patham

Good point. We see the videos on how conventional planes crab and waggle wings in windy landing conditions, and that is with the plane and pilots on the centreline axis. Could be very interesting if the pilots reference frames are substantially off the axis. Although maybe with a monster like that they only fly in near-ideal conditions.

I have heard they rate it in terms of km/hr the tape can withstand - is that correct?

Most of its pretty well worn by the time its tossed out. But all through the year you will see people put big ticket items out in the hopes that someone will take them and save them the hassle of a dump trip. Occasionally you get the community newspaper reports along the lines of "I just left my mower outside for a few minutes whilst I had a drink and now someones taken it" as people mistakenly think that anything on the grass verge is up for grabs.

There's an app for everything ? The youth of today have it easy, now in my day we had real first world problems. For strictly enforced on scavenging I think read "ever enforced", those utes are like flocks of vultures circling the streets on that first weekend before scheduled pick-up. I think the higher the property values of the suburb the more of them get tempted to come in the hopes of striking it lucky with rich peoples disposals.

Kerbside collection for the big ticket items should be coming up in a few weeks GrahamS2 in our neck of the woods. The suburb looks like a tip, as the council trucks never start on the date they say they will. Its not the neighbours that bargain hunt, its the scavengers from the poorer end of town that are professional pickers who come in their old utes and trailers to take what they can get. They can be fussy and just take what works for them, I've seen them just cut and take plugs off old appliances which hardly seemed worth it. But it is a great opportunity to declutter and throw out the stuff you should not have brought over in the first place (like the dishwasher - as they are all built in here). I gather there are some councils in WA who do not do area wide kerbside collections, but allow you to do a once-off skip bin per year, so you call in, have a skip delivered to your house, you fill it with the junk, and off it goes at the councils cost. Our weekly bins are also colour coded like that, except rubbish is weekly, garden waste and recycling alternate. And the worst is going off on a long holiday, and not knowing what the cycle is when you get back. Definitely need to take a walk along the street to gain a consensus of what bin to put out (as some people get it wrong anyhow).

You mean SA is Marileze bevok ?

JB Hi Fi in particular are renowned for hoiking up their prices quietly, and then a week later putting on a big yellow sticker with 30% (or whatever) off and dropping it back to about what it was earlier. Basically a case of Buyer, Beware. Shop around and pay no attention to the promoted notional discount.

Been there, done that awesomeness. A game drive is one thing. Paddling on the Zam, avoiding the hippocrocoducks, coming up close to the ellies and buffaloes is something totally different. You feel very small and vulnerable. My GF and I were the only clients on the canoe safari, so we had our own private guide. On one of the islands he took us on a walking safari up to the ellies in the reeds as the wind was in our favour. I had an 18 mm lens on my film camera and we got so close the head did not fit in the frame. The other memorable moment was an unseen hippo, grazing in the daytime on an elevated river bank, out of our viewpoint from the canoe. The hippo got a fright, thundered to the river and did a swan dive from height into the river. Right above us, as we were paddling hugging the bank. So we can claim to be one of the few people to have seen the underside of a hippo..... That was scary, we paddled like crazy to get the hell away from him. Cool memory refresh - thanks.

That diesel is so sweet its unreal. I load up with 4 people, luggage and food for a week, and the engine feels nothing, there is still more than enough power and torque for effortless highway cruising and overtaking. Unfortunately, as its the cool car in the family it has been co-opted as the school run vehicle, so even though I paid for it and its in my name I only get to drive it on the weekend.

Quite correct, this is good practice. But the hill in question was deceivingly flat at the top. We speculate (there were no witnesses) it must have been a very gradual acceleration to begin with until the hill steepened. But lessons have been learnt...

Yep.I have had 3 Kia Sorentos since 2005, one Hyundai Elantra and my second car at the moment is the new Cerato (don't know if its made its way to SA yet). The Kia's have been great, my 2005 one at one stage had an interesting fault - its digital clock started to run backwards - repaired under warranty. My 2013 one had a folding key that broke - replaced under warranty. And those have been my only issues with them. The Hyundai was a perfect performer - until the handbrake disengaged itself whilst parked on a hill and it turned into a runaway. A low probability but high consequence event as it went through a wall and over a retaining wall. Hence the new KIa courtesy of insurance. And a lesson not to rely on just one mechanism to prevent movement.

Its a hard life but someone has to do it. I can imagine it's a step up from the DC8 in Iraq and Afghanistan ?

I did a bit of navel gazing on this exact same thought over the weekend and came to the conclusion that as I have gotten older I tend to see more shades of grey rather than absolutes. That's probably a good thing in society I think, those who can only see black and white are probably less inclined to politely debate matters and more inclined to escalate when their point of view is not heard when they meet their polar opposite.

Smile and wave to the NSA everyone, we've now been flagged. I think the US have regulated ammonium nitrate sales quite a bit, and target farm supply shops as an intelligence information source after that event. Again, you could probably buy one bag a week and just repeat for a year or two to remain under the radar, but that would weed out the hotheads who want to do stuff now.

Will the bans make the world a safe place - No. Will they make it appreciably safer- probably not. But I think there is still some value to be gained in winnowing out some of the easier opportunities for the said maniacs to go large.Every little speed bump in their plans can be worked around, sure, but adds time and effort, and hopefully an opportunity for intelligence to intervene. And some mods just are not feasible, you cannot convert your grand-dads bolt-action 303 Lee-Enfield to automatic. And if someone spends all their time trawling illegalgunmods.com that might be a flag..... And I would hope that minimising the semi-autos would help in the going postal scenarios, when Billy-bob gets upset after being fired, goes home to pick up his weapons and returns back to work. I suppose its scenario planning. You can't cover mitigate all possible scenarios with one action, but maybe helping out 5% of scenarios is at least a step in the right direction. Still better than the NRA patented "hopes and prayers" approach.

I also agree to a point, but it will take some time to kill 50 people with a swiss army knife, giving more time for intervention, fight or flight. I do agree that its vehicles that are pretty lethal weapons that are easily available.

Think back to the dinosaur days of grainy black and white newspaper photographs being your primary visual knowledge of politicians (and maybe the 15 minutes of news on TV). That was probably a big leveller in the looks vs abilities rankings of politicians. Slightly related topic - I agree with Scott Adams (Dilbert creator) theory that people are born to the role of CEO, needing to be tall, big build and bald with a personality disorder.

I think she means well, and is very photogenic. I do not think she needed much original thought in the gun banning process, many political commentators / news sources that I could see from here were calling for NZ to follow the Australian example, not banning them could have led to an even larger outcry. Strangely, I think you can compare her political success to that of Donald Trump, in that I don't actually think they themselves believed they would both get to to the top and lead their countries. I tend to have a distrust of people who have been career politicians their entire lives, as I think a bit of work experience in the real world does you good (OK, Trump is a special case that does not help that argument). In that respect Jacinda is similar to the current QLD state premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, who's dad was a Labour MP and she just worked in the Labour party system until becoming an MP herself. But in Aus politics, and I think NZ to a degree, most of the pollies are in it for themselves and their next re-election. Thats why once you take the rhetoric and slagging out of it, in most cases the policies of the main parties are pretty bland and without major strategy or long term vision. No-one wants to commit to a 20 year strategy and give some unknown politician in the future the chance to get the glory by cutting the opening ribbon, its all about trying to maximise their own chance of re-election. Hence if there is no short term gain or sound bite it gets relegated to the do-nothing pile. Here in Aus its legally compulsory for citizens to vote, and in the next Federal election thats coming up soon there is actually no-one I would like to win, its just who is less useless than the rest. I can see why some people spoil their ballots in protest.

All good points. Might mark me as a dinosaur but I never bought into any of those. I am still holding out against Whatsapp as I do not want the family spam bonging me awake at weird hours of the day from far-flung distant relatives. The hub is about as social media-ey as I get- although some of those traits you mentioned still apply here.

I hear you, discussions that are fact based will be far more productive for everyone. But to be 100% verified facts, the only people who help in that are Boeing as they are the only ones with the intellectual property of the design calculation package. And technically, they would still be unverified until some other qualified outfit can review them. I suppose we could also consider it as factual if the FAA or similar investigator releases their final reports into the crashes if they have been supported in their investigations by Boeing. I do note this piece has linked below has a short little video (with not much detail) attributed to Boeing, but I have a feeling that everyone will be forced to join the dots in their own little way for now. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/asia/lion-air-plane-crash-pilots.html

I found the one source here: https://leehamnews.com/2018/11/14/boeings-automatic-trim-for-the-737-max-was-not-disclosed-to-the-pilots/

Posts 757, 767, 777 and 787 coming up soon now that you have set the precedent. But well spotted !

I will have to hunt for the links to the online info I paraphrase below. The engines are now way ahead of the CoG and Centre of Lift lines. I gather that the engine nacelles themselves are very poor wings, i.e. they generate their own lift.This is pretty nominal at normal flight angles, but as the Angle of Attack increases they produce more lift. As they are ahead of the CoG, CoL line; that extra lift tries to pull the nose of the plane even higher. That increases the Angle of Attack, which means they produce more lift, which increases AoA...you can see where this is going, its a negative feedback loop. Eventually the plane will be too nose high, the normal wing would have stalled and it's all gone horribly wrong. The MCAS is meant to pick up the warning signs of this situation and automatically intervene to bring the nose down.

The common Rainman myth. It's correct only if you make clear that you are referring to jet aircraft. Or maybe stretch to post-war multi-engine prop planes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Qantas_fatal_accidents

More results from my hard drive exploration. Still at Reno 2007. The RR Griffon engined P51 with the contra-rotating props is probably a good example of "just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should." It's all just engine - and the conversion seemed pretty prone to mechanical issues as it barely flew. The close-up of the highly polished spinner is a favourite of mine - just shows how much care and attention the owners and teams put into displaying their prides and joys.