willedoo

If anyone gives them a hard time about being such a small country, they can always point out that it's 7,000 klm. from one side of the Netherlands to the other. Just a lot of ocean in between that they don't own.

As an addition to the above comment on the amount of white space being a bit more glare on the eyes. It would probably be different for each viewer depending on their device or monitor size. I use a 950mm x 550mm TV screen as a monitor, so it's more noticeable than on a laptop for instance. It's like when they brought out the crystalbrite laptop screens. It was hard on the eyes initially, but after a while, you don't even notice it.

Seems to be working ok. It takes a bit of getting the old eyes used to the higher level of glare as there is a much larger amount of white. Now that I've found the return to top arrow, it's a lot easier to navigate back to the main page. All good, the eyes will adapt.

Madame MiG is worth a mention. Marina Popovich joined an aero club when she reached the minimum five foot height limit at the age of sixteen. After putting her age up to twenty two and battling the post war Soviet ban on female military pilots, she was accepted into a military flight school. She worked as an engineer and flying instructor, then went on to join the Air Force in a long career as a test pilot, reaching the rank of Colonel. She was the third woman to break the sound barrier and flew over forty types of aircraft, setting more than a hundred world records, some of which still hold today.

Red wine is known to swell the fingers.

I shipped an aircraft seat in from Germany once. The freight cost was bad enough, but on top of that I got a full A4 list of charges totalling almost $900 to get it released from Brisbane airport. And that was with no customs duty.

That is light; I hadn't done the conversion. I seem to remember when they had the test dummy neck breaking problem that it happened with weights under 60 or 65kg.. Can't remember the exact figure, but around that mark. Only one pilot was grounded until the above fixes were brought in. I think the problem was with low altitude ejections where seat/pilot separation is immediate. The low weight dummies caused the seat to rotate further forward, causing a bigger snapback of the neck when the main chute deployed, hence the addition of the panel between risers. At least, that's the way I understood it. The new MK.16 seats are an interesting development. The test bed photo below gives a good view of the firing gun twin tubes in the cockpit. That part is a major change and opposite to previous seats where the inner firing tube remains with the seat and the inert outer and intermediate tubes remain in the aircraft. To save weight, the MK.16 uses the twin guns as the rails and does away with the need for a side chassis. Basically upside down. The charged inner tubes are part of the aircraft and the inert outer tubes are fixed to the seat and egress with it. The drogue harness setup is moving more to the way the Russian seat works with a more rearward pull. A bit different from the older seats I'm familiar with where the drogue pull is on the top of the seat only. That had the effect at high speed of pilot and seat heading feet first into the wind blast, which is a safe way to de-accelerate. I guess there's always the possibility that the MK.16 drogue harness would have cutters to release the lower straps and provide the same feet first attitude if you egressed above chute deployment speed. The rocket pack angle would also be trying to push the seat onto it's back, so that might help in a high speed situation as well.

In answer to the above question, I've received this update: "The F-35 program introduced the final standard of the US16E ejection seat in LRIP 10 in May of 2017. This configuration of ejection seat incorporates a pilot weight selection capability and a fabric panel on the parachute risers to control head motion. These features work together with a lightened helmet to allow the full weight range of 103 to 245 pound pilots to safely eject from the F-35. These most recent seat improvements join other state of the art technologies previously incorporated into the F-35 escape system, including: • F-35B auto-eject system (the first use of an auto-eject system in U.S. aircraft) • Arm restraint system (the first in the U.S. Navy) • Leg restraint system (the first passive system used in the U.S. Navy and Air Force) • Single point water activated parachute harness release system on the F-35 seat (the first of its kind used worldwide) • Inflatable airbag head support (also the first of its kind used on any ejection seat worldwide) The F- 35 program has used modern technology to meet safety requirements more stringent than those used on any preceding tactical aircraft program. Upgrade of the F-35 fleet to the final standard US16E seat is underway and is scheduled to complete in 2020."

Just wondering if anyone has heard any updates on Martin Baker's progress on the F-35 seat problems. Last I heard, they were working on some fixes, and in the meantime had put in place a pilot minimum weight. At that stage, only one male pilot was cashiered and the only female pilot was above the weight limit. From memory, the fixes being planned were a head support panel between the risers, and a weight selection mechanism. I would guess that would be to alter charge or trajectory for the lighter pilots. The third idea was to develop a lighter weight helmet which is no easy task, given the amount of gear it holds. Here's some good test bed footage: Martin-Baker F-35 Lightning | Video | Martin-Baker Hub | Gradcracker - Careers for STEM Students

Ah yes, the holocaust conspiracy theory. What's obvious to some isn't always obvious to others. I twigged after reading your previous post which hadn't appeared at the time I was typing mine.

I might need a bit of help here; I'm a bit thick. I can see the progression and the wisdom page possibly representing connecting the dots. It's the Star of David on the conspiracy sheet where I don't get the connection.

That's an easy one. No to the former and yes to the latter.

On another angle, there's the theories of prior warning. Allegations that the attacks were carried out by bin Laden's crew as per the official explanation, but that prior warning of the event was ignored. The harshest theories could say that high authority ignored the warnings and let them go ahead for political gain. Probably a more likely theory is that the warnings only got so far up the chain and were being sat on until more solid intelligence was gained. Susan Lindauer has made a lot of claims in her book, but like all these things, it 's only one person's word to believe or not. https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0903/S00028/susan-lindauer-reveals-facts-about-911-warning.htm

Thanks, Methusula. I'm sure it would be an interesting thread. It's too involved a subject to be diluted in another thread. Look forward to it.

It probably would be a good idea to make a separate thread for the 9/11 thing. It would have no shortage of posts. It's totally unrelated to this F-35 thread and it makes it hard to follow the F-35 discussion when every other post is about 9/11. Methusala, with all due respect, you're in the wrong thread.

I'm a bit confused. Had a look through that article and must have missed the bit that was relevant to the F-35.

The decision making seemed to go from bad to worse; drop the TSR-2 then create the Phrankenstein Phantom.

Bruce, you are correct there; the Russians do get more bang for their Ruble. There's a few reasons for that. Firstly, the Russian Federation, when it comes to military manufacturing, has retained a lot of the centralism of Soviet manufacturing. The design bureaus and plants that survived the breakup of the USSR are now corporations and companies but the military and government still has a lot of control over them. The military and the scientists identify a need, run it by the government, then the company gets the order to design and produce. It all gets done in a typically no-fuss Russian fashion with everyone singing from the same page, from the government right down to the sub-contractors. They have a holistic approach to design and manufacturing which minimises the American style of corporate snouts in the public trough and sloppy, costly, piecemeal development. Their budget is usually about one tenth that of the U.S. in post Soviet times. Even in Soviet days it was a lot less. The Soviets knew they could never defeat the U.S. one on one in a full frontal conventional conflict because of the sheer amount of gear and money the Americans had. So they developed a system to do the most damage with minimal funds. Their concept was to develop highly mobile, hard hitting forces - eg. to strike at the American belly, retreat quickly and hit them hard somewhere else. In modern times, it's still the way it's done, enabling a smaller more affordable force. Also, the Russian forces are mostly defence orientated as opposed to the U.S. requiring large offensive forces deployed all over the world to ensure world domination (or world peace according to them). The U.S. has eleven carriers to project power outside their own country which is a huge drain on their budget. That compares to one old ex Soviet rust bucket on the Russian side that spends most of it's life in dock for repairs. The other factor is that the Russian defence budget has fluctuated quite a bit over the years. After the fallout of the Soviet Union collapse, the military fell behind badly. Their defence force was run down, outdated and diminished to the point of inadequacy. In recent years they have embarked on a rebuilding and modernization programme aided by revenue from high oil prices and political will. They were lucky enough to have been able to outlay the biggest expenditure before the oil price drop. In recent years, their budget has been around the 60-70 billion, but they've now reached the point where the military is up to scratch and they can ease off on spending. Next years budget will possibly be no more than Australia's or even less. They've done all the hard yards in spending. The timing has worked out as well. They were smart enough to spend up when oil was high. This came at a cost of reduced spending on the public and social programmes. Now that economic tough times are here, they plan to divert more funds to the citizenry and services. This will help government re-election and because of previous spending, shouldn't impact their defence capabilities. Prioritizing military development over social spending was a gamble to ensure they had the capability to defend the nation, but now it's time to turn it around. The government is very aware that social issues could be their downfall, and the fact that the Communist Party is no.2 in votes, is a constant reminder. The U.S. on the other hand, has a more even amount of spending from year to year as they are not subject to as many variables as the Russians.

That's sad. It's a tough gig to keep any air museum sustainable without a lot of government support. Most are high costs, low earnings.

Very true, Nev. I'm under doctor's orders at the moment to avoid B6. I was tested at almost twice adult male maximum levels which is well over the limit at which B6 will cause neuropathy symptoms according to the blood lab. I've been off it for three months and the peripheral neuropathy in my feet has improved quite a bit. The B6 was in the fine print on a bottle of another product, so the intake was accidental and not intentional. B6 is one of the few that doesn't have much leeway between maximum recommended levels and levels that are harmful. According to the experts, normal diet doesn't provide enough B6 to be harmful. If it's way too high, it can only be from supplementary sources like vitamin pills or sports drinks. Stop taking them and the neuropathy symptoms will resolve, as I think B6 is water soluble and is flushed out eventually.

It's a re-write of a 2018 incident.

PZh-1

Jerry, the way the government here in Australia is talking, our legislation will be quite clear. It will be a criminal offence for anyone to use the data for any purpose other than intended. Also a criminal offence to try to force someone to download and use the app. Illegal for any data to be stored outside Australia etc.. They've already knocked back law enforcement agencies requests to give them the power to access data. I guess we'll find out in a couple of weeks what the final legislation is. I think the government is serious about keeping the nasties out of it so as to encourage maximum takeup of the app.

The spokesman talking on the radio today said the privacy legislation will make it a criminal offence to insist people have the app.

Stalin only had two choices at Stalingrad - be ruthless or lose the war to the Germans. Stalingrad had to be held at all costs and if it wasn't, we'd all be speaking German now. One controversial thing was his refusal to evacuate civilians. The east bank of the Volga was heavily fortified with rear guard elements with orders to shoot any retreating Russians, so there was little risk of the troops at Stalingrad disobeying orders and retreating. But the other risk was that they would surrender to the Germans, and Stalin kept the civilians there so the troops would have something more than real estate to fight for. It worked. A lot of Stalin's ruthlessness had tactical reasoning behind it.