (before you could swap)