Dave Hunt

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

When there was a Chinook Fly-past for the Aircrew** killed in the Mull of Kintyre crash, one of the Aircraft reported that their GPS Nav System was five miles out.....

 

**Who were basically "hung out to dry" and used as scapegoats IIRC - I think that may have been corrected now, at least in part.

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.

I remember seeing it run at the Rainhill 150 and it just seemed to float along the track - a beautiful thing to watch.

Dave

And some attempts at humour fell on stony ground 😕

Dave

52 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I think one of the bits of knowledge we had to retain for 0 level woodwork theory was about elm and how it was used for docks and buildings that got wet and dried out as it was  rot resistant . 

I only did woodwork at school for one year aged 11-12 and all we did was make a load of different joints in bits of 2x4 IIRC. Not exactly fascinating stuff really. For the second year I had to choose one of art, woodwork or music and chose art.

Dave

And before HH intervenes, I refute the suggestion that I then became a p!ss artist.

5 hours ago, bbishop said:

All I know about guns is that when I put the sight thing to my eye, there is a bloody great bolt in front of my face.  In the CCF, the other cadets got the Lee-Enfields, I was given the map.

4 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

 They obviously saw potential Naval officer material.

Aren't most of the maps the Navy use just all blue?

Dave

5 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

And they support vast piles of stone architecture with apparently few problems to do with settlement - although the campanile of St Mark's did collapse in 1902.

I am led to believe that the greatest threat to the stability of Venice's buildings is the wake from cruise ships.

Dave 

1 hour ago, Ian Abel said:

You DIDN'T POST THAT, DID YOU!!! 🤣🤣

 

Fortunately, the Mrs doesn't see my ER thread/contributions, otherwise she'd be tracking you down sir! 😮

If mine ever saw it I'd be singing falsetto.

Dave

I've got one already. I call it the wife 😂.

Dave

4 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

First day on the job in the US I asked the department admin Nancy if she had any rubbers.

 

My finest hour when I first went to work in San Diego in the mid-80s was to ask a buddy in a bar one Friday evening in quite a loud voice, "Terry, can I bum a fag?" The place went silent until my mate said, "He's a Brit - it means can he have a cigarette." Even then, though, I still got a lot of funny looks.

Dave 

16 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

Hmm.  Preservative (preservatif?) means something else entirely where Jamie lives!

I think it means a local landlord*

Dave

* French letter

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

Add in the fact that Timber Preservative has gone all cuddly?  (Creocote?  Cr@p - you can't beat good ol' Creosote any day - I believe the likes of Farmers etc. can still buy it - but in nothing smaller than 25(?) Litre drums.

 

Also, timber that is supposedly "treated" when manufactured gets such a miniscule dunking etc. that it's barely worth the effort;  when Bear created a raised flower bed in the back garden I used softwood "railway sleepers" (ever tried shiftin' one of those without help? - genuine hardwood jobs would be nigh-on impossible to shift on your own unless your name is Arnie).

I stood the ends in Creosote (I had a bit left) overnight - it really hoovered it up thru' the end grain.  Each one then got rather a lot of coats all over - so hopefully they'll last a while.

 

 

When we lived in Boston (Lincolnshire) there was a works just outside the town where telegraph poles were pressure treated with creosote (and, I believe in earlier times railway sleepers were treated as well). You could smell the creosote a mile away. The works stood alongside what had been the Boston - Grantham railway line and had its own narrow gauge system. It closed in the mid-80s.

Dave

5 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Perhaps what's needed is the vacuum loo, ensuring a good seal between derriere and porcelain.

Although the loos on the cruise ship we went on were vacuum operated, I didn't try seeing what would happen if the flush mechanism was operated whilst I was still sitting on it 😫.

Dave

A friend of ours is fanatical about closing the loo lid before flushing as she claims that otherwise there are zillions of widdle and/or poo particles ejected into the atmosphere.

Dave

Personally I think that if it is desired to hide appliances there must be something wrong with the appliances. When we were rebuilding our kitchen the salesperson made great efforts to persuade us to include new, built in appliances. I told her that as we already had extremely good, reputable brand appliances we would stick with them. She then tried the 'ah but it will look classier if they are built in' approach, to which I replied that we wanted a new kitchen, not a 12 inches to the foot scale doll's house. At that stage she gave in (and obviously accepted that her commission would be lower).

Dave

A nice day here in rural Hipposhire so I’m just off for a walk - only about half a mile this morning as I‘m feeling a bit sore after doing over a mile yesterday but I’ll do another short one this afternoon. I’ve also got a Zoom meeting with some friends later and I’ll be baking a cake for a friend’s upcoming birthday. So, best get on with it after I’ve finished this muggacoffee.

TTFN

Dave

When we lived in a small village in Lincolnshire, the house across the lane was two Elizabethan cottages knocked into one and was a listed building. The chap who had bought them was in the process of rebuilding them using the original wattle & daub method due rot in the corner timbers. He was replacing one wall at a time by supporting the roof and floors on pole jacks then taking the wall down and rebuilding it. The new corner posts were oak with some sort of preservative treatment although I don’t know what it was, and when I asked him how long he was expecting them to last he said that since the original ones had been in for over four hundred years he didn’t think that he would have much trouble in his lifetime. The only alteration he was making to the original structure was to include a French drain all

round the outside of the house to prevent the ground from retaining water.

Dave

I was taught as a lad by an uncle who was a carpenter that if splicing a piece into an upright outside timber, always make the join at an angle with the bottom of the join on the outside face. That way water will run freely down the join line and not collect there, thus avoiding rot.

Dave

Back to walking a (slow) mile today, although my back didn't half ache afterwards. I was thinking about spending some time in the workshop this afternoon but I had to have a lie down instead. It wasn't all wasted time, though, as I did a lot of thinking about how I'm going to make the sheerlegs for my layout. Ah, well, onwards and upwards as they say.

Dave

40 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Meanwhile in the "heart of stone" class, some notably idiotic dog stories around at present...

........The Golgafrincham B Ark must be refusing bookings daily... 

Wasn't the population of Golgafrincham wiped out by a virus picked up from an unclean telephone after all the hairdressers and telephone sanitizers were shipped off in the B Ark?

Dave

I don't recall which one it was but a friend who models in OO told me that an Iain Rice plan that he liked the look of couldn't actually be built because the necessary pointwork wouldn't fit in the space available.

Dave

What was the question?

Dave

1 minute ago, SM42 said:

OK, I think I'm trying  too hard.  

 

I've just spent 20 seconds looking in the fridge and couldn't see what I was looking for

 

Hardly surprising as I was looking for the vacuum cleaner attachments.  

 

I may need a lie down.

 

Andy 

Don't worry Andy, it's just your brain practising for old age. You may ask how I know this..........?

Dave

1 hour ago, Tony_S said:

I like the 13 1/2 inch dimension…

Probably half an inch bigger than Iain's front to back waist measurement.

Dave