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broadband Business internet

Pigeon Versus Broadband Update Rory and Tref

The great Pigeon Versus Broadband race began when the birds were set off at 11.05, and they clocked in at the loft 1hr 15 minutes later. At that time the broadband upload to YouTube was only 24% complete, and then only after having to reset it as the connection was dropped.

The distance according to Google maps was 75 miles and according to Unikon pigeon specialist Ray Knight the straight line flight path was 65 miles I believe (I am assuming they flew in a straight line).

We killed the upload after around three hours when it was 60% or so through.  You have to excuse the element of vagueness there – chasing pigeons takes a lot of concentration.

The pigeons got back a significant amount of time before I did but I was hampered by the Humber Bridge road toll (the pigeons got off free with that one but at least I kept the receipts) and the fact that I headed down the M180 in the wrong direction.

My thanks go to farmer’s wife Michelle Brumfield who gamely participated in the experiment even though she didn’t know me from Adam, Ray Knight (ditto) and Frank Tasker who was the owner of the two genuinely champion racing pigeons Rory and Tref. 

Rory came in 1 second ahead of Tref I am sad to say but reality was it was a dead heat – they arrived as a team. Rory was just theonewho wanted his bird seed the most.

I’ll post some pics later and the video once I have compiled it much later.

PS I have read some posts saying that the Pigeons flew back to Wrangle in Lincolnshire.  In fact we released 12 pigeons in all, 10 of which went to Wrangle and the two champs,m Rory and Tref flew back to a different loft in Croft near Skegness.  The distances are different.

For the cognoscenti amongst us the two pigeon RF ID tags were GB10X15447 (Rory – arr 12.20.51) and GB10X1355 (Tref arr 12.21.18)

Short clip of the actual tref at the barbers video

Michelle Brumfield and Trefor Davies release pigeons Rory and Tref with the assistance of Ray Knight from Unikon
Michelle Brumfield and Trefor Davies release pigeons Rory and Tref with the assistance of Ray Knight from Unikon - photo by Simon Renilson

6 replies on “Pigeon Versus Broadband Update Rory and Tref”

John – by my calculations it was doing 533kbps or so 🙂 though the datarate is very much dependent on line/flight length. Obviously had we only been sending over a mile or so it would have been a lot quicker – it is a fundamental rule of rural internet conectivity.

Next time, put them up against the USO. Oh, that’s not symmetrical 2Mbps is it? If this hasn’t proved, for all but the biggest sceptics, that our broadband is pants, nothing ever will.

Well done Tref, Chris, Guy, farmers, pigeons, and our road network for failing to allow Tref to do his full-on Stig impression – oooh, Harper Collins on the line for ya, Tref….

Meanwhile, JFDI FTTH!!

I’m just sad that the barber shop video clip wasn’t longer 🙂 . No but seriously, good job to all involved. ISP review saw a lot of interest in the article we ran from right around the world and I think around 10,000 – 11,000 people, including front page viewers, have probably read the article. Still doesn’t beat our 54k record for a BT news item we ran in 2009 but so far it’s the top story this week and month.

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