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The Night Mail


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17 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

The same principle applies when you are using a helicopter for personnel transfer/ casevac from ships and boats. It can be quite fun when the (then) Sea King has been tasked to lift folk from a RIB doing just over 30 knots.

 

Going the other way we just jumped into the water and got the RIB to pick us up!

I once recall a suggestion of this sort being made for a particularly difficult offshore transfer to a small anchor handler which probably should not have been attempted, but that was how it was in those days of Wessex choppers .....

 

The Air Traffic Controller was unambiguously discouraged from any such notion and we returned to Yarmouth. 

 

Edited by rockershovel
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2 hours ago, SM42 said:

 

Isn't it a bit risky building a prison over all those ready made escape tunnels?

 

Andy

Wasn't my decision, way above my pay grade  and somewhere in the Government........

Probably the same lot that decided to build Whitemoor Prison on the trackbed of the March to Spalding line.

 

Jamie

 

 

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2 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Re various comments regarding Geordies etc, that's why we have The Queens English. The Tudor dynasty recognised that none of the regional variants, being derived from so many unrelated sources, would serve as a national working language.

 

The problem with that is that only a tiny amount of people actually speak it - therefore the majority of the population can't understand them.  We have a new neighbour from 'somewhere down south near London', I still haven't been able to decipher his surname when asked. He can't pronounce mine properly, and it only has three letters.....

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3 hours ago, rockershovel said:

I once recall a suggestion of this sort being made for a particularly difficult offshore transfer to a small anchor handler which probably should not have been attempted, but that was how it was in those days of Wessex choppers .....

 

The Air Traffic Controller was unambiguously discouraged from any such notion and we returned to Yarmouth. 

 

Any rotary wing pilot will tell you it is better to lift off of something that is moving that having to try and hover over it.  Hovering is OK over open water or ground but alongside a stationary ship is not too much fun.

 

Helicopters also need  much more power in the hover, which in turn eats into their fuel reserves.

 

Losing an engine at low altitude and speed is not a good situation, and over a ship is not to be recommended.

 

So they get the target ship to sail into wind as fast as it can, then fly down the port side of the ship and drop the winch man onto the deck and then stand off and orbit. 

 

Collection is similar, but the winch man has everything set up for a swift pick up. As soon as they start to winch up the helicopter moves to port and picks up forward speed as soon as it is safe.

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3 hours ago, SM42 said:

This could be on the prototype for everything  topic

 

Lay your track directly on the floor with 1st radius curves

 

20211023_123006.jpg.3207daaa4eeffcb1c8ac258cd09da8d5.jpg

 

Andy

 

Oooh! And it's cunningly designed to come in three bits to reduce the size of the package.

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I've posted this one before but it's true.

 

We were coming off the ferry at Dover and dad's Vauxhall was blowing its head gasket. He asked a customs gent for the name of the Vauxhall garage in Dover.

 

"You want Seven Alters garage mate."

 

Five of us in the car all heard the same thing. After a ridiculous amount of burglaring about we discovered it was actually Southern Autos.

 

http://www.dovergarages.altervista.org/maison dieu.html

 

 

 

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We were staying in a hotel in Austria and there was a group of young Germans staying there. One of them (they all were colleagues in a department store) congratulated me on my spoken English. I said it was probably because I was English. They were more used to hearing American accents. I suspect nowadays a more American rather than British accent is taught. Aditi’s younger cousins English is more American than British. Aditi has another cousin married to a banker. They have travelled and lived in many different countries. One of their sons has been educated in US style  overseas schools, the other in the British system. Both have ended up in the US though. 
 

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1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

Any rotary wing pilot will tell you it is better to lift off of something that is moving that having to try and hover over it.  Hovering is OK over open water or ground but alongside a stationary ship is not too much fun.

 

Helicopters also need  much more power in the hover, which in turn eats into their fuel reserves.

 

Losing an engine at low altitude and speed is not a good situation, and over a ship is not to be recommended.

 

So they get the target ship to sail into wind as fast as it can, then fly down the port side of the ship and drop the winch man onto the deck and then stand off and orbit. 

 

Collection is similar, but the winch man has everything set up for a swift pick up. As soon as they start to winch up the helicopter moves to port and picks up forward speed as soon as it is safe.

Something of the sort was indeed described to us. The description offered in reply was rather more concise. 

 

I can't imagine any part of the episode taking place today, but they were different times...

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32 minutes ago, AndyID said:

Jock from Scotland and Fred from South London in adjacent beds in a nursing home.

 

Jock: Did you come here to die?

 

Fred: No mate. I come 'ere yesterdie.

I have seen that before but the conversation was between a WW1 British officer and a newly arrived Australian soldier. 

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5 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

We were staying in a hotel in Austria and there was a group of young Germans staying there. One of them (they all were colleagues in a department store) congratulated me on my spoken English. I said it was probably because I was English. They were more used to hearing American accents. I suspect nowadays a more American rather than British accent is taught. Aditi’s younger cousins English is more American than British. Aditi has another cousin married to a banker. They have travelled and lived in many different countries. One of their sons has been educated in US style  overseas schools, the other in the British system. Both have ended up in the US though. 
 

The Dutch all speak American English. Probably all the tv they watch. 

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4 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

He can't pronounce mine properly, and it only has three letters.....

No it hasn't - M-I-N-E is four letters . . . . . . . 

 

3 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Welcome to the unpronounceable short surname club

Oh I don't know what you mean . . . . . . 

 

1 hour ago, Tony_S said:

They were more used to hearing American accents. 

 

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

The Dutch all speak American English. Probably all the tv they watch. 

 

Just the same in Israel - plus they all seem to have American cousins - I was told there were more followers of the Jewish Faith in New York than there were in Israel.

.

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I once visited a University friend in Penshaw, near Sunderland. 

Now with me came another friend who although of Polish descent, spoke with a very BBC accent.

 

We were a little early arriving so decided to retire to the pub to wait for our friend, as one does 

 

Beer and crisps were ordered. 

Now what flavour crisps to have?

 

" what have you got? " my friend asked

 

He was doing alright till the landlord got to bayfee 

 

Auto correct changes that to baffle,  which is exactly what it did to him.

 

"I beg your pardon" was uttered 4 times until I told him it was beefy.

I was getting thirsty after all.

 

Oh how we laughed.

 

Andy

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Having just watched the tail twitching clip, I now know what the phrase 'When the sh!t hits the fan' really means.

 

A mate of mine was once en route from Cyprus to Coningsby in an F4 having had a kebab and several glasses of Kokinelli the previous evening. Passing Nice he got the green apple quicksteps but as he was wearing an immersion suit it was, shall we say, contained. When he taxied in at Coningsby he was met as he descended the ladder by a customs official. "Anything to declare?" asked the official. "Yes, I've sh@t myself; you really don't want to speak to me," our hero replied and walked like a cowboy without his horse to the back door of the flying clothing section, outside which he stripped off and was literally hosed down.

 

Laughed? I nearly bought a round.

 

Dave

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36 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

Having just watched the tail twitching clip, I now know what the phrase 'When the sh!t hits the fan' really means.

 

A mate of mine was once en route from Cyprus to Coningsby in an F4 having had a kebab and several glasses of Kokinelli the previous evening. Passing Nice he got the green apple quicksteps but as he was wearing an immersion suit it was, shall we say, contained. When he taxied in at Coningsby he was met as he descended the ladder by a customs official. "Anything to declare?" asked the official. "Yes, I've sh@t myself; you really don't want to speak to me," our hero replied and walked like a cowboy without his horse to the back door of the flying clothing section, outside which he stripped off and was literally hosed down.

 

Laughed? I nearly bought a round.

 

Dave

 

And I'll bet you - and the other lads - never let him forget it.....:laugh:

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58 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

And I'll bet you - and the other lads - never let him forget it.....:laugh:

We used to have tank suits to keep us a little better insulated than the standard issue combat kit.

Basically, it was a thick onesy with a hood.

Our gunner disappeared to do a shovel recce.

It was only when he pulled the hood on that he realised that the hood was already occupied. 

Being merciful pals, we quickly forgot how Sh!thead had earned his nickname. 

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