Early Risers.

[Ozexpatriate]

4 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

Portland Oregon and the Columbia River.

I thought of but didn't include PDX, because the runway is (mostly) parallel to the river except at the western end where the river bends slightly.

 

The primary good weather approach is from the east. On a clear evening with alpenglow on the mountains it is stunning particularly since the approach through the gorge passes through 11,000' (which is the summit height of Mt Hood) immediately north of the mountain. The Columbia is entirely to starboard for this approach. The mountain views of any clear weather take off or landing from PDX are fabulous.

 

On the primary bad weather approach from the west, 10R is about 1.3km from the river which is crossed at a shallow angle in the vicinity of the interstate bridge. 10L is closer to the river bank (1km at the end of the chevrons) but I think 10R may be preferred for landings when the weather is nasty. A port side window seat provides a good view of the rail-served coal shipping terminal and the huge RORO terminal on the Vancouver riverbank that loads new cars from Asia onto auto-racks. 

 

Runway 21 is only about 500m from the river. It is highly irregular to land on 3/21 in commercial carriers and it is limited to smaller aircraft (closed to height group IV aircraft with cockpit to wheel height greater than 22'). It might be VFR only.

[Barry O]

Ey up!

BAC 1-11.. I think I travelled on a British Caledonian on once...nice flight with the stewardesses all kitted out in short tartan skirts..

 

Got some food shopping to be done. Hire car needs a refuel...and I need some scran.

 

Have a great evening and sleep well when you hit the pit.

 

Baz

[Tony_S]

28 minutes ago, AndyB said:

Evening all. 

Was a very early riser this morning; in the office at 6.45. A junior colleague had to be in early to do some work, so I figured it'd be good form to do an early start too. 

 

A propos the new diesel car, can anyone tell me what the advantages of the more expensive "ultimate diesel" fuel are over the cheaper varieties. There's about a 15p to 25p per litre difference hereabouts. 

Is it fuel efficiency, better for the engine, save the planet..?

Quote from autoexpress website

"However, if you drive a diesel car, there's no harm in running a tankful of super diesel through the engine every 1,000 miles or so. This should clear out any oily or sooty deposits from the engine and fuel system, and will help your car to be more efficient and economical when running on regular diesel, as the fuel system will be clearer. In the long run, paying an extra 5-10p per litre for super diesel every now and again could help to avoid costly future repairs if your diesel engine packs up."

 

For petrol vehicles the super fuels are sometimes specified for high performance cars.   

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

It is I believe the only airport built on the site of a sea battle.

How on earth (or on water) did the Dutch and Spanish stage 250 warships to meet on the Haarlemmermeer without prior interaction?

[Kingzance]

2 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. I have just had the gutter of the porch extended and a down pipe added for free, all part of next doors refurbishments. Due to a peculiarity of the design of the houses part of next doors porch pokes into my house and as the guttering doesn't match in shape or colour the builder has extended my guttering to just below the end of next doors guttering so that water will just pour out into mine and thence into the down pipe. The wall to which the down pipe is attached is next doors but the downpipe empties into my front garden. I'm going to make a soakaway beneath the downpipe, the hole is partially there already as there is an old rotten dead tree stump were the soakaway will be. Time for dinner and its club night tonight, be back later.

I would strongly suggest that the soak-away is located well away from your foundations.

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, AndyID said:

Also LaGuardia. A plane did go into the drink there a few years ago.

Except that it didn't land in the East River, it "landed" ("watered"???) in the Hudson River.

 

LGA is a good example though. Runways 13 and 22 are well into the Riker's Island Channel of the East River and 31 is in Flushing Bay.

[New Haven Neil]

BAC 1-11.  Crikey, last one I flew on was to Portugal on a last minute cheapie holiday when TT was cancelled due to foot and mouth - 2001?  Can't recall who the operator was, but it was a touch tired.  I preferred the Tridents I flew in on the NCL-LHR shuttles, still think they were the fastest plane down the runway I have flown in.  Worrying crack repairs on the wing roots though.....always!

 

 

[roundhouse]

1 hour ago, Barry O said:

Airport approached over water? Wellington, funchal , belfast (landing there in a F27 was fun), new Hong Kong (not as much fun as the old one) cairns..you sort of slide in sideways... avoid the mountain at the land end of the run way taking off though.

Baz

I have only landed at Cairns at night. Not been to the new HK airport.

 

Skagway airport we have only taken off from but it has am mountain one end and water the other. We took off over water. First time we flew to Seattle we landed on water - float plane from Victoria harbor

1 hour ago, JohnDMJ said:

 

I used to have annual travel insurance but when I received my renewal quote last year, I decided that, for the number of journeys I do  each year, to look into per trip cover. So far, it's working well.

It crossed my mind but we have two trips planned with possible a third so decided to stay with them for another year.

[AndyID]

1 hour ago, AndyB said:

 

A propos the new diesel car, can anyone tell me what the advantages of the more expensive "ultimate diesel" fuel are over the cheaper varieties. There's about a 15p to 25p per litre difference hereabouts. 

Is it fuel efficiency, better for the engine, save the planet..?

 

It's got more Bee Pee in it.

[Ozexpatriate]

I was surprised to see an article on Pacer railcars under CNN's travel banner today. I was wondering how a US travel writer could possibly research such an obscure topic (from this side of the pond). The author however is based in the UK.

 

Edited February 12, 2020 by Ozexpatriate

[brianusa]

14 hours ago, TheQ said:

Saudi Air always starts with a prayer before the flight, and the larger aircraft , 747s and 777s etc have prayer room at the back...

 

 

There's a couple other airlines around that could do with such a facility!

    Brian.

[JohnDMJ]

 

43 minutes ago, roundhouse said:

It crossed my mind but we have two trips planned with possible a third so decided to stay with them for another year.

Fairy nuff!

[tigerburnie]

Had the afternoon freezing my nuts taking pictures of burds in a hide at Montrose Basin, sat waiting for high tide as you often get interesting things appear...….not today, on half term Grandad duty tomorrow in Perth, just hope the snow keeps off for the journey back again.

This one kept me company waiting for tide to rise

 

[Tony_S]

2 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

How on earth (or on water) did the Dutch and Spanish stage 250 warships to meet on the Haarlemmermeer without prior interaction?

I should imagine the Spanish fleet was already there. Much of the present day Netherlands was a Spanish territory then. 

[tigerburnie]

G'night all

[Ozexpatriate]

59 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

... the Spanish fleet was already there

Presumably but they were not all locals. The Spanish had laid siege to Haarlem the previous year (1572) to suppress the growing revolt led by William of Orange (William III of England's great grandfather) and the Haarlemmermeer represented a water link to resupply the town. I assume the Spanish (and Amsterdam) fleet was in place to prevent resupply of the town by water.

 

The Geuzen (Fr: Gueux de mer, En: Sea Beggars) attempted to break the siege and tried to bring a larger naval force to bear. There's little online other than some sparse Wikipedia entries, though there are many references to the painting of the battle (painted some 48 years later).

 

I imagine the Haarlemmermeer to have relatively small openings to passages to the open sea, which makes me wonder how the Dutch managed to get 150 vessels through whatever openings existed to enter the Haarlemmermeer and engage the Spanish - without being prevented by the besieging Spanish forces either on land or water. The Haarlemermeer doesn't seem "that" big.

 

It makes me wonder whether the size of the engagement was perhaps exaggerated over time.

 

If I read this map accurately it seems that the Haarlemmermeer grew significantly over the century following the siege. The part labelled "Oude Haarlemmer Meer" is quite small in 1531.

 

A month or so after the May 26 naval engagement, a small army raised in Leiden by William I of Orange to raise the siege would be defeated in July 1573. Haarlem would fall to the Spanish later that month, but the Dutch Revolt would ultimately succeed.

 

Edited February 12, 2020 by Ozexpatriate

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. All quiet on the club front tonight and as many of the members left early I followed suit.

2 hours ago, Kingzance said:

I would strongly suggest that the soak-away is located well away from your foundations.

The downpipe is attached to an outbuilding that has been incorporated in to the porch and well away from the foundations of the main building. The ground also slopes away  from the house at about 1 in 6 so there should not be a problem.

[The Stationmaster]

3 hours ago, Kingzance said:

I would strongly suggest that the soak-away is located well away from your foundations.

The last figure I saw for the distance between a building and a soakaway was 5 metres.  

 

And watch out if you're on clay becai use you will find it leeches into teh soakaway and clogs it.  I put a couple of small ones in the drive at our old house because it sloped down towards the garage  and there was no way I could put in a French drain.  But while digging out for a replacement fence post a few years later I also had a look at the small soakaway because it was no longer working afd found itcompletely blinded with clay.  So I cleared it out and refilled it but blanketed it first and that kept the clay out but still let the water gradually soak through.  Some years later when the builders were doing foundation work for the extension they dug into it and it was still perfectly clean to the vertical blanketing had worked perfectly - using newspaper!

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all

[pH]

Somebody obviously didn't pay attention to the cause of the "millennium bug":

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/12/home-office-tells-man-101-his-parents-must-confirm-id

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

Yet another day has passed and the order I placed last week for some electronic components STILL hasn’t arrived, I must admit that I’m now getting a wee bit ticked off. I’ll give the company until Friday then I’ll ask for demand a refund. So today I cut the rest of the circuit boards, all the edges have been sanded down the tracks have been cut, that’s 73 in total, of which 9 are finished, leaving 64 left to do. 

 

Over the last few weeks we’ve had several cold callers at the door, mostly working for some charity or other. Today we’ve had two, neither of which seemed to understand how to use either a door knocker or a door bell, despite the later having a sign below the pull handle which reads “pull bell”! They both greeted me saying, don’t worry, I’m not selling anything, “good” says I “because I’m not buying anything”. Although that was strictly true, still wanted money, needless to say they didn’t get anything from me, as I’m not in the habit of giving my bank details to a complete stranger. I also had to check next door (who are currently on holiday), as the callers also seemed incapable of closing a gate, despite having opened it to get to the door! What’s the matter with people, it seems to me that they are either too ignorant to be bothered closing gates that they’ve had to open, or are just thick to realise the need to close them. We used to have a sign saying, no cold callers, hawkers, religious groups etc. One cocky salesman said “oh, he just ignored those sort of signs” so I replied, “I ignore those who ignore my sign” and shut the door in his face!

 

Goodnight all 

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[laurenceb]

Night awl

[J. S. Bach]

Night owl from a dark Piedmont.

[Barry O]

Went for a stroll today. Had a nice magic mushroom and steak pie from the Fat Bar Stewards pie shop...excellent!

 

Came across some birds in the local park..

Very pretty. 

 

We visited the railways station. Newly built in 1978 closed 1981..that was well thoughto through. 

 

Despite thinking they are environmental warriors ....they aren't.   Big petrol engines in all types of cars, poor recycling process...there is hope for the UK yet.

 

Sleep well!

 

Very positive thoughts to all who ail!

Baz