Well, Jen and I had this great plan to retire to Cyprus.  All planned and carried out to schedule over two years leading to placing the house on the market on 1st September 2008.

All went to plan until we put the house on the market when the worlds housing market and financial institutions went into melt down.  So we're currently stuck.  All my radio and electronics hobby stuff is stored in a container awaiting transfer to the new home.  God knows when that will be now.  So I currently have the TS2000 hooked up to along wire that exits the house via the dinning room window, up the front wall of the house, over the roof and down the garden.  Not brilliant but better than nothing at all.   Took the house off the market in November as nothing at all was selling.

I started a solar power project in the summer of 2007 bearing in mind the amount of sunshine in Cyprus.  Although the solar panels are in storage and I intended to manufacture the tracker after the move I thought I would use the unexpected additional time here in the UK to progress it.  I am very fortunate as where I work I have access to a complete engineering workshop along with associated skilled personnel.  So the Solar Project section contains a record of the manufacture of the tracker project.

To be honest, if this had been made after the move it would never have turned out so well so at least something has come out of the delay.

February 2009

Having completed the solar tracker project and with no possibility of selling the house the next project I came up with to hang on to my sanity was a little compressor for the SCAM 12 pump up mast.  Thanks again to Pete, my long suffering colleague. 

April 2009

Fed up with the HF longwire getting into Matthew's Xbox I reconfigured it to be fed via an aatu from the bottom of the garden and moved the operating position to the conservatory.  Much improved and does not cause TVI (XBI).

July 2009

Finished the compressor, nice little job.  Hope I get the chance to use it.

September 2009

Put the house back on the market hoping that, a year on, it might sell.

Bored again.......so, where I work the apprentices have an end of year project.  This year one group had a go at building a wind generator.  So I recovered the stepper motor and managed to get Pete interested in making our own version.  Pete found a web site with blade designs and managed to produce three blades from an old piece of 3 inch pipe.  Bolted them to the motor and it seems to work great.  The motor only produces 0.5 amp, shame, should have bought the next model up but the apprentices were on a tight budget.  Next job is to put the motor in a box and manufacture the rotating stuff and tail fin.  This project is only intended to increase my knowledge of wind power generation.  I learnt from the solar project that things are never as simple as you first think.

November 2009

Cyprus has cooked it goose I'm afraid.  Whilst house prices in the UK and rest of Europe have been dropping prices in Cyprus have continued to rise.  No evidence that anyone is buying them though.  With this in mind and the never ending problem of property deed ownership and developers continuing to take out bank loans on property already sold we have decided that Cyprus is a no-go for us now.  Sorry guys.  Having researched Spain, Portugal and France we have decided to concentrate on France.  So Jen is now busy looking at the French regions for sunshine, rainfall and temperatures to identify possible areas.  Never thought all that French I did at school would ever be used but then you never know what's round the corner!

December 2009

Swapped the dining room and study round as it seemed to make both rooms more usable.

April 2010

Well it seems as if our time has finally arrived as someone is interested in buying our house.  Not too bad. Only two years later than planned.

Loads of packing again and another storage pickup.

June 2010

Moved out of our house and in to rented accommodation.  At the end of the month we spent a week in France house hunting.  Found one we liked and have agreed to buy.

August 2010

 Initial contract documentation completed and returned.  Just waiting to see when completion may be.  In the mean time we have shopped ourselves to the extreme.  All the things that are hard to get in France like paint, beds, sofas and deep cycle batteries and tools as well as quilts and clothes.

September 2010

Jen and I officially retired from work on 1st September so we are both people of leisure now.   All pre contract documents signed and returned after the seven day cooling off period.  Storage pickup on Monday 20th September.  Deposit money in euros transferred to the Notaires account.  Just waiting for the completion date now.