James Bond, Towers and VHF Parrots

I passed the Maidens Tower in the Bosphorus.

I remember this Istanbul tower from the James Bond film, "The World is Not Enough".
In the film, a submarine enters a subterranean cavern under the rock that the tower stands on.

For several years, I imagined that the water was very deep around the tower, as the Bosphorus is very deep.

Considering that the waterway is only half a mile wide at this point, the deeper parts in the middle are over 150ft deep.

Although I knew that the cavern was fictional, I was disappointed to learn that the water around the tower is just a few metres deep and the shelf that falls away on the outward side of the tower is only about 35ft.

Not deep enough for an atomic submarine, I'm afraid, M.

Movies - pah..

I love Istanbul.

It has all the ingredients that I adore - water, boats, cats galore and the exotic food of the east.

Its harbours always bustle with a myriad of different vessels, bobbing in its deep, choppy, fast flowing currents, which teem with fish.

This is the ships radio station - a modern GMDSS system with DSC and satellite.

On a VHF radio, it's very easy to miss somebody calling you or some other vital piece of information.

These VHF sets record whatever is received on the channel and the sound message can be played back on demand, by pressing a dedicated playback button.

The recording is done on an internal solid state integrated "chip".