Hooptedoodle #304 - The Haar

View from the upstairs bathroom window - somewhere out there, there should be a
distant view of Dunbar, and the Lammermuir Hills. But not today. This is a day for
staying indoors, and listening to the guy on the radio complaining about how
hot he is in London.

What you might call a characteristic regional phenomenon here is the haar (otherwise known as a sea fret) which blows in off the North Sea during warm weather. As an incomer, I always assumed that haar was probably a Viking word - a number of our local words - especially weather-related ones, have a pleasingly rough, Nordic twang, but it turns out that the origins of this one are almost certainly Dutch - there are similar, ancient words in use in Friesland and the Netherlands which simply describe cold, foggy weather.

Whatever the etymology, the haar is the reason why for the last couple of days, while most of the rest of the country is enjoying a minor heatwave, we have our central heating switched back on and the view out of the window stretches about as far as the trees on the far side of the nearest field.

One of my older sons visited North Berwick on Sunday, and he reassured me that Edinburgh was also cold and misty that morning, but yesterday, when my wife returned from a shopping trip, she arrived at the end of our farm road in bright sunshine, and could see our very own haar sitting like a pancake on top of our woods, so it is probably OK to take it just a little personally. Microclimate.

My first memorable experience of such weather came when I first moved here, in 2000, and my parents came to visit - all the way from (warm, West Coast) Liverpool, during a remarkably fine, warm spell in October. One late afternoon we were sitting on the terrace, with glasses of chilled white wine and straw hats deployed, when suddenly the mist began pouring down from over the trees at the bottom of the garden, and it became gloomy and bitterly cold while you watched. Show over - remarkable. [As a footnote, I have to say that my parents were not put off, and they duly upped sticks and came to live in this area the following year.]

[Drat.]

The haar, as I'm sure you are aware if you live on the East Coast, anywhere from Norfolk to John o' Groats (or could care less, if you don't), is the result of warm air passing over the cold sea - the water vapour condenses into thick mist, and the sea breezes waft it back in over the coastal land - the fog obliterates the sunshine, the temperature drops, and we start wondering about the heating. It's always been like this here.

We have had a good number of bright days, too, of course. Here is a swallow resting on
our electricity cable, gathering his strength for nest-building in the woodshed...

And our beloved white lilac has had its brief few days of glory. We really do love the
show it produces, and each year, as the blossoms start to turn brown, I ponder the fact
that it will be another year before we see it again. That's a thought that becomes more
profound each time, I guess. 

The Contesse continues to produce some terrific wildlife photos - here's a very
scruffy robin at his ablutions.

We've also had some remarkable exhibitions of raw aggression recently from those icons of peace, the Collared Doves. They have been beating up the wood pigeons on a regular basis. They have now been seen chasing magpies out of our garden - very scary - they really are surprisingly vindictive little beggars. We're still trying to get a photo of that - maybe even a little video, but no luck yet.

Blogger Misbehaving?

I've seen a couple of posts along this theme. I'm currently having problems with Blog comments. For some subscribers (not all, and I don't understand why) I am not getting email notification of pending comments. I also now realise that these "stealth" pending comments are arriving in my Awaiting Moderation folder in batches - sometimes a while after they were submitted.

Very sorry if you've been affected - I know that Stryker, Jon Freitag, David from Suffolk and one or two others have sent comments which didn't trigger the notification email. I live in hope that Blogger will be fixed soon - I don't think any of us has done anything wrong!

I do try to keep an eye on the pending folder.

Bavarians - Flags, and a Possible Wizard Wheeze...

Continued (very useful) correspondence with Giovanni suggested that the line infantry flags I have used with my new Bavarians might be of wider interest. Now I have to say straight away that the flags are such a nightmare to draw (not to mention the risk of epileptic seizure) that, unusually for me, I was happy to go for the examples in the Napflag bit of the Warflags site. I have long admired the Napflag material - Alan Pendlebury did a splendid job of giving a free offering of all his research and very impressive graphic work. The pity is that the site hasn't been updated since 2001 - not because the flags are wrong, but because more modern internet bandwidths would have permitted higher-resolution (bigger) files.

So I downloaded Alan's Bavarian flags image and - entirely for my own preferences and use - I used the trusty Paintshop Pro to alter the shade of blue a bit, and to replace the black outlines and construction lines in the image with the predominant blue shade. I've also, for my own purposes, swapped some of the centre sections between flags. The tweaked image is here, if it is of any use to anyone - please note that this is Alan's intellectual property, from the Napflag site, and I take no credit for any of this. The images are a lot smaller than I would normally use, but for my 20mm soldiers I have printed them so that each flag comes out 24mm high (they were 173cm, according to the regulations), which is 1/72, and they work out fine. I would not recommend them for anything larger. Oh yes, the Leibfahne (carried by 1st Bn) is on the right of each horizontal pair, the Ordinarfahne (2nd Bn) is on the left. If you want more details of dates etc, check the Napflag site.

These are slightly tweaked versions of Alan Pendlebury's flags from the old
Napflag site. If you use them, or pass them to anyone else, please explain that
they are Alan's flags, though it was me who probably spoiled them! 

I was mentioning to Gio that my only concern about having a burgeoning Bavarian army is that I don't have anybody for them to fight. Yes, they could have a bash against the French after Leipzig, and I can always change history and get them sent to Spain as part of the Confederation contingent, but for the most part I will be relying on visiting (or hosting) generals at social games to provide an Austrian army for opposition. Gio, of course, humorously suggested that I was now irrevocably committed to building an Austrian army of my own to complement them. This has already been suggested by a number of other humorists, and the joke is not what it was. The Austrians are no kind of niche army - that would be a very serious undertaking, though the idea does have a strong appeal for about 8 seconds, until the full horror of the implications hits you.

One campaign I do have an interest in, however, is the Bavarian involvement in the Tirolean Rebellion in 1809. This would be a smaller undertaking all round, would involve relatively few Austrian line troops, and, for me, has the scholarly underpinning that my imagination was caught by Andreas Hofer and all that lot during a couple of fairly recent holidays in the Tirol. Yes, all right, all right. Hofer and ice cream. Highbrow stuff.

There is still the problem of sourcing suitable figures. The only known models of Tyrolean rebels in a scale which suits me are a single set of plastics by German, which got a very muted reception in the pages of Plastic Soldier Review.

German's Tirolean rebels

However, Gio suggested that my existing Napoleonic Spanish guerrilleros might just slot right into the Tirol. Hey! There are plenty of round hats and capes, lots of knee-breeches, priests, mad women with blunderbusses. He may well be on to something. And, of course, I have about 130 of them. As Napoleon said, quantity has a quality all of its own.

Thinks: if I added a sprinkling of celebrity figures - maybe a box or two of the German plastics - I could already have the makings of a rebel army. Some of the flags might seem a bit inappropriate, but that's not bad for this week's potential Wizard Wheeze. If you half-closed your eyes, you might not notice that some of Hofer's heroes looked a bit Spanish.

I'll probably have gone off the idea, or have been talked out of it, by this time next week. My local providers of Austrians may have some understandable doubts about their prized regiments appearing alongside some very scruffy guerrillas. It does go to show, though, how sometimes we are so hidebound by history that we can't see the possibilities.

Part of the Bergisel Panorama, Innsbruck

Bavarians - noch zweimal

Newly finished yesterday, here are the two battalions of the 14. Linieninfanterieregiment, flagged and ready.

My Bavarian forces are based on the troops which made up Lefebvre's French VII Corps in 1809, and the three battalions produced so far are part of Bernhard Erasmus von Deroy's 3rd Division.

The 14th regiment was relatively new in 1809, and had no official title, since it owed its existence to the terms of Bavaria's contribution to the Confederation of the Rhine rather than the patronage of a particular Inhaber. The history of the organisation of the Bavarian army is rather complicated, as I am learning. Even the brief snapshot around 1809 has a few quirks.

Line regiments with higher numbers than 10 become a bit tricky. Regt No. 11 "Kinkel" was ceded to the newly-created Grand Duchy of Berg in 1806, though a new regiment with the same name and number was created the following year - these chaps spent 1809 chasing around the Tyrol, fighting Andreas Hofer's rebels.

Regiment No. 12 "Lowenstein-Wertheim" was disbanded after it mutinied in 1806, and the number was kept vacant until 1814. The problem was that the regiment, which formed the garrison of Bamberg, consisted of men from the Würzburg area, and since Würzburg also became a new state in 1806 the troops did not wish to remain in the Bavarian army.

Regiments 13 and 14 were created in 1806, without regimental titles (which, I remind myself, was the reason I embarked on this explanation). In 1811, the new (replacement) 11th Regt was disbanded, the 13th became the 11th, the 14th became the 13th (to preserve seniority - and there continued to be no No.12); subsequently, in 1814, more new regiments were raised and things swapped around again, but we won't worry about that here.

Bavarians - 1/9. LIR ready

King Maximilian's heroes - Oberst Delamotte leads the Ysenburg regiment towards
the front lawn. Some fool parked his car in the wrong century.

Here we go - all based and flagged, this is the 1st Bn of the 9. Linieninfanterieregiment "Graf Von Ysenburg" ready for action on the Danube. I have another two battalions almost ready, and I was holding off to post a photo of all of them, but time is passing and I thought better of it.

The others will be along on the next bus. Two posts for the price of - well, two, I suppose.

These are a bit special - they were painted by the illustrious Count Goya, who - when he is not painting the horrors of war - can apply his skills to turning out some very nice miniatures, as you see. This allows me, now I think about it, to focus my attention on the horrors of war. Anyway, my grateful thanks to the Count - I'm delighted with these fellows.

20mm as it used to be - guilty as charged, Your Honour. The rank and file are Der Kriegsspieler, the mounted officer and the Fahnenjunker are from the old Falcon range, which is now available again from Hagen, and the foot officers and the drummer are Hinton Hunt.

They probably felt a bit conspicuous marching round the garden, being the sole representatives of the VII Corps at present, but some friends will join them shortly, and they were enjoying the sun.

Hooptedoodle #303 - Flushed with Success [EXPLICIT]

Today was our day for a visit from the Septic Tank Man. The wagon duly arrived - all the way from Motherwell - to pump out our domestic drainage system.

As expected, it was all very professional and inoffensive. The driver/operator got about his business very quickly and efficiently - half an hour and we were done, and he was on his way to his next call.

It's not a big tank (1000 gallons), but it only services part of our house, so usage is very light really. This is our first clean-out in 13 years, and there were no problems - it was not an emergency. In the light of this (and the one-off service cost £250), consider, if you will, that Scottish Water, whom we approached late last year, will not touch your tank system unless you sign up for a 5-year minimum contract, with yearly visits which each cost more than Henderson's job this morning. Sometimes local authorities are not unlike the Mafia in their business model.

Anyway, all done, and now we are good for some years. Thank you, Mr Henderson. Remember: it may be just sewage to you, but it's his bread and butter.

...and, in case you missed their marketing push...

Lightbulb Moment - The Murky World of Illumination

The dining room lights at Chateau Foy - we like the light fittings a lot, but I need
some rather jazzier bulbs I can fit  on wargames days

Just over a week ago I had the very considerable pleasure of attending one of Stryker's classic wargames - his photos of the event are on his blog (4 posts starting with this one), and very good they are too.

The Bold Baron had a very crafty ploy up his sleeve - at the start of a turn he would bring in a couple of freestanding photographer's lamps, and we would all snap away, before the lamps were moved out of the way for play to continue. A wizard wheeze - the results are evident from his pictures.

This has got me thinking (again) about how to improve the lighting at my own wargames. I get occasional mutterings about my gloomy photos - quite rightly so; I'd like to do rather better - much better, in fact.

It was not always thus. Nearly 40 years ago, in another life and another house, I was given an old set of tripod floodlights by a friend who was a part-time professional photographer. They were OK - they came from his junk shed, but they worked well enough, though the cabling was a bit of nuisance, and visitors had to be careful not to scorch themselves. The bad news was that they were Soviet Russian (don't ask), and when the bulbs eventually died there was no way of getting hold of anything that would fit. One major obstacle to my adopting this extra-lights approach now, with more modern kit, is that I have a bigger table, and just don't have space - Stryker's room is far larger than mine.

Whatever I do is going to have to be a stew of compromises - I'll try to summarise what I need - if anyone would care to make some suggestions I'll be very grateful (practical and affordable would be good). I'd welcome some recommendations for particular bulbs (models or types?) that would do the job for me. I'm in the UK, so I need a British/European solution - no more retired Soviet stuff for me.

I fight my wargames in the household dining room - it's not ideal, but it works well enough - it is a decent size, and there are two overhead lights above the table.

Some of the uncertainty in this area stems from my outdated grasp of lighting metrics. I come from a world of traditional, incandescent coil-filament bulbs in which the folk lore is that 40 watts will do for a bedside lamp, a 60 watt lamp will do for the landing, normally we would be looking for at least a single 100 watt for a living room, and so on. This is now confused by the need to save the planet, and by the introduction of LED and other new technologies that Messrs Edison and Philips never thought of, not to mention the dodgy claims of equivalence made by manufacturers.

Our dining room has a nice dimmer circuit, so you can set the mood to anything you want (consistent with still being able to see what you are eating, of course). Most of the fancier bulb types do not work with a dimmer, but my literal "lightbulb moment" recently was the realisation that I could simply replace the normal bulbs with more suitable alternatives for the duration of a game - and if I keep the dimmer turned up full then it doesn't matter whether the bulb is designated as dimmable or not. The removal of the need to find a type of bulb which will handle both jobs is a big simplification. All I need now is a better idea of what I need for the wargames.

We currently use a pair of Philips halogen bulbs which are described as "75w, equivalent to a 105w bulb" (75w being the actual consumption of electric power, 105w being the claimed illumination equivalence in old money, just to confuse everyone). These will dim satisfactorily, and they give a good level of light for normal use, but they are not really bright enough for wargames, and too yellow for photography, especially if someone places a large mid-green table a couple of feet below the lights.

I thought maybe I could just screw in some proper photographers' lamps. Problem is they are very large - deliberately so, to avoid the hard shadows associated with a point light source - and they really don't work with our domestic downlighter fittings.

I did some background reading, to brush up my understanding of the numbers underlying the science. My Philips bulbs each produce a bit less than 2000 lumens of light, and the "warm white" colour which makes my photos so yellow is typical of domestic, household bulbs which are said to have a colour characteristic of about 2500K (that's degrees Kelvin, chaps). Never mind how the temperature relates to the colour - the point is that proper photographers' "daylight" bulbs are rated at 5500K, which is a much harder, bluish-white light, as we know.

I tried screwing in a couple of these. Not great - they are enormous, so protrude from the
shade, which gives a very uncomfortable glare. Also - and paradoxically, given my concerns
about glare - I'm not convinced that the overall level of illumination is much improved

So I'm building a picture of a pair of wargaming bulbs to keep in the drawer, specially. The overall requirements are:

* must be suitable for a large domestic light fitting - must not overheat the thing

* should be suitable for 220-240v AC, needs an E27 (European large screw) fitting, and should be about the same size as a standard bulb, so it doesn't protrude below the light shade (thus avoiding a distracting glare)

* it would be nice if it is dimmable, but it doesn't matter - dimming is not needed on wargames days  [...on the other hand, if it did dim, then it would be possible to set the lighting levels differently for normal play and photo moments...]

* I don't care too much about the technology - I'd like to save the planet, naturally, but whether it uses LEDs or whatever is not important, but...

* the bulbs must produce about 2500-3000 lumens [to put this back into terms I understand, this would be a bit more than I would have expected from a big old 150 watt incandescent bulb, which would certainly have fried my light fittings]
* ideally the colour should be whiter than my current "warm white" bulbs - the full 5500K daylight standard would be OK for photos, but is a bit harsh otherwise - does anyone produce an intermediate type of bulb, rated at say 4500K?

Mother ship. I ended up with an accidental UFO pic...