Free Wi-Fi At the Bunker, Trip to Barnton Quarry

Free Wi-Fi At The Bunker   View from the Quarry   The Happidrome Building at Barnton

As it is the school holiday I am bringing my daughter Elizabeth and wife Ann along too. It is a long trip to the bunker but we are stopping at Edinburgh overnight, Marriott reward points will help out with that! We will take a look at the Barnton Quarry bunker the following morning. It is a nice bright morning, after breakfast we head out to Barnton Quarry, we took a walk around the grounds via the o2 site entrance which had been left open, and it is really overgrown since last time, so much so it was not possible to get down to the bunker car park. There are several new holes in the fence and some burnt areas which is not too good. We took in the views from the top of the Quarry and headed out to the road. The main gate had a hole in the fence just to the left so we entered there. We didn’t go inside but there was a new hole in the wall where a metal panel had been removed. We took a walk around the outside of the Happidrome and looked in a few of the outbuildings. It was now mid morning and the traffic was quiet so we headed for Troywood, on arrival we met up with James then got settled into the accommodation. The WB1400 in the ROC had again stopped working, this is due to the fact that if the test button is bypassed the battery charging is switched off. To overcome this I have wired an external switch to the control box so James can turn the unit on in the morning then off again at night so it can re-charge. The cheetah in the BT room again has a faulty keyboard, I reckon the public are just too much for these machines; I will reconsider the exhibit and come up with something else next time I visit. Perhaps we can use a teleprinter 15, these are almost indestructible and we have plenty. That evening James took us all out for a terrific Indian meal in St Andrews. Next morning James and I ran in some CAT7 cable from the Bar which is just behind the entrance bungalow to the manager’s office just at the end of the tunnel. We have broadband which is run over a very long line so speeds are not that great, the cable currently in use is a fairly old and poor quality 0.4 copper internal. CAT7 is a high quality screened stranded copped cable, it is expensive but well worth the money. It took a long while to run the cable, terminate both ends properly and change over the DLS line. Good news is the speed has increased and we now have several pairs of top quality copper run into the bunker. I am interested to find out why BT did not use the copper already run into the BT room, perhaps the cable is loaded, even still the pairs can easily be bunched, perhaps we can investigate this next time. On the same theme BT had sent James a new business hub, funny enough I worked for the company that made these for a couple of years, they are an American start-up called 2Wire. I set up the unit in bridged mode and we now have this in the restaurant providing free WiFi to guests so anyone bringing a laptop or using a WiFi mobile device can connect to the internet. My daughter Elizabeth helped me make up some nice signs.