onetrack

You're not wrong there, Nev - and the downing of a mid-size commercial airliner is an indication of how poor the identification and control systems are on these Russian missiles - coupled with poor training in the Middle Eastern countries.

General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps airspace unit, said - "the airline's pilot and crew had done nothing wrong, and instead an Iranian officer made the 'bad decision' to open fire on the plane after mistaking it for a cruise missile."

Now this was an IRGC officer who gave the order to fire - not a lowly private acting on impulse - on a large aircraft that was very obviously climbing - not descending, as you'd expect from a cruise missile only a short distance from its target.

I guess that's what you get, when training in learning the words of the Quran, comes before good military training that results in competent officers with outstanding leadership skills.

Boeing 737-800 specifications;  MTOW - 70,535kg.  Wingspan - 34.31M. Length - 39.47M

Cruise missile specifications;

Excessive heat due to operating under heavy load, is primarily the biggest destroyer of pistons.

It's a mistake to try and keep pistons as light as possible in an air-cooled engine, that is required to produce 75% to 100% power, almost constantly

The Indian business model;

1. Find and target people with money.

2. Spin them a yarn that sounds highly plausible.

3. Rip them off mercilessly.

Funnily enough, the missus remarked - after watching several TV documentaries about India, and the shows following a few desperately poor individual Indians, in their attempts to get ahead financially;

"They are utterly ruthless people - and they are more ruthless towards each other, than they are to foreigners!"

The franchisee system is another classic example of corporate rorting, although it doesn't normally involve Govt funding ripoffs.

But it's typical of these so-called "business models", where the aim is to shaft the lower levels (the franchisees), to ensure the upper levels of the "business model" receive renumeration on a par with bank CEO's.

Some of the franchisees agreements are nothing short of agreements of permanent financial slavery. These people make the robber barons of earlier centuries look positively benevolent.

......Onetrack was already two steps behind Turbo, having learnt from Army life, to be quick stepping back, when asked to step forward and volunteer.

Greta was now looking for another target for her natural hostility. Hi-Ho had been unaware of what had recently transpired, as he was examining plans for further Drifter upgrades.

Greta picked on Hi-Ho. "Hi-Ho", she said, "What are you going to do about........

(why is it, whenever I type "Greta", it comes out as "Great"?? This must be a Internet Climate Change Activist plot!)

....and got so close to Cappy he could see the fire in her eyes. "How dare you!" cried Greta. "You have been burning untold amounts of avgas for decades, and now you tell us you could have been using hydrogen and oxygen!"

Cappy gasped, and looked around like a trapped rat. There had to be some way of........

I must say I'm blown away by the fact the Iranians have simply admitted now, that they hit it with a missile in error.

I was sure obfuscation and lies and blaming America, would be the order of the day, for years to come.

All I can guess, is that the evidence was so overwhelming from the start, that it just couldn't be denied, and that's probably the reason why they owned up.

When the leaders of the various Western countries started saying it was an Iranian missile hit, picked up by U.S. spy satellites and Intelligence from intercepted communications, then I knew it was getting the ring of truth.

Poor buggers, it's bad enough getting shot down by a foreign nation, let alone your own countrymen.

Doesn't say much for the trigger-happiness and poor level of training amongst the missile operators.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-11/iran-admits-to-shooting-down-ukrainian-plane/11860508

....ensure that our Drifters are armed with a better grade of missile, because the Turboencabulators have improved their performance so much, we can now fit substantial armaments".

"Speaking of Turboencabulators" said Hi-Ho, "I find it quite amazing, how Turbo managed to get his name included in the Turboencabulator design! It can't be, that he had that much input, they would name it after him?"

"No, he didn't", said Cappy. "I have it on good advice, Turbo has pictures of his boss in bed with his secretary, and utilised them to get a promotion from a position of lowly truck mechanic, to head of the Design Dept - as well as his getting his name included on the Turboencabulator! Of course, he doesn't have a clue what he's doing in the Design Dept, everyone just covers for his disastrous errors!"

"Sounds just like CASA!", exclaimed Hi-Ho. "Well, he's apparently planning to move to CASA once he gets booted from the Design Dept", said Cappy. "He's got all the necessary skills now, writing up gobbledegook, making thousands of rules and regulations that no-one understands, you know, all that kind of thing".

Meantimes, Turbo had been fiddling with a Drifter, trying to make it fire-proof, missile-proof, and installing an automatic park brake. He had even bigger plans in mind, the next thing was........

I don't recall seeing any of the runways in the North of W.A. with grooving. They're all just regular highway grade, smooth asphalt. 

The tarmac water runoff rate in heavy rain is quite slow, because the runway camber is quite flat, as compared to highways.

There would have been a lot of water on the runway surface in this case, under the rainfall and wind conditions shown, and it would have been quite a "hairy" braking effort.

http://aaa-asphalt.com.au/our-work/

Newman had 142mm for the 24 hrs up until 9:00AM Thursday 9th January 2020. The Qantaslink Fokker (QF2650) landed at 7:15AM with heavy rain still falling.

Obviously the PIC and his FO didn't have enough experience of what "heavy rain" means in the Pilbara, nor perhaps did they have enough experience, as regards aquaplaning.

It seems pretty obvious the brakes didn't have anywhere near the effect, that they expected.

Quite embarrassing - and costly too, as the roads around Newman were closed, and they didn't have the right towstrap on hand to be able to haul the Fokker back onto the tarmac.

https://www.airlineratings.com/news/qantaslink-flight-overuns-newman-airport-heavy-rain/

Passenger video, with Geoffrey the local expert, having his 0.02c worth - https://7news.com.au/news/aviation/qantas-plane-slides-off-runway-at-newman-airport-due-to-cyclone-blake-downpour-c-640039

.......soon sort out their rocket shee-nanigans!" "But you can't call the Ayatollah 'Rocket Man', whispered a Presidential aide. "You've already used that on that North Korean nutter".

"But it shut him up, though, didn't it??", retorted Donald. "You haven't seen him launch anything since, have you?". "Yes, we have", said the aide. "He's launched 11 more, since you called him Rocket Man".

"Nobody told me about them?" said Donald. "You sure on that? I don't recall any NK rockets since I roasted him like a Thanksgiving turkey! Well, at least he hasn't let off any nukes!"

"But what about these damned Eye-Rain-ee-ins??" said Donald. "We gotta get up a good name for them! - name-calling always worked for me! And if it doesn't - well, we still got those nukes, haven't we?"

"We sure have", said the aide, but no-one has let off a nuke since 1945, and we're all a bit reluctant to - particularly seeing as we've still got these millions of ordinary armaments to use up!"

"I gotta have a name for these pissant Eye-Rain-ee-in rocket hoods!! Gimme a good name, one that really stings those Muzzie SOB's!!", said Donald, whilst thumbing through his favourite comic book, looking for inspiration.

"Well, said the aide - "How about........

The missile hit evidence is building rapidly, particularly when Justin Trudeau states they have Intelligence evidence of a missile hit.

Plus the Americans have picked up the infrared signature of two missile launches, then missile signatures locking onto the Ukraine aircraft, then the explosion.

Then there's the photo of the remains of the Russian Tor-M1 missile head found at the crash site. It's a repeat of MH-17.

The final nail in the coffin is the photo of the fuselage wreckage showing shrapnel holes (very obvious), and the fact that the wreckage is widely spread, typical of a missile hit.

Then there's the lack of explanation for total failure of all the aircraft systems, from fail-safe backups, through to a lack of radio transmissions indicating trouble - and I understand even the transponder failed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/09/catastrophic-failure-ukraine-jet-iran-suggests-missile

The American news media are saying they have credible reports that an Iranian missile accidentally took the Ukraine 737 down. There's more than one unconfirmed video showing an explosion in the sky, but that could also be anywhere.

U.S. satellites will provide any evidence of an in-flight missile hit, once their images are examined and interpreted. There'd be plenty of U.S. spy satellites aimed at Teheran right now.

It's an entirely plausible explanation for the crash of an aircraft which is as reliable as they come. The only other explanation is a mishandled engine fire, but that seems quite unlikely, given that Ukrainian aviation has a fairly good record.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/world/middleeast/iran-plane-crash-boeing-ukraine.html

........setting up more rockets aimed at a large U.S. base in Iraq. Suddenly the turboencabulator landed amongst them with an almighty crash, scattering parts and components everywhere like confetti.

There was total and utter panic amongst the gathered Iranians, as they all dived under anything that looked like it might afford protection from an American attack, which they were convinced it was.

As the dust settled, and the Iranians slowly came out from under their hiding places, there was consternation amongst them, as to what this new American weapon could be.

It didn't seem to have any explosive mechanism attached to it, which totally confounded them. But it had arrays of mysterious unknown components, and a huge amount of wiring, thus meaning it was very high-tech.

They gathered up the remains of the turboencabulator and rushed it off to the Iranian Weapons Research Establishment, so it could be examined, dissected and analysed.

Most importantly, they had to translate the English writing on it into Farsi. The words "Turboencabulator" and "Chrysler" had them flummoxed.

This was obviously American high-tech equipment of the greatest secrecy, and an incredible find for them, to be able to recover one of these devices in an examinable state.

There was great excitement amongst the Iranian QUDS Force. Their CO got on the phone to Putin. "Vlad!", he exclaimed, "We've got something here we'd like you to see!! It's a new, secret U.S. weapon! - and we've dissected it!!"

Vlad couldn't contain his excitement. "I'll be on a plane to Iran within half an hour!", he said to the CO. "Make sure you......

Familiarity slowly breeds bad habits, when operating machinery of any kind. You must continually check yourself, or better still, be checked by others, that bad habits are not creeping in.

I never cease to be amazed by the number of older, highly experienced people, who kill themselves fairly regularly, whilst in control of fairly complex machines - be they ground-based, or aviation-based.

Then after the event, you speak to others who worked with them, and you begin to pick up that they regularly developed shortcuts, or had developed bad habits, that they should have been pulled up on.

Accident reports are full of dissection of why a deceased victim did what they did - when it's patently obvious they should never have done it, and what they did, went against all the training they had done.

Then there's the creeping effect of ageing neurons, whereby the brain isn't as sharp as it used to be, and your concentration lags, you spend way too long fixated on one problem, when an obvious one is not seen, and ignored.

The sad part, is we are raising young adults today who can't count, don't know their times tables, can barely spell, who think txting is proper English, and who need to have electronic devices in front of them constantly - such as tills that tell them the correct change to give. A power blackout or a flat battery is the ultimate hell for them.

I bought a lotto the other day, it was $12.10, I handed the pretty 17 yr old girl the correct amount in cash in the form of a $5 note and the rest in gold and silver coins - and she was absolutely and totally flummoxed, trying to add up how much there was in her hand. She had about 3 goes before she decided it might be correct, and put the money in the till tray, but she still had a look of total confusion on her face.

I'm guessing she'll end up an important financial controller for a huge organisation, where everyone with some maths skills will cover for her.

I have found that with the advent of electronic devices doing everything for us, you rapidly lose the important basic skills you were taught in primary school.

I now keep a handwritten daily diary (as I did in many previous years), to ensure my handwriting skills don't deteriorate. I often do longhand calculations and rows of additions mentally, to keep up my mental calculation skills.

The old adage still applies - use it, or lose it.

Red - No, I think your Aircraft showcase is well done. But there's a problem as regards copyright when setting up a website, that few people seem to understand.

If you are going to cut-and-paste wholesale from other sites, and use other peoples writings, largely word for word, you lay yourself wide open to copyright infringement.

If you wish to put stuff on the Internet, you need to ensure that you acquire approval to use others people creative writing work and photos, and give them credits when doing so.

There are many people out there who are either ignorant of copyright law, or who just wilfully steal everything they can lay their hands on, and care not a whit about the ramifications.

Copyright law extends to the Internet and people have been sued (and the ligitants have won) when copyright has been infringed.

The bloke running the "Aviation Collection" website claims he's simply an aviation collector and house-husband located in Mt Barker, W.A., and he claims he is operating on a "not for profit" basis.

However, this still does not let you get away with cut-and-paste, and displaying other peoples creative work. Many people are highly protective of their creative work, and litigious to boot.

Gary Larsen, the cartoonist represents the typical problem of simply reproducing other peoples creative work. When someone copies a Larsen cartoon and forwards it or puts it on a website, it deprives Gary Larsen of income.

Gary Larsen became appalled and angry about this problem, where millions of people freely redistributed his cartoons online and deprived him of a great deal of income.

As a result, he refused to put anything online and actually stopped producing cartoons for quite some time. I don't know if he sued anyone, but he could have sued millions of people.

On the ExplorOz 4WD forum, we had a bloke who put up a regular "Sunday History Photo" article. The problem was, he was simply stealing other peoples photos, cutting-and-pasting from a myriad of other websites (many official websites included), and having a great time. But the owners of the website were made aware that if this bloke wasn't stopped, they would be subject to legal action - so his "Sunday History Photo" regular articles, became history.

There is a "fair use" test for copyright, I have included a link below. As a general guide, you can reproduce around 10% of someone elses work for "discussion or educational" purposes, without needing official permission.

https://www.usg.edu/galileo/skills/unit08/credit08_11.phtml

We've gone through this problem on other forums - car forums, truck forums, tractor forums, 4WD forums, fishing forums, you name it. You can be prosecuted for using a companys logo and trademarks without official authorisation.

Caterpillar are a classic. Try reproducing any Caterpillar trademark, logo or symbol, on a website, and Cat lawyers will be in contact with you, very promptly.

The passage of time does not necessarily affect copyright, trademarks, logos, or symbols. Many a time, someone has re-registered some old name, trade symbol or logo, and people think it's defunct, when its not.

We found out that Cat utilised 28 different styles of writing of the Caterpillar name, from 1925, when Caterpillar was formed. People thought the early versions would be out of copyright - but Caterpillar still own the copyright, on every name and logo and symbol they have ever used! If the copyright had time-expired, Cat have renewed it.

This bloke with the Aviation Collection is running close to the wind, even though he claims he's not-for-profit, he needs to either re-write what he's got, in his own words, or obtain permission to reproduce other peoples writings and photos - and put up credits for their work.

I did attack him initially, believing that he'd set the site up for making money by adding advertising, and getting income from Google - but I see now, after reading his story, that he merely has a large aviation collection that he wishes to share.

Despite that, he needs to educate himself further with regard to copyright and fair use rules, and take into account that on the Internet, it's not just Australian law that applies - if it's visible in other countries, their laws apply, too.

EDIT: I do see now, that many of his photos are his own, and he has put up credits for information on some pages to Wikipedia. However, I hope he got permission to use company logos.

....SHAFTING Award, which honoured him directly for his contributions to truck axle shaft design, encabulator shaft design, encabulator shaft bolt design, radi-encabulator shaft design - and which award also indirectly applauded him for his interpersonal and office skills, where he had an unerring ability to shaft everyone he came into contact with.

Meantimes, Hi-Ho was finding he was having great difficulty in controlling the Drifter, as the turboencabulator strapped to his back was making it extremely hard to operate the control column.

In addition, the frequencies emitted by the Chinese-built turboencabulator, were not approved, nor compatible with any aviation frequency in Australia.

As result, he couldn't use the radio; the static from the headphones was driving him mad; and the limerick he'd carried on board was fouling the flaps lever.

"MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!", Yelled Hi-Ho, which wasn't heard by anyone, not even those on the ground, within earshot. Hi-Ho had to make a critical decision. It was now or never.

He unstrapped the turboencabulator, and threw it overboard. The Drifter leapt upwards into the sky, and at along last, Hi-Ho could hear himself think - and use the radio.

But far below him, the turboencabulator was spinning and gyrating and gaining speed groundwards. Hi-Ho suddenly realised, it was heading straight for the roof of the Captains house!!

"No-o-o-ooooo!!!", exclaimed Hi-Ho. "Not Cappys house roof!! Anything but that!!" And the turboencabulator kept spinning and gyrating and gaining speed, until it........

The website is full of cut-and-paste from other websites, with no references or credits.

A very poor effort, and typical of a lot of these "crap, money-making" websites that proliferate, designed specifically to generate sizeable income for the website owner, via clickbait.

Anyone who thinks aircraft are expensive, and boats are a cheaper answer, obviously hasn't owned a boat before. Not for nothing is BOAT reputed to stand for, "Bring Out Another Thousand dollars".

Or as yachting friend described it, "Just like standing in a cold shower, constantly tearing up $100 notes".

The turbo encabulator phase of human history, was but a small passing phase in the history of turbo encabulators and flight power.

It was merely a stepping stone to the magnetic paradigm fluxurator power source, which was a spin-off from attempts to use hydrogen as a power source for flight.

Hydrogen was abandoned when it was realised that there wasn't ever going to be enough hydrogen available, particularly in remote areas, to provide enough flight power for the vastly-increased number of personal air-transportation devices.

Meantimes... back in the early 21st century, Hi-Ho was eagerly strapping a turbo encabulator to his back to make a quick getaway, whilst holding everyone at bay with a limerick.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Hi-Ho was beginning to lose it, as he tried to strap on the encabulator - with his utterings rapidly degenerating into a rabid prattling-on, about magic dragons, feathers and steel-shod boots.

Nobody could understand what he was trying to say - a condition possibly brought on by his frustration in trying to strap the encabulator on.

Because, despite getting overhaul and maintenance information on the encabulator, he didn't have the installation instructions - a serious failing on the part of the encabulator manufacturers.

Then, in the course of trying to help Hi-Ho, it was discovered that the encabulator he was trying to strap on, had been manufactured by a Chinese subcontractor, who had arranged for unauthorised suppliers to supply components for it.

This of course, led to a complete breakdown in the traceability of components - and even worse, assembly and installation instructions being provided in Chinglish on a single page document, using mostly diagrams - many of which were later found to be unrelated to encabulator assembly and installation, and which diagrams were finally identified as actually being for a Chinese Russell Hobbs toaster.

"This is unbelievable!!", screamed Hi-Ho, as his frustration developed into full-blown rage, and he started to...........

......causing his mixed metaphors to tumble erratically (avref) as they stumbled over their syllabic feet, and sought to align their flux capacitance with their trochaic and spondaic meters.

But the Jedi Rat wasn't done yet. He snatched the rifle from the sniper as he spewed over the mangled rhyming, and........

Spacey, the queue starts over there, it's about 150 metres long .... 

.....a thing or three. "How dare you!", she repeated. "How dare you bring the AUFCF into disrepute by bringing in a Trained Hostage Negotiator? That's the last thing we need, we're already on the nose!"

"Who put what on its nose??", inquired the Cappy, suddenly raised from his mid-afternoon, post-prandial torpor, at the mention of something even remotely av ref.

"Go back to sleep, you silly old man", said FlyingVizla. "That big lunch, downed with 3 bottles of Brown Bros, and followed by the huge dessert pudding, has been too much for you!"

"But I heard someone put something on its nose!", protested Cappy. "No, you didn't", said Flying Vizla, "You're on the nose, right about now!!"

Then Turbo stepped through the door. He said, "I heard there was......

.....chose to be a hitchhiker

and then got picked up by a biker

who turned out to be transgender

and who said his name was Brenda

which caused Cappy to like her.........

....in an unrelated exciting discovery, a press release was put out by Chrysler, outlining a brand new, revolutionary design, reduction transmission, they'd developed.

Several ancient AUFCF pilots realised that here was a fabulous new motoring invention that could be put to use in Drifters, to provide a vastly improved range of propeller speeds, and a major gain in engine torque transfer to the prop.

What was even more exciting, Chrysler had freely explained all the intricate design details on a video - and had even include additional troubleshooting and repair information!

"This is absolutely revolutionary, and we are so lucky to be able to acquire this technology!", exclaimed the Nice Jedi Rat (keeping in mind, that this is the Chinese Year of the Rat, so you can't get any luckier than that!)

"With this new reduction transmission, the performance of a Drifter will start to approach that of a King Air B200! We'll be able to.........

(please watch the video carefully, in case you miss the important, descriptive parts ....)