Hello

Laura and I are heading off to the Sunshine State tomorrow (Saturday), but not for the sunshine! As with last time, we'll be keeping a daily photographic blog of our chase, as well as discussing our plans and the weather outlook in Florida.

Our photos and blog will be kept here if anyone fancies a visit:

http://www.1whitley.co.uk/chaseflorida.htm

although we'll post a few photos here too. We'll be arriving in Florida around 2pm local time. As this is around the peak time for thunderstorm development we'll probably be hitting the ground running!! I doubt we'll see anything that even comes close to the successful TWO team's trip to the Plains but we'll do our best!!

Cheers

Bren & Laura

Good luck Bren - looked pretty active on GrLevel yesterday afternoon! Hope it holds for you. 

We're there on Thursday, looking forward to July 4th celebrations in Celebration...

 Look forward to the photos Bren.

Good luck Bren and is a right timing to go there since there no thunderstorms or heat here yet.  Can't wait to see the Philippine's storms soon.

Bring it on

Cheers chaps! Final preparations are underway, trying to figure out how we can half the amount of stuff we're planning on taking so they actually let us on the plane

 All the best Bren - I will look forward to your reports and photos.

Good lucks guys, look forward to your photos and videos.

Bren:

Cheers chaps! Final preparations are underway, trying to figure out how we can half the amount of stuff we're planning on taking so they actually let us on the plane

Women and their clothes you know what they'll like!

Have a great time Bren and Laura. I'll check daily on your blog, hope there are loads of

Excellent - looking forward to seeing some lumpy convergence stuff for a change!
Can you remind me how you're going to be geared up for the road? I'm already starting to look at alternative ways of staying connected after our rather patchy experience in May.

Thanks again

Neil, we've got a complicated setup which, at the moment, doesn't seem to be working properly, although we won't know for definites until we get there.

We've borrowed Stuart Robinson's Alltel wireless datacard which, as long as there's Alltel mobile signal, gives constant broadband (unlike the Plains, Florida is almost completely covered). He purchased it out in America and has to pay around £25 per month to keep it going between chases. However, as this datacard uses an older port (Express port), which Laura's laptop doesn't have (it has PCMCIA instead), we've also had to borrow a datacard adapter from Alister Chapman. This is a standalone unit which plugs into the USB port on the laptop, and accepts the datacard in the unit.

The trouble we're having is that you have to set the adapter up as a separate dialup modem, because Alltel's software doesn't recognise the datacard when there is an adapter present. It's all setup now, but the stuff that Alister has told us should be displaying, isn't. We won't really know until Florida though, so will have to wait until tomorrow!

Bren:

Thanks again

It's all setup now, but the stuff that Alister has told us should be displaying, isn't. We won't really know until Florida though, so will have to wait until tomorrow!

Hey hey - if my limited knowledge serves me correctly I reckon the display will fire up as soon as the card registers with a signal over there. Sam (Anvilhead) will know about these things.
Actually it's great that you can borrow this stuff from other chasers - get ready, group hug

LOL N

I have a very big worry in the back of my mind though. Essentially, I've been told that I should see two modem connections if it's all setup correctly. One will charge me a fortune for downloads whilst the other is all included in the monthly bill. However, I'm seeing a totally different third connection, and not the other two. I don't know if this will charge me more or not! We've paid Stu's rental for the month and the last thing I want to be doing is running up a bill for $$$$$s!!

I've already said this to you, Bren, but you and Laura have a fantastic trip, but at the same time stay safe! Will be following your blog with great interest, here's hoping for some interesting photos and perhaps video footages.
   All the best!

EDIT: Have bookmarked your blog, which meant me taking a peek at it anyway and I really love the looks of it. Very professional with that superb bit of CGI graphics in the center. Nice work! Did you do that center picture, or you paid a designer to do it for you?