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Post by corsair5517 on Oct 1, 2020 16:00:28 GMT 12
Some time ago, when my father was visiting England, he was due to go to RAF Duxford on a tour and the bods at Duxford found out that he was one of the old'n'bold and asked him to give a short talk on his experiences during training and combat. He did and apparently his visit was very well subsrbed and his talk very well patronised, but, of course, I never got to hear it!
However, with his moving into an assisted living facility, his crib notes have surfaced and I was wondering if anyone in here was interested iin seeng them?? I'm not sure if there's anything new but they are of immense interest to me!!
My eldest sister has also transcribed his diary from the Canadian training time into a .pdf...
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Post by corsair5517 on Mar 29, 2020 22:04:50 GMT 12
My uncle, Flt Lt Pat Stokes, was air traffic controller on Norfolk Island during the war, and moved on to ATC at Momoma post-war...
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Post by corsair5517 on Aug 6, 2019 23:30:52 GMT 12
I lived in Jersey for a few years, Dave, and was quite interested in the Occupation history to the extent that I was a member of the Channel Islands Occupation Society but I never heard or read anything about NZers on Jersey, at least, during those years. That's not to say it wasn't so, just that I never heard about it but my nationality was well known and often commented on so you'd think that there would be some mention made, eh?!
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 17, 2019 9:55:00 GMT 12
Let me check my archives... I went out and saw Concorde at Chch airport in 89 and also was invited onboard the NASA C141A that was there...
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Post by corsair5517 on Dec 29, 2018 21:00:37 GMT 12
Got photos if anyone's interested.... Go on then, we're interested. Was it rebuilt? Of the recovery, Dave.... of the recovery! Mind you, I'd hate to think that the only thing stopping a restoration was my tiny piece of wing leading edge!! :-)
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Post by corsair5517 on Dec 29, 2018 19:19:34 GMT 12
Dave, That was where Auster NZ1703 came to a sticky end of course. David D I was part of a team that went in and pulled what was left of that airframe out of the scrub in about 89, I think; I still have a small piece of it here on display! Got photos if anyone's interested....
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Post by corsair5517 on Oct 13, 2018 20:54:13 GMT 12
Goodness me; you have certainly set yourself quite the task, bloke - I say give it a bloody good nudge, eh!!
The lads above make very good points, Dave - there is SO much to do and see in England that you may very well suffer from sensory overload, so just watch how you go; the Law of unintended consequences is lurking!
When we toured around England - we lived in Jersey for a bit - we used YHA accomodation, especially in London; I cannot recommend the London City Hostel highly enough! It's just behind St Pauls in the old choristers digs.... though you may do well to base yourself somewhere in the Midlands....
We made extensive use of holiday gîtes when in France, especially around Normandy - generally pretty good value, the bonus was the gîte on an orchard when the farmer made his own Calvados, and was extremely generous in supplying his guests with said spirit!!
This is a most worthy project - even if the cynic in me reckons that most of what you're going to cover has been done already - you are painting this with a very broad brush indeed which should make some most enlightening moments; bonne chance!!
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Post by corsair5517 on Sept 18, 2018 7:59:58 GMT 12
Right you are... I'll now try to find them - they're on CD; how quaint!
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Post by corsair5517 on Sept 17, 2018 18:42:07 GMT 12
I have my fathers' scanned, if you're still interested? 15Sqn, 44-45.
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Post by corsair5517 on May 7, 2018 10:30:58 GMT 12
Driving around the UK is fine.... but; on busy days and at busy times the traffic is a bloody nightmare with carparks on all major arterial routes and you're planning on visiting airshows!!
I solved that problem by using public transport, especially around London and the southeast - easy peasy! The trains in England are great and go everywhere you want to be!
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Post by corsair5517 on Aug 2, 2016 1:53:02 GMT 12
Mount Bruce isn't fenced at all, they have a pest management plan using a series traps and bait stations that has been expanding outwards. The interim plan to 2025 is to demonstrate that a further 20,000 hectares around the country could be or are protected without fences - Mount Bruce is ~ 1000 hectares. I think its worth a crack, trapping effectiveness with new technology has improved several orders of magnitude even in the last 10 years - with a good aimed focus and tech improvements over the next 30 I don't think its completely beyond the realm of possibility to achieve. Even if it doesn't quite get there, giving predators a good knock back should dramatically improve birdlife That's great!! And refreshing to hear that a difference is being made!! However, my point stands; as long as you have one breeding female in an inaccessible area, you've got a problem! And predators aren't the only problem - aggressive herbivores like opossums and mice, swarming insects like the German Wasps in the beech forests and the wandering rootings of pigs encroach on the feeding patterns and habitat for the natives making life unsustainable. Fiordland is not the Wairarapa - I hunted in there for years and it is tiger country - and I believe there will always be an exotic predator population in NZ in areas like Fiordland. I spent a little time in the Uraweras, too; hard country again and not condusive to trying to keep predators at bay, but gee; it's good to hear of someone giving it a decent nudge!! You know, at one time in NZ- or so I was told! - there was an increasing German wasp problem so the government of the day put a bounty on queens: small boys of all ages soon ensured that the wasp problem was well and truly countered, at least in esay to reach areas!! Wasps are the only thing in the NZ bush that truly frighten me and a decent honeydew season sees a spike in their numbers....
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Post by corsair5517 on Jul 31, 2016 22:43:33 GMT 12
NZ will never, ever be predator free, in my opinion. How do you fence Fiordland? Or the West Coast? Or North Canterbury? I've seen mustelid sign all over the place there along with rat shit - and enormous feral cats - and the weasels are a bloody sight harder to eradicate than rats!!
Fenced enclosures like Orakanui in Otago, Mount Bruce in the Wairarapa and Aucklands Ark in the Park are the best hope for most bush species but the wading and shore birds are in dire straits, and that's down to people, cats and dogs.
I've been lucky enough to spend time on Tirirtiri Matangi and at Miranda which was absolutely magical, and leaves you with a heavy heart for what might have been. To see and hear kokako in the wild truly sends shivers down the spine....
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Post by corsair5517 on Jul 31, 2016 22:32:17 GMT 12
I've completed one, too... but I am probably of no help to you, Dave as I don't listen to the show. Not because of any deep seated objection or anything like that, simply because I do not have the time with a young family, representative sport and music taking up my time!
I also have a dislike of being spoken to or talked to on the radio, and haven't listened to a commercial radio station for 25 years; I listen to the 30,000 odd songs I have stored on a hard drive through the stereo...
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Post by corsair5517 on Jun 26, 2016 10:28:28 GMT 12
I would have thought that there is a wealth of information out there about NZ pilot experiences in the ETO during WW2 without having to go to what seems to be an extraordinary amount of trouble to gather yet more of the same!! Consider this: the NZ experience in Europe 1939-1945 wasn't that different to anyone elses and there are hundreds of books written by people who were there, at the the time. I would point you towards books by Bob Spurdle, Johnny Checketts, Vincent Orange, Leslie White and others for the NZ angle....
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Post by corsair5517 on Jun 26, 2016 10:15:29 GMT 12
Travelled on the TGV from Paris to St Malo and couldn't beleive the smoothness of the ride; it only stopped once - in Rennes - and was probably the fastest I've ever travelled on the ground. The Japanese Bullet Train is pretty much the same deal and Queensland Rail have the Tilt Train which travels from Brisbane to Cairns which isn't as fast but still quite quick.... apart from stopping at what seems to be every bloody station en route!!
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Post by corsair5517 on Jun 13, 2016 9:36:35 GMT 12
"News" here is dominated by sport, death and destruction with very little international newsworthy events properly covered. Local TV news is absolutely awful, just terrible with presenters who, generally, are just dills, with no idea how to phrase, pace and use grammar in their usually breathless delivery of banal subject matter.
I watch the BBC news or Al-Gazeera... sparingly, but mostly listen to the BBC World Service on the radio.
I haven't read a newspaper in perhaps 10 years, at least not since we left South Otago and the less strident tones of the ODT....
I despair at the dumbing down of the First World.
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MOTAT
Jun 5, 2016 10:20:10 GMT 12
Post by corsair5517 on Jun 5, 2016 10:20:10 GMT 12
I use my initials rather than my full name, for a certain degree of anonymonity - not because I wouldn't debate what is essentially only my opinion with anyone else on here in person, but more so I can at least limit what comes up with a google search by any random that types my name into a search engine. Surely peoples names are less important than content anyway? If the comment is valid, or stupid, the name beside it makes no difference.... This. In an age where digital information is readily accessible to anyone with a search engine, I like to keep a little distance between myself and the trolls and Viagra marketers!
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Post by corsair5517 on May 30, 2016 22:34:32 GMT 12
And none of that will save you from a savvy hacker! Granted! But equally I could worry about being run over by a bus - life's a gamble and I'll take all reasonable steps to stop our accounts being hacked but I'm certainly not going to be stupidly paranoid about computer security! You know, if you observe simle rules - like not opening email from addresses you don't know and avoiding links from unknown sources - then you're pretty good, really - we've been online for about 15 years and been hacked only once - through Facebook - while we were overseas and using an Android netbook; none of the family Macs has ever been hacked. Our first computer was an enormous IBM thing that used the enormous floppy disks - 71/2"?? which had the keyboard and monitor in one housing with a massive tower - from memory I think I programmed in Turbo Pascal before BASIC... thank goodness for iOS and Unix!!
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Post by corsair5517 on May 28, 2016 11:13:49 GMT 12
Worrying about hackers and the like will surely mean that you will eventually be found sitting in a home made Faraday cage with a tin foil hat on, eh; embrace the technology, I say... just be sure to back your data up.... three times!!
I use the cloud, an external hard drive and an huge capacity thumb drive. And change your passwords frequently.
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Post by corsair5517 on Apr 14, 2016 20:47:55 GMT 12
Hells teeth.... I worked in 7 Hangar for a bit, and lived in Chch for years.... I don't recognize that top pic at all!!
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