patham

Magnum PI style !

Pretty much all of the edited list above applies in Brisbane. Wife lost her phone at the beach, it was found and they let us know by phoning the most popular outgoing number (and luckily that was me). Wife leaves garage door open quite often, and I am more scared of the spiders and snakes coming in than of stuff being taken. Door is also occasionally unlocked, and once or twice left wide open. No self respecting burglar here would steal a 55" TV though, the health and safety aspects of heavy lifting would shut them down. They would only take stuff that fits in their pockets !

Why the minus, that looks like a great summer's day in Auckland

New Zealand security and access control: Ultimate Level.

Topgun 2 trailer can be found at this article here: https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/114353186/tom-cruise-surprises-comiccon-with-top-gun-sequel-trailer

Yep, the US labour law has very little "workers rights". I also understand that if you are in an executive, managerial or financial type role, people get scared to take all their annual leave allocation as it might make them look like a slacker compared to their co-workers, and hence be the first person to be let go. Which can be done fairly arbitrarily.

Likewise. The start is amazing scene set-up, with the moody shots of the flight deck, with steam from the catapult shots to build up the atmosphere. There used to be a pub in San Diego (where the true Top Gun base used to be) that was frequented by the real top gun pilots, and the basement pool room had tons of F14 and pilots memorabilia as its theme. That was a pretty cool place to have a frosty. Back to the question: Tom Cruise & Val Kilmer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gun:_Maverick https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26505/an-f-14-tomcat-has-returned-to-the-deck-of-an-operational-carrier-for-top-gun-2-production By the way, the War Zone is a pretty good website for military articles, with as usual, an interesting cast of characters who frequent the comments section. It's worthwhile browsing.

Anyone else have Kenny Loggins "Danger Zone" playing in their head right now? Topgun 2 being filmed as we speak.....

And if its a Ford Kuga the meme is doubly appropriate !

Quite right. However I thought that adding a padlock will deter the casual thief, the one who carries around the massive M30 spanner (or whatever it is) to unbolt the tow ball will probably have the tools to get the lock off anyway.

Good work. I had plans of splurging and paying stupid amounts of money for a Lightning flight with Thunder City in Cape Town for my 40th birthday. Dave Stock's tragic crash in a Lightning in 2009, and subsequent closure of TC put paid to that. But from what I remember of the investigation, safety standards at TC were not leading class, maybe it was an accident waiting to happen.

I think I have seen a hyper-realistic painting that could have been the source for the Tomcat part.

No, pretty sure its photoshopped. The US had stopped air testing of nukes by the time the F14 was around (i.e. all tests after 1962 were underground, F14 first flight was in 1970), and the F14 was never involved in even being trialled or certified to carry nukes.

We may have a winner for the worst photoshop image in the world contest.

Its already dissolved the spoon !

And a few more to Egypt and Qatar.

I can't comment on capabilities but the Rafale just looks so much more graceful than the Eurofighter/Typhoon.

Looks like you broke one of them on the trip.

I am not looking forward to that. I think the Sydney- JHB route must be one of their most profitable, I have done 4 return trips on that and it is either full, or 95% full. With losing close to 30% of the seating capacity from the 747s, that flight would always be full, and there will be less chance of booking flights on days you want or for ticket specials to occur. I had kind of hoped they would try an A380, but no such luck.

There are some pinch points and injuries just waiting to happen....

Yep - back then we had to project our own shadow puppet movies on the cave walls in the firelight for entertainment. My favourite movie star was Deformed Rabbit.

its been a while since I have seen a Worth1000.com watermark. It was the go-to website for people to display their photoshop skills. One could spend many hours perusing their galleries.

I did a 2 week holiday solo a thousand years ago, mixture of family and prepaid accomodation/travel. I budgeted $100 per day average for dinner, drinks & entertainment, and that did cover the expensive Queenstown type tourist activities and had some cash to spare at the end. So $200 per day for yourself is probably OK, but if you need to cover expensive activities and meals for the kids or other family members those costs can rack up quick. Movie tickets, slushie and popcorn x 4 (for example) is a scary number in Australia & N.Z.

The second Sydney airport currently being constructed will change that cosy relationship, being 44 km west of the CBD. If its like Melbourne, the far flung airport will be where the low cost airlines fly. The new airport will probably generate the usual amount of complaints at start-up from people who have not read the itinerary or ticket details properly and head off to the exact wrong one.

I was very tempted to try and be punny, but thought it best to leave it to the audience.