onetrack

I can recall reading that the British had no less than 22,000 military aircraft sitting unwanted and unloved, in early 1919.

Nearly all were broken up for scrap, some selling for a little as a couple of pounds - and many had only a few hours on the clock.

Nev, I don't need first-hand knowledge of Rudd's temperament and modus operandi - plenty of Labor people close to him have already outlined it clearly.

And there's nothing slanderous (definition of slanderous - "false and malicious") about my assessment of him, the precise same words have been used by others to describe him, and I used them with no malicious intent. The words are an accurate description of his character flaws.

What amuses me, is Tanya Plibersek seems to have done a complete about-face in her opinion of Rudd. She needs to have the footage replayed to her where she described working with Rudd as difficult, and how flawed his personality is.

Here Nicola Roxon (former Labor A-G, in case you forgot) calls Rudd a bastard, and for him to quit Parliament, in a John Button lecture ..

Nicola Roxon calls on 'bastard' Kevin Rudd to quit Parliament in John Button lecture

How not to be a boss like Kevin Rudd (SMH) ..

How not to be a boss like Kevin Rudd

Rudd would be an embarrassment to Australia if he was punted into the U.N. leadership position. He was an embarrassment as a PM.

He's another Trump - a bloke who mistakes movement for action, he's nothing but a blue-arse fly.

His airfares bills when he was PM were utterly staggering, and he spent more time in the air, than on the ground.

Anytime there was a pressing decision to be made at home, Rudd was on a jet, tear-arsing around the world, pressing the flesh with every 3rd world tinpot dictator he could garner a photo session with.

He sees himself as a world leader to eclipse Winston Churchill - when the sad fact is, he's an arrogant, narcissisitic, bullying, divisive, intransigent prick, who is a complete arsehole to work under. And I'm looking at the descriptions from Labor people who had him as a boss, to form that opinion.

Turnbull may have broken with tradition - but a proposed appointee to the U.N. position has to show the necessary qualities needed, by way of leadership ability, ability to unite people, ability to work with others, and a calm and steady temperament. Rudd has adequately demonstrated none of those qualities.

I might add, I've employed many hundreds of people over a number of decades, and I've operated a business with up to 103 employees at the one time, so I think I've acquired some character judgement skills, when it comes to assessing peoples abilities, and employment suitability.

Bex, I feel for those people who are losing their livelihoods in the car industry - but there's a maxim I live by, and these people need to understand it.

"The only constant in life is change".

With drastic changes, unending losses, and restructuring, comes opportunities. They have to be identified and seized. I've been there and done that.

In the late 1970's, I had to abandon all I knew, the industry I worked in, and all the goodwill and clients I built up with my business, to reset my life and start out again in a different direction - when I was cursed with a 400% increase in fuel prices within 18 mths, a drought that was the worst in 80 years, and interest rates that peaked around nearly 30%.

I actually had to pay 23% interest on a $100,000 bridging loan in 1983, to enable my total change of direction in life, and into the new industry I'd selected as the way forward.

The move paid off handsomely, but it was certainly a torrid time, and most of my white hair probably came from that traumatic period of my life.

In most cases, people who relied on the local car industry for their income will have to re-examine their skills, what they can utilise them for, the potential for them to move elsewhere for work, or the potential for them to maybe even start their own small businesses locally.

Life is a rolling train, and you have to ride the bumps and undulations, and the derailments, that your travel through life hands you.

Nearly all these car industry people will receive severance payouts - it's not like the factories have shut at 5 mins notice, and with no money left to pay anything.

Facthunter, the simple fact remains the numbers are against us. The total vehicle market in Australia is a little over 1M vehicles annually - for ALL makes and models. Compare that with manufacturers requirements that investment in a vehicle manufacturing facility has to be a guaranteed annual sales level of at least 250,000, just for that make, to ensure adequate ROI.

Falcon sales have recently been down to about 20,000 annually. Ford have been producing the wrong model for our market for too long, with lower build quality and poorer design, than the imports.

They stuck with a huge thirsty 6 for far too long, when high-tech 4 cyls and smaller capacity engines were taking the market by storm.

The only thing we can do with our manufacturing industries today, is to seriously upgrade and automate them, and seek out niche markets.

Car manufacturing in Australia is a dead industry, it's been dead on its feet for the last 20 years, and only constant huge Govt subsidies have kept it operational. Those subsidies largely only benefited global corporations.

The car industry in Australia should have been given a decent funeral and buried with honours in the 1990's.

It served Australia well from just after WW1 to the 1980's - but it was overtaken by technology, it was crippled by corporations who refused to invest in new automotive technologies, it was hobbled by manufacturers failing to recognise what the Australian customer wanted.

It was destroyed by global corporations selecting low-cost-base manufacturing zones, and utilising the benefits of favourable Australian trading regulations, that gave advantages to those third-world countries seen to be in need of trade assistance.

Those regulations never foresaw global corporations becoming the major beneficiary of those favourable trading laws.

Australian manufacturers never produced a local diesel engine, the Japs saw the market and filled it. Jap diesels rule in Australia now - yet, it could have just as easily been Australian diesels.

It's not like we lack the smart people to design engines - it was just Western global corporations protecting their investment in the engines of the day, and refusing to progress to new and better and more fuel-efficient designs.

Local manufacturers had to be dragged kicking and screaming into producing 4 speed transmissions in the late 1960's - when they all insisted that 3 speed trannies were good enough for everybody.

They refused point-blank to produce and install 5 speed overdrive trannies - so the Japs promptly met the demand.

The local manufacturers belatedly produced their 5 speed overdrive trannies, 5 or 8 years later - but it was too late, the Japs already had the market by the short and curlies.

Australian manufacturers never saw the emerging market for dual-cab utes. The Japs and even the Europeans did, and these vehicles are the biggest sellers in Australia today.

I can recall the brother buying a HQ Holden Statesman - which was only available in V8 and automatic transmission. He wanted a manual for improved fuel economy and preferred a decent 6 cyl rather than a V8.

The salesman agreed, he said they had told GMH there was a considerable market for a 6 cyl manual transmission Statesmans - and GMH told them they wouldn't make it, as it was deemed as detracting from the "luxury Statesman image".

I have a copy of an interesting book, called "The National Handbook of Australia's Industries (1934). This book was a Commonwealth publication, detailing all the industries in Australia in 1934, state by state.

A YouTube user shows part of the above book -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=domRo02ur4Q

It is mind-boggling what we produced back then, even though we only had a whisker over 4M population. The car industry alone employed nearly 40,000 people directly. Probably another 140,000 were involved in ancillary and associated work related to the automotive industry.

However, those industries survived because they were industries of the times, meeting the current demand, and wisely (for that era), protected by tariffs.

In the intervening 82 years, technological advances have wiped out many of those industries. The rest were wiped out by thoughtless total tariff removal, by poor management that couldn't see developing trends and meet them - and by favourable trading regulations that enabled an onslaught of products from low-labour-cost nations.

Total tariff removal only works when everyone does it - we did it, but a lot of other nations didn't. Who's the mugs, then?

Naturally, many of those imported products from those low-labour-cost nations today, are poor quality, but people (the buyers) largely only see the initial purchase price, not the poor quality.

The situation is not helped by retailers only stocking the cheapest products with the highest profit margins.

The future of Australia is not in manufacturing - it's in innovation, in producing new technology, ideas and inventions, that are world-class-leading.

Our future is in education and training the people in the 3rd world countries. Go to Singapore and see how well-regarded an education in Australia is.

We need to be pushing English-language proficiency, both for Australians, and for people from overseas who are studying here.

English is the world-recognised language of technology, of science, of engineering, and of high-tech construction - as well as aviation!

We are world leaders in many things - but no longer in manufacturing. We need Govts that recognise innovation and technological advances, and we need Govt support for industry and individual research and development, of promising and world-beating new processes and inventions.

America does this, and reaps the rewards accordingly. U.S. Govt support for R&D is huge, we need to follow their lead.

My dear old Auntie, despite living in Australia for something like 40 years, never lost her Scottish accent, as did my own mother - even after 60 years here.

Auntie ran a shop in Townsville for 30+ years - and yet, she goes into another shop there, and asks for a "2 pund of tatties, and pirn of threed"!

(2 pounds of potatoes, and a reel of cotton thread, to the uninitiated!)

I'd like to know how many of you can read and understand, "Da Tree Peery Grice"!

SCOTS - Da Tree Peerie Grice

This incident has obviously not yet been fully covered. I have yet to read about the Capt and FO, "wrestling with the controls", yet to read about the "passengers screaming in fear", as the aircraft "plunged off its designated flight path" to "avoid the looming major disaster".

Congratulations to Bill Leak, the resident cartoonist at the Australian newspaper, for this succinct effort - the barb made even more pointed today, by the speech given by Kizr Khan ...

Bex - Trump is a master of divisiveness, an expert in fomenting hatred and disunity. He's erratic, both in his outrageous statements, and in his decisions.

I can well imagine him running around Congress, screaming out, "You're FIRED!!!" - because in his mind, he's still running a reality TV show, and he has total power to hire and fire.

The man is a narcissistic, self-centred, Gangmeister. You know the type (I've got a SIL like it) - they start in the schoolyard, forming a gang to exclude you, because their gang is "in control of the yard".

They practice the "them and us" stuff to perfection, and send kids to Coventry for no more reason than some arbitrary decision by the Gangmeister.

They really are the very worst type of people to hand any major powers to, they will misuse and abuse those powers, to promote themselves over others, and to create disunity and hatred at every level.

I personally believe Trump suffers from severe bipolar disorder that has never been diagnosed or treated.

Some of the BD symptoms are described in the paragraph below ...

"People with Bipolar Disorder can become high, over-excited and reckless, or imagine that they are more important or influential than they are in real life."

It's a scary thought that someone with a mental illness is easily capable of becoming President of the most powerful Nuclear-armed nation on Earth, simply because of that countrys severely flawed electoral system, which is easily manipulated by the extremely wealthy.

As regards, your "policy issue" question, I don't believe that fits with this aim of this thread, but warrants a new thread if you want an extended discussion about manufacturing.

I can recall the local firebombing operators dropping a Dromader onto a suburban house in Perth, W.A. It landed on the carport, and there was only a surprisingly moderate amount of damage, and the pilot escaped injury. I guess he must have still had a little forward speed and lift for that to happen.

Stan has a problem. Every time he farts, instead of the typical BRRRRRAAARRRP! noise - it goes "Honda!"

This didn't really bother him too much, until a friend warned that there might be something wrong with him.

He visits doctor after doctor trying to find an explanation, but has no luck. All the doctors are completely baffled.

Eventually he finds his way to the Far East, and visits a wizened, knowledgeable, ancient Japanese doctor.

He explains the problem, and the old doctor nods knowingly.

"You have abscess!" says the doctor.

"An abscess?" says Stan.

"Yes. Everyone should know, "Abscess make the fart go Honda!"

"Mothballing" is a process that is wide open to various forms of storage - some of which are just plain detrimental to mechanised items.

Done correctly, mothballing requires steps to prevent corrosion from becoming a problem whilst in storage.

The U.S. military regularly mothballs a lot of equipment, and specific procedures for mothballing have to be carried out, when an item is being mothballed.

Personally, I have seen brand new reconditioned engines seize solid with cylinder bore corrosion, merely by being stored in a workshop storage area for 2 years, whilst awaiting installation - without proper steps being taken to prevent that corrosion.

Condensation exists in every environment where regular, substantial temperature changes take place. This is the reason for temperature-controlled environments, to prevent storage damage.

Oil drains off oil-coated surfaces within a couple of months, where an item of mechanised is not moved. This immediately leads to corrosion commencing on the formerly oil-coated-but-now-poorly protected, surfaces. Even in a hot and dry inland environment, this is still a problem.

If you store a mechanised item - ideally, it needs to be started and moved every 3 mths at least - or substantial protective measures need to be taken if it is going to be immobilised for periods of time that exceed, say, 6 mths.

Just my .02c worth - not specifically criticising the OP.

I got to admit, Clinton is a particularly poor offering on the part of the DemonRats. She is the ultimate operator in her lust for power.

Bex, the simple problem is, POTUS has the ability to press the Big Red Button without reference to anyone else.

He's "Commander-In-Chief" of all the U.S. Armed Forces, and it would take a brave man to refuse to carry out his orders.

I would not put it past Trump to make an ill-informed, irrational decision to nuke some country that he thought was trying to attack America, without full verification.

Nuclear football - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The problem with Trump is that he thinks America is voting to endorse Trumps businesses - not actually putting him in the position of governing the nation.

He's used to delegating all the important decisions and fine details in his businesses, to every one of his managers in his businesses, and he thinks he's still going to be able to do that when he's POTUS. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. The Prez has to personally make a lot of hard decisions.

Trump is the personality type we all hate to have as a boss. Intransigent in decision-making, and does about-faces in decision-making, so fast, it leaves you breathless.

They mistake movement for action, and they're good at agitating and fomenting movement, that does nothing to unify people. In fact, their agitation causes splits and divisions.

They produce nothing in their proposed ideas, that has any attention to fine details and precise methods.

That's for someone else to work out - just as long as they can see agitated people running around, they think they have achieved great results.

They propose lofty ideas and spout BS on a scale unparalleled - then backtrack on the visions so fast, it stuns everyone watching and listening.

Trump "promises to make America great again". He proposes to do so by re-invigorating American manufacturing.

This is the greatest and most breathtaking load of BS and empty promise, that any politician has ever spouted.

He doesn't seem to realise that his corporate mates are the ones who have destroyed American manufacturing - by moving all their manufacturing to China, to increase their corporate profits to mind-boggling levels.

If Trump thinks he can reverse this in 5 mins, with his major bullshitting skills, then I've got some land in Denver with ocean views to sell him.

This man will make the scariest Prez that America has had since Nixon. He makes Nixon look positively honest and truthful.

Donald Trump's top 10 campaign promises

Interesting to see that the construction of the 4000lb bomb appears to be a pure "blast" type - nearly all explosive, with apparently little by way of casing.

A fragmentation bomb on the other hand, has a thick casing of metal, designed to produce a lot of shrapnel and cause many shrapnel injuries to human bodies, sometimes more than 200M from the actual blast point.

A blast bomb relies on the shock wave created by the explosion, creating a lot of damage to structures - but having a lesser effect on personnel than a fragmentation bomb - because, even if people are caught in the shock wave, they nearly always survive, even though it may knock them over, or even hurl them some distance.

Bex, that tail post looks a little flimsy to my untrained eye. Seems like it needs more metal depth, front-to-rear.

Remember the Lovebird crash (VH-UGF)? That was caused by useless Oregon timber. The rudder post collapsed, and the result wasn't nice.

My recommendation is to steer clear of any Oregon in the build. Well, maybe you could have Oregon trim around the instrument panel.

'PLANE CRASH. - Grave Statement at Inquiry. BROKEN RUDDER POST. TEMORA, Tuesday. - The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954) - 29 Jul 1931

Nev, are you talking about seeing self-starters in the OP's video? - or the AWM WW1 film clips?

In the AWM film clips, I see one bloke pulling on one Rotary to start it - but I see no self starters anywhere.

The Gnomes were never fitted with self starters, but they could be hand cranked. They apparently started very easily - much more easily than a radial.

The following article explains why.

Rotary Engine Theory - 100 hp Gnome Monosoupape

Here's a great (and lengthy) article on the Hucks starter.

The Moment - First Hucks Start in 70 Years > Vintage Wings of Canada

That's a good effort - but personally, I prefer original film footage of WW1 - of which, an amazing amount was shot - and of which, a surprising amount has survived.

The AWM is the repository of nearly all of this footage, and they have both Allied and German footage. Here's some of it, it provides a lot of interesting viewing, despite being all silent. The incredible devastation of the countryside is very clear to see from the air. What is surprising, is the amount of actual in-air film footage.

Tucano - here's a good start.

AU: vintage gauge repairs - Google Search

I can vaguely recall from another forum, some crowd in Victoria doing a good vintage instrument reconditioning job - but their name escapes me right now. I'll need to contact associates to acquire their name.

I certainly cannot recommend Les Cooke Instrument Co in W.A. - they are as useless as a hip pocket on a vest.

I had a damaged pressure gauge from a Caterpillar hyd press that I wanted repaired, and they wouldn't even look at it!! It didn't even need any face markings repairs. They claimed they didn't have the equipment to re-crimp the brass bezel that holds the glass and seal in place.

In total disgust, I took it back to my shop and repaired it myself - and I must say, I produced a very worthy result, even though I don't have bezel crimping equipment, either!!

O.K., let's stop all this sidetracking, and get to right to the spec we all want to know - just how fast is this thing going to be, with say, 100HP pushing it, Bex?

Are we looking at at something that is going to give a Swiss Risen a run for its money? - or is it just going to be a whisker faster than a Cub?

Lots of people need to know this urgently - the amount of notes you can hear being rustled, will increase exponentially for every 10kts increase in promised design cruise speed, over your average ultra-light.

It's very hard to do comparisons, because we live in a relatively healthy world today, with huge advances in medicine, and very good treatment and control of diseases.

The actual ship losses were reasonably low - because the sailors and ship captains of the day were quite competent.

Most shipwrecks occurred when approaching coastlines, and unmarked, unlit, or hidden reefs and rocks.

The most dangerous areas were the Southern and Western coastlines of Australia - the infamous "shipwreck coasts".

There are in excess of 1100 known shipwrecks on the West Australian coast, with the largest number being sailing ships.

The dangers of sea voyages increased when shipping converted to the Great Circle route in the 1850's, via the lower latitudes, to gain the speed advantage of the "roaring forties".

The levels of seasickness then increased substantially, and serious numbers of people died as a result of severe seasickness.

It was not uncommon for dozens of passengers to die on a trip, and if a trip ended with only a dozen deaths, it was regarded as a very successful trip.

One captain received a lot of kudos for only losing 7 pax on his trip, in the mid-1800's.

Steamships rapidly became much more reliable, and shipping became much safer as a result, from around 1880. Steamships were no longer at the mercy of the winds, as sailing ships were.

Disease was rife in the 1700's and 1800's, and this was the major reason for deaths on the long sea voyages.

Hygiene was poor, there was no knowledge of germs or bacteria or viruses, and there was no cure for even relatively minor complaints.

You got sick, you often died - there was little by way of medicine, and little by way of life-saving surgery. Many a time, "medical cures" in bottles were nothing less than poisons.

Measles and smallpox were rife and nearly always fatal, particularly for children. The level of deaths amongst the children on early sea trips was horrendous.

As a typical indicator of medicine progress, my own grandmother (on Mums side) died in Scotland around 1913 - due to blood poisoning (septicaemia). There was no cure for septicaemia in 1913 and the docs weren't even sure what caused it. Today, a dose of broad-spectrum antibiotics will fix it and survival rates are very high.

Penicillin wasn't perfected until 1941, although it was first discovered in 1928.

From that point on, penicillin and the related antibiotics that followed, have saved hundreds of millions of lives from infections that would have previously killed them - including a large number of WW2 soldiers and sailors and airmen.

Then there's the time factor to consider. Sea trips from the U.K to Australia took months, flying today only consumes 2-3 days. So, on that basis, the comparison is essentially flawed.

Then there's the fact that todays flying is so safe, it borders on boring. If it was still early days of flying, and the pax numbers the same as today, the death toll would be in the multiple dozens weekly.

Sailing Routes: Museum Victoria

The Journey - by Sailing Ship | Maritime Museum of Tasmania

Groan! Bex, you'd better stick with your day job, instead of that night-time stand-up comedian aim.

IBob, I think I've pointed out there's plenty of positions for daring fighter pilots and aerobatics pilots, who love to display their skills pushing the envelope. Let's not just place them in a position where they can endanger the innocents. There are 11 innocent dead people in the U.K. as a result of one surviving stuntmans inability to make the link to the consequences of the failure of his manoeuvre.