Dave Hunt

An RAF colleague had at one time been a police car driver in Bristol. He told us that a common trick played on newbie car passengers was to drive down the road by Temple Meads station that is a dead end at some furious speed until smashing into the wall at the end seemed inevitable, then brake hard when passing a section of fencing that had been left unpainted. This would stop the car just short of the wall, usually giving the passenger the heebie jeeebies and the driver much amusement....... ........until one day someone painted the fence. The driver had to explain the foreshortened police car. Dave

IIRC, the average European of today has something like 3 - 5% Neanderthal DNA. Dave

From Wikipedia: Several species of humans have intermittently occupied Great Britain for almost a million years. The earliest evidence of human occupation around 900,000 years ago is at Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast, with stone tools and footprints probably made by antecessor. The oldest human fossils, around 500,000 years old, are of heidelbergensis at Boxgrove in Sussex. Until this time Britain had been permanently connected to the Continent by a chalk ridge between South East England and northern France called the Weald-Artois Anticline, but during the Anglian Glaciation around 425,000 years ago a megaflood broke through the ridge, and Britain became an island when sea levels rose during the following Hoxnian interglacial. Fossils of very early Neanderthals dating to around 400,000 years ago have been found at Swanscombe in Kent, and of classic Neanderthals about 225,000 years old at Pontnewydd in Wales. Britain was unoccupied by humans between 180,000 and 60,000 years ago, when Neanderthals returned. By 40,000 years ago they had become extinct and modern humans had reached Britain. Dave

Thank the Good Lord, no. If she had I wouldn't be typing this due to: a. Not being very well after being ambushed by a baseball bat or similar, and.. b. Not being able to get into the house to use any of my electronic thingies. Dave

Just ring 119 Puppers. That's what I did this morning and within five minutes had booked Jill and I in at a time and place that suited us. Dave

I’ve just bought Jill a new iPad because her old one is now Neolithic and can’t update so more and more web sites won’t let it play. Unfortunately when I fired it up my iPhone was in my pocket so they immediately fell in love and started to share passcodes etc. I’ve now got to set about dissuading it from pursuing this love affair and become independent. Isn’t technology wonderful sometimes? Dave

I always thought that special relativity was the reason that there are lots of funny people in remote parts of the Ozark mountains and suchlike. Dave

I’ve watched a few of their games recently and there’s been some good rugby on show. Dave

Had a trip out to Dorothy Clive gardens today and enjoyed both the flora and lunch outside at the cafe. I managed a reasonable amount of walking but after just half an hour during which there was some uphill stretches my legs felt like jelly. I hadn't realised properly until now just how unfit I have become because of not doing any proper exercise for years while my spine was giving me grief. Now I've had it largely sorted, though, I'm determined to get reasonably fit again. It'll be a bit of an uphill battle but a necessary one. Dave

You are leading the poor chap down the garden path, Neil. Since when has the traffic on ERs made any sense? Dave

Known to generations of RAF aviators as Sally’s tits. Dave

No surprises there then 🤣 Dave

There used to be a very good Italian restaurant on Orchard Road. Probably long gone by now. Dave

Which two mounds are those then? Dave (OK, I admit I had to look it up)

Otherwise B58 and F22. Dave Ah, beaten to it by HH. Rats!

That brings back many happy memories of sunset feasts in Palm Cove north of Cairns. Dave

Mind you, I think that the famous Aussie pies (including those 'floating' in soup, although mine always seemed to sink) are actually generally very good. And as for the seafood - yum yum. Dave

Some friends had the archetypal Labrador and when they were staying with us once it stole and ate a two pound block of Stilton; the result was its banning from any room we were in due to the eye-watering noxious vapours. In contrast, our Lab/Collie cross Sam, although he would gleefully eat anything he was given, would not touch food until he was told he could. He would sit gazing into his full food bowl (and drooling) until we said, "Go on then" and we could leave the coffee table with plates of food all over it safe in the knowledge that although he would sit looking longingly at the contents he wouldn't touch anything, even if left alone in the room. Dave

In my early RAF days I knew a couple of the pilots who flew in the BoB film and one of them described the filmed scenes, despite some careful control and briefing, as 'raving dangerous.' I also know and once worked with (in fact, I was his mentor on his first squadron) one of the pilots who flew F14s in the original Top Gun (he was RAF on exchange with the USN) and was the one who can be seen flying past the carrier leaving a wake in the water. He earned himself a bit of a b0llocking for that when the film was released. Didn't do him a lot of harm though as he later became an RAF squadron commander. Dave

In addition to my last post, don’t believe what you see in carp such as Top Gun. Dave

No. The cleverness of systems, particularly radar and tactical displays, means that the workload of operating and interpreting them has reduced very markedly, hence the need for back seaters has largely gone although even in aircraft such as the F15E there is still that need. Back seaters in such as the F4, Tornado, Buccaneer etc. were a necessity not a luxury. No designer or end user would unnecessarily have a manned rear cockpit with its concomitant weight, equipment, drag etc. penalty. Having flown such types in both seats I can assure you that the workload was too much for one man safely and tactically to undertake. Although my experience of such as the Typhoon is only from simulators, I can vouch for the fact that the processing power available within the systems makes life in the cockpit nor more demanding than that in the front seat of the previous generation of fast jets; in fact, in many ways it is simpler. Dave

Oh, dear Flávio. I thought that you were immune from the ‘world stops north of the M25’ virus. Here in the frozen northerly outpost of North Hipposhire we actually have several really decent restaurants with 15 - 20 minutes drive of Hunt Towers. They include a very good ethnic Italian (run by and with food cooked by real Italians) ditto a few proper Indian and Bangladeshi places, Chinese and Asian fusion eateries, Greek etc. There are also some excellent places that have no claim to any specific ethnicity but serve very good food. Hollywood? No, not even as low as Hollywood on a good day and as for Hollywood’s interpretation of the Enigma story and the like, not in the same universe. Admittedly there are also the likes of McD’s, Greggs, Dominos etc. but they have spread from darn sarf and the North can’t be blamed any more than Ukraine for unwanted neighbours invasions. Dave

Another nice day in North Hipposhire and for a change it’s not windy. We are scheduled for lunch at a rather nice restaurant to celebrate a friend’s ‘significant’ birthday for which occasion I have made a chocolate cake. The cake has already been delivered to the restaurant and armed guards mounted behind bear and hippo traps just in case. Dave

Sorry Bear but the Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash was caused by poor airmanship. When flying at low level you have to take into account something called safety height, which is basically to take the highest point within a certain distance of your route then add 10% and a further 1500 feet. If you fly into IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions, I.e., bad visibility and particularly fog, mist or cloud) you must climb to safety height. This the Chinook crew failed to do and whether their nav system was 5 miles in error or not was immaterial as safety height takes care of such uncertainties. I know personally several of the people who were involved in the Board of Inquiry for the crash, including the senior officer in overall command, and can assure you that whatever the press and other civilian parties alleged, there was no attempt to lay blame unfairly, mount a cover-up for system shortcomings, use scapegoats or anything similar. We were all as shocked and saddened by the accident as anyone and the last thing anyone wanted to happen was for blame to be allocated unfairly - indeed, there were differences of opinion for a while even within the RAF - but at the end of the day lessons have to be learned. Sadly, some lessons get repeated and this was one of them. Dave PS - the above safety height consideration refers to peacetime sorties. In actual operations, more risk is accepted.

As HH says, in my day, I.e., up to 20 years ago, low level sorties were flown using topographical maps rather than aviation charts . The general route would be drawn up on a 1:500,000 map which as well as being topographical also had a printed overlay showing power lines. The really low level part would be on a 1:250,000 map then the last couple of minutes or so leading up to a target were on a 1:50,000. Since the sortie would usually be flown at 420 knots (490 mph) with the run to the target at 480 - 500 knots, progress over the maps was quite rapid. There was an electronic display in the cockpit that showed a sort of moving map but that was for tactical appreciation of the route and not detailed map reading. The aircraft radar could also be used to some extent for navigation but required a good deal of expert interpretation. There were some aircraft going right back to the 1970s, such as the Jaguar, that had proper moving map displays driven by their inertial nav systems and the Tornado GR1 / GR4 even had them tied in with the autopilot but they were purely strike/attack types and on the multi role or air defence types that I flew the hand held map was the primary low level nav aid. It’s all changed now, of course, and electronic mapping is primary. Dave