MH 370

http://www.pprune.org/

Image courtesy of PPRuNE

The amount of conjecture over the disappearance of this aircraft has reached ridiculous proportions.

The bottom line is that there are very few facts to report.

The aircraft took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport on 8th March 2014 at forty minutes past midnight. It climbed to its altitude of 35,000 feet and was travelling at 471 knots true airspeed when it ceased all communications and the transponder signal was lost around 1.30am.

That's what we know.

Since there there has been speculation about hi-jacking, mid-air explosions and decompression.

The fact is, until wreckage is found, or the aircraft turns up intact somewhere, it is simply all speculation.

The mystery does have some personal resonance for me, as I flew (with my wife and daughters) from Brisbane to Kuala Lumpur in 2007 in the aircraft that disappeared. We took a stopover in KL before flying from KL to Ho Chi Minh City on a Malaysian Airways Airbus.

How do I know it was the same aircraft?

I have this weird tendency to jot down the registration of every aircraft I fly in. In this case it was  9M-MRO - same aircraft.

The decision to fly Malaysian was deliberate, based on decisions about seat pitch and fleet age. In the case of Malaysian, both were an improvement over Qantas, and similar to Singapore Airlines which took my sons and myself to South Vietnam on the first occasion I went back.

One thing is intriguing if you look at the map I posted, courtesy of PPRuNE.

Note the route which according to automated data that was transmitted after regular contact was lost, can be plotted from these transmissions.

It hugs the borders of the Air Traffic Control zones.

What does this mean? Your guess is as good as mine, but some are suggesting that if it was deliberate (and it's hard to imagine it wasn't) the person in control of the aircraft was trying to confuse ATC.

Until we know more, hope is always better than conjecture.

Dem Dreaded Double Lines

You may, dear reader, be coming to the conclusion that I have an obsession with videos captured by my trusty dash cam.

Not so.

I am on the road a great deal, the camera is always on, and every now and again I capture videos that are worth sharing.

This is another one on the meme of Cowboy Truckies.

At about the twenty second mark, you will see double lines appear. A few seconds later, you'll notice a road train overtaking on these same double lines.

The road is straight, and visibility good, so why are there double lines on this stretch of road? It's because there is a property access road coming in from the right, and overtaking is a very bad idea across access roads.

This truckie obviously thought he was above the law, or knew better than the engineers who designed and built the road.

It's a not a great attitude when you're responsible for thirty tonnes of kit traveling at 100km/hr.

There's a great deal of kinetic energy in that combination.

I let him go - and made no attempt to overtake. The vehicle I did overtake was the road train following, which is the rig old mate crossed the double lines to pass.

I'd much rather have someone with that attitude ahead of me where I could see him.

The road was the Warrego Highway between Chinchilla and Dalby, and the vehicle was a Nissan Dualis.

Tailgating

Tailgating is not unusual, but this was so deadly dangerous that it's worth publishing.

This was on the Warrego yesterday afternoon.

The hero driving the multiwheeled rig was about one car length behind the small sedan at 100km/hr for about 1500 metres.

I've captured the first few seconds, but it continued well beyond the point when I overtook it and moved out of camera range. Watch from about the 55 sec mark until the end. Motion stops earlier in the sequence for some unknown reason, but it doesn't matter for the purpose of illustrating stupidity.

At least the rig was empty.

Consider the consequences of the dark sedan making an emergency stop for some reason - and I am aware of the excuse that the truckie can see way down the road.

I wonder what length of road is required to stop this thing.

I've been driving since 1964, and have seen a major improvement in the standards of both rigs and drivers in that time.

The rig in this example looked to be brand new.

The driver was the weak link. He is a lunatic.

Class Action?

Smiley Tim

Like many Nashos who were in government employment when called up, for me there was a real cost in a financial sense.

Let me explain.

I was called up as a teacher. Back in 1969, my teacher's salary was $2848 per annum.

Once in the army, I earned $1248 per annum in Australia, and $1846 per annum on active service in Vietnam.

Had I not been called up, the total of my teacher's salary across those two years would have been $5696. That was what all my colleagues who didn't win the ballot earned.

In the army I earned $3094 during 1969/70.

The difference is $2602.

A pittance, you say.

Well, not really. The value of $2602 in 1970 money is, in 2014 money actually $27550.

How did I work this out? There are any number of websites that will do the calculation. The example is a US site, but the figures hold on this side of the Pacific. It's inflation, stupid.

Some states apparently provided "make-up" pay, in that they paid the difference between army pay and public service pay to the diggers called up. This did not happen in Queensland in Bjelke-Petersen's day.

I wonder if this could be grounds for a class action. I've contacted a firm of plaintiff lawyers, and they're looking at it - out of curiosity, you understand. They haven't dismissed it out of hand and are asking for more information. 

If any of this is relevant to you, dear reader, by all means get in touch, either on this blog, or by email.

Imagine Tim Nicholl's (Qld Treasurer's) reaction if he was presented with an invoice for $27550.

I doubt he'd be smiling (as per pic above).

The figures were obtained from my Army paybook, and the archives of the QTU. They're accurate. 

Fascinating stuff.....

Australians who Served

I'm proud to have served with this bloke.

Rain

Southbound near Wyandra

I'm just back from west of Charleville, working out that way all last week.

During that time the first decent rain of the summer turned up in that part of the world. The locals were rapt.

I can understand why. Prior to the rain, the country was starting to succumb to dry weather for about eighteen months. When that happens you begin to notice that any grass turns a shade of grey indicating a complete lack of nutrient.

What stock are left look skinny, and the roos and wallabies come into the roadside looking for green pick and invariably get cleaned up by road trains at night, often five or six at a time. 

The grey tinge was still evident on Monday outbound, but by the time we returned on Friday, green growth was already evident.

Bird life had also exploded, a sure sign that conditions were on the improve.

It will need more - good follow up rain - but it's a good start to the new season.

I usually bring rain - but never get any thanks.....

Poem

My daughter captured this image on a visit to Vietnam in 2007. It's on the Perfume River (Sông Hương)

Viet 1

I remember an Ektachrome daylight

In the Binh Ba rubber.

She sat, ochred feet resting.

That old, old woman who showed me

How to wear a headband.

She was unafraid of our scout

And his outlandish burst of Armalite;

It was more important to be comfortable.

She ignored us, our useless armour

Mud-green high-tech camouflaged nonsense,

Smiled and smoked a grudged cigarette,

Turned away and thought on soldiers and children.

Her eyes were as wise as Lao Tzu

And she quietly waited for our departure.

04.07.70

I wrote this after an incident on a TAOR patrol when we came across a group of woodcutters in a free fire zone.
We had to round them up and take them across to Route 2 so they could be checked out by the local authorities.
One of them was a very old woman who obviously felt sorry for the hot and bothered digger who was standing over her with an SLR. I was that digger.

She reached up and mopped the sweat off my face with the cloth I was wearing around my neck.