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HEM

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Everything posted by HEM

  1. Don't go down that road - it can cost you your life... This policy would have saved at least 2 lives some time back. Its been my pleasure to have visited the offices of the German Air Accident Investigation folks (BFU) in Braunschweig a few times, along with a group from my flying club - a former club member is one of the accident investigators. Following a lecture which included in-detail analysis of a particular crash (such as AF447) we would be led into the "wreck-hall" where the sad remains of numerous types of aircraft from airliner to hot air ballons were resting. One particular heap of metal was caused by CO poisoning due to the heat-exchanger corroding & letting exhaust gasses into the cockpit. The tragic thing was, the owner had perviously had an electronic CO-detector fitted but had it removed "because it was always sounding alarm".
  2. The trouble is that insurance companies don't think the same way as their customers. Although its no help I assume that pre-Brexit there would have been no problem - at least some level of cover would have been automatic.
  3. My son has a Volkswagen ID.3 as a company car & is VERY happy with it & says its great fun to drive. During the Summer months it will charge from the solar panels on his roof (recently built house).
  4. I have Handbrake installed on my PC - its a tool frequently recommended on the Adobe Premiere Elements user forum. I have used it when I accidently changed the setting on my CamCorder to Dolby 5.1 & had to use Handbrake to convert the video clips to stereo audio.
  5. I guess about once per week there is a report in the local paper about a bomb being found & defused. Usually this is whilst clearing land for some new building. (I live on the outskirts of a town just outside Hamburg - to the North-West).
  6. HEM

    Opportunity

    When I knew her she had white sails...
  7. Which would be about that time that my aunt & a teacher colleague must have bought her (Nancy). See the second post on this thread:
  8. HEM

    Opportunity

    This sounds very much like the boat my aunt Brenda & a colleague (both teachers in the Manchester area) owned back in the 1960s / 70s. They regularly took groups of girls for sailing sessions, based on Malthouse broad. Said to have been "the tallest mast on the Broads", Nancy was supposedly the prototype for a new Broads class that was never further developed. IIRC the transom has "Nancy" and "Southgates Horning" on it. On one of the sails "Nancie" was written in small letters. I sailed with them several times. I started a thread on the subject a while back but got no response. My aunt Brenda celebrated her 100th birthday on the 3rd December 2022 - for which we flew to the UK to be with her. She passed away exactly one month later - her funeral was last Tuesday.
  9. There is a bit more snow at Crater Lake Visitor Centre (Oregon, USA)... We've been there twice - but without snow (or only very little)!
  10. The figure is supposed to be that of Mrs. Barrable & her pug William. Coot Club was the first AR book I read - at the age of 10. A tatty hardback version was in our classroom library.
  11. Some little while ago there was a TV program over 'ere about one of the Swiss mountain cog railways. The locomotives are either powered by coal or oil. Apparently they are under pressure (or even ordered?) to use wood pellets instead. Trouble is that they would need 4x the amount of pellets by volume & the bunkers just have enough space for coal for one trip. So there is a problem...
  12. HEM

    Brrr!

    I'm glad it was the 2nd - 4th December when we paid a flying visit (literally) to the UK for my aunt's 100th birthday on the 3rd. Although the Manchester / Liverpool area isn't really known for much snow (I used to live there). Said aunt spend numerous sailing holidays on the Broads back in the 1960s / 70s.
  13. Ferranti Mercury? The prececessor to Atlas. The Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell installed theirs in 1958.
  14. I joined the German branch of Sun in April 1998 & stayed through the acquisition by Oracle until retirement age (just under 20 years), ending up in global remote hardware support. Previously I'd had about 10 years as Sun system administrator. My brother was Sun employee #10 in the UK.
  15. Made by Sun Microsystems?
  16. Modern stuff - try this for a bit of computing history: Ferranti Atlas: Britain's first supercomputer My father was one of the users of the Manchester Atlas (for Chemistry research) and as a school kid I was occasionally taken into the Atlas room at weekends without realising the significance of the whole thing. Subsequently I studied Computer Science at Manchester with lectures from Tom, Dai, Simon & colleagues. When the Manchester Atlas was decommisioned I saw how some large components were thrown over the parapet of the flat roof of the electrical engineering building into a skip below (I was watching from the 7th floor of the Chemistry building). The final comment is somehow painful: "and now your washing machine has a more powerful computer in it than Atlas".
  17. Since the title of this thread includes "Non Broads" I offer you this video I made during my 1-week vacation on Mallorca at the end of September this year: The trains are a real gem - lovingly maintained. The journey takes about an hour each way. What I missed filming was on the climb out of Soller (return journey) the train driver had to do an emergency stop due to a car that shot across his bows. Then both drivers had a great argument!
  18. I would have thought not but I see that she was not part of the "Vigil of the Princes" for the Queen Mother.. I'm somewhat saddened that the funeral looks like taking place on Monday 19th as I'll be in the air that morning flying (as PAX) from Hamburg to Palma. I'd have preferred the Sunday as I could have at least watched live.
  19. Back in the 1960s my aunt together with a teacher colleague owned a half-decker called Nancy. She was Bermudan rigged - I think the sails had "Nancie" written on them. IIRC she was carvel-built (mahogany?) with the name Nancy & "Southgates Horning" on the transom. Supposedly "the tallest mast on the Broads" she was said to have been the prototype of a new class that never got further. My aunt & her colleague (teachers at Oldham school for girls) used to take a group of pupils sailing based on Ranworth (Malthouse) Broad each Easter. It was probably 1966 when we joined for a long weekend after the pupils had left. I must have spent at least a couple of holidays on the Broads with my aunt (on one of which I became friends with Erny Curtis - son of Basil who ran the Thurne shop). On one such visit we collected Nancy from Southgates before sailing to Thurne. Anyhow - my aunt is still alive at 99 & I'd be interested to learn what became of Nancy...
  20. Yes - but there is something called TCAS.
  21. ...and cockpit voice recorder (it was AF 447). A previous member of my flying club is an accident investigator with the BFU (German air accident investigation folks). My club has run a number of Summer Camps (to be repeated this year) near to Braunschweig (BFU headquarters) and on bad-weather days we have visited the BFU & had a talk either by our ex-member or one of his colleagues. The various national accident investigation teams cooperate closely & in the case of AF 447 numerous countries were involved under French leadership - including the Brits, the Germans & the Russians. Our ex-member was part of the search team "you are from Hamburg area - you are seaworthy". Thus eventually our man was on a ship using sonar to search. His expedition did not find it - the following one did. He then briefed us what went on on the flight deck.
  22. HEM

    My Day

    It always is - just might be rather short. Its an urban myth that German Autobahnen have no speed limits. What is true is that some sections of German Autobahnen have no speed limits. The section of the A23 Autobahn (5 minutes from where I live) starts with a 120 kmh limit in the direction of Hamburg & this rapidly reduces to 100 kmh. 15 to 20 years ago whilst working for a global computer manufacturer I often had to drive between home & Ratingen (near Dusseldorf) and on suitable sections did touch 150 kmh (the company diesel Passat was a kilometer-eater). But nowadays driving my own car I usually do not exceed 120 kmh - above that it really drinks fuel (sadly not a diesel).
  23. My mother (or was it grandmother) used to tell that story. At the time of the coronation I was 11 months old - I believe my mother followed events on the radio.
  24. When we bought the current cars we had them fit all-year tires & are happy we did so. Avoids the twice-yearly exchanging and storage. Up here in Northern Germany where its flat there is rarely any serious snow. Things are different if you live in hilly areas or near the alps.
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