Member postings for Samsaranda

Readers in Australia certainly appear to get a raw deal from their internal postal service but things are not that much better here in UK, if I send a first class letter or packet to my daughter in Wigan from my home in East Sussex it takes usually five working days to be delivered. Complaining is pointless, there always seems to be an excuse and the service never improves, parcels sent by carriers take on average two days for sometimes a lot cheaper than Royal Mail. Moral seems to be use the PRIVATE SERVICES rather than Royal Mail or Australia Post.

Hi Cornish Jack, I served at Sharjah bit later than you in the 60's, spent twelve months there on the airfield. A previous posting was spent on aircraft recovery and transport in the South of England, spent two and half years on that and we regularly used the Scammell Recovery Tractors, as you say quite a beast and very capable of winching a fully loaded Bedford with Queen Mary trailer across a totally waterlogged and very boggy field. Aircraft tend to crash in the most awkward of locations. I look back fondly on the many miles spent bouncing along the roads in the old Scammells.

When I served in the Air Force was posted to a desert air strip in the Middle East during the 60's and when working outside on aircraft, sometimes in near 50 degree heat, all we wore were desert boots and kd shorts, which ended up black with grease and oil. To clean the shorts we used to wash them in a bucket of aviation gasoline and then hang them up to dry, they always came up clean, hate to think what the health and safety implications would be nowadays, I know that nowadays my long suffering wife launders my working clothes from the workshop with soap powder and a liberal dose of Vanish, works for her and she is very fussy about results from the washing machine.

My workshop is built from a mixture of concrete block walls and ship lap boarding which is insulated for the most part with 4 inch king span type material, heated throughout the winter by a small oil filled radiator which keeps the temp fairly constant, It is about 18 feet by 8 feet with an OSB boarded roof again insulated with king span and felted on the top surface. Machinery comprises of a lathe and two mills and various bench surfaces, sharing space with two stationary engines in various states of assembly, unfortunately there are always numerous projects underway at the same time which means it is far from tidy; my wife is always nagging that it needs tidying and the other day she remarked that I had left the workshop unlocked, my reply was that if anyone ventured in there uninvited then they wouldn't be able to find anything because she always maintained that I could never find things.. Not the correct response!!!

Tool abuse reminds me of a practical joke played on a comrade in the Air Force in the mid 60's; we all wore regulation issue shoes as part of our uniform, these were leather soled and with the passage of time they would need new soles, when they needed new soles we handed them in through the stores system and they were despatched I think to Prison Workshops were they were refurbished with new soles. On their return to the unit we retrieved them from the stores system; on this particular day one of our section collected his shoes from the stores and left them on a table in the crew room, unfortunately when he returned to collect them he found that every lace hole had been filled with 1/8" pop rivets. He spent most of his lunch hour with a windy drill and a pair of pliers removing the obstructions. We could be very cruel in those days..

During my time at college many years ago (early 60's) I left a chuck key in on the lathe I was using and started it up, the key flew at great speed the length of the machine shop, fortunately it missed all the other students and collided with the far wall; The instructor gave me a severe verbal lashing and as a consequence I am fanatical about stowing chuck keys away from the chucks even though modern lathes have guards which prevent lathes starting with keys in the lathe. We do learn from mistakes!

Looking really good, wish I could use a cad system like that.

What will happen once we finally break from the EU, if we buy from them will items be despatched without VAT being charged, as happens with sales taxes in the US, and will we then have to pay VAT on receipt and the handling charge to collect said VAT?

In respect of Muzzer's post about being fleeced by DHL, I recently received an item through Royal Mail that had been handled by their International Mail Handling Centre in London, I was required to pay a hefty handling charge before Royal Mail would release the item, which had cost me less than half the handling charge. I would be wary of Neil's idea of splitting down the consignment because my experience is that you could end up paying multiple handling charges irrespective of whether any VAT is charged or collected.

Extended my workshop last year and installed 2 bog standard fluorescent units for lighting and within a year one unit failed completely, contemplated replacing with LED unit but price put me off, chose to replace it with a high frequency fluorescent unit which was surprisingly reasonable cost. To date very pleased with the light output and it uses standard 4 foot fluorescent tubes so cheap to replace. Only time will tell if I made the right decision.

Remember using a Clinometer in the early 60s for checking dihedral on aircraft wings when I was an aircraft technician in the RAF, once we passed out of training never saw or used one since. I have one of the small digital angle gauges, great bit of kit.

Looked at the Link, would take a lot of hacksawing to get anything of a useful size for model engineering purposes. I would think as they were cast as ballast weights the quality would be awful, as the ad says good for use as boat anchors.

Prior to retirement from a career in engineering I served as chair of governors at a local primary school, I was very disappointed at the emphasis our politicians placed on the need for ever higher academic achievement. Schools were expected to ensure that pupils achieved "better" scores year on year, the only criteria that mattered was academic achievement. Some pupils really struggled academically but could excel at vocational subjects but this is deemed irrelevant by our politicians in our society today. How refreshing to see that James Dyson is taking a different view although perhaps some who would excel in his business empire will be excluded if they cannot attain the requisite A levels to qualify for entry to his "University". Our society needs to radically rethink its education and training provision, don't get me on the subject of the ludicrous provision of modern day "Apprenticeships".

Has anyone tried the app available for an IPhone called Clinometer, developed by Plaincode, it's free to download and more importantly would appear to be accurate; no problem with the batteries as long as you keep your IPhone charged. Another very useful app available is I-Engineer. .

According to the Times today, the aircraft carrier is over thirty years old, quite ancient for a modern war machine, and is fuelled with oil to power it's steam turbines and burns a very low grade fuel oil hence the accompanying smoke screen. The Cruiser that is escorting it is nuclear fuelled and apparently a much more modern machine, the rest of the convoy are all non-nuclear.

In reply to Bandersnatch and his comments I did refer to an IMac, a proper computer, not an iPad or iPhone, there is a difference, the IMac is much more stable.

When I read this column about Windows and constant problems I am glad that four years ago I took the liberating step of buying an IMac and ditching Windows, what a difference it made no more computer or software problems. Apple systems are a world apart from Microsoft, I can hand on heart say that since I unpacked my IMac it has been trouble free, recommend anyone to take the plunge and change, no connection with Apple just a very satisfied user.

We don't appreciate how much quieter modern aircraft are compared to their predecessors. I served 22 years in the Air Force as an aircraft technician which meant that I was up close and personal with very noisy military aircraft in the sixties, having spent a very busy year in what was then Trucial Oman during the pull out from Aden in 67, now wear two hearing aids to compensate for substantial noise induced hearing loss, can remember enduring physical pain in my ears when starting and dispatching aircraft. Later in my career the noisiest was probably the Lightning especially when reheat was engaged.

Too much information!

Royal Mail seem to be variable depending on which region you live in, Parcelforce and parcel deliveries here in the south-east are generally very good but if I send anything first class to my daughter in Wigan it takes 5 days, makes a mockery of next day delivery if sent first class.