Broithe

He just needs to be given some responsibilities - and a uniform - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tama_(cat) .

Just don't rest it on the bomb......

When it's exploded, it's not a bomb any more.

At least they're not ten-ton Grand Slams... Odd that they seem to have been found before, though.. We had a stick on the factory in WW2 and only one really went off, and nobody really knew how many there had been, either. Around 1985, we were digging a pit in the test area and hit an object about 15" diameter, where there was not supposed to be anything - it turned out to be an unknown, abandoned drain-pipe, but it was exciting for a while....

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/folkestone/news/bomb-halts-train-services-33593/ - Why do they always describe them as "unexploded"? If they had already exploded, then they wouldn't still be "bombs" and we wouldn't be worried about them exploding. Using the phrase "dug up again" is slightly worrying. Note - I have carefully avoided saying "bombs found by the railway in Kent", in case I inadvertently provoked the evacuation of Cork station.....

I was an early adopter of CDs in the mid-1980s, and people often came to my house for a demo, before committing themselves to a purchase. One of my demonstration CDs was a very good steam train sounds one. During one demonstration, the 'target' got up to stand in the centre of the room, for the best effect. A low-loader, similar to that above, complete with steam engine, sailed slowly down the street, exactly in time to the sound-track. Poor chap thought he was hallucinating.

True high speed rail is not something that seems to happen over here - the UK has 68 miles of proper high-speed track. Starting at about the same point in time, China now has 7,450 miles.... The 800s are rated for 140mph, but there won't be many places that they will actually do that for a long time to come.

You need the weather for it.....

Nigerian Guinness is somewhat different to the white man's drink - and deceptively strong - 7.5%. In fact, a 600ml bottle contains more than the UK Government's recommended daily alcohol allowance - so, I always open one before midnight and finish it just into the next day, can't be too careful. The small bottles can often be found in Tesco and the large bottles are available via the internet.

The view from the Space Station today.

I like a warm pudding at this time of year. Cool ones are for the summer.

It's a long time since I was at school, too, and, as you say, filters have never created one wavelength out of another, they just select what passes through and what doesn't. Try putting a filter in front of a white LED and see what happens, be it a warm white or a cool white one. If you want warm white LEDs, then they are available, though the packaging is often lacking in information. They just have less blue output than a cool white one does.

A red filter will surely reduce the amount of blue passing through, for example? It's true that white LEDs only usually emit three single colour spikes, rather than the full spectrum, but a coloured filter will still change the relative heights of those spikes. It seems odd to sell these otherwise.

Is it feasible to mask/filter the existing LED with a felt pen?

RTÉ News is currently running this picture - - without any warning about the risk of setting fire to the genital area. Let's hope none of us end up in A&E tonight....

Excitement's OK - if you get away with it.....

Also the patron saint of Nigeria. I've got a case downstairs.

I'm there, too - I think the last time I was loco-hauled here on the 'mainland' was about 2000.

They were actually very lucky that the crane wasn't up to the weight - if they had had a capable crane, then they wouldn't have found out at that point..... Where I worked,for very complicated reasons involving take-overs and bankruptcies, we made transport cases for torpedoes for a while. These had internal suspension and were supposed to protect the torpedo from damage if it was dropped on a concrete dockside when being loaded. We had an "Inert Dummy", a genuine casing, with a filling to simulate the weights of the real innards, so that we could check that it would fit properly, etc. One morning, completely unannounced, two Land Rovers full of Naval MPs turned up, with a low-loader containing another Inert Dummy. "You will swap the one that you have for this one - now!" They refused to discuss the reasons behind this. I like to think that we might have just had a torpedo with a live motor*, but, knowing the Scampton Grand Slam history, I was happier when the swap had happened - if we even had the right one then, of course...... *The motor was a gas turbine running on Otto Fuel - that going off would have been exciting enough... ..but a 300kg warhead was another matter.. ..and from outside, it was impossible to tell, except for the markings, if they were right.......

In that first fire picture, the plane was running up on the runway*, so they had the benefit of facing into the wind - the second one, though, has the wind coming from the rear quarter, which will have made getting out through the hatch (that you can see hanging down) very exciting, with thousands of gallons of burning paraffin sloshing around on the concrete, whilst the undercarriage is collapsing. Not for the faint-hearted. * They had to use a shortened section of the runway for a while, as the concrete was destroyed. It was a couple of years before they had the full length available again. Interestingly (perhaps) the road past Scampton used to be the longest straight in England, 18 miles, I think - until they extended the runway for the V-Bomber and had to put a bend in the road to get round the end of it. Even more interestingly (I think), when they came to move the "Gate Guardians" for the roadworks, a Lancaster and a Grand Slam bomb, the crane failed to lift what was presumed to be just the case of the bomb, but it was then discovered that it was actually a fully filled and live ten ton bomb - it had been there, next to the main gate, alongside the A15 for nearly fifteen years - it was never resolved how that happened.....

Some of the non-fatal incidents, of which there were many, could be quite "entertaining" - Delivery flight to Filton from Boscombe Down for engine handling trials with the Olympus B.01 21 engine. The aircraft had been allotted to Handling Sqn to enable flight trials to be undertaken to update the advanced issue Pilot's Notes. The Captain Flt Lt Wareham had 15 hours on type and the co-pilot Mr Frost none. After touching down fast, from an ACR 7 approach, 550 yards beyond the threshold on a flooded runway in moderate rain at Filton, the pilot applied the wheel brakes with no apparent effect. The drag parachute was then deployed but again no retardation was felt. Engine power was applied 600 yards from the end of Runway 10 and an overshoot executed, the aircraft was pulled off the ground 50 yards from the end of the runway. During the overshoot the aircraft struck a sodium light bursting four of the eight starboard bogie tyres and struck a commercial garage situated at the end of the runway, blowing all four petrol pumps away, damaging two cars, and hit the street lighting. As the aircraft climbed, the streamed brake parachute fell away. The aircraft then diverted to St.Mawgan and landed safely. The weather at Filton was marginal for the Vulcan especially using the ACR 7, which the captain had never before flown in a Vulcan. This had been compounded by the failure of the brake parachute to fully deploy. Other fires happened, as well, this was at Filton again, I think - it took a fire engine with it... They did use a Vulcan as a flying test-bed for other engines, including the new Olympus for Concorde.

Fatal crashes with Vulcans were not rare events, particularly after the conversion to terrain-following, when the original high-level missions became both unnecessary and unlikely to succeed. As designed, a high-altitude evacuation was a plausible procedure, but just not practical at low-level. By 1967, when that fire above occurred, they didn't really have much of a real task left. They had the wrong sort of enemy for HE bombs, just the tribesmen in Yemen, which would have resulted in just re-arranging the gravel. The nuclear task was largely undertaken by the Navy with Polaris. Some Vulcans were converted to tankers, using the bomb-bay tanks and a hose-drum. I'm not sure if that one was hose-fitted, but the hose-drum might not have survived in a recognisable form. The supplementary tanks were stainless steel, hence their survival. Most of the tankering was done by converted Victors, as they weren't structurally up to sustained low-level flight. The mark of a good Vulcan pilot was always said to be if he could pull a 1G barrel roll without getting any comment from the back three. A few could do it, though I only ever saw one rolled - and that was at a rather lower altitude than I might have liked to be involved in. You can just see the bottom of a supplementary tank here, at the front of the bomb-bay of Cosford's Vulcan. The Balck Buck missions to the Falklands were probably more impressive for the refuelling arrangements than for the couple of bombs that actually hit the runway. They had to fly tankers to refuel the tankers that refuelled the single Vulcan that was bomb-armed, so that it could have a fully available bomb-load, in order to run a stick across the airfield. The flight out required the bombing Vulcan to be refuelled seven times - and once on the return Other Vulcans flew with Shrike missiles - and one of them ended up in Uruguay after the refuelling probe failed and there was nowhere else to go with the remaining fuel..