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The People I meet.

Recently I was in Coffs Harbour for the Caribou 50^th Anniversary Bash and decided to take a break during the celebrations to catch my breath. I found a nice comfy lounge on which to sit for a few quiet minutes but alas, it was not to be. It seems I was oozing Radtechitis as I was spied by several of the Resort’s girls who couldn’t resist the opportunity to drape their lovely selves upon one’s person no doubt endeavouring to absorb some of that alluring Radtechitis that radiates from one’s body.

For what seemed an eternity I fought the good fight to repel these lovely girls but alas, my stamina faded and I had to acquiesce to their desires. Fame is such a burden….

Balus bilong Bob.

Bob Webster, (right) a friend of ours who lives in the US and who, from time to time, helps us sort out our unsortable problems has had one of these delightful little aircraft for some years and regularly trusts it to take him all over the place. He recently did a trip from Oklahoma to California and overflew the Amedee Army Airfield (without being shot down) and took a few pics – you can see them HERE.

Amedee has a 10,000ft strip which was built about 1942 and was known as the Reno Army Air Base Auxiliary Flight Strip. It was built as an emergency airfield for military aircraft on training flights and after the war was retained by the Army and is now part of the Sierra Army Depot. The word PART is the definitive word, have a look at the size of the place and the huge amount of equipment housed there. Our bases look like toys when compared (see HERE), (we've got more trees though) everyone based there would need their own private jeep just to get around. I’d like to see one of their main bases.

Bob’s little aircraft, which is build and sold in kit form by Lockwood Aviation in the US is known as the Air Cam. It's powered by 2 X 100HP Rotax engines mounted in a pusher configuration and has a useful load of 640kg. It stalls at only 63 km/h and can be comfortably flown at any speed between 80km/h and 160km/h but the airframe starts to rip itself apart at 180km/h. Its 105 litre tank holds enough fuel to keep you in the air for 6 hours after which you could have covered 550 kms. That’s enough to get you from Melbourne to Canberra. It requires only 200 ft to get airborne and 300 ft to put it back down again and should you lose an engine on take off, it will climb out on one at a respectable 300 ft/min. A great and very safe little aeroplane.

Half his luck we say!!

You can see it in action here.

NBN

We recently received a request from a reader asking us if we could check with the powers that be whether it was preferable to have cable to the home instead of copper to the home. This reader had been told by someone that when the NBN was rolled down the street you had the option of choosing either. And as he had the Optus Cable bundle (internet and phone) he also wanted to know what would happen to that when NBN came calling.

We sent off an email to Mr NBN and had a chat to them via phone and eventually we received the following non-committal 'mother-hood' reply:

"An NBN Co spokesperson said:

• NBN Co is building and operating Australia’s largest national infrastructure project. The goal of the National Broadband Network (NBN) is to bring better broadband to Australians.

• Due to the nature and size of our country, the NBN is being rolled out in stages using a mix of technologies best suited to each area.

• NBN Co has been tasked with providing download data rates of at least 25 Megabits per second to all premises as soon as possible.

• As at 4 September 2014 there were more than 251,000 homes and businesses connected to the NBN across all technologies (fixed line, fixed wireless and satellite).

• NBN Co is currently trialling  different technologies in order to roll out the NBN quicker, more efficiently and at least cost to taxpayers. One of these technologies is fibre to the node (FTTN) which  marries fibre optic cables with Telstra’s copper lines in a street-side node cabinet to deliver fast broadband to homes and businesses.

• As the NBN rolls out across Australia, we will inform the community and update the rollout maps on the NBN Co website. Maps of areas covered by the NBN rollout are available at http://www.nbnco.com.au/when-do-i-get-it/rollout-map.html "

Which told us absolutely nothing!  We spoke with them again after receiving the above and we were told the following.

• If you live in a densely populated city suburb, odds on you will get cable to your home.

• If you live in a small town you will probably get cable to the node then copper to your home.

• If you live in the country you will probably get cable to a centralised WiFi transmitter and will have to cope with a WiFi connection to your home.

And when NBN comes rolling down your street, if you're on Optus cable (or any other system) that will go and Optus (and the other providers) will pump the data down the NBN pipe. There will be no optioning - you gets what you get!

This seems to be the complete opposite to what we were told prior to the election, I was under the impression that fibre to the home was too expensive (a Labor initiative) and that the LNP was going to water this down by connecting fibre to the node then copper to the home and save all Australian tax-payers a bundle.

Seems this just isn't so and we're going to get the Labor plan afterall!!!

Chopper’s last ride.

The Perth RAAF Association’s Aviation Heritage Museum finally got its long awaited Iroquois helicopter. The ex RAAF/Army/RAAF UH-1H Iroquois (A2-296) arrived at the Bull Creek Museum in July and was placed on static display on the site that had been patiently waiting its arrival.

This aircraft was first delivered to 35 Sqn at Townsville in November 1973. It was then transferred to 5 Sqn at Fairbairn then in 1990 when all the RAAF’s rotary aircraft were handed to the Army, 296 joined 171 Sqn at Oakey Army Base, west of Toowoomba.

In August 2007 it once again joined the RAAF and was off to the Aircraft Research and Development Unit (ARDU) which had moved to Edinburgh from Laverton then it was flown back east to Archerfield on the 12th December 2007 where it was prepared for storage in the Meeandah Army Base near Brisbane Airport. In 2012 it was promised to the RAAFA's Aviation Heritage Museum at Bull Creek.

The helicopter is in immaculate condition and seemingly complete down to grey lamb’s wool seat covers, seat belts, instrumentation etc. It wears the green/tan/black camouflage scheme and has the RAAF ARDU emblem in black on the nose and black ARMY titles on the fuselage as it last served in dual markings with ARDU. Although it was born after peace had broken out in Vietnam, while at the museum it will become the centre-piece of a Vietnam era exhibition and will be displayed in a replica sand-bagged revetment with a large background mural of Hueys flying over the jungle.  Click the pic above to see an ABC 7.30 news item covering the delivery of the aircraft.

60's music and the occasional distinctive “wokka wokka” sound playing over loud speakers will really complete the scene.

Click the pic (above) to see an ABC report of the arrival of the aircraft.

Pete Robinson, who headed up the blokes who put the aircraft back together and then on display, was a sumpie brat on the 14th intake at Wagga back in 1960/62.

Pete did a tour of Vietnam with 9 Squadron from April 1969 to Feb 1970.

TV Commercial.

Some TV commercials are funny, some are informative, some just bore the socks off you. Yet, every now and then one is released which is worth keeping so you can replay it over and over again. This is one of them – have a look HERE.

MH-17

Laurie Lindsay sent us a copy of the initial incident report for MH-17 - you can read it HERE.

More aircraft for Amberley.

The Magazine, Australian Aviation, recently reported that the Defence Minister, Senator David Johnston has flagged the acquisition of further Airbus KC-30 tanker-transports and Boeing C-17 airlifters for the RAAF.

Minister Johnston suggested the next Defence White Paper, due for release next year, will propose the acquisition of two extra KC-30As and one or two additional C-17s. One of the KC-30s would also feature a VIP interior for international travel by the prime minister.

“When you get good service from a platform it prompts you to say, why don’t you get some more?” the Minister was reported as saying during an interview aboard a KC-30 bound for Darwin. “It [the KC-30] allows us to go anywhere in our region and far and away beyond that.” The report also quotes the Minister as saying acquiring additional C-17s is a “no-brainer”. The RAAF currently operates five KC-30A tanker-transports with 33SQN and six C-17s with 36SQN, with both Sqadrons based at Amberley.

Acquiring additional KC-30As “makes sense”, the KC-30 program is coming good, the boom and pod hardware and software remediation development is wrapping up, a new software load is expected to fix many of the minor idiosyncrasies and work-arounds of the original design, and the aircraft has proved its strategic reach in recent ALS (air logistics support) taskings to the US and Europe, and on long-endurance tanking missions in Australia.

Separately, Minister Johnston remarked in Darwin last week that “I am optimistic this aircraft will soon be removed from the Projects of Concern”. (The KC-30 acquisition is being managed under the Defence Material Organisation’s ‘Projects of Concern’ process due to issues with the aircraft’s refuelling boom system, which are close to being rectified.)

As well as Australia, the KC-30 (known outside Australia as the A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport [MRTT]) has been ordered by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

Australia has a unique, but limited, opportunity to secure additional C-17s. Boeing has commenced assembly of its 269th and last C-17 at its Long Beach, California plant, with production due to wind up next year. However, the company is building 15 “white tail” aircraft without a customer to date. India (which already has 10 on order) is reportedly interested in six of these, and Boeing remains in ongoing discussions with existing C-17 operators and potential new customers regarding the remaining aircraft.

Scootarbor.

Ex-RAAF bods and bodettes ride across the Nullarbor to raise funds for Beyond Blue.

Ted, who some say was not a very good Radtech, joined a group of veterans to raise the profile of mental health and lend a hand to those now returning from war. A group of old buggers, 20 men and women aged 65-75, rode 10 scooters across the Nullarbor aiming to raise $100,000 for Beyond Blue.

The 2,400km trip took the 50cc scooterers 10 days.

Ted and others have told us they will record the event and we’ll bring you pics and a story next issue.

Dr Dennis Jensen MP, the Federal Member for Tangney (WA) gave Ted a mention in Federal Parliament, you can see it below.

And Here's some video taken when they were half way across the Nullarbor.

And HERE is some more.

Boring Cars.

These days all cars are designed in the wind tunnel. Cars have to be “slippery” – they have to power through the air with a minimum of fuss with the buzz word being co-efficient of drag or CD. Numbers like a CD of between 3.0 and 3.5 are the holy grail but these numbers don’t mean a lot as a cars’ total drag is its CD multiplied by its cross sectional area. So a large car with a low CD could still have more drag than a small car with a high CD.

When a shape is designed and refined in a wind tunnel there has to be a time when it becomes the ultimate shape. Aeroplanes are a classic example, they are designed to slip through the air with a minimum of drag and refinement has made them all the same. What happened to aeroplanes has now happened to cars, they have all adopted the one "perfect" shape, the only differences being in wheels, colour and head lights – which is boring. Have a look at the pics below:

There’s lots more and from a distance you can’t pick them apart. And it’s not just the sedans that are the same, the SUVs are the same too, have a look:

It’s all to do with how many kilometres they can squeeze from a litre of fuel which is a bit silly really. Fuel has always been the lowest cost associated with running a car. The NRMA says the average weekly fuel cost for a 6 cylinder Falcon is just under $30 whereas the total cost of running that particular car is $233/week (See HERE).

If fuel costs $1.50 a litre and a car does 15,000 klms per year, a car that uses 10 lt/100km would cost (in fuel) $2,250 in a year whereas a car that uses 9 lt/100klm would cost $2,025 – a saving of 2.8 litres or $4.30 per week, less than the cost of a cup of coffee, yet everyone makes a huge fuss about that 1 litre saving.

Back in the 1950’s, when fuel wasn’t the main concern and building cars that people would and could admire was, manufacturers came up with some wonderful machines. Have a look at THESE. Even though they are concept cars, it shows that designers were determined to build cars that had soul – had character.

Bring back the gas guzzlers I say!!

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