turboplanner

16 minutes ago, RFguy said:

What am I up  to now.. 107 hours ?

What is different now  compared with 50 hours ago , is growing awareness, (grows hour by hour) , of vulnerability, particularly  in-attention to something.  I've got alot more 'worries' 'concerns' ' attention points' going on in my head than I used to have.

That's about the right mindset, awareness, observations checks, confidence, and minimum clutter.

1 hour ago, danny_galaga said:

One-track, I think people really have to stop thinking of China as that place that makes crappy hand tools etc. Last year they surpassed the US for the first time in number of patents applied for. Us has again taken the lead but that is clearly an indication that they aren't just a nation of 'people with nimble hand who can make knock offs'. People are people, you get industrious and incentive people in every corner of the world, even the poorest or most authoritarian country. 

 

On the subject of pay, did you know that the average engineer in China earns more than their counterpart in the US? 

 

You have to divorce your attitude to the politics and just look at the facts when it comes to economics. To say China will be the biggest economy in the world doesn't mean you like their government.

About 25 years ago one of our car manufacturers decided the only way we could compete with importers was to manufacture in China, so a director was sent across to set up a carline to build the next model six cylinder car for Australia. The middle management income in China exploded so far so fast that they were buying two story McMansions and wanted big luxury cars, so Australia got the flick and the carline was used to build a luxury brand US model in higher volume.

2 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Many of those "accidents" should be added to the suicide category.

We have the ATSB and State Coroners to investigate the cause.

..........Ads produced by TurbineMedia showed his old gilrfriend who............

...z...........

.....had to be helped home by Turbo. As usual Loxie deputised Turbo to come up with a story, she threw her hands in the air knowing that Loxie didn't get that injury from reading books in the Library, and went to bed. Loxie cracked a couple of stubbies, and told the strangest of stories.

He said, "As you probably know, Cappy, in his Avatar shows his country as Guinea Bissau." and went on to say he'd noticed Guinea Bissau, of "Biss" to the locals was number 43 in the world in containing Covid-19, followed by Australia. This was due to Cappy blubbering to the CEO of Pfizer, a personal friend, about a needy African country, and the whole population had been vaccinated before March 2021 and were back on the cocktail circuit.

Guinea-Bissau had been discovered by Sir Lancelot Cook in 1492 who took the worst photos he could and went back to the Secretary of the British Department of New Countries, Sir William Halfpenny-Jones, showed him the photos of the poor quality of the land, and offered England a dollar for it, and Sir WH-J six cases of gin for it. Sir William spoke for four hours in response raising all the difficulties of managing a country, and the loss of revenue to England and how the Minister would never consider it, but they both knew a good deal when they saw one, and Sir William drafted a document, they signed it, and he was the owner of a part of Africa. The Cooks debated all night on what to call it, and finally settled on Guinea, and Cook went down to the Registry of New Countries in the Mall next morning and Registered the name "Guinea". The Public Servant meant to enter it in the register, but he was on the phone for three hours explaining how the monetary system for Canada would work and forgot, and so the name was registered for another country as Guinea, then another one New Guinea. It didn't matter for the next ten years, and then Cook struck Oil and the rest is history. Suddenly he needed a different name and added the hyphen Bissau to disguise its English origins.

A few centuries later one of his descendants, Captain James Cook made himself famous then hopped into the women in the hills around Honolulu. If he'd just gone back to England there would have been no problem, but he came back and did it again, and the Hawaiians threatened to sue the british governmemnt for all the half-breed offspring hanging arond the streets, so he had to go. The history books tell us that Cook was speared by natives and is buried inland, but, Loxie said, a deal was struck where he would disappear. The crew told the natives to leave some evidence on the back and they would come up with a story, but the Captain was never to be seen again. The crew were actually a dumb lot, and carried Cook's precise navigation instruments to the beach instead of a bloodied blue coat. Loxie was on holidays in Honolulu and saw them in the Museum, and gradually put together the real story. Cook opted to go to Guinea-Bisstau, where of course he was never heard of again, and Cappy ..........

18 hours ago, Jabiru7252 said:

I used to fly the TB10 Tobago in 35° temperatures and 30 knot winds, rough as guts but tolerable. I could never get used to strong turbulence in my Jabiru. I took off one day in gusty hot winds and 30°C. It was dreadful. Rolling 30° or more but really violently and the 'pot holes' were so bad I was sure the wings were going to come off. The water bottle on the passenger seat disappeared down the back of the plane somewhere and the video camera came off its mount. Landing was just as bad, I remember seeing the wing tip about one foot off the runway while floating along as Jabs do. I'll never fly in hot gusty conditions in my Jab again. Flying is meant to be enjoyed. Only glider pilots like that sort of 'thermal activity'.

The history of the J170 is interesting. The model before it was the J160 which I felt flew very well (Victoria south coast), much like a GA aircraft, but apparently there were complaints of slow climb speed in the northern, hotter parts of Australia, so a much more effective, and longer, wing was put on the existing fuselage, which worked for those northern customers very well. However, in the much colder more compressed air there was too much lift and the short fuselage/tail fin/rudder was no match for the increased yaw drag of gusty winds. For some reason my instructors insisted we come in with crossed controls, so in a stiff onshore wind you were often out of rudder authorit and a gust would spin you round, so some very novel corrective action was needed. Jabiru fixed it with a retro kit, but it wouldn't surprise me if what you experience originates in those very high efficiency wings.

1 hour ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

I read a great science fiction book about how Nigeria became the "owner" of the moon. Why? because they offered LESS regulation!

Our sort of aircraft would benefit from the same reasoning. Gosh, if the prospect of losing your life does not make you careful, why should a bureaucracy help? All they can produce is poverty.

It makes me angry that I am officially regarded as stupid and regulated accordingly. Well I'm no Einstein, but I would be smarter than many of the regulators. For example, I know that the main cause of premature  death in Australia is NOT aviation, it is due to poor diet and lack of exercise. 

Good, you've accounted for about 60% of the deaths (I only made that up, but if anyone finds an accurate figure please correct.) Bill Bryson wrote an entertaining news story on what killed Americans; he'd found a US chart which minutely dissected the causes. There was even a percentage who were killed by their beds. However, RA have a significant number of unnecessary deaths, such as going up when the local forecast is for severe turbulence, flying below 500 feet into a powerline and not being able to make the turn onto final, practiced so many times.

......was off by 50 mm and he completely missed the bar, with one of the weight landing on his axia crucium which caused him excruciating pain, and Loxie ..........................

Skippy: “So, it would seem you are well aware of & use the flawed system - Why was there no approach to the appropriate Gov service/public servant? Why did you find it necessary to make a direct approach the Minister & his/her staff?  Do you have a personal connection that facilitated this short cut?  Are you not part of the problem?”

Let’s be clear; you’re the one calling our system flawed. I came off the farm and learnt it.

·        I hadn’t thought about why I didn’t deal with public servants, and certainly wouldn’t generalise and condemn them as a whole, but in what I do, probably the best summary would be I haven’t found them productive or willing to make decisions; it’s been more productive to go to Ministers or Ministerial staff.

·        No personal connections, just hard work; I’m dealing with an ever-changing group of people.

·        No, the system flows around me.

Skippy: ”I agree – human (individual interest) seem to corrupt most if not all, systems. The question is should we accept this or continually strive for better/improvement?”

·        Jesus tried to change the system and look where it got him. You have to decide whether you             are going to get the job done, or fix up all the things that are broken.

Skippy: “If your only measure is the economy/wealth (similar to our governments) – we probably have no more to discuss.”

·        No, it’s not the only measure, but if you extend on GDP and extrapolate it per capita you can see how being able to afford something makes all the difference to every facet of life.

Skippy: “our financial position is largely as a result of mineral/fossil fuel extraction – not production as such. An accident/luck of our geographic location – not Government enlightened policy direction (my apologies for any offence taken by our excellent & highly productive agricultural sector)”

·        It was John Gorton in an impassioned speech to Parliament who said we should not just be extracting iron ore from the ground, but refining it into steel, adding thousands of jobs and retaining the money in Australia, then using it to make finished products, adding exponential numbers of jobs and wealth. Where he came unstuck is no one wanted to do that, they just wanted to sell as much as they could as quickly as they could to make their fortunes. We are after all a free Country.

·        Inevitably the minerals boom ended. I was expecting to see Australia crash financially when that happened, because we’d lost our main source of income – primary production of wool and food when the UK went into the EU, but Australia quickly learnt how to promote itself to tourists and recovered almost without loss.

·        In the early part of European settlement of Australia, developing our own manufacturing base was necessary because of the difficulty of obtaining goods at affordable prices, but containerisation and freight hubs reduced the freight costs allowing Australians to buy T shirts and jocks at prices manufacturing on the huge overseas scales allowed. We are getting into some of it with robotics, but our GDP per capita is too high to complete with the big  olume manufacturers where human labour is significant.

Skippy: “What I see, since I joined the NSW public service in 1985, is the severe running down of most services/agencies (many are mere shells of their formers entities), coupled with the rise & rise of “fee for service”. This is despite a near doubling of our population in that time and presumably the tax base that goes with it.”

·        I have some sympathy for you there; the same happens in the corporate sector where poor managers just employ more managers and more people instead of developing systems to handle the work. The people start playing  politics, the company starts going down the tubes and there are mass sackings and a much smaller company handling only its core business, only it can’t survive on that core business, and it goes under, then the cycle repeats  with a different lot of management.

·        One of the primary factors is digital. In my own operations, by using self-calculating systems and data population, I  was able to do the work of three people. Some jobs which took a week came down to minutes or in one case 17  seconds.

Skippy: “As for the (news) media – sure their world/approach has changed to accommodate technology developments but at base they are as they have always been.”

·        No, the print media made huge cost savings due to digital, typesetters went first, then people started to drift to social media and the newspapers followed, but lost their newspaper market and with it their advertising income.    They played with online editions but made two mistakes, putting up paywalls at much the same subscription rate as  their newspapers had been, and trying to convert a newspaper layout to screen layout, which none of us like. They mostly became financial basket cases and started sacking sub editors, and journalists to the point where it seems             that even the remaining journalists are on a drip-feed of income. I do work with investigative journalists who might  work on a story for 12 months before it is published, and a few years ago they could call in a helicopter, send out a  photographer, hire people to do extensive research – all the things required to develop a complex story based on  facts. Today they’re mostly working from home, and a lot of Contributors are writing stories using words like peech instead of peach.

25 minutes ago, onetrack said:

I think you have to be very careful measuring a countries position in terms of finance. There are many more areas in a nations performance that are more important to many people.

 

The nations good health of its people should be the most important thing - but in the current pandemic situation, a serious number of people seem to think that concentrating on keeping up huge profits, is more important than the nations good health.

 

No better example exists of this failure to get priorities right, than America, the richest nation on the planet with the worlds worst health system, and where huge corporations make vast profits from people being sick.

Yet in Cuba, a country with their financial position in a precarious state, their people are in excellent health, health treatment is freely available to all, and they manufacture their own drugs and provide them at cost to the people of their nation.

 

Somewhere along the line there's a good middle ground between the disparities between America and Cuba - but I'm concerned Australia is going to follow America at the current rate, with a major emphasis on gathering up vast amounts of personal wealth, that one could never fully utilise in a hundred lifetimes. 

I can tell you this much - when you are seriously very sick, and facing death, or long-term debilitating pain, and restriction on movement and personal enjoyment, you will almost certainly happily hand over all your lifetimes accumulated stash of wealth, to return to good health.

 

Yes, there's a balance, and nothing wrong with doing a SWOT analysis for a Country.

5 minutes ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

Was going to write a long diatribe.. I would wager, given the evidence, that Australia has progressed more in spite of the governments than because of them, and with more progressive and strategic thinking governments we would be miles ahead of where we are now. Mind you, it is not unique to Australia...

Yes, we would have progressed more if our governments had got the right information and used it progressively and with strategic thinking, but with a population of 25 million, are we doing something wrong in being in the top 10 to15 countries in finance, or 44th out of 173 countries in Covid death rate/100,000 people?

5 hours ago, skippydiesel said:

That's fair enough Tubs - to a point.

Such faith in our (clearly very flawed) system, smacks of the very complacency that allows our leaders to behave in ways that we would not accept from our own family/friends/work colleagues and the proletariat.

I would council a more cynical and analytical view of our leadership and its deterioration over the last 40 years.

If we continue down the path they are leading us, your children/grandchildren, may no longer be able to freely "go down different paths" without state sanctioned repercussions.

I moved on to avoid an interminable discussion involving what someone meant by the words they used, how legislation says one thing but convention does another, and how certain Acts, Amendments, Codes and Conditions change operations. I realised with a jolt that in the past 25 years I hadn't dealt with public servants at all, but gone straight to Ministers and their staff to get solutions - in other words working within your "flawed system".

All systems are flawed with some having some very good points and some hopelessly bad, so if you're waiting for a perfect system to emerge, it's not going to happen. King Arthur thought he had it but then someone screwed his wife and the fights started all over again.

If you take your own advice and analyse the net government impact on Australia over the past 40 years, you'll find it.

hasn't deteriorated, we are all better off, and Australia continues to punch around No 10 to 15 financially in a world of over 200 countries, with its State and Commonwealth government structures.

What has happened in the past 40 years is the media has just focused on the leaders, so a lot of good hard working talent goes unnoticed, and the print media has all but gone. beaten by the near zero cost of digital distribution, and the stories are clipped at around 100 to 150 words, or a few seconds on TV, so we miss a lot of the action. For example, were you aware that the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services shifted to horizontal integration to handle the current pandemic faster?, so while the CHO is in charge, there are strategic people out there in the suburbs and country who have the authority to act instantly, and have been doing so, which is one of the reasons Victoria has been able to shut down outbreaks so fast. For all I know Skippy some or all of the other seven jusidictions might be copying Victoria as you read this.

......the infrastructure and development. “Do you have any development around here?” He asked, and up stepped Loxie, Jose in hand and ......

......knew better than to let that gin soaked tart get his finger on the trigger. Even tourists knew the when heading out of WW on skeet days you need to be at double the speed limit just in case Cappy pops a stray. People have said they’ve seen Constable D. coming up behind them and driving straight past. She knows the risk, and........

39 minutes ago, Markdun said:

Turbs, you are wrong on the US and Australia on separation of powers.  The USA has much stricter separation of powers than in Australia.  In the USA the ‘Executive’ arm of government is completely seperate to their parliament (Congress). Their Executive is headed by the president who is ‘the boss’ of all public servants, subject to the constraints of laws passed by the seperate Parliament.  Their judiciary is seperate as is ours federally...actually we copied the US system on this. However, the big difference is that our governments (the ‘Executive’) are not ‘separated’ from parliament.  We have what is called (perhaps incorrectly), ‘responsible government’ in that tge Executive is drawn from parliament and responsible to the people through parliament, whereas the US ‘Executive’ is responsible directly to the people via a popularly elected president.  The States in Australia have the British tradition of no formal separation of powers; they only practice separation of powers from choice, not law.

The Vic govt may choose to allow their CMOs and other experts to do their own thing without political pressure but this is just an indicator of a wise government....a bit like when Kevin Rudd accepted the advice of Treasury when responding to the GFC.

Just because a person holds a statutory position, like a CMO, does not protect them from political pressure.  Just look at the sports rorts, where a statutory body with the legal power and duty to allocate public funds was effectively totally bypassed by a Minister acting loose and fast with the rule of law.  I have decades of experience in the federal public service and a couple of examples...I was asked to write a robust piece on the empirical evidence of the costs and benefits of privatising a certain type of large government owned business.  I did this, and my paper was returned from the Departmental secretary with the instruction, ‘remove all arguments and evidence that don’t support the government’s position and submit to the Senate committee’.  Or another time I was directed by a Minister to ‘invite’ the head of a statutory regulatory authority (like CASA) for a face to face meeting with the Minister.  That Minister told me to ‘make very sure he knows this is not going to be some cosy chat, but a real dressing down’.....that was one difficult phone call for me.  My guess is that that meeting was cosy and short because all the Minister had to do is say, ‘I think Mark explained to you the issue I’m not happy about’...’Yes Minister, I’ll fix it’. This was decades ago in the era of an independent public service....it’s much worse now.

Skippy mentioned the comedy, ‘Yes Minister’.  But we also have the Australian distopian documentaries of the ‘Hollow men’, ‘Utopia’ and now the reality show on all channels called, ‘the Morrison/Murdoch Government’.

Well don't worry about it then; we'll go down different paths.

"........light the fuse and they go supersonic, faster than Insane Bort"

"Did you mean Usaine Bolt?" asked one of the reporters.

"Yes, that him" said the Official beginning to bristle.

"He's not on the Olympics" said another reporter taking a risk.

"Who's fastest then?" demanded the Officlal.

"It's an Australian!" yelled one of the ruder reporters.

"XXXX Me!, those XXXXXXX Ausrayans AGAIN!, the XXXXX, now we have to go without MORE wine, cookies, stacks, and crawfishes" the Official exploded. 

TurbineNN sent a newsflash to Cappy to activate the Spratley's Defence............

...the petrolonastraycatstail (POSCT) method which always produced a record run to ................

...do a flare [avref], and then ...........

.....taking off [avref].

And then she said "You realise I'm going to have to give you a ticket for Obscene behaviour", and Cappy turned white (he was normally coffee coloured, a product of his Pacific past.) as he realised the Wagga Wagga Business Advancement Association members and the Gumley Gumley hopscotch club would find out he was obscene and a disgrace to Wagga Wagga, that fine upstanding Rivereina City where the worst offence to day had only been ................

21 minutes ago, jackc said:

Ignition,

 

About 12 or so years ago I visited Wilde Evolution at Jerome AZ U.S.A. They had converted a Landrover to electric back then.   I was interested in electric motors and controllers etc.  When I came home, I got a Suzuki Hatch 800 van for the conversion.  Worked out how to build it with the help of books I had sourced etc.

Took my ideas to Qld Tpt Dept and got all their required compliance information etc.  Basically, they made it as  hard as possible and was told on the side that they did not want my conversion on the road.  So, I made it easy for them, I gave up……

Since the Motor Vehicle Act 1989, it hasn't been possible to design a prototype vehicle without compliancing it to all the Australian Design Rules.

It's doable for an individual, and there's a pathway to do it using low volume Certification, and, up until recently a Machinery Department "signatory", a qualified engineer who does the necessary calculations.

Believe it or not people still are designing and building their own sports cars.

46 minutes ago, skippydiesel said:

All credit to you Turbs, you stick to your guns and make a good argument.

Sadly I just dont think there is the degree of separation, you suggest, between the CHO's and their political masters.

You comparison with the bush fires does not really apply - Bushfires are a dramatic visual drama, the fast moving front, smoke, lights/sirens, shocked  evacuee, burnt livestock & fleeing wildlife, all make for a situation where a CIC must be given a free hand, that is until the drama subsides somewhat and the polies want a photo shoot/sound grab. Much of bushfire reporting is after the fact.

 

CV19 certainly has its dramas but they are mostly played out in the within the confines of a hospital  and only really become public when we have an illegal demo. The whole "atmosphere" is quite different as is the visual image, allowing polies, talking heads of all persuasions and general commentary (like mine & yours) to evolve, hit the media, all while the health emergency is going through its phases. This allows the politician's to be lobbied by vested interests/pressure groups, many of whom are only interested in money. Sooo the polies go the the health officials and say how can we minimise the impact of this lockdown you propose, to see how it pans out, limit the lockdown of a voluntary stay home in a suburb or two, etc etc. I have no doubt that the health officials , being scientists, are giving good advise which then is "shandied" by the political imperatives (pandering to the dollar).

Re the bush fires; I seem to remember a massive campaign to paint Scott Morrison in a negative light when he was on holidays in Hawaii, scream that he should have been holding the No 1 hose, when he was in fact several steps removed from a Qld, NSW, Vic. SA fire truck.

The coffee shops, pubs, and some employer groups have been relentless in the media calling for lockdowns to end and people to get back to work, and the Victorian Liberal Opposition has torn itself to pieces with the same hostile messages to the point where it's leader is still in place because the Covid restrictions in the Parliament don't permit enough people in a meeting to oust him, and while their antics play out in the daily media the Health people just ignore it. Whether there is any shandying is up to sleuths like you to find out Skippy. 

.........a fake, and disappears when I pull this string, and with that Cappy looked the picture of innocence, but the large part of his costume had done the damage when it fell off amd exposed the Cook family birthmark which showed conclusively that Cappy was .....................

51 minutes ago, mkennard said:

There is only one direction EV's are going at the moment around the world. Australia, thanks to the govt is a laggard. Likely because of this Australia might become a dumping ground of ICE cars.

 

Anyway, here is a bit of light reading.

 

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/electric-cars-have-much-lower-life-cycle-emissions-new-study-confirms/

Australia isn't a laggard, there are plenty of EV makes and models on sale. All you have to do is buy one.

The dumping gound idea came from social media - people who knew nothing about the car industry broadcasting what seemed like a good selling feature for EV....which didn't work.

Did you read the link you posted? Wasn't very honest was it. Made a straw man comparison about the extra cost of building and scrapping EV, vs  a claim of 60 - 68% lifetime emissions savings (presumably supposed to mean CO2 savings), then just forgot to mention the need to charge the EV, and rewire the street and grid infrastructure and add extra power stations (in Australia's case double the number of power stations and competely replace the power grid).

I also notice that the northern hemisphere EV evangelists are starting to panic with the low numbers of EV, and have started to call Hybrids electric vehicles, which they aren't. Their exhausts produce CO2 because they are powered by an ICE engine. There's even a second-bite designation for plug in hybrids. There would be a minute reduction in CO2 compared with an ICE car during acceleration, and if the car is fitted with ICE-Off mode, but in the scale of all motor vehicle CO2 emissions in Australia adding up to less that 5% of our total, we would be better off fitting our cattle with gas collectors and selling a Methane car.

These are the designations creeping in to Europe

BEV    Battery Electric Vehicle

HEV    Hybrid Electric Vehicle

PHEV  Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicle

FCEV  Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (Compressed Liquid Hydrogen) 

The last one has risen again like Jesus from the 1990s.

As we saw in the Austrian market share figures, if your EV figures aren't living up to the hype, you can get around double your share by faking hybrids as EVs.

36 minutes ago, aro said:

The lock downs might be under the authority of the CHOs, and recommended by the CHOs, but regardless of where the legal authority lies you can guarantee the decisions are made by the governments.

 

If the CHOs were making the decisions there would be much less variation from state to state. They would follow what has been proven to work rather than reflect the politics of the leaders.

 

The body language of Kerry Chant in one of the Sydney press conferences has been commented on widely - it was pretty clear that she did not agree with what was being announced, despite being named as the person responsible.

No doubt when the CHO and staff sit down with the Cabinet and say, Tomorrow at 11:49 pm the State is going to do this, there would be emotional politicians on the other side of the table saying "Impossible, you must be crazy" or whatever politicians do, and no doubt a CHO might waver. However, here on this site it would be a big breakthrough in some quarters if everyone understood that Scomo does not have the power to stick out his tongue like a gecko and pull in the RFS Commander of NSW when there's a busfire going, or a CHO when there's a pandemic. If we understand how the system is designed to work and who has the power and who doesn't that's a good start.

Offsetting your Kerry Chant story the Victorian Health Minister a few days ago when Melbourne was about to open up, could have said "Yes, Go ahead" when a journalist suggested a good idea. Instead his body language said yes and his mouth said "We'll be taking the CHO advice on that one, but it's quite possible.

Fortunately in Victoria, we've had good proof that the decisions are not made by governments as you suggest, when in investiagtive journalist from the Age was allowed free access inside the Department of Health and Human Services, and wasn't that an eye opener. The CHO is certainly the front man, but the Department, having been trapped by that long lockdown last year was rapidly changed to a decentralised configuration, bringing in sotware specialists, and sending their brightest stars out into the suburbs where the spread was starting, so they could start swatting down outbreaks in a fraction of the time of the old vertically integrated paper driven DHHS. I've seen a lot of corporate changes, and this would have to have been one of the fastest and best Australia has seen. The results have reflected the changes. Within Victoria Barwon Health have knocked down outbreaks in Colac and Geelong that I'm aware of.

The variations from State to State reflect the State Departments of Health in action within their State as we would expect.  The CHOs do have a panel coordinating some information, but things are probably happening too fast for the Commonwealth's CMO led team to form Australia-wide policies. With the results Australia is getting that wouldn't be high on the agenda anyway, just a lot of Health people doing a stunning job all round the country.