willedoo

I remember those small ice cream tubs. The small serve ones, either Peter's or Paul's, and you would pull the top off and eat it with a flat stick like a paddle pop stick. I still use a thermos regularly if I'm working about the property or going out and haven't had time to finish the pot of tea. I'm one of those people who have no concept of a cup of tea; it's a pot or nothing. Mt teapot holds about four full mugs of tea. It's enameled metal and needs a beanie over it as a teapot warmer. An old mate of mine cut a spout hole in his beanie. He'd use it as a teapot warmer while having breakfast then wear it to work. He always had a bit of hair sticking out of the hole when he wore it. I don't do that; I have the luxury of a dedicated teapot beanie and exposing the spout loses heat anyway, so no holey beanies at my place. Just a reminder, this is Queensland we're talking about.

Here's my SK-1 Iskra seat. It needs a complete re-restoration as the previous owner, while well meaning, did a man cave restoration on it (wrong colours, inappropriate and irrelevant stickers, mounting on an office chair base with a made up seat base). His idea was something for the man cave that people could sit in, which is fine for that sort of thing but just not cricket for a serious collector. Apart from that, it's in very good original condition and complete.

Did I hear someone mention ejection seats? Caution - boring alert. spacey, all they need to remove is the seat's explosive charges which is a simple job. Newer seats have more charges than the older ones and they also have several small pyro-cutters that need to be removed as well as the rocket packs. The pyro-cutters cut belts and restraining cords on parachute and survival packs. The older seats were much more simple in their workings. As an example, an old Martin Baker MK.2E seat I did a cosmetic restoration on only had one primary charge, one auxiliary charge and one small (about .6 calibre) drogue gun charge. Those charges got the seat out of the aircraft and the drogue deployed. The rest of the sequence mechanisms were just mechanical consisting of tensioned springs, time released locking star wheels and cams. Even the old MB MK.2 seat from the early 1950's was quite sophisticated compared to the MiG-15 and Iskra seats that I have. The Mig-15 seat (KK-1) didn't have a drogue and was prone to severe tumbling. The Polish TS-11 Iskra seat (SK-1) which is very similar and based on the KK-1, also had no drogue system but had fixed plywood wing sections bolted on around the head and shoulder region to act as a stabiliser. In those days things were a bit rough in the east as far as ejection seat development goes. The Brits were way ahead of the game back then. Just for interest, the photo below shows an SK-1M seat removed from a TS-11 aircraft and shows the plywood stabilising wings situated between the seat back and the head rest. The stabilisers and drogues work to slow the seat down and prevent tumbling, but another important role is to push the seat into an initial horizontal plane to present a smaller cross section to the wind blast during a high speed ejection. The TS-11 Iskra was a Polish built two seat, single engine jet trainer. The Poles were hoping to sell it to the Soviets and Eastern Block countries but the Czech L-29 was the winner there. I think only Poland and India had the TS-11, and it was still in service until fairly recent times. It went into service in 1964 but they used a seat based on a more than ten year old design. Probably for weight saving I would guess.

Yes, we'd better get back on topic.

It's not the case here. Eight were allocated to museums and 25 sold to Canada. The rest were earmarked for scrapping. The ownership of the museum allocations remains with the RAAF, which means the RAAF continues to own them but they are on permanent loan to the museums. Accordingly there's a lot of restrictions on what the museums can do with the aircraft. For an example, for a long time the museum couldn't open the F-111 cockpit and let the public sit inside it on open cockpit days. Over the years they've become more lenient there. It probably helped a bit by having two tour guides who were ex F-111 crew. I think the RAAF still clean and maintain the F-111; I don't think they trust museum staff with the job.

Thanks everyone. I might copy and paste the main part of the post to the other site.

Our local air museum, the Queensland Air Museum has been trying to obtain one of the classic Hornets, so on behalf of the museum, I'm begging for e-petition signatures. Hopefully the link might spread a bit as every signature counts. The museum has plenty of people on it's side in local, state and federal areas, but the federal government is flatly refusing requests and will scrap the remaining Hornets rather than allocate any more to museums. The problem is, there's only one chance at obtaining a Hornet and that's before they're scrapped; once they're gone, they're gone forever. None have been allocated to any Queensland museums and QAM, Australia's largest air museum, has unfortunately missed out. A Hornet would be a great addition to the museum. The RAAF fast jet line up at the museum includes an F8 Meteor, CAC Sabre, Mirage 111, a Macchi trainer and an F-111. All ex RAAF except the Meteor. It's ex UK, ex Singapore and detailed to represent the RAAF Meteor flown in Korea by WO Ron Guthrie who was the first person in the world to perform a combat ejection. Link to the e-petition: https://www.qldair.museum/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3CrEK4TkeMUjOmTOS0dBuJB8fxe1M9G5yLK4ETuEMlGj3E1c7o24zCaLo_aem_AYVOprRVBzVWx6krUcwDtETL0q5yykUxQlrLrEpasihq_BUhBYL3Uaqq9Pz0NzgYqnQhLEsrJVG9hTlaD7vS9UEn

Macron has announced that France will supply the Mirage 2000 and training to Ukraine.

They're no slouch on the footy field. I went to high school with a lot of blokes from PNG and played on the same side as them as well as against them. They were solid and very,very fast on their feet. There were a couple of taller, slimmer brothers who didn't play football but they were unbeatable in the long distance track events. All the shorter, stockier blokes who played football also were outstanding at track and field events like sprinting, hurdles, shot put, long jump, relay - you name it, they could do it.

Apparently it comes from areas of salt leaching to the surface which are used by animals as salt licks, referred to as just licks in Kentucky. I hadn't thought about the finger licking part in reference to Kentucky; a good observation Marty. The Colonel's goatee beard looked a bit salty as well.

You can see in the above Google Maps screengrab that Kathy's Little Doggy Store is not far from Knob Lick.

There's a lot of Lick place names in Kentucky. Beaver Lick, Big Bone Lick and Knob Lick are there as well.

Trump knows suckers when he sees them.

I seem to remember quite a few years ago in the UK there was a Best Party I've Ever Been To Party ran in the elections.

In a big development for Ukraine, Germany and the US have given the green light to use their Patriot air defence systems against Russian aircraft on the Russian side of the border. This adds to permission recently for artillery and HIMARS strikes over the border in the Kursk and Belgorod regions. Within hours of getting approval, Ukraine started hitting convoys and troop concentrations massing on the Russian side of the border region, as well as HIMARS strikes on S300 air defence systems at Belgorod.

Another positive is that we are never too old for a bit of fun, despite what we might think. In this video, old grandad is having a fat old time shuffling with his granddaughters. He learnt to dance late in life and if my memory serves me well, he was taught by his dance instructor daughter. I remember some time back seeing videos of him in the early learning stage. What is he doing there? In my opinion it's a slower, more structured version of the Melbourne Shuffle. For an old bloke, he's got the running man down pat (and no, it's not a Michael Jackson Moonwalk).

I see where I went wrong. I arranged them in alphabetical order based only on the first letter of each word and not the rest of the letters in a word. So with my method, all letters starting with F had equal placing.

Very true. One of my positives is that I was almost deceased a little over two weeks ago, but here I am fit (almost) and well. The other positive is that when I had a gravity defying LOC, I didn't damage my 10 day old, new titanium hip. The positives keep coming; now that I'm in reasonable health again, the increased exercise and physio is going well on the hip surgery recovery front. I'll be tap dancing in no time flat. That's four of my nine lives used up now with five to go, so make the best of it and don't blow them is the plan. Every time you get another chance, when you wake up and open your eyes it's a wonderful world to be in. Life is too short to be a sad sack.

When I was in hospital recently someone came around as part of a prevention of delirium programme. They give you a booklet on delirium risks during hospital stays and ask questions about whether you are active in reading, watching TV, net surfing on the phone or social phone contact with friends and family. They also give you a big wad of brain teasers printed on A4 paper. General brain teasers and different puzzles to solve so you don't go loopy.

I made it two numbers. Four and Five.

Presidents and presidential candidates are subject to a lot of social media criticism but also false smear campaigns. One of the more benign things is video clips edited to remove important original context. On the other end of the scale is outright BS. John McCain was subject to a lot of BS regarding his prior military service when he was running for president. One was that he was a collaborator during his stay in the Hanoi Hilton. Another was that it was him who caused the 1967 Forrestal fire. That's been debunked by people who were there and saw the rocket launch from one of the Phantoms on deck. McCain and his Skyhawk were on deck but had nothing to do with causing the fire. Another slur was that he was a reverse ace. He did lose five aircraft during his Navy career, but not all were his fault. Certainly the last one where he was shot down had nothing to do with pilot error and no way can go toward reverse ace status. I'd have to check but I seem to remember another loss or two were due to mechanical failure and not the pilot's fault. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden both copped a lot of the same sort of treatment during their presidential campaigns.

Recently I had a bloke approach me in a car park asking for money. He said he lost his job and needed cash for some groceries. About 40 metres away from where we were standing, Coles has a food donation bin where shoppers can donate food to the needy. The food in the bin doesn't go off to a charity; it's there for needy people and the homeless to take straight out of the bin. The way he was talking gave me the impression he was full of BS and was trying to scrounge money for drugs. He seemed too agitated to be an alcoholic looking for grog money. I told him I was a pensioner and didn't have spare cash to give away (all true) and then he went away.

North Korea and Iran stick with Russia because they need what Russia can supply them, and it also gives those isolated states a powerful friend. China is increasing support to countries like that and the day could come when Chinese support means that they don't need Russia anymore. If that happens, putin will be irrelevant to those two countries. China gets oil and gas from Russia but only because it's cheap.

He wont use them, He knows if he did it would be the end of himself and Russia. putin is a lot of things but he's not crazy. Twisted yes, but not crazy. He likes to use them as a big stick to threaten and intimidate. For the last two years he's done nothing when multiples of his red lines have been crossed. His reaction has always been to address the public with more BS to shore up his domestic image, then make more threats so the gullible Russian citizens think he's a tough guy. The reality is he's a scared coward. The only thing that gives him fuel is Western weakness. Like any bully, he'll seek out opponent's weaknesses and try to take advantage of it. ICBMs are the big, long range missiles that go into space and then rain down on cities on the other side of the world. The awareness on both sides of MAD is the deterrent from using them, for as we all know an attack is met with an immediate response leading to world destruction. The concern has been if he ever uses small, short range tactical nukes in the theater of conflict. Even doing that would be highly unlikely due to the consequences for putin and Russia. The use of one battlefield nuke would probably lose him most of the very few friends he has. He would lose Chinese support for a start and probably end up with only Iran and North Korea on his side. Xi is in the position where China needs to sell it's products to the Western world to survive economically. There's no way China would risk economic ruin from severe Western sanctions just to support his dickhead vassal using tactical nukes.

It sounds like putins propaganda machine and his army of paid on-line trolls are starting to get a foothold in the US. That's his plan, to subvert US politics and get his orange mate reinstalled as president. Trump has said he will cease all aid to Ukraine if elected, meaning putin wins. It's the only real ace putin has left up his sleeve.