Week Forty-Seven It’s beginning To Feel a Bit Like Christmas!
Long term readers may recall that one year about this time, I offered a prize to whomever could specify me the parts to build a 12 Volt LED light string on a cigar lighter plug. Well, I kept it, having builded it to Tim Reeves’ design and it still works a treat! The ancient car Christmas tree from Ron Imports that has done such horribly long service has, for the first time ever, had special 12V rated bulbs chosen for it and purchased as spares from Wilkinson’s, to be plucked from their housings and switched about the other little plastic receptacles! It is so old, it has to be the last one running in the UK of that model. Not seen any like it, since.
My filming with Atsuhiro of Alpine was cool last week at Auto Audio, we sat in a lovely Bentley, with another one next to us (with a W12 engine!) and had a look at a flip-screen motorised single DIN headunit, an Alpine IVA-D511R. Very nice. It’s on my ‘˜Presenterbloke’ channel on YouTube which has as I write, has had 1,110, 291 views, has 780 subscribers. There have been 1,958 likes and 175 dislikes, with 1,418 comments and 234 shared clips. And 1,008 have favourited a clip as well I’m quite chuffed with that!
On a serious note I have been out to test a new safety awareness device that can keep you aware of emergency vehicles. It reads the airwaves and the special radio system used by emergency vehicles. While out testing, we went past the ambulance station in Queensbury, Middlesex and it showed the ambulances’ systems were right on top of us. Also, on a high street hill down from Wembley to the North Circular road that with the Ace Café on it, we had another ambulance with the lights on appear way behind us and it whooshed past the traffic. We were warned before the road users around us had seen the lights in the far distance. In time, we had to pull sideways and STOP right in a yellow box and everything, to let it flow onwards. That we knew it was needing to be looked out for as the proximity system had gone off to five LEDs, was truly useful.
The distributor is NOT looking for lots of dealers but if you have a customer base who own cars likely to get them into trouble for a moment’s lack of attention to speed, then the device is like having someone sat next to you saying, ‘Oi! Less of it, Mate!’ as it will of course indicate even an unmarked emergency vehicle like a candle in a cave, by the comms it has on board.
If you think you and yours might be the right stuff, (It’s going to be about a grand, retail fitted) then get onto me and I will put you in touch. I certainly think I need that Big Brotherly presence to keep my general attention focussed.
Lots of other kit to test, including a cute Bluetooth doodad by Scosche called the BoomBOTTLE, so I’ll crack on
Adam Rayner On Line Editor