The year 2001 has flown by for me, and I hope it has for you also. We started with a great Annual Ball at the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Vancouver where 80 members and guests met, ate and danced till after midnight. Note that the music was provided by Route 66, a 12 piece dance band who were not too loud for our secretary Robert Martin! We then proceeded through to July with our regular monthly technical meetings (see included reports), which have been well and in some cases very well attended.

In July we held the annual barbeque and telephone box inspection at Ian Price's house - we managed to fill the garden ("yard" in Canadian) and have a great time. In September we were able to organise a great "outing" to Vancouver Island for the weekend, including committee meeting on the ferry and technical tours of British Columbia Aviation Museum and Saanich Historical Artifacts Museum. In October and November two more technical meetings. As I said, all the meetings are reviewed later in this Newsletter - but I do want to give you an insight into the workings of the committee. The Committee meets before every technical and social meeting; it comprises between 10 and 20 keen and willing volunteers, whose sole purpose is to run the affairs of your group.

It has to be admitted that the committee meetings are fun and a good opportunity to socialise, but we do get through a fair amount of business too.  A typical agenda would cover:

• coordinate the affairs of all the Chartered Institutions in the WCGCE catchment area
• arrange for interviews for membership of the Institutions
• organise and plan the technical meetings
• coordinate the mentoring of young engineers
• communicate with APEGBC and look for means of assisting/implementing their initiatives when required
• publicise and market the Institutions to any who may be interested in joining
• review correspondence and respond on behalf of the Institutions
• ensure adequate funding to carry out our affairs - and monitor spending
• plan communications to members and ensure alignment with their needs
• organise social events
• Web site management (have you been there yet?)

This is typically carried out in 1 1/2 tough hours and hurriedly wrapped up in time for a technical meeting.  Next year we hope to review our initiatives and roles and ensure that we are providing value for your money.  In the last newsletter I asked for some feedback on how we were doing as a committee. I have to say that the number of responses was disappointing.  I know that I had also committed to phone every member - and have not done very well at that. But if we are going to improve our service to you, our membership, we have to get feedback on what you want and how we are doing, so please do write to me or phone me or email me to let me know:

• what services you want,
• how much communication
• how often
• in what form
• what social events you appreciate

In closing, I would like to thank my committee who does sterling work month after month.  Who are unable to do what they do without bringing the elements of fun and enthusiasm to it and who have nothing but your best interests at heart.  Have a great 2002 and may we the WCGCE bring something into that year for you.

In comparison to Europe and Asia, North America has very few urban tunnels. Those that exist are mainly rock tunnels for roads or rail lines. Europe and Asia cities are comparatively densely populated, developed before the era of modern transportation, the majority of North America cities were developed later.

In general, North American urban environments are becoming increasingly congested. As space available for the development of new urban infrastructure decreases, the solution for congestion lies underground.

Tunnelling technologies are highly advanced due to extensive tunnel construction in Europe and Asia. Much of this technology is new to North America, particularly soft ground tunnelling and micro-tunnelling machines. Most soft ground tunnelling in the US still utilizes steel arch and timber lagging for primary tunnel linings with shotcrete finished lining. The use of "one-pass" precast concrete segmental linings in comparatively low.

There are essentially two types of TBMs; Rock TBMs and Soft-ground TBMs.

Rock TBMs are also divided into two types; TBMs without shield for hard rock and TBMs with shield for softer rock that requires some form of permanent support. Hard-rock TBMs use disc cutters to fracture the rock through wedge action and then process the shavings. Soft-rock TBMs use disc cutters and ripper teeth to excavate the ground. The TBM's shield supports the softer rock until a lining can be installed or rock bolts placed.

There are several types of Soft-ground TBMs; the choice of which depends on the ground to be tunnelled through. They operate in such a way as to prevent the uncontrolled ingress of the excavation face to prevent settlement or collapse of the ground above the TBM.

Earth Pressure Balance TBMs (EPBMs) are best suited to silty or clay soils. They operate by balancing the pressure of the unexcavated soil with that of the soil in its excavation chamber. This is achieved by altering the rate of forward thrust and soil extraction.

Slurry Support TBMs use a slurry medium to support the excavation face and convey the material out of the tunnel. They are suited to sandy and gravelly soils where a constant earth pressure is predicted. This pressure is matched by pumping the slurry at a set pressure.

Mix-shield TBMs use a slurry support medium with variable pressure. The pressure of the slurry can be altered in real time to enable the TBM to bore through grounds with varying soil and ground water conditions and prevent uncontrolled ingress of the excavation face.

Open Face TBMs with mechanical excavation are used in any soil type where the excavation face is self-supporting and ground water is not present. Where ground water is present these machines can be used with compressed air. The author used such a machine for a several sewage tunnels in south Wales. The ground conditions were slightly cemented sands and gravel with large boulder and glacial deposits approximately 12 m below the water table. Access to the excavation face was required to manually process large boulders that were troublesome for the TBM to extract.

These types of boring machines are increasingly being used in an urban environment as an alternative to open trench pipe laying. MTBMs use pipe-jacking methodology to install a pipeline/tunnel by pushing pipes into the ground with an MTBM at the front to excavate the soil. Micro-tunnelling machines have been manufactured from 20 cm diameter up to 3 m diameter. The most frequently used MTBMs are in the 1 to 2 m diameter range.

MTBMs are also used to install temporary support for larger tunneling application. For example, an MTBM was used to install a steel pipe arch under a major US highway to allow construction of two road tunnels (see picture).

The group of Chartered Engineers and their guests from Vancouver joined members of Victoria region of Vancouver Island and their guests shortly after the ferry from Tsawwassen reached Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island. Next, a cavalcade of twelve cars drove to the British Columbia (BC) Aviation Museum located near Sidney. Despite clear directions to the museum, some cars, or drivers (including the person who wrote this report), missed the correct turn on the first pass. Nevertheless, everybody managed to find the right place eventually.

The BC Aviation Museum is dedicated to the preservation of aircraft and aviation artifacts. The museum exists because of the dedication of volunteers who take pride in restoring and preserving British Columbian and Canadian aviation heritage.

Here is a list of some aircraft shown in the display hangar:

After it was retired from the military, it was adopted to aerial fire fighting due to its high speed, great maneuvarebility, flying stability and reliability. As a fire-fighting machine, it could carry up to 900 gallons of fire retardant or water. The museum's example was donated by Conair Aviation (a world leader in aerial fire fighting) of Abotsford, British Columbia.

Virtually, all Canadian pilots trained during the war had their first exposure to flying in the Tiger Moth before moving on to more advanced aircraft. The model displayed in the museum is a Canadian make 1942 vintage model with the full canopy, which was modified to accommodate the harsh Canadian winter. The model is fully airworthy!

It was first flown in November 1935. Quickly, due to its adaptability to floats and skis as well as wheels, it became very popular. It supplemented Fairchild, Bellanca, Fokker, and Junkers designs.

When World War II broke out, the US Army Air Corps was looking for rugged utility aircraft and turned to the Norseman. They bought about 750 machines. The model, which is being restored at museum to airworthy standard, was bought for its scrap value after it crashed during landing at the Cominco mining site near Bronson Creek, British Columbia.

Inside the BC Aviation Museum there is a Memorial Room, which contains a historical display of the Pat Bay Airport as it was during its time as a Commonwealth Air Training Centre, complete with models of all the aircraft the were stationed here during those years. A visitor can also find here many artifacts from the wars in which Canadians fought, either as members of the Royal Canadian Air Force, Royal Flying Corps, or Royal Air Force.

After a relaxing lunch at McMorran's Beachside Restaurant (see photo of the group), the group visited the Saanich Historical Artifacts Museum. The museum has an extensive display of agricultural machinery dated from the 1900's including steam traction engines, early working tractors, etc. Exhibits also include antique trucks, cars, guns, and many more items; the complete list would easily fill up the entire content of this newsletter.

There is also a working model railway, which is operated by Vancouver Island Model Engineers (who also maintain many of the other exhibits). Several members of the group could not resist the temptation and went on a ride. You should have see them. They had a lot of fun! The event was a huge success and people are already asking if a similar event could be organised next year as well.

IntraCoastal System Engineering Corporation is a world leader in the development and implementation of Automated Meter Reading (AMR) systems.

The Power Line is a very unfriendly environment for communications. The equipment and wiring are designed for cost-effective delivery of power with no provisions for use as a communications channel. Here is a short list of some of the problems one must overcome to communicate effectively over power lines:

• Very low source impedance (transformer's windings),
• Variable load impedance (load can be small or large, highly imaginary or real),
• Variable distributed impedance,
• Impedance modulation (motor loads, rectifiers loads, switching power supplies),
• Multiplicative noise rather than additive.

The power lines must meet the following criteria in order to be used for communication:

• Better than -72 dB attenuation or anti-jamming margin,
• Multiple frequency transmission should minimize the effects of nodes, noise, and jamming signals,
• System should handle signal fading and multi-path distortions.

In order to meet those criteria IntraCoastal uses a Spread Spectrum system.

In the Spread Spectrum (SS) system the transmitted signal is spread over a broad frequency band, which is much wider than the minimum bandwidth required for transmitting the information being sent. This is achieved by modulating the information that is sent together with a wide-band encoding signal. The initial development work on SS systems was done by the military in the late 1940's and the early 1950's. Only recently, the declassification of the Spread Spectrum technology enabled its usage in commercial applications. IntraCoastal uses the most common SS signaling method, known as Direct Sequence (SS-DS).

The SS-DS system makes use of a coded sequence (pseudo-noise pattern) to modulate and spread the data signal out over the selected bandwidth. In addition to providing the encrypting and anti-jamming, this system also provides signal hiding, because the suppressed carrier that is produced can be well below the level of ambient noise.

The AMR system consists of five components:

The RU is constantly broadcasting this information. However, in order to reduce congestion on the power line, each Remote Unit transmits the data on a random interval, which can be programmed between 1 and 15 minutes. In addition, the data is encrypted so only the Concentrator can read it; this further reduces the ability to tamper with the meter reading. Extra features include low voltage detection and capability to automatically save last meter reading to non-volatile memory in case of power failure.

Information stored in the Concentrator can be retrieved by multiple methods using a built-in RS-232 serial port: telephone or radio modems, GSM or satellite devices, direct connection using data loggers or computers, and any other standard RS-232 compliant devices.

This presentation gave the audience an overview of multimedia technology and showed an interesting application of this evolving technology that can be used for devising promotional and educational materials. The rundisk is a self-running application marketed by Clemstar Multimedia.

The application runs from a mini CD, which can be played from any CD-ROM. A disk, which has a size of a typical business card, can store up to 40 MB of data (text, graphic images, audio, and video files). The rundisk does not require any installation and does not depend on the operating system. This stand-alone application will run on almost any platform, including Windows 95, 98, Windows 2000, Windows ME, and Windows NT.

During the presentation, several examples of the rundisk implementation were shown.

"The Clinical Knowledge Series" - the rundisk product is used here to deliver a lecture. The content of this disk was designed in conjunction with Novartis Pharmaceuticals and Viridae Clinical Sciences. On the disk, Professor Stephen Sacks of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia talks about his research devoted to antivirals. As he talks, a listener can listen to the lecture and read it at the same time, because the script of his lecture is being shown in the scrolling window. The speed of scrolling the text is automatically synchronized with the sound. The complete lecture consists of 20 slides, and each of them is accompanied by audio.

The second mini CD was produced for SMED International, the leader in modular interior construction and architectural woodworking. It includes examples of the full screen video capabilities of the rundisk technology. There are 2 videos on that disk that use MPEG1 compression: the first is about 2 minutes long and the second about 1 minute and 30 seconds long. Both videos are accompanied by sound (mix of music and commentary). Both videos were originally created in VHS standard. In order to be stored on the disk they were digitized and converted into MPEG1 standard. The sample screen shows the main graphical user interface, which includes a video window were footage of orca (footage was shot nearby Langara Island in July 2000) can be watched.

The third rundisk was produced for the American Express Tax and Business Services group in New York. It was design to help their recruiting department by providing complete information about the company and job opportunities.

A promotional material that was developed for a local photographer Lionel Trudel was also shown. That disk was created to show a viewer samples of his work, provide the background to the work he did as well as contact information by including hyperlinks to his Web site.

The annual inspection of this historic, early Scottish telephone took place on July 28^th, 2001 at Jane and Ian Price's Residence in North Vancouver. For the ninth time Jane and Ian were hosting this ever so popular event. Thirty-four members and their guests attended this annual social event. Traditionally the focus of this event was on the technical inspection of this fine, fully operational, telephone box.

Your present Group Committee retires on Saturday, January 19^th, 2002. A new Committee will be elected and will take office at the Group Annual General Meeting (AGM).

The official Notice of Annual General Meeting of the Western Canada Group of Chartered Engineers is being mailed with this newsletter. The AGM will be held on Saturday, January 19^th, 2002 at the Four Seasons Hotel, 791 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, British Columbia. Please note that AGM starts at 6:00 PM followed by Dinner & Dance at 7:30 PM, and the event finishes at 1:00 AM.

Commencing directly after the AGM, the Group's annual Dinner & Dance will begin. The evening offers good food, great live music, and good company! A detailed program of the event, a ticket form together with contact and payment details is being mailed with this newsletter. Please, book your place early, number of places is limited!