Broithe

A bit late to 'announce' it, as I only got back on Thursday to find out that the February show was really going to happen at last this weekend. It was in the main hall this time - much better with room to get about easily, it was getting quite congested in the side halls. My usual plan is to have a quick walk past everything and then take a methodical route to scrutinise things properly. This slightly fell apart as the first layout I saw was Castlefinn. There were many other interesting layouts, British, Continental and North American.

This is my favourite bit of Stafford's cycle provision. A bike is too long to fit on it. Maybe I should get a unicycle?

Try cycling on them - I haven't used any in Ireland, because there aren't any in the vicinity that I frequent, but most on the Big Island are useless and often actually dangerous, they give the impression of being done simply for 'effect', rather than with any intention of being useful. I've never seen a bike on either of these - https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.8065686,-2.0933096,3a,75y,120.28h,56.98t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sI7Oofzf6vbw0TiWNVL3uSw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DI7Oofzf6vbw0TiWNVL3uSw%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D42.05714%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 - there would usually be more cars parked along there than in the picture - especially at weekends and in the evening - you won't last long, weaving in and out of that lot. Also, cycle lanes to the side of a road tend, pretty much always, to remove the priority at every side-road. This is a classic example of that - https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.8307723,-2.1088423,3a,75y,285.18h,101.68t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sP9GQZGBuJOZVodUalXa6qg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 - four Give Way/Yield situations in a few yards, with cars approaching from anywhere, instead of just cycling past... Pretty much the only one that I would use in Stafford is, amusingly, a bit of the old Uttoxeter rail line, where the above issues hardly apply much. I will say that the general motorist's attitude to cyclists in Ireland has been a revelation over the last couple of years. People in Ireland drive like maiden aunts compared to the homicidal maniacs I'm used to on the Big Island.

This popped up today and might be of interest to those who might not have already seen it.

In terms of population, Ireland is unusual and possibly unique in the world in having a lower population now than it did 200 years ago. Back in the days of the USSR, there were occasions when 'the system' indicated that nuclear weapons should be launched, but the individuals required to actually initiate that decided not to do it.

In circumstance where I don't know of "what has worked on these products before", I have found that carefully scraping a digit off with the end of a curved scalpel blade is reasonable safe. It can leave a little 'polish' of the underlying colour, but there won't be any chemical difficulties.

Surely, the technical term would be "under starter's orders"..?

Undercover operation?

24 hours! Some dive. You can finish half an hour early tomorrow.

I'm often heard to say that there's only two basic problems with Public Transport. The public and the transport. One down, one to go...

The top two pictures have that 'slightly too neat' look that many model layouts suffer from...

By a complicated route, I think it may have been made by this chap. http://elagujerodelblister.blogspot.com/2016/04/ignasi-castelltort-conduciendo-el.html

Correct! It is not. And I believe she is not still living..?

No. He would have been twelve years old. That would have required considerable widespread foresight amongst the general population.

No. I think he is No 8 of those still alive. If you take twenty guesses, you might get the second and third, but if you don't know the top one, you won't get that with a thousand guesses...

Reminds me of a time doing a pub quiz in England, around 2005. "Whose autobiography was called 'Reach For The Sky' ?" I had the pen, so I just wrote in 'Douglas Bader'. Bemusement from all the others in the team, including the Head of History at a secondary school, with a 'specialism' in WW2 matters. "You must have heard of Douglas Bader, surely?" - "No, he sounds like he might have been a cricketer?" Well, I suppose he would have a good go at it... The same person also asked me who I would have voted for in the "Hundred Greatest Britons" TV poll*. I said I would probably have gone for Leonard Cheshire, because he had great influence, both during and after the war, in very different fields - this met the same bemused look from her. "What did he do?" - "You've surely heard of Cheshire Homes, at least?" - "Ah, I think they built an estate near us - my Dad did some work for them". Knowing when to give up is a skill. * If you have nothing better to do, then, without looking it up, try to guess who, since the death of Thatcher, has been, according to that 2005 poll, the Greatest Living Briton..?

Many interesting things at Scampton, including this impressive fire. It threw a compressor disc and just burned to the ground. Plenty to burn, with two bomb bay tanks in, too. Everybody got out, including the cadet they had with them, whose parachute went off inside the plane, adding to the interest of the occasion. The runway at Scampton had been extended for the Vulcans, resulting in the big sweep on the originally dead straight A15 road, but this made such a mess that it was shortened again by 500 feet, until it was repaired, eventually. I 'believe' that I met Mick Martin, around 1970, but without really realising who he was, he was never really one of the better known names from that period, for some reason.

Guy Gibson's dog's grave is still there, although there is a new memorial stone these days, Still plenty of Brownings in use these days, all over the place.

Although the flak was a danger, the bombs from above were possibly a greater risk factor. Short Brothers do also seem to have had a tendency to go for alliterative names, Sunderland, Singapore, Sandringham, etc - but they did also come up with the dramatic 'Knuckleduster'. Alliteration was a common theme - Vickers devices often began with a V, all the way from Vimy to Valiant, Viking and Valetta. There's also the odd situation where names were reused - a Hawker Fury could be either a biplane or a later, completely different, monoplane - and a Westland Whirlwind could be a twin-engined fighter or a helicopter. Both "pairs" were in service, but not on overlapping timescales, but you could have spares for the earlier ones lying around for decades, whilst the later ones were in use.. The Americans weren't immune to that, either, there was a McDonnell Phantom prior to the more well-known device, although the earlier one never entered British service,

The Lancaster was, perhaps, named after somewhere near to Manchester, as it was really a development of the ill-fated Avro Manchester, after the Vulture engines were abandoned in favour of the rather better Merlins. And, Avro was a 'local' company there. The Lancaster then morphed into the Lincoln and, ultimately, the Shackleton, flying on into the 1990s. Handley Page had a penchant for names that started with an alliterative 'H'. 'Stirling' also, perhaps, had a secondary hint of solid reliability? The Stirling was rather overshadowed in the four-engined hierarchy. It was an early design that was required to fit through the standard hangar doors, so the wingspan was shorter than it could otherwise have been. The airframe was relatively robust, but the landing gear could be troublesome, and the bomb-bay was divided, so it couldn't transport the larger bombs that became operational later in the war. And the low aspect ratio wings led them to often fly lower than the other planes, with a consequent higher risk of being bombed from above. We made a list once of the various types of names - battles, famous people, cities, weather, birds, other animals, etc. There were some odd ones that stood out, there were a few insects, but we could only think of one plant, the Bristol Sycamore helicopter - and it seemed odd to name military aircraft after prey animals, Gazelle, Wildebeest, etc.

Energy, ancient and modern.