Scale

This event  in London a couple of days has finally brought some semi official recognition of the sacrifices made by the aircrew of RAF bomber command, after they were shunned at the the end of the war by a government trying to distance itself from the outcomes of it's own strategy. It brought to mind this graphic, which I came across a wee while ago (I can't remember where), and was saving for use one day. It shows in a way that numbers can't the sheer scale at which World War 2 was fought (click to enlarge).

Each Lancaster had a crew of seven, each Mosquito two, with thousands more needed to service, arm and organise the aircraft, and thousands more on the other side trying to stop them. On this raid losses among the attackers were light at only 9 aircraft, but on one occasion (Nuremberg in 1944) 96 bombers were downed in the space of a few hours. On the ground thousands were killed or de-housed.

It's a distraction that the particular raid chosen for the graphic was the notorious one on Dresden, since it might suggest that was a special effort. In fact the horrific result at Dresden was the atypical aspect; the resources used to achieve it were not. By the mid to latter stages of the war raids of this size were sent against Germany most nights practicable, with the USAAF doing the same by day. And this was only one aspect of one theatre of the war.

Mug Tray Jenga

Slight interruption in the regular blogging thing at the moment, due to a combination of being busy with off-line stuff, and coming up with all kinds of stuff to post but ending up like that scene in The Matrix where Neo can only sit and stare at his computer screen when it comes to posting it. I need to coincide the inspiration with the times I can get it down on pixel. In the meantime, today some colleagues and I came up with a new game to play at work, after noticing that once the top tray of mugs empties people just go for the next one down without placing the empty tray to one side. We call it Mug Tray Jenga :)

Thoughts from the saddle

The hip problem that dogged my autumn has mostly gone away now, enough for me to carefully resume regular riding*. Just in time for winter.

Here is my gear drying out after riding home in the rain last night.

It has occurred to me that I must be turning into a 'true' cyclist or something, in that weather becomes less and less of a concern. As long as I have somewhere at the end of my ride to get changed and/or dry out as required I'm not bothered by the elements. Last evening was forecast for gale force winds and heavy rain and I didn't bat an eye before heading into the fray. I missed the wind but got the rain. Once you're acclimatised it can be kind of pleasant. Only my hands and legs wind up getting really wet, and at times I quite like being out in the rain.

After overnight heavy rain and thunderstorms, by dawn this morning local weather picture looked like this for my ride to work. This was about as warm as it got all day.

My stream of thought on this morning's ride went something like this (not untypically):

Wow it’s a bit bitter this morning. Lucky I’m riding a bike to keep me warm. Apart from my hands and feet.

The waterproofing I put on my jacket the other day seems to be holding up well.

Go on clouds, hail, I dare you.

Why is this song stuck in my head? Worst song they ever released.

Some more thunder and lightning would be fun right now.

Polypro's keep you warm even when they are wet. I’m not getting as wet as I thought I would be though.

Weather like this is great for thinning out traffic on the trails (unless you're an earthworm, in which case it seems to encourage you to rise from the depths and see if the grass is greener on the other side of the trail).

I must be getting fitter, since I’m not working as hard as I thought I would be.

Two lane roundabouts utterly do not work for bikes

You can sit in your cars and laugh but I’m having more fun than you are.

Why is it every time I ride over this narrow two lane bridge with no shoulder it coincides with a truck going the same direction?

Gas heated mains-pressure showers at work are ace

* as well as my other physical activities. Not quite back to normal yet ability wise but getting there. I seem to have lost a little bit of speed and power, but the fitness is coming back steadily.

Deb's Night Out

A couple of days after seeing the Shihad doco on the weekend, which is well worth seeing for its own sake even if you have no interest in the band, I came across this revisiting of one of my favourite tracks of theirs, "Deb's Night Out", as well as another better known song (that I kind of have a love/hate relationship with). I knew the broad backstory to "Deb's Night Out" already, but I enjoyed the more detailed insights into just how it came to be.

It's the song that finally got me into the band, after flirting with earlier singles. I remember hearing it on the radio sitting in a car in a supermarket carpark in 1995, hearing that looping melodic drone, the line about "pray for the rain, to wash you far away", the relentless drum sample that propels the song forward and I was hooked. It was perfect. In its more guitar based reworked live version it has become one of my favourite songs to see at a gig as well. The doco used the song brilliantly, cutting from live footage of it being performed last year to archival footage of the band's manager at an early 90's show.

When released as a single it was packaged as an EP, with four other tracks, two of which are also favourites, the bulldozering cover of their then manager's band Flesh D-Vice's "Flaming Soul", and the gloriously moody and atmospheric instrumental "Last Day Of A Three Day Journey". I remember driving around in a car all night with a few friends in 1996, talking about loves and life, and playing this tape over and over until the sun was about to come up. The video too is cool, capturing the conflict in the song perfectly (as well as some Wellington locations that are now either very different or gone altogether).

I like it's unusual structure, and the way it presaged where the band was going creatively. It isn't only unique in style on it's album, it pretty much stands alone in their entire back catalogue. But it showed there was more to this band than just riffs and noise. It's dark, moody and uplifting at the same time, and I love it.

Speed reading

Found this the other day and had a go. Apparently I am a fast reader (somthing I noticed at high school, when I once attracted an audience in class for reading this at about a page a minute when it was our study text), although I have no idea how the metrics for this thing are sourced, and it is advertising, so the whole thing might be bunk.
http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/technology-research-centers/ereaders/speed-reader/index.html

I clocked in at 525 wpm, although I wasn't reading at full pace (the display and typeset took a couple of seconds to get used to, and I take a few pages to get warmed up anyway). Fun though.

Also fun in the way of internet randomness was discovering I share my blood type with at best 1% of the world on average (I knew it was rare, but not that rare), and that as a type it didn't even exist until relatively recently (not seen until 1000-1500 years ago). For some reason it reminds me of the time I got 'made' for being Black Irish by an Irish doctor last year. Solely on appearance (pale skin, very dark hair) he determined correctly I had at least some Irish ancestry. Since I have elements of Irish, English (and possibly Scandinavian given that part of England was prone to occasional tourism by the Vikings) that I know about in my ancestry, getting an ancestral DNA test done might be fun sometime.

RNZAF 75th Part 3: Hunter

Finally getting around to posting some pics of the show itself. Rather than deluge a giant pic post, I thought I would try and go for theme or type posts. Since it opened the show, it seems only fair to start with the Hawker Hunter FR.74B.

This isn't an RNZAF jet, but a civilian owned and operated jet warbird, which first started flying in NZ in 2000 before being grounded for cost reasons mid-decade (it's a high performance jet fighter, and thus not exactly cheap to run). It was reactivated for this summer's display season, and it is great to see it flying again.

The Hunter is a second generation jet fighter developed in the 1950's by the British, one of the best looking jet fighters ever built, and one of my favourite types. The RNZAF never operated Hunters, but New Zealanders did fly them on exchange with the RAF. This particular one was built in 1957 and had an RAF career before being refurbished and having a second career with the Republic of Singapore Air Force, whose colours it wears now. The Singaporeans retired it in 1992, and it came here a few years later.

It might be old, but it's no slouch. It's plenty fast enough to generate it's own vapour cloud on a high speed pass (500+ knots in this shot; it is in fact the fastest aircraft currently flying in NZ). If only the sun was shining on this pass it would have shown up the vapour better:

One of the things I've learned about airshow photography is anticipation is key. Knowing where the aircraft is going to be and what it might do is really handy. With that in mind I remembered seeing a picture of a couple of Swiss Hunters generating good vapour on a fast pass in a magazine a little while ago, so was hoping the morning air might be good to see the same here. I got lucky:

 

Again would have been awesome if the light was a bit better, but them's the breaks. The streaks over the wings are cool, but I particularly like the little bit of ectoplasm sitting right above the pilot :).

Like many high-performance aircraft of its era it uses a braking parachute to slow down after landing.

I used to love seeing this jet at shows in the early 2000's, and hopefully we'll see it around for a few more seasons yet. It's fast, noisy, graceful and full of character.

Real TOPGUN

This is one of my favourite pieces of kit boxart (and aviation art in general), by one of my favourite aviation artists, Shigeo Koike, who in addition to painting exquisite aircraft portraits, has a long association with producing artwork for Hasegawa plastic kits.

It might not be the most accurate depiction of the time and place, with another one here, but it is still a great painting (I like the incidental detail of the cloud in particular) and depicts the last flight of a US Navy F-4J Phantom, callsign "Showtime 100" on the 10th of May 1972 . At work we write all the dates dd/mon/yy as a convention for clarity, and I have nearly automatically written "10 May 72" instead of "10 May 12" a heap of times today since it is a date I have seen in print so often.

It's crew that day shot down three MiGs in one mission (becoming the first US aces of the Vietnam War), including an epic final duel against arguably the best North Vietnamese pilot any US flier would encounter throughout the war, before being shot down themselves by an unseen missile (the last battle against the well handled MiG-17 flown by a mysterious pilot also the subject of myth and lore is depicted in both paintings). Swiftly rescued they were back on their carrier the same day. It is one of the most analysed and discussed air combats in history, probably second only to the Red Baron's final flight.

Forget the movie, this was real TOPGUN stuff, with their performance that day helping vindicate the formation of the then still relatively new and unproven tactics school that was created to address poor performances earlier in the war. Both of the crew were TOPGUN graduates, and would go become TOPGUN instructors, although one would subsequently fall from grace in a big way.

It was the stuff of legends, and 40 years ago today (and only four years before I was born just quietly...).

12 months of Soph

Sophie is one year old today. She has a lot of similarities to her older sister, but a lot of differences as well, and she is just as awesome; her journey so far has been just as rewarding. And since I did it for her sister, a trip through Soph's archive is in order (and it's interesting comparing the two!):

May 2011

June 2011

July 2011

August 2011

September 2011

October 2011

November 2011

December 2011

January 2012

February 2012

March 2012

April 2012

May 2012

Happy Birthday beautiful girl :)

Dope On A Rope

Yesterday might have been my wife's birthday (Happy Birthday to Fi, who also took all these photos BTW), but I got a great present in the form of participating in a winching demonstration at the Life Flight Open Day, after winning a radio competition a few days ago to play the role of sandbag/volunteer/item to be winched. That's me with the paramedic on the end of the cable.

The helmet helped, but it wasn't as noisy or windy as I was expecting, and they haven't dropped anyone yet, so I wasn't worried about falling. It was great fun; it honestly never occured to be to be nervous or anything. Watching the helicopter get closer and closer was cool, until it eventually blotted out the sun as it came to the hover about fifteen feet above me.

Since the crewman's head is only about a foot away, and you're trying not to move around too much as requested (as well as enjoy myself, my main focus was to listen to the guys whose job this is, and not do anything dumb), you can't actually see much on the winch. I did have a surreal moment when we got level with the aircraft, and I looked down it's length and thought "Do you realise just where you are right now? You're hanging outside a helicopter thats forty feet in the air!". It was cool.

Safely retrieved we flew past the crowd, who were waving so it seemed only polite to wave back. We then picked up a few more draw-winners and headed off for a flight around the city.

 Did I mention I was picked up from the back of a fire engine? Even more awesome points.

As well as being  a good launch pad the airport appliance was a great place to watch passing traffic while waiting for the helicopter to launch. I have terrible posture in this shot, but I blame the harness. I've spent a bit of time wearing them for this and that over the years and they never make you look good :)

So now I can cross being winched into an airborne helicopter off my to-do list. It was a privilege and a lot of fun, and thanks to everyone at the Life Flight Trust and Classic Hits who made it happen (hopefully circumstances like these are the only time I get to do this!).

RNZAF 75th Part 2: Backstage Pass

As I mentioned in the earlier post, on the night before the airshow I was lucky enough to be part of a group invited by owner/operator Brendon Deere to spend a couple of hours in a hangar on the base housing his personal collection of flyable historic aircraft.

While we were waiting to be escorted on base, the recently refurbished gate-guardian Vampire FB.5 was looking good in the evening light.

Dominating the hangar is the recently returned to NZ Grumman Avenger. This aircraft used to fly here in RNZAF colours before heading to Australia about a decade ago. It isn't ex RNZAF itself, but it represents the Avengers the RNZAF did fly in WWII and the years after.

That's not an inspection hatch, it's an entry hatch. The Avenger is big, built around being able to carry a torpedo in an enclosed bomb bay, and enormous for a single engined aircraft. Comments about it's size on seeing one up close for the first time are quite common according to it's owner :). There is a legend that an entire fifteen man rugby team was once transported between RNZAF bases in one; looking at one up close it isn't hard to believe it might be true.

Having a look at this Avenger reminded me of the 1980's when I used to be able to go and explore a genuine RNZAF one near where I lived. The wings were stored on the ground nearby, and you could see where the paint had worn to reveal the original US Navy markings applied when it was built in 1943.

Photo credit Sean, via Wings over NZ forum

It was one of the first insights I had that these weren't just old aeroplanes; they had history and stories they could tell.

As well as the Avenger, the hangar is home to a pair of vintage trainers in the form of ex RNZAF Harvard, and Ex RAAF Winjeel.

The highlight for many though, was the presence of Brendon's Spitfire Mk.IX. Brendon was responsible for bringing this aircraft to NZ, and completely restoring it to airworthy condition. It wears the markings of his uncle Alan Deere, one of New Zealand's most well known WWII fighter pilots.

Like many surviving Spitfires, it has a varied history. Built in 1944, it served with the RAF,  Italian Air Force, Israeli Air Force and  Burmese Air Force before being retired in 1956.

In addition to all the other displays and artwork around the hangar walls, a nice touch is an original section of PV270's skin, bearing the colours and serial it wore in Burmese service.

I remember reading about this particular Spitfire in a magazine as a child while it was still sitting on a pole in Burma. As an adult to be walking around it and inspecting it in my own country as a fully restored and airworthy machine was more than a little surreal, and an enormous privilege. If you could have told me back then I would spend an evening like this in the future I probably wouldn't have believed you :).

Under The Mountain

Theme song for this post: Going Underground

We marked ANZAC day on Wednesday by going to a mid-morning remembrance service, visiting a friends for (their) birthday tea and scones, then going up to Wright's Hill Fortress in Karori for a wander in the afternoon. ANZAC Day also marks 13 years since Fi and I got together, so it was nice to do something as a family. We finished up by having a mini-picnic (cupcakes and raspberry buns) on the lawn outside the entrance :)

I've been to the fortress a few times now, and while it is interesting to see how the restoration is going (especially compared to the first time I visited it in 1989), it can be a bit creepy knowing just how enclosed you are (besides it not being a particularly welcoming place in general). It still impresses me how hidden it is. Aside from the long empty gun-pits on the surface (in a nice piece of irony, the guns and turrets were sold post-war to the Japanese the place was built to defend Wellington from), and the external access portals, there is little hint of what lies below the summit of the hill.

Charlotte liked the wetas especially. The cool and dark is a perfect environment for them:

It is open about five times a year, and worth checking out by any Wellingtonians interested in the history of their city.

NB this post was meant to go up a few days ago, but I ran into some problems with bloggers new photo uploader insisting the images I saved in portrait were really meant to be in landscape, and thus posting everything sideways. Not an improvement when the old one never had any issues with it.

RNZAF 75th Part 1: Good and Bad

Listening to: The NZ Breakers taking out a back to back championship win in the ANBL. Yeah!

So still playing catch-up with the blogging, mostly due to a heavy dose of REAL LIFE ^TM last week. So where were we? About three weeks back I think.

So three weeks ago, as March turned to April we all went up to Palmerston North for the weekend to go to the RNZAF 75th Annivesary Air Show at nearby RNZAF Base Ohakea. It was a fun trip.

Firstly though, since it probably needs addressing (and everyone I know who has asked me about the show mentions it), and to get it out of the way, the bad. A big part of the media coverage of the event was The Traffic.

It is a bit sad and disappointing that what should have been a great occasion (and was for those who got to attend) was spoiled for many by The Traffic. It was so bad that many didn’t get to the airfield, even those who had left ample time for the journey. The traffic management for getting to the show was a debacle, no other word for it. If there was a plan, there was no evidence of it, or it was executed incompetently. Certainly the flow was much worse than any other show I have been to at Ohakea. The arrival routes and detours were reasonably well advised in advance publicity (even if some of them made no sense at all, like routing traffic through choke points rather than around them), but at the time we arrived at least on the day there was no signposting or off-base direction whatsoever for air show traffic. Since I know the roads around there reasonably well I knew where to go anyway, but most of the people arriving didn’t know (and shouldn’t be expected to). Hence lots of traffic going where it wasn’t planned to, not helped by an accident on one of the inbound routes.

Compounding the problems was an apparent expectation from the Air Force that most show-goers would have pre-purchased tickets on-line (as a pre-show announcement that gate sales would in theory be limited suggests). Having a pre-bought ticket made for a very speedy entry; buying a ticket at the gate from the car window not so much. When we arrived the road to the entry was split into ticket holders and sales; the ticket holder queue was short to non-existent, while most vehicles were going into the purchase line. This would have further added to delays up the queue. Combining this with the Air Force possibly under-anticipating the number of people who wanted to attend, and some of those people (not all) naively assuming that they could plan to arrive just before the flying was scheduled to start, and the jam became inevitable. It got so epicly bad that the Air Force is not only refunding tickets, but formally reviewing what happened.

Experienced show goers know to get there as early as practical, as some traffic delay is part of the game, it just isn’t usually this fouled up. We left later than I had planned, sped past one already gridlocked road, and were only in slow moving traffic for half an hour or so, getting on site later than anticipated, but still before the show started. I griped about the traffic at the time, but in hindsight for us it was about average. We luckily missed the worst delays, and only heard about how bad it was getting as the day progressed. As it happens some members of a web forum I post on flew into the show while we were still on the road, and one of them took a picture of the queue. I remembered seeing the aircraft they were on, and had a closer look, and lo, there we were!

(Mumbles is my forum name, original image by P. Lewis)

 Adding to the the traffic issues was the parking direction on the field. The route to the carpark area crossed a closed runway where the food vendors and retailers were located, and no crowd control meant distracted pedestrians were often unaware of and moving in front of the still arriving cars, meaning more delays as cars had to stop. The filling of the carpark itself didn't help either. At every other airshow I can think of, the carparks are filled from the far side from the entry point first. This works; incoming cars have a clear idea of where to go, making the drive in easier, and it is safer since no-one has to drive past an unloading car to get to a park. Instead, the park was filled from the entry in, meaning more reliance on marshals to know where to go, driving down long lines of cars unloading people and gear, and because of that creating an unnecessary hazard. People getting out of cars, especially children, want to move around and stretch their legs, and at one point we came to a complete halt with young children moving about blocking the way, while their parents obliviously unloaded the car. You could argue that’s just bad parenting, but back-filling the carpark properly would have pretty much eliminated this kind of occurrence, which added up to even more delays for those still to arrive.

The programme for the show itself also caused a few gripes, mainly in that there wasn’t one published. No programme survives contact with the day generally, but it would have been nice to have some clue about what was flying when, so I could plan forays to the ground displays when things I wasn’t that interested in were flying. Not have a lunch break didn't help, so I missed out on seeing some things on the ground. The running order was also a bit weird, lacking continuity and focus even while the actual displays were cool. There were times when it seemed that the commentary team didn’t always know what was going on either.

Most disappointing though was the decision of display organisers to cancel the Ohakea based Spitfire's display for timing reasons after it was already airborne. Seeing it and the other Spitfire present in the air together was going to be one of the highlights of the day for me, and found it staggering that at an air show dedicated to celebrating the 75^th anniversary of the RNZAF, someone thought it appropriate to drop the display of one of the most historically significant aircraft there, while other gap-filling displays with nothing to do with the show's central theme went ahead. It was especially disappointing since I and some other members of the forum mentioned above had been privileged to enjoy an invite-only inspection of the Spitfire by it's owner the night before the show.

As a veteran show goer, while I had a great day, it was flawed by a definite lack of polish and things that have been done better by the same organisation in the past. At times there was a slightly puzzling feeling of inexperience on the part of the organisers, puzzling because usually they are pretty good. There was a sense of wheels perhaps being re-invented.

Anyway, these are the at length ramblings of someone who has been to a lot of air shows. We had a great time.The weather was good, the flying was great, and my girls had fun, including Sophie making her air show debut:

My memories of air shows at an early age are dominated by hating the noise (I love the noise now), so I made sure I got earmuffs for the babes. They came in handy for moments like this (FA/18 right over our heads in full afterburner. Niiice):

And while a lot of the media focus was negative, there were some good unintentional lols as well. This is a Spitfire (you can trust me on this):

 According to the NZ Herald Website though, these are Spitfires:

That gem pales though in comparison to the gold that was The Sunday Star Times' take on the show (notes mine):