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    Out in the Shed with Ted.

Ted McEvoy.

This page is brought to you compliments of the Kedron Wavell Services Club, Brisbane’s superior Club.

Pensions.

The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Senator the Hon. Michael Ronaldson, announced the new pension and income support payment rates for veterans, their partners, war widows and widowers across Australia which would apply from 20 September.

As pensions are paid on a daily basis, the next payment, which falls on 1st October will be paid partly at the old rate and partly at the new rate. The first full payment at the new rate will occur on the 15th October 2015 though you'll hardly notice the difference - the new rate is a miserly 0.787% increase over the March rate. It means a TPI will receive an increase of 74 cents per day!!!!    Thanks for your service!!!  bloody hell... 

The ADF is prepared to pay its young men and women an extra $57.50 a day when it sends them to a war zone, but if they get injured while there and can no longer work, it seems to just wipe its hands and forget them. A young man or woman, who is injured while on active service, and who is discharged as a TPI, can expect to spend the rest of his/her life living in near poverty conditions - it's just not good enough!!!!

Minister Ronaldson released a press release showing the increase in pensions from Sept 2013 as being 4.8%, why do that, what has that got to do with anything??  It was probably to give the impression that the Government was being very generous - who knows!!

The ABS CPI figures for the March quarter (1 March 2015 - 30 June 2015) show an increase in the CPI of 0.8% and it seems the Government has used this quarterly figure (0.8%) as a multiplier over the March pension rate to arrive at the new rate. The second quarter (July - Sept) CPI figures will be released by the ABS on the 28th October and if (and you can bet they will) these figures are greater than zero, then those in receipt of and who rely on the disability pension will be further behind.

Before the last general election Senator Ronaldson held  over one hundred “Veterans Consultative Forums” at which he was advised again and again that the Coalition needed to rectify the ALPs exclusion of TPI disabled from the 2009 structural increase to pensions. The Senator was told the Veteran community needed the Coalition to return to the Howard era legislation that linked movements in the TPI pension to movements in the Age Pension.

Since the election there has been no forums and no rectification of the ALPs exclusion however, there has been $400 million allocated to the centenary of ANZAC.

PM Howard saw the need to link the TPI to movements in the Age Pension thus arresting the erosion in the TPI rate over time. The ALP broke that link in 2009 when they left the TPI rate at a base of 25 per cent of the average wage while increasing the Age Pension and all other (4,000,000) pensions to a base of 27.7 per cent. The ALPs dumping of the Howard legislation has cost the families of TPI families $65 per week but Senator Ronaldson won’t rectify the injustice.

It's our opinion that pensions should be adjusted quarterly, not half yearly, and they should be adjusted after and in accordance with the quarterly CPI figures. At least that way recipients would stay current and not fall behind each 6 months - you can bet the pollies would not allow their pensions to be eroded every 6 months.

Military Covenant.

After DFWA’s success in having the “Unique Nature of Military Service” accepted by Government, Kerry Mellor set about drafting a Military Accord/Covenant paper.

On the 9th September, Queensland LNP Senator James McGrath launched a nation-wide petition calling for the establishment of an Australian Defence Covenant. You can see his presentation to the Senate HERE.

Senator McGrath said defence force personnel and their families made a unique contribution to the nation that needed the formal support and recognition of Australia's Parliament. The brave men and women of Australia's defence force make a contribution like no other, defending our freedoms and liberties at home and abroad," Senator McGrath said.

"Whether it's leading a multinational humanitarian task force in East Timor, fighting militant jihadists in Afghanistan or responding to disasters like the Black Saturday bushfires – the Australian Defence Force serves our nation valiantly."

Senator McGrath said a Defence Covenant would act as a charter of rights for serving, discharged and retired members of the Australian Defence Force and their families. "This idea is essentially based upon the notion that the entire country has a moral obligation to the men and women who serve and have served in our armed forces, and their families," Senator McGrath said.

Senator McGrath said the idea had in principle support from ex-service organisations including the Defence Force Welfare Association, the Queensland Veteran's Advisory Council, Legacy, the Alliance of Defence Service Organisations and Mate for Mates.

National President of the Defence Force Welfare Association Colonel David Jamison warmly welcomed Senator McGrath's initiative. "The time for adopting an Australian Military Covenant has now arrived. It flows from an understanding of the unique nature of military service, a concept now widely accepted in the wider community and universally by all sides of politics," Colonel Jamison said.

You can sign the petition HERE.     (Will this fix the pension anomaly??)

"Why don't women have Adam's apples?"

One of those thorny questions that, since the dawn of time, has worried absolutely everybody and has caused loss of sleep to thousands is, “What the devil is an Adam’s apple and why don’t women have one?”

Well!  -  firstly, the Adam’s apple, or to use its doctor’s name, the “laryngeal prominence”, is the lump or protrusion that is formed by the angle of the thyroid cartilage surrounding the larynx (the voice box). It is the lump you can sometimes see in the middle of a man's throat and it gets its name from the biblical story of the Garden of Eden. According to legend, Adam got a piece of the forbidden fruit stuck in his throat and since then all men have had to bear witness to Adam’s fall from grace. For males, the noticeable bump of cartilage starts to become evident during puberty, when the voice box gets bigger. The reason it’s there is to protect the walls and the frontal part of the larynx, including the vocal cords which are located directly behind it. It also controls the deepening of the voice. During a male’s puberty, the thyroid cartilage and the larynx grow, forming a large soundboard which is why a male’s voice gets deeper as he matures.

And here’s the answer to the second part of the question, believe it or not, women also have one which immediately leads to a trickier question, why can’t we see it in the fairer sex!!!

In an adult men it is usually clearly visible and palpable. In women, the bump is much less visible and is hardly perceived on the upper edge of the thyroid cartilage. The meeting point of the two portions of the cartilage generally forms an acute angle (of about 90°) in men, while in women it forms an open arc (of about 120°).

Girls' larynxes grow, too, but just not as much. As a result, teenage girls and women tend to have higher voices than their male counterparts and they usually don't have noticeable Adam's apples – though some do! The appearance of an Adam's apple (or what looks like one) in a woman is usually due to a number of reasons. Sometimes, it's an anatomical anomaly, genetic trait or the result of a hormonal imbalance that occurred during puberty. Or it may not be an Adam's apple at all – it could be an unrelated growth caused by a health condition.

There!  I bet that’s a load off your mind!!

Agent Orange.

A new official account of the Agent Orange Controversy has been commissioned. The current Official History of the Agent Orange controversy is fatally flawed and unjustly insults the veterans who campaigned for the Repatriation system to acknowledge it harmfulness. The present Official History omits findings of the Agent Orange Royal Commission supporting the veterans case. In the first place, the history omits a Royal Commission finding that, under the standard of proof prescribed by Repatriation law, there were two categories of cancer attributable to exposure to Agent Orange. The history also omits the Royal Commission finding that the Department of Veterans Affairs purposely disobeyed Repatriation law in not allowing veterans the prescribed benefit of the doubt.

The history goes so far as to accuse the campaigning veterans of dishonesty and greed. Of course, the veterans turned out to be right about the harmfulness of Agent Orange. Their behaviour, far from being dishonest and motivated by greed, was a fine example of the ANZAC tradition of veterans looking after their comrades-in-arms.

So it is wonderful news that after years of campaigning, the Australian War Memorial Council has agreed to commission a new study titled:

Medical Legacies of South East Asian Conflicts Vietnam War.

Dr Peter Yule of Melbourne University has been chosen to head the study and it is estimated the task will take him four years. It remains to be seen whether the new history will redresses those omissions and insults. We can only hope so.

The new volume will include other medical legacies such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Regards,

Jim Wain

National President

Decades after the Vietnam War, the US Government has finally admitted that Agent Orange poisoned troops. The US Department of Veterans Affairs has acknowledged that Monsanto’s Agent Orange, a herbicide sprayed over 4.5 million acres across Vietnam during the  conflict, was responsible for health ailments in a group of as many as 2,100 veterans. It had previously denied such allegations.  See HERE.

Virus.

Currently there are very aggressive virus emails circulating that are currently bypassing all anti-spam and anti-virus software platforms. These emails are supposedly coming from Australia Post, Coles, Bunnings, Woolworths and many other companies, all with the angle that there is a voucher or a delivery waiting for you.

If you receive one of these emails, do not open them, instead DELETE THEM IMMEDIATELY. If the software that it asks you to download is run, it will encrypt all files on your local PC and network and the only way to recover them is to pay ransom money, or recover from backup.

Remember NOBODY is going to give you something for nothing … be warned. ENSURE YOU DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR RUN ANYTHING, FROM ANY LINK, IN ANY OF THESE EMAILS

Here is what some look like:

Planning an event??

Kedron-Wavell Services Club Inc. is a unique one-stop venue that can satisfy all of your event requirements. Whether you are planning a corporate seminar, workshop, meeting, reunion, business launch, cocktail party or dinner, the Club offers a variety of function rooms to cater for 15 to 500 guests.

Their point of difference and areas of expertise includes: 

• A specialised Events Department where an experienced supervisor is appointed to ensure that your event runs smoothly from start to finish.

• Room set-ups and layouts, including themeing.

• Catering and banquet menu planning.

• Audio visual planning.

• Entertainment suggestions.

• Co-ordination of recommended vendors and suppliers.

• Advice and information on the best pre and post event activities for guests.

• Assistance with transfer or accommodation requirements.

Technical equipment and services they have:  

• Corded, radio and lapel microphones

• Whiteboards and flipcharts

• LCD data projector

• Colour monitors

• Screens (up to 4m x 3m)

• Photocopying and faxing services

• Lighting and sound technicians for the Blue Pacifi c Room

• Free standing velcro screens

• Wireless Internet access

• Pens and notebooks.

You can download their full Events Package HERE which includes room specifications, menu’s, facilities details, services offered, room hire etc. Virtual tours of all their rooms are now available, to view virtual tours click HERE.

Replacement Medals.

The Department of Defence has recently revised its replacement medals policy. Prior to 2003 lost, stolen or destroyed medals could only be replaced directly to the individual who earned them. ln 2003, this policy was extended, allowing replacement when deceased individuals' service awards were lost in specified natural disasters. ln December 2004, the Minister for Defence agreed to a revision of this policy, which now allows for the medals of deceased individuals to be replaced in the following circumstance: 

• Replacement medals will only be issued to the holder of the deceased individual's medal/s. The medals cannot be replaced in the circumstances where an individual has died and the medals cannot be found.

• The loss, damage or destruction of the medals occurs in circumstances beyond the control of the holder of the medals: for example as a result of a house fire or theft.

• The loss, damage or destruction occurred after 1 December 1974.

Defence can only replace medals it is authorised to issue. As such, it cannot replace honours or decorations that were issued under the Imperial or Australian honours system, such as meritorious and gallantry awards, or foreign awards. However, replicas of these awards may be purchased from a commercial medals dealer.

Medals replaced by Defence will be engraved with the initial “D” to denote 'duplicate' unless the damaged original medals are recovered and returned to Defence.

To apply for replacement medals, claimants may complete the online application form, which is available on the Defence Honours and Awards website HERE

Alternatively, the application form can be downloaded from the website to be completed and then returned to the:

Directorate of Honours and Awards

CP2-1, Department of Defence

PO Box 7952

Canberra BC  ACT  2510

Claimants are to include with their application form a statutory declaration describing the circumstances of the loss or damage. Additional evidence such as police or insurance reports, and any evidence showing proof of the claimant's relationship to the original recipient would also be useful in assessing eligibility.

The revised replacement medals policy does not affect currently serving or former members of the Australian Defence Forces who are still living. Defence will replace the medals for living recipients except when they have been sold, gifted or otherwise supplied to another person.

Fuel Saving??

Walk down the aisles of almost any Supercheap, Repco, AutoPro or other automotive store and you'll see a lot of products that propose to help your car in a number of different ways. But like anything you buy, not every claim a product makes on the packaging comes true. During times of rising petrol prices, which seems to be all the time, vehicle owners are on the lookout for a well-priced product that would work and could save them a few dollars in the long run.

There are lots of products in the car market that claim to increase or restore the fuel mileage in your vehicle. There are fuel additives, air bleed devices, liquid injection and even magnets all claiming to get more out every gallon of petrol. Some of them claim to clean out your engine and as a result restore your engine's fuel economy. Others claim to change the molecular structure of the petrol, heat or cool it, or just add air to it to make it last longer. But do any of them actually work?

Here’s five different products that claim to improve your mileage which have been tested to see how well they work, if at all. Some may minimally increase your vehicle's mileage, but it may be so small that you won't even notice the difference, except in your wallet. Other products can actually be harmful to your engine as well, so before you buy any fuel saving system or additive, read on.

The most common products that claim to add some extra MPGs onto your drive are the pour-in-your-tank additives. You'll see almost an entire shelf devoted to them at the car parts store and most of them have two basic claims. The first is that they clean out parts of your engine and the second is that they increase or restore mileage because of or in addition to, the first claim.

Of course, whether or not the additives truly help clean out parts of your engine would be difficult for most vehicle owners to actually prove. Some of the areas these additives claim to clean are not easily accessible to the person buying them and therefore hard to properly evaluate on a case-by-case basis. Or, if they do clean the engine, the change is so insignificant that it has no effect on the engine's mileage. Some people put these additives into their vehicles at every fill-up and others may only do it occasionally, but either way you're most likely not getting what you've paid for. Even if the additives do clean areas of your engine like they say, according to the US EPA's tests there are no additives you can put in your car that will increase mileage. The EPA in the US tested 14 different fuel additives and none of them were proven to have any positive effect on a vehicle's mileage. You'd be better off saving the few dollars you'd spend on the additives and actually buying a litre of fuel with them.

But additives are just one category of products that claim to increase your mileage. A more sophisticated approach to adding more klms to each litre of petrol comes from the air bleed and vapour bleed devices. An air bleed device sends additional air into the carburettor (on older cars) or into the injector system. They are typically installed on the positive crankcase ventilation (PCV) line or replace the idle-mixture screws. The EPA has tested more than 20 air bleed devices and has found only one that slightly increased fuel mileage, but at the cost of increasing exhaust gases.

A vapour bleed system, sometimes referred to as a mixture enhancer, works in a similar way but instead of just adding more air, it vaporizes the fuel going into the inlet manifold. Some vapour bleed systems work by taking liquid fuel on its way into the engine and mixing it with air from a pressure line. The pressurized air and fuel mix together in a chamber until the fuel becomes vaporized and is then released into a line that feeds into inlet manifold. The idea behind vaporized fuel is that the engine will burn the fuel more completely, not wasting any of the fuel and so increasing the mileage of each litre. As opposed to the additives, these systems need to be installed in the engine compartment and certain modifications and additions added to the engine. Out of all the vapour bleed and mixture enhancer products that the EPA tested, not one of them showed any improvements in mileage.

The idea of liquid injection comes from war planes during World War II. Fighter planes would inject a water, or water and alcohol mixture, into the combustion chambers of their engines in order to cool the air their turbochargers were warming. Cool air is more dense than hot air and this injection of water and alcohol would create more power from the engine. Since then, some car manufacturers have tried to use the same idea in vehicles, but with no proven results. Kits that you can buy don't inject water directly into the combustion chamber but rather send it to the fuel and air intake system (the inlet manifold).

A few writers from Popular Mechanics installed a system into one of their trucks with less than stellar results. Their water injection system used the vacuum in the intake manifold to pull water from a bottle into the manifold. They found that that the truck not only had a decrease in power when the water injection system was installed, but they also saw a decrease in fuel economy by 20 percent. Not exactly the results you want when you're trying to save money. The EPA had better results with a liquid injection system they tested, but not enough to significantly increase fuel economy. They found only one liquid injection system that improved the mileage by a "very small" amount.

Many of the so-called fuel-saving products on the market like to talk about increasing the efficiency of the fuel being consumed in the combustion chamber. An engine ionizer falls into this category. The ionizer has a set of rubber clips that attach to each of the spark plug leads near the cylinder heads. It consists of one rubber clip for each cylinder that supposedly harnesses a "corona charge" which is a charge that gets transferred from the firing cylinder to another cylinder. The claim is that this charge then causes "a partial breakdown in the larger hydrocarbon molecules in all the non-firing cylinders, resulting in increased combustion efficiency."

In addition to better mileage, some of these products also claim increased horsepower, reduced emissions, a smoother idle and better starts (and whiter whites??). When put to the test by Popular Mechanics, the test had to be abandoned due to a fire, which was caused by the product. The ionizing rubber blocks attached to the spark plug leads began melting onto the manifold and caused flare-ups similar to what you might see when you're cooking a burger over a grill, which is not exactly what you want inside your engine bay. Not only did it cause a fire, but the test also showed a decrease in horsepower while the ionizer was attached.

One of the Web sites that sells an engine ionizer claims that vehicle owners can save $500 to $1,000 a year using the device. That's a pretty tall order considering that a magazine for mechanics had to stop testing it because their car caught on fire.

Magnets are a reoccurring theme as a solution to all of life's problems, but if you're thinking about using magnets to increase your mileage, you should think again.

Here's how the magnet products supposedly work:

The magnets attach to the outside of your fuel line, sometimes inserted inside and they are supposed to break up clumped fuel particles so they can burn more efficiently. As with all the other products we've mentioned, this is simply not true either. Tests of magnets on fuel lines have shown no improvement to a vehicle's mileage. In addition to the magnets not working, the idea that fuel inside of the engine isn't burning efficiently is a bit flawed to begin with. US Government tests have shown that 99 percent of the fuel that goes into your engine is burned up, with only 1 percent being leftover. If any of the products could actually cause an engine to burn fuel more efficiently the percentage would be so small that it would hardly be noticeable or worth the cost.

Real fuel saving measures have to be earned the old fashioned way. Drive to the speed limit, remove excess weight from the car, keep the engine in good working condition, combine errands, use cruise control and keep from extreme driving habits like jack-rabbit starts. You should treat the accelerator pedal as if it was made of egg shell – go easy on it. Saving money on fuel is like losing weight, it takes some discipline and there are no quick fixes to get the results you want.

Dam busters.

The Dam Busters was a British Second World War film, made in 1955 and starred Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd. The film supposedly recreated the true story of Operation Chastise when in 1943 the RAF's 617 Squadron attacked the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams in Germany with Barnes Wallis's "bouncing bomb". The film was based on the books “Enemy Coast Ahead” (1946) by Guy Gibson and “The Dam Busters” (1951) by Paul Brickhill.

While the film was great to watch, how accurate was it??

Actor Martin Shaw, known for his roles in the two recent television series Judge John Deed and Inspector George Gently and a million years ago as Ray Doyle in The Professionals, is also a pilot and owner of a WW2 vintage Piper Cub which saw action at Dunkirk. He has a passion for vintage aeroplanes and aviation in general and has often wondered about the authenticity of the film – he decided to “make some enquiries” in a bid to separate the facts from the myths surrounding the famous tale of enormous courage and ingenuity and which is perhaps the most daring attack in the history of aviation warfare.

In order to get to the truth, he decided to retrace the route taken by 617 Squadron back in 1943 and take a fresh look at one of the most famous war stories of them all. He met with and spoke to the last living RAF veteran of the mission, as well as a survivor of the tsunami that was caused by the Moehne dam's destruction and also met with the secret wartime girlfriend of 617 Squadron’s CO, Guy Gibson.

It is a very interesting story and you can see it here - click the video below.

PS.

Following a spell in hospital with heart problems, Les Munro, the last WWII Dambusters’ pilot, died in his native New Zealand on the 1^st August, aged 96.

Speaking to the RAF in 2013, Munro said "From an operational point of view the raid was successful but the main point in my opinion was the morale of the English people. The land war hadn't been going too well so the success of the dams’ raid was a great boost to the population." But he said the mission left him and his crew with a bittersweet feeling of success. "Those that survived were disappointed so many had lost their lives; there was a certain degree of sadness by those that had come back. We were losing crews on ordinary squadrons before we got to 617 Squadron; seeing crews they were drinking with one evening and were not there the next evening, you become accustomed to it and you couldn't allow that to affect your ability to operate the next day. The crews that did survive celebrated the fact that the Mohne and the Eder had both been breached and the main objective of the operation had been successful."

Eight aircraft and 53 of 133 crew were lost in the raid.

Pearl Harbour.

Here's a short mini-documentary on the 2 P-40B Warhawks that got airborne during the attack on Pearl Harbor and scored multiple kills. Flown by Ken Taylor and George Welch they were able to attack Japanese aircraft of the second attack wave. Worth a look.

Blessed are those who are cracked,

for they are the ones who let in the light!

Ok, Ok!! – I’m going back to my room now!!

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