Kiwi303

Been marinating this in brandy for a couple of weeks already.

Yeah, Our ones don't have STDs like your skanky ones :P

As to Back vs Spinal. The mention Back went by Ambulance, while Spinal went by Air Ambulance. I would make the wild guess that the Back guy got gouged externally by some scrap while the Spinal guy had internal injuries. Different priorities. Get one to the surgeons fast and fix those vertabrae in place, while the other can make do with some iodine and a bandaid until a nurse has a bit of free time to thread a needle.

The chinese mills buy a lot of the mid-micron Merino here after the Italians have cleared up the supply of superfine and fine micron merino. For REAL luxury, you need a Possum/Merino blend. Can't get it in Aussie... they LIKE possums ;)

Or do what one of the pacific island hopper lines does and charge by the Kg.

When I needed to have a translation done, I stopped by the British consulate in Chognqing, thinking as an official place they would have a list of reputable translation services I could use... Only one guy there spoke English, They seem to be set up to deal with Chinese wanting to go to England, not Commonwealth people with problems.

Probably tells the checking staff ground side, but that's not usually the plane side staff. Sounds like a miss communication between passing on the passenger manifest to the pilots for calc, and not updating last minute sales, standbys and walk-ins.

But the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament... In Christian Theology, the old testament is now a historical document, not the current operating manual for life. We no longer have to paint blood on the doors over passover or toss the yeast, and all the rest of the requirements of making burnt offerings on altars et al are obsolete. In Islam, if two statements conflict, the older has precedence... Think of what life would be like if the Ops Manuals could never be updated. changed, altered, varied or adjusted. Which is part of why good Muslims loathe Bahaii, their religion is an offshoot of Islam as Islam is a perverted used camel salesmans offshoot of Christianity. Mohammed used to be a Christian, before he started his own cult and marched off into the desert to convert the heathen, taking a large proportion of the Monophysite Christian heretics of the time with him. This left the dominant Dyophysite Christians that made up the Church of Rome/Catholic Church to dominate the theology until the Muslim hordes came out of Asia and took the holy land, sparking the Crusades.

If it's what I think it is, it's pretty solid built... I'm thinking the machined from solid bar used aluminum, but didn't really thin it out all the way, the external case sides look pretty slabbed flat. They mention Long Life... not Light and Sporty.

Interesting conrod lubrication, the didn't cross drill the mains and con bearings.

They already have their noses so far in that they can't withdraw them without losing any last sheds of credibility that they may have. Instead they have to see it through or lose any influence they may have. and given an oil rich zone filled with a religion which has their extrmeists planning mass extinctions of those not of their own religion... they believe they need the influence for national security.

If I was the Pres of the US... I would be leaning on the puppet in Kabul and the radical in Instanbul about making their Kurdish areas devolved self-governing states, let them and the free republic of Kurdistan (AKA bits of Syria that seceded) set up their own local visa-free passportless travel area for locals with local ID cards. Still pay federal tax to the country they are from and serve in the countries army, but responsible for their own schools, infrastructure, police etc, with local reserve milita formalising the tribal peshmerga into a official force rather than ad-hoc on-demand tribal levies. Things would be a lot more peaceful in the region. When you have one nation co-located on the territory of 3 others... things get a but sticky. Just too much loss of face in the capitals to be practical.

But over 1000 hours and still the lump of metal hanging off the front of the plane, is a little different that a litre of petrol being consumed in 3 minutes (20 L per Hr) and gone out the exhaust to mingle with other atmospheric gasses. . People think of consumables as things that are used and gone and no longer visible. The engine is a Depreciating Asset with a finite lifespan. Fuel is a consumable, you can't refurbish a litre of petrols worth of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxides back into fuel again. You can refurbish an engine back to "zero hour" rated.

They did... Remember "Peace in our time"?

well IIRC it is designed for rough surface takeoff and landing on poor quality siberian and second rate rural city airports. Often just frozen gravel. Which explains the extra weight... a beefier structure.

https://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/sites/default/files/shado/Divisions/Sydney%20Division/Southern%20Highlands%20and%20Tablelands%20Regional%20Group/INFRASTRUCTURE/AirTrafficControl-29Sep2011.pdf page 11 A bit hard for Kiwis to sneak in, but from Indonesia it doesn't look too bad for aero smuggling... Until you realise up there is where the Jindalee OTH HF military radar is pointed.

"784N/176Lbf thrust" How much thrust does a Jab 2200/Rotax 912 make with a reasonably standard prop on a typical microlight?

He would have had to be GA VH anyway if Australian reg, RAA is not ICAO and a round-the-world trip through so many different jurisdictions would make being an ICAO primary national organisation registration pretty much mandatory rather than being a delegated sub-ICAO class organisation reg. NZ on the other hand, all microlights are still ZK reg, so a RAANZ or SAANZ or SACNZ microlight is still on the ICAO affiliated national register.

Hand delivery by the flight crew too. And the part was pulled off another SeaRey owners plane and delivered to the airport at cairns to make the morning flight rather than wait for the 3pm one. Some great guys out there.

AH and AN are both correct. A is A in both Roman and Cyrillic, N is N in Roman and H in Cyrillic. So you have Antonov and Антонов. The ATRAN picture I posted has AH-12, ditto Red750's military picture. Ruby Star Airlines Belarus has a Wikipedia page which only mentions having 2x AN-12BP's With that zoom in and crop posted saying BK under the pilots window, not BP, I had a deeper google... and a visit to the Ruby Star web page. The mention having a fleet of several AN-12 but don't list makes. googling the reg number EW-275TI brings up some planespotting fact and photo sites. That one IS a BK, built 1970, on the other hand, reg number EW-338TI is a Ruby Star owned BP like the wiki page states they have. So they have both. The BK is a late model wide-door BP with modernised cockpit. Of the two, the BK in the OP is 1970 built, the BP I found was a 1961 build.

I don't mind admiring the girl....

Personally I don't see anything wrong with 600 kg. A decent plane can be had in the 300 to 350 kg empty weight class, with a MTOW of 600 kg you have allowance for 100 kg pilot, 100kg passenger and from 50 to 100 kg fuel. The Jodel D.11 for example lists on wikipedia as 340 empty. 100kg pilot and 100kg passenger and 60 kg of fuel. at a fuel fraction of .75 kg per litre you can carry 80 litres of fuel for that 60 kg, enough for a few hours travel. Ok, the jodel is a heavier plane designed as a GA, 620 kg MTOW as designed, but you could always register it as a microlight with 600Kg MTOW, sacrifice 20kg of capacity in order to have an RAA reg.

AN-12BP actually. The BK was only built for the military airlift services, the BP included civilian models with all military specific gadgetry left off right from the production line. Ain't Wikipedia great. looks the same as the picture in the Wikipedia article.

AN-12 not AN-128

Most, not all, but many, motorcycle suits are purposely highly slick and non-stick. You're better scrubbing off your velocity skidding over 50 meters than having the suit catch and tumbling for 15.