Huntingdon Section
The station is currently on a 2 month maintenance shutdown. This was a rare opportunity to see the plant disassembled as the 80 Tonne Gas Turbine Rotor, 84 Tonne Low Pressure turbine and the 45 Tonne Generator Rotor had all been removed to allow for inspection and overhaul. The tour also included a visit to the central control room which is staffed 365days per year, 24hrs per day.
Click here for poster for RNIB visit on 28th Feb 2008
On the 28th February 2008 the group had a successful visit to the Royal National Institute for Blind People's service centre in Orton Southgate in Peterborough. We were pleasantly surprised at the level of technology used. We were given talks about the conversion of documents such as magazines and television programme listings into a mark up language so that they can then be converted, almost automatically, to Braille, Moon, synthetic speach or the other formats that are used to support blind or partially blind people. The synthetic speach was very good, with a degree of intonation. The RNIB supplies considerable quantities of useful items to its members, and we were given a demonstration of some of them such as large keypad mobile phones, magnifiers and Daisy players. This last is the format used for the 'talking books'. A visit to the production areas introduced us to Braille printing machines and an unmanned room with 13 robotic disk writing machines turning out 10000 talking book disks a day! Altogether it was a very interesting and eye-opening visit.
The Next Huntingdon Section Lecture is on Tuesday 20th May 2008 at the Shrievalty Centre, Alconbury Airfield at 19.00pm for 19.30pm. The title is "Predictive Maintenance using Infrared Thermography"
About this event
As the price of cameras decreases this form of predictive maintenance is becoming more popular. However, the use of the technique and more importantly the interpretation of images taken, is not straightforward. Alan Casey will highlight some of the pitfalls and vagaries of immissivity with many sample images from practical examples. Alan is a lecturer in the Division of Engineering at the University of Northampton.
Speaker
Alan Casey - Northampton University
Click here for poster on this lecture
The Huntingdon Section attended Huntingdon Regional College Awards Ceremony on 30th November 2007. They presented their prize for excellence to an engineering student. The prize consisted od a trophy which the student retains for one year, a certificate and a cheque for £250 from the IET Huntingdon Section.
The winner was Thomas O'Kane (pictured below) flanked by Laurrie York (Learning Director: Engineering, Huntingdon Regional College) - left, and Mick Ross I Eng MIET (Treasurer IET Peterborough & Huntingdon Local Network) - right.
We are fortunate in having the use of the Shrievalty Centre, well equipped with presentational and domestic facilities, at Alconbury Airfield, for our meetings. We normally meet on the third Tuesday of each month, a day chosen carefully to avoid clashes with either the Peterborough or Cambridge local network meeting dates.
Strictly speaking, St Ives and St Neots fall within the catchment area for the IET Cambridge local network and many IET members will prefer to attend meetings in Cambridge. St Ives and St Neots are however closer to Huntingdon than Cambridge and thus we hope to provide a more local network that will complement the excellent programme of events organised by the Cambridge network. Indeed, we hope that many members living in Huntingdon, St Neots and St Ives will attend meetings and events in Cambridge, Peterborough and Huntingdon. We are fortunate to live in an area of the United Kingdom with such a vibrant and varied engineering and scientific community.
Please note: For Huntingdon Section talks at the Shrievalty Centre there is no need to book places in advance. However, we would be grateful is places for visits were booked in advance with our events coordinator John Williams.
Committee
Function | Name |
Chairman | Alan Scott C Eng MIET Email: agscott@theiet.org |
Honorary Secretary | Ray Williams I Eng FIET Email: raywilliams@theiet.org |
Treasurer | |
Events Coordinator | John Williams C Eng MIET Email: jbwilliams@theiet.org |
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