Jump to content

willedoo

Members
  • Posts

    6,279
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    107

Everything posted by willedoo

  1. The Queensland local government elections on the weekend saw a record number of female mayors elected. Approximately one third of all council mayors will be women for the next term of local government.
  2. The Ukrainians now have a couple of operational Blackhawks.
  3. This graphic shows locations and some distances of refineries that have been damaged. Currently 14 out of Russia's 30 largest refineries have suffered drone attacks.
  4. He did even better in the Donetsk People's Republic polling 95%. I wonder if the election officials door knocking with two accompanying armed soldiers could have influenced the vote there.
  5. Gee, what a surprise. putler must be really, really popular. Every election he has polled higher and higher figures. He's saving the 90's percentage points for the next one.
  6. The encouraging thing about the latest rounds of drone attacks on Russian refineries is that the Ukrainians seem to be getting a high degree of accuracy and are hitting high value targets within the refinery complexes. In a lot of the recorded video of the strikes, it looks like the distillation and cracking towers are burning. Video of one refinery being hit a couple of days ago showed the drones on descent, then turning in a U turn dive to hit specific targets. It's the tall things they need to hit:
  7. There's 4 cats there. It took me a few minutes to see the fourth one.
  8. The putin propaganda billboard in the foreground of this photo has the slogan 'Stability!' written on it. The backdrop is another one of Russia's oil refineries burning after Ukrainian drone attacks.
  9. Every day for the last two weeks, long range Ukrainian drones have been striking Russian oil refineries. Some estimates put the figure at 20% to 25% of Russia's oil refining capacity currently off-line until repaired. The challenge is to identify and be able to knock out critical parts of the refining infrastructure to cause longer term loss of production. A lot of strikes in the past have hit storage tanks which is not such a big deal. Damaged storage can easily be isolated and worked around. The latest strikes seem to indicate that the Ukrainians are getting more accurate and going for the higher priority components in the refineries. It also highlights another problem for Russia. They know these attacks are occurring almost daily and yet they can do nothing to stop them. I've read some opinions that the Russians have had to move a lot of air defence systems to Ukraine to replace losses there which consequently leaves Russia relatively undefended. It looks like the attrition of Russian air defence systems at the front is starting to bite.
  10. With the two by-election seats, Labor looks like losing Ipswich West after copping a 15% swing against them. They've retained Annastacia Palaszczuk's old seat but suffered a large swing there as well. The new Labor candidate's primary vote was 30.9% lower than the former premier's vote at the last election. In Ipswich West the LNP is likely to win on One Nation preferences. ON polled around 10%, which should be enough to push the LNP over the line. The Legalise Cannabis candidate received 14.4%, most of which would flow to Labor, but Labor's primary vote was behind that of the LNP.
  11. Some things you just can't unsee.
  12. Jerry, you're thinking of David Schwimmer.
  13. Hellenic Air Force F-16M over the Aegean Sea. It's easy to see why pilots love the F-16; it's like the fighter plane version of a sports car. It would have the best visibility of any fighter plane in my opinion. It also seems to be the most popular choice worldwide for home built cockpit simulators. The low profile and simple cockpit build would probably be a factor there.
  14. There's two state by-elections on today in Queensland in Inala and Ipswich West. It will be the first time in 40 years that Inala has not been represented by a member of the Palaszczuk family.
  15. Gerasimov has finally showed up in public in a propaganda video of him and Shoigu voting. It should put to rest rumours that he was killed in the Crimean command post strike in early January. He doesn't look well so it's possible he might have been recovering from some injuries which would explain his absence. Or he might have just had a bad case of covid for a while. It's hard to tell with Gerasimov as he looks fairly dopey at the best of times.
  16. I formally withdraw the Ringo statement. Ringo's ears are different and he wouldn't have had hair that long in his younger days. That hair is a bit more 70's era.
  17. The Beverley Hillbillies were a bit of an extended family. Granny was Jed's mother in law, Ellie May was Jed's daughter and Jethro was the son of Jed's cousin Pearl. Or at least that's the way I remember it. The hint of the actress looking nothing like the character she played made me think of Irene Ryan as I remember that was the case with her..
  18. Irene Ryan aka Granny Moses?
  19. She has a very Jodie Foster like face.
  20. I suppose statistics can reveal a lot if they're properly broken down. Something like the oil and gas industry is a hard one to generalise because of the diverse nature of work. Fixed facilities like processing plants might have the odd welder blow themselves up, but most accidents happen driving on roads out on the lease somewhere. With drilling, a lot of accidents have been on or around the rig itself and are related to the dangerous nature of the machinery they operate. Then there's pipeline construction work, well servicing and seismic exploration; all varied types of work with their different hazards. If you exclude the working of the rigs, most of the deaths by accident I know of have been from vehicle accidents or crew change aircraft accidents. With crew change planes I personally know of 13 deaths, three serious injury cases and a couple of planeloads of walking wounded that were lucky to walk away. I've only had one close call in a 206 making a bad landing. The pilot landed in the wrong direction with a heap of wind up his tail and the little Cessna didn't want to touch down. When it finally did touch down, it did a big broadside to port, a bit of a fishtail, a broadside to starboard, and a bit more fishtailing before straightening up. Problem was by then we were rapidly running out of strip as we had traversed most of it ten feet off the ground. We pulled up with about six foot of strip left and very smelly brakes. It's the only time in my life I've assumed the brace position (twice). Beyond the end of the strip was a gradually rising sand dune, so in the worse case we probably could have stood on our nose or flipped over if we'd overshot it. Not preferable options but better than trees. Obviously it was a dirt strip. The funny thing is that the nervous, relatively inexperienced pilot went on to become a very experienced, confident bush pilot within the next two years. That was due to the big number of hours he put in when we had crews in the Kimberleys and were flying out of the base in Queensland.
  21. The reasons for quad bikes overtaking tractors is fairly evident I think. Modern tractors are much safer than their older versions, and when tractors were of a less safe design there weren't any quad bikes around to compete in statistics. In those days you got around in the farm ute or a two wheeled conventional ag bike which is a lot safer than a quad bike. In the last 20 to 30 years there's been an explosion of quad bike use on farms. And now they have the side by side two seater buggies that ome mentioned.
×
×
  • Create New...