Dave Hunt

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

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

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.

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

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

She doesn't know my wife does she....... does she? Dave

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

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

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

I think it means a local landlord* Dave * French letter

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