turboplanner

The Commonwealth government has just approved a gas-fired power station for Melbourne.

That will tie in with Labor's plan to put solar on the roof of every home.

Open Airplane offered rental information around the US which allowed a hire service with the same simplicity as hiring a car.

You got off  an RPT flight to, say Sioux Falls, Montana, walked across  to the light area and picked up the keys to a serviced Cirrus.

You had a record, so no test flight or references were required and the owner had the assurance that you knew how to do the engine management on a Cirrus, or not overheat the turbine on a Caravan.

Where they went wrong was in the business model survey.

I can remember doing surveys on new trucks where we asked whether operators wanted about $10,000 worth of new technology.

All the major fleets said Yes.

When I asked a second time aksing them whether they wanted it if the price went up $10,000 they all said no.

If I want to fly when I go to the US, I hire an Instructor with the plane. He does the radio and legals, so very relaxing.

Minerals Council, coal lobby are into fire fighting?

Would the moderator(s) please delete every reply that is not immediately relevant to the accident in question to save server bandwidth and reader frustration please? This thread isn't drifting, it's moving away from the subject at Mach 1.2!

 

Back to the subject, I met the pilot in question at Wollongong the day he undertook the ill-fated flight and am very saddened to learn he did not make it home. We must wait until the investigators have done their work before we go speculating on what might have caused the accident. We have lost a fellow-aviator and that ought to make us pause and reflect.

 

This is an RAA aircraft so the only report we MAY see will be the Coroner’s report in a couple of years and that may not include the whole flight. As far as I’ve been able to see the pilot’s name hasn’t been released yet.

".........Il pleut dans mon coer ontil I zee you"

But Brigitte was no fool: "I had to brush Trump off" she thought "and that was easy; this old geeser, Sir Lacelot Spratt or whatever he called himself will be a pushover."

But she had not reckoned with the undoubted charm of Turbo's mate the Captain, who bought her a dozen .............

Interesting interview with David Packham on the ABC this week.

David Packham is a scientist who in the past worked with CSIRO as a bushfire researcher.

He recently told the ABC that the current fires were not due to climate change and that the former Fire Chief group were being bankrolled by Tim Flannery, so the hyperbole there is quite predictable.

He says we must reduce the fuel load by burning in the off season using low-heat methods to protect the tree canopies and animals, just as the aborigines did.

He says we know our fire fighting capacity and can easily calculate it thanks to an injection of $12 million research by the Fraser Government which was conducted on the Nowa Nowa fires in East Gippsland in that era.

What came out of that research was an understanding of the capacities of fire fighting from the air (using a DC6B), ground, bull dozers, and graders.

These methods can control a maximum 3 – 4 Megawatts per metre fire.

The Black Saturday Fires reached 70 megawatts per metre, and the current NSW Fires have been around 30 Megawatts per metre.

(Which is probably why we have to let the fire go at the downwind edge and try to backburn in front of them.)

He says there are 5 elements to a bush or grass fire:

·        Hot

·        Dry

·        Windy

·        Ignition

·        Fuel

The only element that can be controlled by humans is fuel.

The only economic way of controlling fuel is mild fires doing no damage to the crowns of trees.

It’s critical not to created enough heat to scorch the earth, and to leave 30% of the burn area for animals to shelter in.

........it was at this point that he woke up with his hand on the cat.

It wasn’t his cat; it was grey with an ugly sunken face and looked a nasty piece of work. With claws extended and a snarl it lashed out at Cappy and caught him on the pinky. Knighthoods were no longer on his mind and.....

....Doof Doof” Turbo thought it would be some time before it became a hit.

Captain had treated us to a nostalgic walk down memory lane. Her Majesty told Turbo she’d crossed her fingers each time she’d knighted him so it didn’t matter; she’d keep doing it as long as he kept bringing those jars of Kapooka honey. As for the scrubber he drooled over, don’t tell him but the babes at the Grong Gring BNS ball would leave her for dead and speak....

Most capital is spent on cities. Nothing changes there. The majority of people live near the coast and in the cities  Dog knows what will happen to regional and rural areas. Continuing decline I would think. .Looks as though it will turn to desert with a lot of weeds taking over, where there's still enough rain. Nev

 

Not surprising since the country of Scotland only has 2/3 the population of Melbourne. Regional centres suffer from poor planning by State Governments and the changing income locations. Roma was a tiny town; now it’s Airport is about the size of Adelaide (before the new terminal was built) other centres based on wool are dying, Broken Hill which went from boom to dust is booming again. We’re probably seeing the beginning of the end of the family farm in Australia with conglomerates investing big capital on combined titles.

.......get a photo op with you under the truck and a spanner poking out the side, and you'll slide out (don't worry about that, we'll pull you out with the Land Cruiser if we have to), and you'll be talking to camera with an African American face, shiny white teeth and waving the spanner to show you're involved, then say something like "They tell me Albo was up on the fireline without a regulation fire suit on; what a callous regard for CFS standards, and....."

With more high rise about, City fire fighting will always require more specialised and expensive land (road ) based equipment. It's very different from bushfires. Arguably in a drought and heatwave together situation ability to extinguish a fire is nearly impossible without rain. Resources concentrate on saving lives and property in that order Cost of Risky areas will definitely become a factor as Cyclones, floods and coastal inundation/erosion will also.. This may affect where people choose to live/farm, operate as it did in SA  in the past. Nev

 

High rise is interesting; a few weeks ago a very large water main running up the centre of a high rise building burst, and squirted huge amounts of water down over the sides of the building. I'm not sure anyone in the fire industry saw the significance, but  there was enough water coming out at enough pressure to break the old paradigm of 7 floors, and enough to fit a ground operated fogging system to put out cladding fires, using the building's own water supply. Many  high rise fires could be fought internally also using the building's water supply.

Queensland is a good example right now of what you are saying with the drought drying out bush that this time of year is usually the opposite of Victoria's.

The Aerial resources are doing just what you say;focusing on lives and property.

Risky areas already attract higher insurance premiums. Here in Melbourne, while developers are denying some areas are flood prone, Insurance companies have increased the property's flood insurance by $5,000.00

....dons a fire suit and steps up to the fire.......and then calls for Albo to put his money where his mouth is and get into a fire suit and.....

......advise us that ScoMo takes his orders from Alan Jones, ther fires were an LNP plot, climate change did it and the tipping point had come early although they were not sure what the tipping point was, that this was the armageddon forecast. The Labor spin doctors dragged Albo up to the fire front, with their TV cameras. Make Up ruffled his hair and did their best to smooth the wrinkles out of his suit, and filmed him, (without a fire suit on btw) looking over his shoulder as if the fire could reverse direction, increase from its 300 mm height, and engulf him and said "The Prime Minister should be here!" (as he look nervously behind again), but he fled, fled to Hawaii; he should be here like ME and a ha ha slipped out as he ran out of words. Albo wasn't able to tell us all what exactly he was doing, but was later filmed with that cocked head, testy look saying "He's not here yet!" The NES leaves him there with Make Up ruffling his hair a bit more so he could start on the "Is he here yet?" stage. Meanwhile, on Waikiki Beach, ScoMo was playing netball when the phone rang for the sixth time "YOU HAVE TO GET BACK" yelled Macca. "What for?" asked ScoMo, Gladys is running the show; we can't just step in and start ordering NSW CFS around......can we?"  "No" responded Macca but everyone THINKS you can and that's what counts." 

"I know that" said ScoMo, but the longer I wait the higher we'll go in the polls as Albo runs out of steam, and I arrive home, the weather changes, the fires go out and everyone says 'Scomo did it', this is politics Macca; we need to wait for the weather report, and Gladys needs.......

Since we are primarily relying on volunteers, and there clearly is a shortage of able bodied volunteers available to fight bushfires, can anyone suggest a solution? It's all very well to bring in some (relatively small numbers but much appreciated) international firefighters, but it still isn't anywhere near the number of boots required on the fire fronts.

 

The people being brought in are likely to be specialists or supervisors so maybe more training in the off season, and more volunteers needed to be trained in the basics.

The demand for people can be highly variable,; On Friday 100 fires broke out in South Australia, 23 firefighters have been injured along with some Police in an Adelaide Hills fire. They were all brought under control, but if the weather had gone the other way and hot, dry northerlies had started blowing hard, it might have been a different story with NSW and QLD pulling spare firefighters from SA.

...........a No Brainer. 

Turbo realised he may have inadvertently offended bull, or Bull as he called himself when responding to the Captain's GAFFE OF THE YEAR, and also realised that by now letters of complaint will have been written, with ccs to the Prime Minister, so he humbly apologises to bull, or Bull for any hurt related to his innocent use of Bull's name for Turbo's Bovinemastiff dog. He thought of renaming him CATR   dozer, but realised that would start another lot of letters as well as TV Ads from the Me Too movement, so hopefully when he calls :"Thunder" for dinner there won't be complaints from meteorologists, although.......

There's nothing wrong with a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but I'd rather have this:  

......dog which was a signal to Bulldozer to attack any person nearby with his two tonne clamping effort jaws. Bulldozer......

The Prime Minister runs the Commonwealth Government, you need to talk to Gladys.

Based on the Acting PMs comments tonight OK will

probably get his Royal Commission.

I’d love to read Loxy’s submission after being dealt a burnt out truck, a broken windscreen, and having to ferry trucks halfway round the world, although I’d have to say superlative effort by the CFS.

......his mate OneHit’s missed golf strokes, but he paid him back by....

30 more firefighters in from Canada today.

.....shiny......

Re #621

NSW CFS information as of today (Figures are hectares burnt)

Tianjara: 5000

Green Wattle Creek: 185,000

Currowan: 131,000

Comberton: 200

Gospers Mountain: 459,000

Grose Valley: 2,000

Oalmers Oaky: 3,000

Kerry Ridge: 97,000

Three Mile: 45,000

Ruined Castle: 34,000

Inverell: 1,000

Singleton: 90,000

Kempsey: 146,198,200

Total so far: 1,198,200 hectares.

In the Black Saturday fire , 1939:

Two million hectares were burnt out

71 died

several towns were destroyed 

1300 homes destroyed

3700 buildings destroyed

Any talk of a user pays system just leads the government to make a bullshite business case to neglect its responsibility.

 

Then it will privatise the whole idea and Fire fighting will be on cost basis plus profit. No cover than you burn.

 

This has already happened in the States for the California Fires. Private fire units only protecting their insured clients. And getting in the way of real fire fighters. 

 

We must remember this is how originally fire services for cities were developed in large numbers and that includes Sydney. It was purely by insurance companies funding, so they might help but only if the fire might then burn a insured property.

 

We can't allow the picking of winners and losers just because it may be less economic or they did not vote LNP. We don't just say that the Army will only defend easy spots but charge money if you live somewhere harder to defend.

 

Has any State Government suggested this?

relying on small rural communities to control these fires has failed spectacularly. The real impact on regional NSW will be felt when people need to renew insurance on their assets. 

 

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I'll see if I can find some comparaitve statistics, but in the past we've had fires burning in Victoria for months.

I already mentioned the switch to handling a fire like this by backburning fire breaks, where they can fly an aircraft along the upwind fire break boundary at cruise speed dropping ping pong balls, so the strategy can change with the fires.

It's not the communities controlling the fires, its the CFS, and it's not even them, it's the CFS backed by shifts of firefighters from all over Australia, New Zealand and the US.   It's a pity one of the journalists hasn't thought to write a story on how big this "army" really is.