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Post by horicle on Oct 14, 2018 11:43:32 GMT 12
The A400 is a possible B757 replacement. Any thought of replacing the current C-130’s directly with a LAV/NH90 capable airlifter is most unlikely. I recall Ron Mark on Q+A or Newshub Nation when asked about the upcoming transport fleet replacements accomodating the LAV/NH90 requirement saying it was a factor or it was covered, (exact wording not remembered). I do not read this as replacing our current C-130H’s with a larger aircraft.
I need answers to the following.
How long will the 757’s last?
How important is it to have a “couth” VIP asset in the fleet?
If we got the A400 would we dare use it in its battlefield role?
For reasons I might have mentioned before I think the best answer is - C-2
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Post by horicle on Oct 11, 2018 11:08:06 GMT 12
Interesting noting the different prop positions of the Canadian and Kiwi belly sitters. The Canadian was put down with the prop feathered, blades stationary and no damage to the upper two. The Kiwi has the props in fine pitch and all blades bent back. Different procedures or different cicumstances?
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Post by horicle on Sept 23, 2018 12:07:47 GMT 12
Sounds like an example of the changing Health and Safety world. Ever hear the stories about WW2 instrument makers who licked the bristles of the paint brushes they used to apply the luminous paint to the dials to make getting fine detail easier. And the terrible cancers they later suffered from. My guess is the dials and indicator needles inside the Norton device where painted with a heavily radium based paint (luminous). The effects of applying the human eye to this concoction is for scientific comment. But as to how the world has changed take this very short version of a long story.
The RNZAF uses a low pressure walk round oxygen system on the C-130 for both emergency and general use when depressurised at high altitude. For some reason there were two part numbers for what was otherwise identical bits of kit. A serendipitous event lead to finding a requirement to check the gauges with a Geiger counter. It transpired that all the older P/Ns had radio activity readings that were outside current hazard limits. It must have been that WW2 luminous paint.
So from all this if you are wearing your Dad's family heirloom wristwatch with the really good luminous dial - you might want to toss it before your hand falls off.
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Post by horicle on Sept 19, 2018 11:31:12 GMT 12
Failed the last two, because due to old age I forgot what I was doing. Or the luck ran out!
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Post by horicle on Sept 16, 2018 15:34:41 GMT 12
New Cessnas? What do you mean? Apologies. Life's a Beech.
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Post by horicle on Sept 15, 2018 12:05:38 GMT 12
The helicopters at Ohakea won't move because "Chopper World" at OH is such a specialised investment. It is the old parts of the Base that are under utilised. Then there is the using of the new Cessnas as a secondary maritime asset. Only as good as the suitability of their weather radar to find a small fishing boat. Anyone seen specs for that piece of kit? But the Cessnas would probably not leave Ohakea because of the training role. The hint of a new smaller transport aircraft is interesting. Bring back 1 Sqn. More activity at Whenuapai from that.
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Post by horicle on Aug 23, 2018 10:29:27 GMT 12
How big a chopper can that heli pad take?
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Post by horicle on Aug 3, 2018 9:27:24 GMT 12
How much of this is political because it is all about war, or is it just financial. Yet the quoted cost of dismantling the exhibition is truly daunting.
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Post by horicle on Jul 7, 2018 12:57:22 GMT 12
Remember the last time Whenuapai was going to be closed?
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Post by horicle on Jun 29, 2018 12:05:42 GMT 12
The seat was powered by the 3 phase a/c and required external power cart or engine running to work (no batteries /DC in this system). It was a useful check that the 3 phase power was correctly functioning before doing any equipment ground checks/functionals. No seat movement, go no further. My left hand does not quite remember where the switch was.
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Post by horicle on Jun 21, 2018 13:51:02 GMT 12
Skytrain is usually populated by all sorts of visitors on any given occasion. Did we invite the Chinese because nobody else would come, or, did nobody else come because we invited the Chinese? I only new of it through this forum, it was invisible to the NZ News, even with those non bypass jet engines. Understand the exercise was conducted between WH and OH so how many times did the IL-76 visit OH? My Feilding spy only saw it once. He got the time right but called it as a Globemaster. Retraining scheduled for next pub day.
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Post by horicle on Jun 8, 2018 12:13:06 GMT 12
Refer my post of May 24 And then there is the lack of a larger door.
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Post by horicle on Jun 1, 2018 12:57:54 GMT 12
The unintended consequence is non standard communications when the pilot is already overloaded with problems he/she did not see coming. Right now I can only recall one other fatal first flight in a single seater and that was in the 1960's. The hard truth of that one was pilot preparation which compounded with the unfamiliar environment lead to the sad outcome.
Now for the long story (and this is the short version). At Ohakea we evolved to the situation where a glider landing on the grass vector with its undercut up was left alone. In two cases where a well meaning call "ZZ you have your undercut up" was made a simple embarrassment nearly turned into a total disaster. The one I saw involved a Phoebus C on a hangar flight. The pilot was taking the luxury of a long ground effect run west towards 1 Hangar and from my vantage point near the winch I was thinking we will have to clean the crap out of the belly hook after this effort because it is too late to change hands and put the undercard down now. Then the winch driver radioed "GA undercart", half a second later the glider which was flying level 10 feet off the ground pitched violently upward into a 60 to 70 degree climb, gained about 30 feet and the pitched down to level flight - with the undercard down - and landed straight ahead. Now for the aerodynamic bit. Phoebus had a slab all flying tailplane. No aerodynamic trim, just a spring on the control column (a design practice now happily consigned to the past) and the anti flutter device was the mass of the pilots arm on the end of the control column. From my own experience if left hands off when trimmed absolutely perfectly Phoebus could not fly straight for 10 seconds. It was a 50/50 pitch hard up or hard down. If not trimmed perfectly it diverted instantly.
Now the owner/pilot in this story knew all this and was in a no stress situation until that radio call.
Back to the post. So if the instructor on the ground is going to make a difference to (for example) a badly planned circuit it has got to be done in stages. First by verbal assistance when things are seen to be diverging from OK, just like the instructor is in the aircraft. Trouble is when things really get rough the instructors next call is "I have control". Only there is a problem. Radio assistance will work but it is an early intervention tool and comes with hooks. It is not the answer to proper training and briefing. As so often happens I feel the findings by the experts are not the best answer.
The earliest intervention from the ground could only be "you have turned onto base leg to soon" (too high). The instructor in the glider would have spoken as the turn was initiated as prevented it, a totally different outcome. Try any combination of events/outcomes and radio assistance from the ground is harder than you think.
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Post by horicle on May 31, 2018 11:47:50 GMT 12
Just an observation.
While reading the Transport Fleet replacement I was prompted to note that some have not got a grasp of the tie up between a nations defence forces and its alliances. Just discussing this from New Zealand’s situation all our defence force needs to be capable of is making an aggressors task difficult until the alliance/s we are in come on stream. Because we are at the end of the world (technically only possible on a flat Earth) we tend to think it will never happen and we are more likely to be one of the helpers in some other nations problem. Either way we are not going to be much use without a balanced defence force. To me it is more about capabilities than numbers. Every thing leads back to restoring our combat force.
Sorry to see the other two threads locked. I was happy sorting the wheat from the chaff and all discussions tend to wander. Did you note the factual inconsistency in the David Broome article which will surely leave an incorrect memory message in the minds of the defence illiterate.
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Post by horicle on May 24, 2018 12:51:48 GMT 12
If we are to introduce a lower level MPA I would not pick the Dash 8 for NZ use.
First on price since that drives all Government spending.
Shopping at Wikipedia you can get a (basic) Dash 8 for $32M. I would put that up against a (basic) C-295M at $28M. The tricky bit is how much you pay for the electronics (and the galley, please note that ANY MPA designed without a galley is a crap MPA). Turning the C-295M into the Persuader MPA version seems to double the price. I have not found a cost for the equivalent Dash 8. But you would get what you paid for.
A second consideration for a small operator is what else can you use the same basic airframe for. With the C-295M it is a capable short field transport. The Dash 8 is a passenger aircraft which we really do not need. Also note that the Persuader still has the rear ramp and some cargo space and easy air/ground delivery of items.
I would like to think we only need this class of aircraft if we drop out of serious deep water MPA, - or buy so few P-8s that we need MQ-4cs and Littoral MPAs to cover the gaps.
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Post by horicle on May 16, 2018 15:45:45 GMT 12
See if this works. Just to be even handed.
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Post by horicle on May 15, 2018 13:43:23 GMT 12
This
Gets you this KAWASAKI P1 - Flying Display at ILA 2018 Air Show Berlin
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Post by horicle on May 8, 2018 13:48:54 GMT 12
Currently I am still against the P-8. It will not do the job the way the job needs to be done. Its proponents tell us it is there to patrol the oceans and sink submarines. Consider these observations.
There are two parts to anti sub ops. The first is stopping the lurking boomer (nuclear missile launching sub) which is the prime cold war task. Face it, there is no way any aircraft will find a boomer unless it knows where to look. You could cover half the ocean with sonobuoys and still miss it. It is akin to flight 370. The second is stopping the air breathers. This is more like the battle of the Atlantic, but things have moved on. Think SAM’s on subs and radar warning systems. Now you might think moving the search platform up to 30,000ft is going to make the odds better. It won’t. The prime senses for finding things on the surface are all electromagnetic. Radar has a small bandwidth, optical and infrared have their parts of the spectrum. Note, optical includes the mark one eyeball. In the radar world the point where RWS (radar warning systems) had the advantage over radar search systems had occurred before Kahu. So that means that at 30,000ft a surfaced sub knows you are looking for it when you are are 190Km away. When you get close enough to detect your returned signal at about 160Km (a really good radar system) the sub has sensibly submerged so you never new it was there. If the sub was still on the surface to be detected what can be done? Terms of engagement would surely exclude launching a missile at it. In fact you would only know it was a sub if the blip suddenly disappeared. This is a case for drones. But the drone has to be in the right place at the right time. If the drone is that good, why the expensive P-8 to manage it?
There is more hope for optics and infrared as they are passive tools. Unfortunately they have their own set of disadvantages which are made worse by altitude. Both are degraded by distance through the atmosphere. The main culprit is water vapour. If it is cloud it totally stops sight. The lower frequency infrared can see through cloud but it is reduced a bit by that and all other water vapour in the atmosphere. For infrared to work the main pickup would be the subs exhaust gases as the subs hull temperature would have to be different to the sea around it to be visible. The only advantage of patrolling at 30.000ft is to monitor surface activity. Perhaps those P-8’s are really patrolling at 12,000ft where they can manage what they find, and not tell the whole world where they are.
The more I look at the P-8 the more I think Fairey Battle (the RAF light bomber that ‘bombed’). I can only agree with the belief that the USN bought it because all the other options had been outmanoeuvred. Boeing failed the first time up with the maritime 757 in the late 90’s which had it won would have made more sense than the current 737 P-8. But that time the USN chose the more ‘Orion’ like option and the whole exercise failed on cost.
I also note that Australia signed up for the MQ-4C (Triton) in August 2014, it was announced by Tony Abbott with no mention of numbers or cost. They are now in for seven.
Also that Kawasaki has made an approach to the European group working to replace all their MPA’s (except UK and Norway of course) with local production mentioned. That is a ten year project so time might be on the P-1’s side.
I feat that only if our government dithers for long enough will we end up with the best answer. Not a nice way to get there.
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Post by horicle on Apr 21, 2018 16:07:43 GMT 12
On a more recent level I have heard that the 1970's (I think) building that housed The Baggies Club, Canteen, Library and a few other ancillaries has been permanently vacated for some reason. Can anyone out there confirm or add to this? There is always the 'Fake News' theory.
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Post by horicle on Apr 20, 2018 14:50:36 GMT 12
I would like to know.
Is the PM travelling about Europe on one of our 757’s? Reasons for thinking about it are;
Absolutely no mention by sight or sound on the news of how the PM is travelling which indicates to my suspicious mind that the RNZAF is involved and nothing has gone wrong.
Secondly, heard a Herc trundle over Feilding on approach to Ohakea about 1000 this morning, about the right time for a Friday shuttle.
I wonder where the other 757 is?
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