bimble

well... unless they actaully track the drone back to it's landing point, or shoot it down (somehow) and retrieve finger prints, the perpetrator is unlikely to be caught. Unless it's flying a predeterminded GPS route and they catch the person and the route is still programmed in the drone...

Keep in mind it takes less than a minute to replace the battery, and there's no reason why the person might not have spare batteries to replace them to give them several runs across the airfield before needing to pause to recharge them.

Of course, if they get a good photo of it and it says "fly Stansted/Luton"...

if it's flying a pre-programmed route there would be no signals to block/trace... and it's a big perimiter for people to stand about with what... shotguns to shoot it down...

What do people think about smart motorways? Saw this saying their roll out should be cancelled https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46553654 but is it a case of enforcing the rules? It really makes me angry seeing other drivers ignoring the big red crosses, they’re not difficult to see, but there isn’t a deterrent to stop people ignoring them. This would be an easy one to solve with technology with a camera on each gantry.

I like the way that people decide that instead of just sticking to lane two, they can now stick to lane three, so when you have to catch up with them in the wee small hours of the morning you get to change lanes from one to four to overtake them...

But the only real issue I have with them is that the motorway matrix sign setters get to lie even more... I remember finishing a night shift in London and coming back down the M3, and once passing the M25 the matrix signs had me driving in lane 3 (of four) and 40mph... with all four lanes empty and clear from the M25 to Junction 4 (where I turned off).

Or when you see them slow the traffic down for a "queue", but you can see the next gantry has a speed restiriction, but the one after that is back to national speed limit... and there is no queuing traffic between you and the third gantry...

Mike you forgot this 'London' Airport 

http://www.oxfordairport.co.uk/the-airport/

I'll see you and raise you London Prestwick... thanks to Ryanair...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1510045/Prestwick-Ryanairs-airport-for-London.html

Meanwhile, the clocks still ticking on the LNER HSTs, with apparently no workshop capacity, or now the time, to convert them.

Would a derogation to allow them to continue beyond 2019 even be possible? As I understand it, the PRM compliance is a statutory deadline, and possibly an EU regulation?

Not to get political, but after 2019, would an EU regulation really matter? Assuming we leave/on time...

Puzzling sight of the day.  I noticed today that at Swindon the 'Cheltenham bay' has full catenary in place and I must admit to wondering why because it is too short to hold any electric unit currently operating on the GWML or (on present information) ever likely to do so.  In fact I wonder if there are any 2 car 25kv powered EMUs anywhere on the network now?

Wikipedia lists a handful of 3 car units (such as the 331 or 334), though no two car units...

Surely it's fast and relief lanes...

they have worked out how to open tins of cat food... they get their well trained slaves to do it for them...

What would they make of the "Gunpowder Plot" & Guy Fawkes?

A prime example that a conspiracy of only 13 people was large enough that the news of the plot got out early enough that it was stopped before it happened... or at least, that's what you would like them to make of it...

 

And his answer to the 1964 question? Throw it away on absurd conspiracy theories. Having worked, very briefly, with Neil Armstrong I actually find the "moon landing was a hoax"  claim offensive to a group of very brave men who knew exactly what risks they were taking. With a good optical telescope you can actually see the lunar landing sites. including the tracks of the lunar rover used on later missions. If he really did study physics I can't imagine that he passed many exams given his obvious ignorance of everything from.... well of everything.

 

Actually you can't see the tracks or the descent stage from Earth, no matter how good your optics are. The photos we do have of the landing sites, showing tracks are from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which is orbiting above the moon at about the height of 50km

Though they are very cool images... https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/apollo-sites.html

I can't see why two copper strips between the rails would ever be preferable to using the two existing metal rails. How do you hide two shiny copper strips?

On board power wouldn't need any fancy inductive charging system - apart from exhibitions, does anybody run locos for more than a few hours at a time? You can get a good amount of run time from a small loco and onboard battery.

If the range is enough they could be under the sleepers, out of sight.

I see thirteen drivers collected 6 points and a £200 fine for using their phone to take pictures of a crashed lorry in Norfolk... what a shame... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-46301319

apparently, most of the fools were HGV drivers... you'd have thought as a professional they'd have known better...

probably with the increase of cars that are unable to drive in slushy/snowy weather without them.... thinking back to an amusing trip home from Grayshott behind a Mercedes that could barely keep from spinning out on a straight, flat road because it was dumping too much power into the rear wheels... or overtaking a porsche that wasn't able to climb the hill at Churt...

none of which were as funny as the Subaru Impreza wrx (in rally paint job) that had binned it in the ditch halfway along the 3/4 mile straight by Frensham Pond!

Yep, there was a touch of humour in my post though.

 

Thing is, why not bring the USA product into line with what they sold in Britain, making them Marathon bars on both sides of the pond (and presumably in every other country as well).

Because they are a BIG market and we are a small one... I'll leave any possible political ramifications of that statement at the door as I grab my coat... ;-)

I once got a lift out of Milan with an Italian friend in some small Fiat... that was an... interesting... journey!

If lane 1 is empty then why are you in lane 2?

 

Rule 264 of the Highway Code states:

“You should always drive in the left-hand lane when the road ahead is clear. If you are overtaking a number of slow-moving vehicles, you should return to the left-hand lane as soon as you are safely past.”

Who said Lane 1 was empty...?? Polybear could be overtaking a line of HGVs...

As  a follow up - What's the longest you can do in UK with out meeting a roundabout? (As a guess somewhere around Glasgow onto the M6 and then down the M1 to London area.) My longest regular run is Taunton (J25) to the Hopgrove on the A64 York By-pass! (All slip-roads) although clearly you wouldn't ever be likely to do it, in full, non-stop. Theoretically though on a night-run you could stick the car on cruise control at Taunton and pootle on up the whole way without a gear change.

Round and round and round and round the M25...

Fair enough when there are gaps in the traffic on the main carriageway but if the flow is continuous how do those on the slip road safely enter the main road ? There is a junction near Oxford (at Botley onto the Western bypass heading north) that I simply do not use any more because the slip road is so short and the main carriageway is often nose-to-tail traffic.

which, if the nose-to-tail traffic is travelling at speed, must be travelling at well under the ~2 second gap, which would leave enough room for cars that have matched the speed of the main flow* to merge...

* - driving slowly down slip roads and then joining at speeds 15-20mph lower than the flow traffic and only THEN accelerating to speed is another issue entirely

isn't that more or less how Flickr was before they just gave everyone a TB for free?

What was true about the Doctor in the past may very well have changed, S/he is after all a Time Lord, so you shouldn't expect internal consistency. In a universe where things can exist and not exist at the same time it's entirely possible for the Doctor to have twelve and a hundred regenerations at the same time and to have never been female before and often female before (though "before" and after may be equally meaningless) 

 

In our world, I suspect the limit of twelve regenerations was a desperate attempt by earlier producers to escape from the character. They succeeded about as well as Conan Doyle did with the Reichenbach Falls!  

Or probably more a case of giving a bit more peril... so there's not "infinite" lives. Time Lords can die/be killed.

And whilst it's hardly surprising that in the early years some of the basic rules were flexible... I doubt any of them considered that 55 years after the first episode the show would still be going strong, but the 13 regenerations became lore enough that they came up with a method to get around it when they ran out of regenerations.

We've only seen male Doctors before, that doesn't mean there haven't been others  taking on a human female form.

 

apart from the fact that we have seen all the incarnations of the Doctor... Time Lords only have 12 reincarnations, and the Matt Smith was supposed to be the last, until he was given more the in Christmas special 'The Time of the Doctor' which introduced us to Peter Capaldi's Doctor...

I wonder if there is any medical evidence to link an increase in Seasonal Affective Disorder to the autumn clock change?

Fortunately I do not suffer from SAD, but anecdotally many people I know do not look forward to the change each year.

 

cheers

Well, they get the same length of sunlight (minus a couple of minutes) from the Saturday to the Sunday, and it's basically dark enough to have your headlights on driving home after work on the Friday before so it's not like you suddenly lose evening light...

Is there a separate thread for bridge strike stupidity ? : - www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-45964816

actually there was... http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/129036-bridge-bashing/?p=2958648

trains of 8 or 12 coaches stopping at Bentley, doors only open on the front 6. Ash Vale only has room for 8, but in the rush 12 coach trains are run.

I do remember Lady Cassandra, from the very second episode of the rebooted series... 5 billion years in the future and very proud at being the last "pure blood" human left...