patham

Guidance and fusing is most often at the tip, ordnance (explosive bit) immediately behind, then rocket motors at the back.

Waiting for winter will also give me time to arrange heart, lung and leg transplants so I can keep up with you ! What part of town do you start from btw?

Cool. One day in winter I need to go on an exploration ride up north - Nudgee, Boondal Wetlands etc.

You should have gotten a red one to be a Where's Wally. Nice background - where was that ?

Thanks - much appreciated. Luckily nothing too close to us in Brisbane, although yesterday was pretty hazy from smoke from a smaller fire on one of the islands offshore (about 60 km away as the crow flies). On topic, Qantas cancelled flights on Sunday afternoon into Canberra due to smoke and pyro-cumulus clouds. https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/canberra-star/qantas-cancels-flights-in-and-out-of-canberra-due-to-smoke-haze/news-story/427fc15142ca9dd6ba1fb67eb5eda28f

Just like most banks - if you can prove that you don't need their money they are more than happy to lend it to you as they feel that why should other people be making money off you if they can.

My first model kit in 24 years after being prompted to rediscover the hobby by my son. Academy 1/48 F 111C in Australian colours- a great and dramatic subject. I learnt that airbrushing is going to be required going forward - masking and brush painting didn't seem to work well for me. Although this particular kit is well known for bad seams, handling poor joints is another improvement area for me. However, I enjoyed myself and thats what counts. As hobbies goes, it may not be cheap, but the cost per hour spent is pretty reasonable -it has kept me busy from Christmas Day. Learning how to take good photos of the final product is an art form in itself that I still need to master. Please note the pigeon toeing of the pylons is due to an internal swiveling mechanism that rotates the pylons together with the wings. A great party trick, but in hindsight maybe I should have just decided on a fixed wing sweep angle and ditched the mechanism. Although research did indicate that the pylons did exhibit a degree of similar behaviour in the real world.... Thats another thing - I have really enjoyed having the internet to do the research on colours, units, load-outs, histories and anecdotes on the subject. Back in my youth you had the box art and that was about it !

Before and after pics - groupset, brakes, tyre and pedal revamp on my Trance 1 after 5 good years of service. Add in a full frame and suspension strip and service it feels as crisp like new. Looking forward to the first trail.

The picture is from somewhere in Aus. I have flown in the Alliance Fokkers and the Rex Saab 340's - but alas not the 225. One of the REX Saabs lost a prop in flight a year or two back due to metal fatigue on the shaft- that must have been exciting.

You beat me to it Ross. It;s been reported a few times that when the bus drivers or ferry drivers go on strike in Brisbane they let you on for free. I use public transport infrequently, but I have gotten on a bus here only to be told that the smartcard scanner was not working. Instead of being forced to pay for a cash ticket, I got the "Scanners not working mate, its free for everyone." line. In the end, in Brissie it's the council's and ratepayer's dime. The incremental cost to each ratepayer for a free trip, vs the disruption if the service is pulled is an equation I can live with.

Awesome videography. But one of my least favourite airports. Too sprawling, confusing and difficult to get around - at least to an occasional user. Having said that, the only time I ever got good customer service from a US airline was at LAX. I was due to fly on a Dash-8 to Reno to go to the Air Races in 2007. The day before there had been a Dash 8 landing gear collapse (one of several) in Europe, and either the airline or FAA decided to temporarily ground that type that morning of my flight. The airline desk was chaotic, as that was pretty much their entire fleet, but they did manage to rebook me onto a competitor, getting to Reno via Sacramento with only 4 hours or so lost. Didn't even have to flash the credit card.

That's what I have been telling people about the rainfall this year. If it was not for the reasonable rain in March 2019, your graph shows we would have been on the 1 percentile or off the plot entirely.

I am in two minds whether it's a bit hyped in the headlines. It is a bad combination of hot dry weather over quite a widespread area, and in Queensland at least, 2 years of below average rainfall generating a large number of fires. As to if its the worst ever - typically Victoria gets the worst fires as they get more rainfall, more vegetation grows, and when that takes alight things go downhill fast. A bad fire season in Victoria (which its not AFAIK) would generally outweigh a "very bad" season in the other parts of the country. The more north you go, in general the less fire load, and less intense the fires- although that's small comfort to those who still lose life & possession. You get to the scrub in far north Queensland, and you could probably jump over or walk around the fireline if you are quick enough there is so little burning. That said, the smoke haze in Brisbane yesterday from fires that are measured in hundreds of kilometres away was pretty intense. Health agencies were warning people should stay indoors, but was probably a case of CYA. My sources in the health system indicated that nobody in Brissie seems to have had respiratory problems needing to be admitted to emergency. I gather some blame has been laid at poor fire management techniques by authorities, such as reducing the frequency of controlled burns that reduce the fire loading. The local guys are pretty good at control burns in the forest that borders my house, so I don't feel too uncomfortable - yet.

That and good skills in necromancy in reviving a post from 8 months ago !

To be fair, inaccuracies in weather prediction are pretty global. I planned my Saturday morning ride around a temperature profile that was meant to peak at 28 degrees max. It did not cool down much over the previous night, and so the temperature at the carefully planned start time was about 4 degrees higher than it should have been at about 25, then climbing into the thirties. Add all the smoke and haze in the air from the regional bushfires, it was not so pleasant: so the youngster and I took it easy and called a short one.

One last Perth anecdote. I got the worst hire car ever from Perth airport - a real wreck from a Tier 1 hire car company (Avis). 75 000 km on the clock. The helper guy said no need to check for body damage - every single panel has already been messed up - so the form for body and window damage looked like it was coloured in by a 5 year old. It drove as badly as it looked. And for this I paid full price. Part of the Perth, take it or leave it experience.

I forgot about the fake grass. I visited my one buddy who had torn up his lawn and astro-turfed it. However, you are not allowed to put fake grass down on the pavement in front of your house - I gather the council insist on natural grass, aka dust. However- horses for courses. My buddy likes it there as he has high quality beach and surf a few blocks from his house - so he has taken up daily morning surfing. Brisbane does not offer that convenience as you have to head to the GC or Sunny Coast for that.

I spent a couple of weeks there in 2012 interviewing both Perth and Brisbane for live-ability, and also another week in 2013 acclimatising to Aus. Perth in winter = pretty crummy and rainy and cold. Its a winter rain area - so think Cape Town. Summer was ludicrously hot - December was >40 degrees. A dry heat though - so much better than Brissie at 40. Hence, Perth has two crummy seasons per year, Brisbane only one (peak of summer). Advantage Brissie. Perthfontein is a better name. It really was like living back in the early 90's in South Africa. All shops closed at 5:00pm. Late night shopping until 9:00 pm one day per week. All shops closed lunchtime Saturday until Monday. No such thing as deciding to have a spur of the moment barbie! I felt Perth to be tiny. After a week of driving there I felt I hardly needed a GPS, and so I thought that it could feel very constrained after a while. After all there is not much north, south or east. I also noted that most professional people I knew tended to live in only one or two suburbs - which might indicate the bogan-ness of everywhere else. Subiaco is nice- but scarcely affordable. Stuff takes forever to get there. All manufacturing, imports etc. are all East Coast, as is most farming. Friends who lived in Perth and since moved to Brissie always complained that ordering furniture or so in Perth would add at least a month for it to be delivered, and much extra costs to the process, and I think groceries were also more pricey. Kings Park is awesome, the Perth office is right next door. To sum it up this way, typically my company historically paid 5-8% more to staff in Perth to recompense for extra cost of living. I still found it a very easy decision not to go there.

Reasons to keep your eyes open on the tarmac - Antonov 124 parked at the back end of Cairns airport. Excuse the mobile picture taken through the Q400 window. Cairns also has one of the last Shorts Belfasts parked up and rotting away in the tropical environment.

If you had mega-bucks to spare, starting up a small scale RR Merlin block casting factory could be pretty lucrative, and if you are in for penny you may as well make the other bits too. Those engines are scarce now that every Tom, Cruise and Harry has a P51.

Good call about finding a local club - that should be pretty inspiring. I think I want to keep the costs down for the moment as I also need to fund his mountain biking. So airbrush and mod- parts can wait a while. I suppose there is a sweet-spot between time, cost, effort and realism, and that will be different for everyone, and hell, it would even vary over time for the same person.

The 11 year old youngster wanted to do his first ever plastic model kit after being inspired by going to the aircraft museum a few weeks ago. He had been given a Hasegawa 1:72 Strike Eagle 4 years ago, when he was way too young to attempt it. As it stands, this kit has a gazillion fiddly bits - who has time to glue the lugs on the ejector bomb racks - especially when Strike Eagles can carry so many bombs in the first place. Tonight will be the finishing up of the armaments and maybe decals, touch up paint tomorrow. I think he did well (needed a bit of my help from time to time and me looking over him to explain the instructions and methodology). Room for improvement still - some brush marks on the paint and some joints really need filler which I was not able to get at the local shops, but probably he was as good as I was at that age (I remember starting at about age 9 though, on simpler Airfix kits). The joint lines were not helped by the Strike Eagle really being a rehash of their other Eagle kits, so the conformal fuels tanks do not have locating pins - they are just extra blobs of plastic to be as best aligned and glued as you see fit. At that age, discipline and patience to paint the inside of the cockpit, ejection seats does not exist, but I was the same back then too. I have convinced him that 1:48 is the way to go for most aircraft subjects - although I still have to finish my own Italeri 1:72 MH-53 Pave Hawk helicopter I have been carrying around for 23 years....

Bombardier sold off a majority share in its old C-series program to Airbus who have relabelled them as A220s. It has also sold off ifs Q400 and Dash 8 program to the same people who own Viking Air (who already had the rights and Type Certificates for the older DHC planes). So Bombardier are now sticking with trains and bizjets.

According to this no-name website - about $100 to 120 M. I always had it in my mind at $120M, with trip7's at double that. http://newsinflight.com/2018/01/28/2018-list-prices-of-boeing-and-airbus-aircraft/

That price seems a little high compared to the nominal list price of the plane its fitted on. But then again, it's all marketing..... Buy 2 engines, get the entire plane for free. Or buy the plane and engines cheap, cheap up front, then pay through the nose for spares and service for the next 20 years. Ps. I wonder what that last 50 c in the price buys you - that's a pretty specific number? Maybe a coke for the poor sucker who's delivered it from the stores to you ?