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onetrack

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Posts posted by onetrack

  1. O.K., I was actually referring to new and exotic combat design aircraft. The military equipment producers seem to have different priorities. I would hazard a guess the designers of these combat aircraft where the pilot lies prone on his stomach thought that having the pilots head right at the front of the cockpit would provide maximum visibility for the pilot.

  2. I'm a little surprised that no-one appears to have thought of a design where the pilot is near-prone, lying on their back, nearly horizontal, but with the head and upper body slightly elevated.

    Sort of like reclining in one of those elevated beds that the bedmakers produce. That would be a lot more comfortable than lying prone on your stomach with your head tilted back.

  3. .....getting into trucks, then buses, then aircraft (long-overdue avref). But it was when he was driving his C210 that he spotted the HondaJet and lusted after it. "What a chick magnet that is!!, he was heard to exclaim. "And just look at the seating and upholstery in it!! And look at that instrument panel with glass screens and automation left right and centre! And it travels at FL410, too!! That thing makes my Corvette look tame! Of course, once you've got a HondaJet, everyone knows you've made it, and you're a big mover in the corporate field!!"

     

    Right then, Turbo started planning how he could acquire a HondaJet. It would involve some sharp corporate moves, a modicum of share ramping, and the issue of an IPO for the next Turbine Inc venture, the move into........

     

  4. .....vintage Alvis Speed 20 convertible, which he'd bought when he was still wearing his epaulettes with bars and wings - because the Alvis was noted as a chick magnet, and it fitted with the WW2 Spitfire pilot image that Cappy had been carefully crafting for years - until the day when he......

  5. The 2 stroke supercharged GM diesel was not only good at converting diesel into hearing-destroying noise, they were also gutless and thirsty, too.

    Oh, and they first appeared in 1937! Their time is past and they belong only in museums and historic machinery/transport exhibition days.

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  6. Quote

    The rates were: Victa  $9/hr and C172 $11/hr  -  both wet.

    It might be relevant to mention that in 1965, the average weekly male wage was about $80, too! 

     

    When you take into account that the AWMW is now around $1900, the cost/earnings comparison for today is still not a lot different.

     

    I think there's a lot more demands on our money today, though, with vast amounts of glitzy electronic devices dragging our funds down. I can recall losing lots of time and money by not being able to contact people or by not being contactable myself - and everything swung around finding an accessible landline phone - even if it was only a party line!

  7. Quote

    I also noted that ICAO Annex 5 is related to units. I'd really like to see this area progress and the imperial spagetti go down the toilet. I do understand that there's a lot of people who are used to dealing with these things however once that bandaid is ripped off things become much simpler. When I was at Uni many years ago I worked with a surveyor and had to deal with miles, feet, chains, links, inches, decimal inches and a whole other lot of rubbish. It still pains me when I seen calculations based on foot pounds, gallons and other rubbish. To me that all belongs in the "Vintage Aviation" category.

    Well, on that basis, you will have to immediately cease dealing with America in any form or type - cease dealing with, or working on many products of American industry - and cease working on or dealing with, any "antique" or "vintage" item of mechanised equipment, regardless of whether it is aviation-related or not. You might note that a very large contingent of people enjoy, repair, restore, and use vintage equipment - and tools. In an ideal world, measurement standards would be universal across the globe, but despite the metrification dream, perfect standardisation of measures, weights and forces is as far away as ever.

  8. ....matching roar that sounds like a JATO-assist C130 takeoff is coming. Just as the clap of thunder is right behind the lightning flash, and you get some warning - the flash of flame from Turbo's rear end is enough warning to start running, before your eardrums suffer serious damage.

     

    It's a little-known fact, that during one of Turbo's stints in the J, that Turbo was personally responsible for starting a recalcitrant Wright R-3350-89A in a Fairchild C-119F that had just dropped fresh troops off, and was preparing to depart.

     

    The R-3350 cranked and cranked, but refused to start. It needed some assistance, so Turbo was called on to fart into the intake. No sooner had he let a monster bum-cheek-rumbler go into the intake, the R-3350 fired up like it had received the entire contents of a can of "Start-ya-bastard", and the crew gave the thumbs-up, and prepared to depart rapidly before the enemy started to mortar them.

     

    The word got around about Turbo's amazing gas-production ability, and soon he was in demand for........

     

     

     

  9. There's an interesting story in Vanity Fair (link below), about how one of Jacksons employees and pilot, Eugene DeMarco , turned out to be a total scumbag, thief and con-artist, who took Jackon (and others) for multiple millions of dollars.

     

    The bloke is obviously a brilliant pilot, and a charmer to boot - but he has a major dark side to his personality, and his personal flaws outweigh his good features.

     

    https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/01/peter-jackson-and-the-airplane-thief

  10. .....loose with his bowel gas in front of important people - something that he is nearly always completely unaware of. 

     

    "You just let rip with a Force 9 fart in front of the French chargé d'affaires!!" exclaimed Cappy in horror. 

     

    "Did I?", replied Turbo with an absent-minded look on his face. "I'm sorry, I wasn't really taking a lot of notice, as to whether I was letting off or not - and anyway, who cares? The Queen's been known to let one rip, and blame it on the horses! Besides, it was just done in front of a minor Froggy diplomat, and they can cop a fart or two, for abusing us over the subs contract cancellation!"

     

    "When I let rip, I was actually planning my next move to cut the ground from under Airbus, with regard to the now-increasing demand for aircraft and flights. I have this plan to ensure that Airbus gets nowhere, when it comes to......

     

     

    And here, Dear NES readers, we have a photo of Turbo practising for the World Farting Championship, complete with afterburner (avref) .....

     

     

    Fart fire.jpg

  11. ....Runts - which caused great consternation amongst the Honda executives when the translation was carried out.

     

    "Ahhhh, so!", said Yakai Sonda, a close relative of Nobura Yonda. "If this is what Ostlalians think of us clever Japanese, that is a slap in the face! They think we know f***-nothing! Very soon, we show them! - we will show them we know f***-all!!"

     

    Turbo was totally unaware of the major international political upset he had created, and he went on happily, offering his services to..........

  12. .....developed plans for a new logo, new stationery (complete with a jet outline logo), and new flying rules. Unfortunately, the 45kt stall speed requirement has been overlooked in the new plans, and Honda engineers are now desperately scrambling to try and reduce the HondaJet stall speed from 106kts down to 45kts. This will involve a major increase in the size of the speedbrakes and the fitment of a huge drag 'chute. Early testing is proving fruitful and Honda engineers are confident that they can get the HondaJet to meet the ALF stall speed requirements. Nobura Yonda, a chief engineer at Honda is reported as saying, "It rill only take some additional time, and the expenditure of around 27.9 trillion yen, and we will then have met......

  13. Alan, there's nothing within even modest reach of Broome as regards clubs or airstrips - however, Roebuck Plains Station has an airstrip, and it's located about 40kms from town, and if they give you permission to land there, you could get a lift or a taxi into town O.K. The airstrip is pretty rudimentary, and certainly not all-weather, so if it rains while you're there, you'll have an extended stay until things dry out. 

    Remember, we're heading into the "Wet" season now, and big storms and severe weather events can appear very quickly this time of year.

     

    I'm not sure how friendly the Roebuck operation is, the station has been owned since 1999 by a local Indigenous Corporation - specifically, the Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation. I guess you can only try contacting the manager at Roebuck Plains to see if they're amenable to private aircraft operators using their strip.

     

    https://rs.locationshub.com/Home/LocationDetail?rsLocationId=084-10100117

     

    http://www.yawuru.org.au/prosperity/roebuck-plains-station/?doing_wp_cron=1636598796.8950569629669189453125

     

  14. Some people simply cannot tolerate an expressed opinion that disagrees with what they believe is the case.

     

    There can only be opinion when it comes to interpreting highly convoluted regulations, and billions of dollars have been expended in the courts of the land trying to define the meaning of a word in legislation, within its context.

  15. .....huge potential market for codpieces that not only protected against Cod, they also had to protect against Stonefish. Turbo spotted the market very early in the piece, but OT wasn't far behind him in the design race. The important part was, the new codpiece had to allow swimming and leg articulation freedom, but it couldn't expose any part of the family jewels at any time.

     

    "We have a winning design, tested on 300 nervous users, but which came through with flying colours!", announced Turbo to a large group of potential sellers he had gathered. These sellers were already in the swimwear market, and they were eagerly seeking additional money-making lines.

     

    "We have a better winning design!", announced OT. "Our model is based on fishplates! As we all know, fishplates are a proven design principle, we just had to adapt it to protective swimwear. What's more, we recycle used bulldozer track shoes in the design, this guarantees the stonefish can't get through to the swimmers FJ's, no matter how hard they try!"

     

    "Hang on", said bull, eyeing off the design warily. "Isn't there a major weight penalty with your design? - as in, the swimmers sink like stones when they're wearing them?"

     

    "All new designs have a few bugs that need to be ironed out", said OT smoothly. "We're addressing the slight weight problem, and it won't be long before............

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  16. One would wonder why the Navy would need mathematicians. But computing the trajectory of bullets from big guns - and missiles and rockets in todays age - is critical to ensuring your armaments hit where they are supposed to hit.

     

    A good mate was an artilleryman during the Vietnam War, and he was chosen to join the artillery because he was a whizz at maths.

    What surprised me, was when he told me when they were firing artillery pieces, they had to calculate the movement of the rotation of the Earth, as part of the trajectory calculations. 

     

    This bloke is a human computer, he could regularly make serious amounts of money betting on neddies, because he would study every single item of information on the neddies race histories, and mentally compute the chances of any particular neddy winning.

    But he gave up betting on neddies, because he reckoned it was too easy to become too obsessed with it, and with winning. I've seen him win as much as $2800 on a single race. 

     

    More on Grace Hopper - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38677721

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  17. Managing large C of G changes as jumpers move around in the aircraft must surely be a flight management priority for jump plane pilots.

     

    Is this taught to them? - or do they just have to try and handle an aircraft that is developing handling upsets, as jumpers run thoughtlessly around inside the aircraft in a bunched-up manner, concentrating only on the jump, and not what their mass movements are doing to the aircrafts handling?

  18. What a fascinating woman and one with an amazing brain. She was essentially a highly gifted mathematician, who believed that a system could be devised to use the English language to programme and operate computers.

    No-one believed it was possible. The "experts" said computers could only recognise mathematical symbols, and it would always need mathematicians to supply those symbols to computers, to make them compute.

    But she devised her "compiler" which was the basis for the COBOL computer language, which is still in use today. COBOL enabled instructions typed in simple English to be used for complex computing and data processing.

     

    I am amazed at how the brains of these gifted mathematicians work, they must be on the autism spectrum to be able to grasp such complex and deep processes which baffle any ordinary person.

    Grace Hopper was not only an amazing mathematician, she was a Professor who taught advanced mathematics, she was rapidly recognised by the Govt for her advanced skills, and she also joined the U.S. Navy and became a Rear Admiral.

     

    https://news.yale.edu/2019/03/26/math-not-computer-science-was-grace-hoppers-first-language

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

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