onetrack

The Coulson B737 has been put into service, dropping retardant on the Collie, W.A. bushfire.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N138CG

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/BMBR138/history/20191215/1000Z/YPEA/YPEA

Interestingly, there's a Wartime report on the 'net, whereby the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory, a division of NACA, carried out engine testing during July 1942, with regards to improving aircraft engine cooling, using copper.

One of the thing they found was an 0.008" thickness of copper plating on cylinder fins increased the cooling ability by 11%. That's quite a substantial increase, and one that could be done to any engine fins.

Copper-plating aluminium is quite feasible, it just requires a several-stage process to ensure adequate adhesion of the copper.

The lab also tested pure copper fins on a steel barrel of a Wright C9GC (R-1820) and got an 84% improvement in cooling capacity.

...... a hamster wheel, and I'll place the quokkas inside the wheel, couple an air pump to the wheel, attach the poly pipe, and the quokkas can run like crazy while the male chases the female, and we'll have all the air we need, pumped into the tunnel!"

"Sounds like an entirely satisfactory solution to me", said the BI from SX. "It's also clean, green, and low-methane (apart from the occasional quokka fart, which barely registers on the methane-measuring scale), so everyone, right down to Greta and the OWHHCbTIBDHAETEGGCGNVC, will be happy. 

Suddenly, a gent posing some authority appeared. "Horld awn", said Fanie De Jaager, "I'm the lawcal mines inspuctor, and I demund un inspuction of this tunnel, whuch appars to not have uny official RSA authorisation".

Turbo promptly whipped out an official-looking document. "Here you go", he said to Fanie, "Here's all the documentation you need, it's all been authorised from JZ himself". Turbo congratulated himself silently for having the foresight to acquire as much forged documentation as he thought might be needed - and the forged Zuma documentation was just what he needed, right now.

"Hawld orn", said Fanie, "Zuma is naw longer awr President, he resigned in February 2018!". "Yes, I know", said quick-thinking Turbo, "But this was authorised by him when he was still in power. It's taken a while to complete the project you know!"

"U'll have to invistigate thus", said Fanie. "Zuma was a cawrrupt crook, you know? There may be some maejor inquiry into thus prawjuct, becawse naw dut Zuma got a kuckbuck out uv it".

"Kickback?? Did you say Kickback!", said Cappy, his attention suddenly diverted from counting his money to what Fanie was saying. "How did I not know about this.........?

Yenn - Your theory of lowering the percentage of no-hopers in the population by allowing drug use to continue unchallenged isn't going to work, the number of no-hopers in the population is still fairly constant, and possibly even increasing, despite multiple decades of rampant drug use.

The drug problem is a money problem. Fight "the drug scourge", it only drives up prices and makes the drug lords and dealers rub their hands with glee. And it makes drug users keen to try the drugs, because they are prohibited.

Get the Govt to produce quality-verified drugs at the cheapest price possible, supply them to anyone who wants to try them, along with drug-using health advice, and the number of drug users will drop and the drug lords will have to find some other way to make a living.

Nothing destroys profit levels in a market, faster than flooding that market with low-cost product.

Places such as Portugal are making small steps towards decriminalisation of small-time drug users, but they still ignore and fail to address the multiple reasons for drug use - boredom, lack of productive jobs, lack of money due to the preceding, mental health issues, and fracturing of social cohesion caused by the corporate model.

If the amount of money spent on drug-users punishment was redirected to the new model of providing Govt-issued pure quality drugs, and addressing the multiple reasons behind drug use, then I'm convinced drug use would become a non-issue in our "developed" societies.

You may recoil in horror at the idea of the Govt issuing high quality drugs for recreational use. The problem is, we already have readily-available access to thousands of high-quality drugs, all offered to us, to improve our health and well-being.

On that basis, Doctors and Pharmaceutical companies are the biggest drug-pushers and drug lords, the world has ever endured.

Back to the B737 firebomber. It's apparently been deemed far better, than anything we currently have in W.A.

We have a large bushfire burning N of Perth, at Yanchep, which has been burning since last Wednesday, and which has caused extensive damage, and it's still continuing unabated.

So, the B737 has been sent from the East to sit on standby at Pearce airbase. I'm not sure why you'd send a B737 all that distance, just to have it sit on standby.

But this is high-level management we're talking here, so us plebs can only marvel at their skills. I guess they'll all walk around it to check it out, then send it back as "not required". 

IMO, the greatest problem we have in the W.A. Fire Authority (currently named DFES - but that name changes every second year, too, simply because it must, to look like you're doing something - is that it's management is run by people slotted in from other local high public-service levels - such as ex-senior coppers.

It's rather revealing that during our worst local bushfire disaster (Yarloop), the Fire Service was being managed by a senior ex-copper, who had dubious policing skills, and whose failure to solve a large number of high-level crimes, largely due to policing incompetence, was his main claim to fame.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-15/water-bomber-aircraft-sent-to-join-wa-firefighting-effort/11800970

....bull made his way through the crowd, shaking hands and saying "Good dey!" to all - until he ran into a group of Boers who called out, "Goeie dag!" This absolutely threw bull, who tried to reply with a fake Afrikaaner accent, but the Boers started to get suspicious.

Next thing, bull was confronted with a big group of Zulus, waving Assagais, holding shields and yelling in Shona, "Dzoka, vatorwa!". 

This greeting floored bull, as he became confused as to whether the Zulus were being friendly, or if they were threatening to run him through with assagais.

He thought he'd take an aggressive stance to combat their apparently aggressive approach. "Git buck, Kaffirs!!", yelled bull, after learning the term by watching Breaker Morant.

But bulls yell only antagonised the Zulus, and they moved forward with a roar, that would frighten even the toughest AWB Commander.

Captain rushed up and grabbed bull by the shirtsleeve, and dragged him back to the tunnel. Cappy said to bull, "You darned fool! You'll get us all.......

....palpable as the realisation struck home that they wouldn't be able to enter RSA without them. "Not to worry", said Onetrack with a grin. "Don't you remember that poster that came onto WreckFline a few weeks back, offering superb forged passports, perfect-quality forged currencies, impeccable forged ID's, along with a dozen other forged products, all equally useful. I got in touch with him, and got us a heap of fake passports made, 1000's of fake R100 Mandela banknotes, and I even got a few fake engineering degrees with honours attached for us, just to smooth the way into RSA".

"That's brilliant!", said the Nice Rat. "That means I can save my brown paper bags of bribe money for when the Prez and the Cabinet of RSA visits us!"

"Now", said Turbine, "It's important we blend in once we surface, so we need to practise our Saffie accents. If any one of us slips up, and is identified as an Aussie, we could be thrown into a cricket team, and have the cXXp beaten out of us! - again!"

"Not a hope!", said bull, who was wide awake by now, "All we need to do, is.....

1. There's nothing wrong with welding, if the correct materials, the correct welding rods, and the correct processes are followed. Welding has a habit of inducing stresses in the structure, and these stresses must be addressed - either by the structure being held in a jig to prevent distortion, or by post-heat-treating of the welded area, to relieve welding stresses. Welding of heat-treatable materials is quite involved, and must follow the manufacturers specific (post-welding) heat-treating process.

Many (aluminium and steel) materials are quite tolerant of welding stresses - but you must know the particular qualities of the material you're working with, prior to carrying out welding.

2. Rivets and plating are a simple design that has stood the test of time - although they are relatively labour-intensive. Rivets and plating usually lend themselves to somewhat easier repair in the case of damage.

3. As regards the Tool King aluminium welding rods - these have been around for maybe 40 years or more. They usually turn up at shows, demonstrations, field days, and other events where a crowd offers potential for sales.

They're usually sold by the regular suspects - those same blokes who sell innovative vegetable peelers and slicers, limb trimmers, magic hammers, and the thousand and one other wondrous devices, we never knew we couldn't live without.

Naturally, most of these devices and tools come with the steak knives offer, if you buy two sets of the product - at inflated prices, as you usually find out later.

I can recall these aluminium welding rods being touted at these events, as God's gift to DIY'ers who were born with two left thumbs, and who could normally injure themselves with a rubber sword.

I was actually one of the gullible public who bought some of these rods, after watching the appointed guru weld up a torn Coke can, with what appeared to be consummate ease.

Alas, whenever I tried to weld any form of aluminium with these rods, my attempts were as dismal as anyones first attempts at welding aluminium, without some form of protective gas covering the weld area.

They are basically useless - the biggest con around - because no-one, no matter what fancy aluminium rods they possess, can simply weld aluminium without extensive cleaning and preparation of the weld area, which prep work also involves heating the area surrounding the area to be welded - particularly if there is a difference in the two material thicknesses being welded. And you need the inert gas shield, of course.

Those rods still sit in one of my cabinets and they will probably remain there for all time, as they are next to useless - unless you need to weld up Coke cans, of course.

I recently knocked up an aluminium bullbar for my 5 tonne Isuzu truck. I don't have a TIG welder, I hate working with aluminium because of its peculiar characteristics when being welded and heated - although I can stick virtually any other metal together with ease.

For my bullbar, I employed a local bloke, an Italian gent who does TIG welding as a spare-time earner from his regular job, as an aluminium welder. He rolled up with his TIG setup in his van, and I assisted in setting up the various aluminium parts and preheating where needed (on most of the bar), and he did some excellent aluminium welding work, for which I was happy to pay him. We didn't do any stress-relieving heating, because the aluminium we used, is quite tolerant to welding stresses.

I'd have to opine that engine wasn't rotating when the prop bit the dirt.

So naturally they got made redundant, paid out and return now working on contract at 5 times the previous cost and now doing 1/2 the work. Brilliant spend ten times as much for the same work.

 

The same thing happened at Telstra about 20 years ago. You called in a fault with Telstra back then, it was usually attended to the same day (unless it was a remote area).

Some hot-shot American rolled up on a "Find cost-savings" drive, and told Telstra bosses they had way too many linesmen for the size of the company. So Telstra made hundreds of lineys redundant, often with large payouts.

What happened? There wasn't enough lineys left to attend to Telstra faults - and fault repair times started to blow out to 2 and 3 weeks. Telstra customers became enraged and the message finally got through to Telstra management.

So what did they do? They re-hired most of the redundant lineys on contracts - at vastly more money than the lineys would have ever got working for Telstra. Such is the regular idiocy of this countrys management.

KGW is on the mark. The W.A. State Govt has only just uncovered a Senior bureaucrat rorting the system with false invoicing to the tune of at least $25M - over a period possibly as long as 11 years.

The total theft is reported to be likely up to $40M.

It beggars belief that any Govt Dept could have a system whereby invoices are not checked. The anger amongst locals is palpable, and this bloke would be shot without ceremony in China.

But there's little doubt a vast proportion of the monies will be written off as "unrecoverable", and he will get a light jail sentence, as all white-collar criminals do.

Now, with the realisation that there could be more thieves in the public service, they've started doing some audits and discovered another bloke who has rorted vehicle servicing by $1.5M in Western Power, a State Govt owned corporation.

If I was Premier, I'd start sacking every head and every senior manager of every Govt Dept where corruption and theft was found, because this only shows, that senior public servants we are paying vast salaries to, are basically incompetent, because they can't even put in place, basic financial checks against fraud and theft.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-02/woman-charged-over-wa-department-communities-corruption/11757892

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-12/western-power-executive-charged-over-1.5m-dollar-corruption/11794974

He's going to have to leave the kids behind, and fit long range tanks, if he wants to make it to Forrest! 

https://www.top100experiences.com.au/listing/desert-landing-forrest-wa/

Natural rubber is the usual, economic, low-cost choice for shock-absorbing devices. However, natural rubber degrades relatively rapidly - and as you've found, needs regular replacement, as it degrades.

If you go to a manufacturer, you have a choice of a large range of alternative materials - varieties of nitrile rubbers, polyurethanes, silicone rubbers. 

All of these products are designed to provide long-lasting service in varying, often adverse environments (such as being regularly being soaked with petroleum products, or encountering high temperatures).

Sorbothane is the brand name of a synthetic viscoelastic urethane polymer, used as a shock absorber and vibration damper, which has some outstanding shock absorbing properties - all of which comes at a much higher cost than natural rubber, of course.

The "egg" test is a Sorbothane test stunt which is quite impressive - but you need to concentrate on the egg, not the spectacularly attractive young lady. 

https://www.sorbothane.com/material-properties.aspx

Do you have a photo or dimensions of the rubber donuts? There are plenty of companies who can manufacture rubber donuts to your specifications, and if you have precise dimensions, you may be able to find something off the shelf.

You may even be able to adapt something unrelated, if the donut material doesn't have some highly specific material, and compressive rating. Natural rubber compressibility (hardness) is measured as a Shore value by the Shore Durometer.

The link below (a gasket company) gives a good technical precis of Shore rubber hardness.

https://www.ramgaskets.com/technical/shore_hardness

I'm thinking you may be able to utilise something readily available, such as vehicle exhaust system hanger donuts. These donuts are quite durable and possibly have a satisfactory Shore value for compressibility.

Ideally, you would get a Shore value test done on your Skyfox donuts, and either find a suitable size donut with the same Shore value, or contact a donut manufacturer and request a quote for supplying your donuts, giving them dimensions and Shore value required - or just supply a used one to them for a guide.

https://www.bt-ingenieros.com/soportes-para-tubos-de-escape/3241-pack-de-gomas-para-tubos-de-escape-tipo-aro-59-x-59-x-135-mm-2-piezas.html

http://www.jmorco.com/whatweoffer.html

Meanwhilst, HiHo slanderer and Onesie saw where the money shot was and ………………

 

....went to see Elon Musk, because they knew he could outbid Gina any time of the day, despite Gina claiming to own all the iron ore mines in Australia, and regularly claiming her Dad started all of them.

Elon jumped around in excitement. "This is just the project I've needed, ever since that Pommy pedo in Thailand stuffed up my last deep-cave-diving technological advances!! I can now use that sub I invented, and show them all up!"

"Hang on, said Onetrack, "Don't jump the gun here - along the route, there's a missing aircraft we can also dig up, that will make us so much money, we'll make the Saudis look like the homeless people of Melbourne!"

"Can you imagine the result when we find it, and pull it up and show everyone that Boeing was at fault all along!! We can buy Airbus shares before we do that, and cream it in when they go ballistic, because no-one will want to fly Boeing any more, what with the MH370 disaster added to the 737MAX debacle! The pax will all be yelling, 'If it's Boeing, I'm not going!!', every time a flight is arranged!!"

Hi-Ho scratched his chin. "I reckon we must be able to convert a HR Holden into a tunnel-borer somehow - particularly now that Holden is virtually stuffed, and they've stopped making Commonwhores. The HR will be a winner, now everyone knows, it's just a matter of time before Holden pull right out of Australia, and we wave them adieu at the port!"

"The HR has some inherent problems", said Turbo thoughtfully. "For a start, the design was done by American designers, after the Australian-designed HD was a flop! So that could be a sticking point. However......

The media choppers seem to get pretty close to the fire action a lot of the times, judging by the video footage.

Old K - I was under the impression that the operators on 000 can pinpoint your location pretty precisely from your phone data when you call in.

I know I've had some amazingly fast responses to emergency situations when I've called 000. I've even had a police car pull up alongside me (in response to my call), as I was still on the phone to the 000 operator.

....of his habit of regularly pawing the ground and shaking his head when he got agitated. He was quite agitated right now, as he got excited about this new tunneling project.

"Hey, I know just the blokes for this new tunnel to SA!", said Cappy. "They're Palestinians that are stuck on Rottnest at present, but I'm sure we'll be able to engage them, particularly when they find they're going to be well paid, and they find they don't have to launch rockets at the West Bank once they surface!"

"There's just going to be a few problems to iron (literally) out. One will be the language barrier, but I'm sure repeating "baksheesh!" regularly in the conversations will overcome that. And as the original, proud NSW originator of the finest Australian forms of baksheesh, involving bulging brown paper bags accidentally left in offices, I can tell you right now, I can iron (literally) out any problems that might arise - from environmental issues, union issues, political issues, and even lack-of-payment issues!"

"Just wait until you see these Palestinians go! Even more so when I tell them the IDF is on their tails, and getting ready to bulldoze their tunnel in!"

"What position am I being offered?", said bull, pawing the ground impatiently. "Let's see", said Turbine, "There will be a need for.......

It's the OH&S disease Bex, gained from other bureacracies such as councils and electrical and water supply depts - you need 14 blokes watching one bloke work.

Most air-cooled motorbikes will overheat rapidly if they're not moving, as in sitting still, waiting for lights to change, or if you leave them idling whilst talking to someone. They rely on movement to keep the air flowing over the fins.

Most British equipment does poorly in high ambient temperatures, such as the tropics and Northern Australia. In fact, quite a bit of American-designed equipment also performs badly in those same conditions.

People starting threads about crashes are well-advised to post the date, the aircraft type (if known), and the crash location in the title - it makes the thread much easier to find, more relevant at future dates, and gives other forum uses the immediate information they need, as to whether they want to read the thread or not.

 I've got a friend who lives in Lynn Lake Manitoba, where it occasionally gets to -30ºC, and even lower.

He likes showing us the stunt of throwing boiling water into the air into these temperatures, whereby it instantly turns into chunks of ice, as it falls.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/01/frozen-bubbles-boiling-water-freezing-explained-bomb-cyclone-bombogenesis-winter-weather-viral-videos-spd/

But they breathe through their bum. Ever tried doing that??

Does this mean, that when you find the catch can full of oil, it's turning out to be a Dog Day Afternoon? 

I noted the owner stated he'd bought the aircraft in a finished state and he had a total of 150hrs in his logbook.

Maybe that 150hrs didn't include enough experience of landing on bush strips with tall trees each end, and with increasing and adverse winds near ground level, after he took off.

I see where he took off around 06:00HRS, went for a fly around, and came back to land at around 07:00HRS.

There can be a substantial difference in wind speed near ground level, between those times.