Radschool Association Magazine - Vol 32

Page 12

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Anzac Day – Thailand style.

Rod Faux was out drinking with a few mates on the night of the 24^th April 2010, as you do, and at around 1am it seemed to them a good idea to go to Kanchanburi for the ANZAC Day service. So they booked a taxi, packed an esky and a change of clothes and left at 2am, arriving at 6:30am. They had a quick nap and made the morning service at the War Cemetery.

As Rod said, “They only served VB after the ceremony but we decided it would be un-Australian not to have one, so we did, or was that 2 or 3. It was bloody hot, but it was good to see a really good crowd in attendance.”

“Then it was ‘load-up’ the esky again, back into the taxi and head for home, arriving back at Hua Hin at 5.00pm that night. A bloody great day!  Hope yours went well”.

Lest We Forget.!! 

Brisbane.

Rod “Rocky” McGregor, who flew the Caribou in Vietnam from Dec 68 to Dec 69, and then went back three more times in 70, 71 and 1972 with 37Sqn, flying the E Model Herc, leads the RTFV/35Sqn contingent at the 2010 Brisbane March.

You’ll notice Rob Meyer is the only one out of step – but that’s about what you’d expect from a clock winder!!....isn't it??

Don't believe us?? run your mouse over the pic.

The Rockhampton Cri.

Back in 1968, the Army was in full training for deployment to Vietnam and was holding bivouacs all over place. One such training exercise was held in the Military Training area north of Rockhampton. Supporting the army were the Army Light Aircraft with their Pilatus Porters and the RAAF with their Iroquois and Caribous which was also good training for the aircrew and aircraft support people. They even had a Winjeel - I suppose acting as a 'fighter'.

The RAAF provided 3 Caribous from 38 Squadron and yours truly was detailed off to go with the Caribous along with a bunch of other blokes. We left Richmond and arrived at the training area only to find the Army had provided tent accommodation for the RAAF bods in what was a wet and muddy field.

The CO of the Caribou detachment, who’s name escapes me, had one look at the accommodation and declared it ‘unfit’ for RAAF bods, so it was back into the aircraft and back to Rocky. I don’t remember what happened to the Chopper boys, or the Winjeel driver, perhaps their expectations weren’t as high as their Caribou brothers

Out came the imprest and accommodation was found for us at the Criterion Hotel.

We moved in, all with separate rooms, and stayed there for a month – and what a time it was. The walls of the old pub could tell a lot of stories that, unfortunately, must remain untold – but I’m sure the photo will bring back a lot of great memories to a lot of blokes. (Hello Peter T)

1969 Bones.

Gerry Walsh sent us these. The photo above was of the RAAF verses the Navy at (we think) HMAS Cerberus, on Western Port Bay, Victoria. Can anyone provide any names??

All we know about this photo (above) is it was taken at Butterworth, we think about 1975 and it was a “pre-posting” to Hong Kong bar-b-q, but we don’t know who was being posted and we don’t know anyone in the photo. HELP!!!

All we know about this photo is it was taken at the breakup of WRRS in 1975. Now the obvious questions are, what is WRRS, why was it broken up, where was it, and what did it do???

WCDR (Ret) John Smythe tells us that WRRS stood for Werribee Remote Receiving Station; it was an outstation of Melbourne Telecommunication Unit (MTU Frognall), along with Laverton Transmitting Station it provided RAAF international radio communication (Teletype) links to Vancouver, Gan, Singapore, and a couple more that elude me at present. During my time at MTU (CO WCDR Reg Moore) in 1966/67 OIC WRRS was an RN exchange Lieutenant Ivor Rothwell, and WRRS was often referred to as HMS Werribee.

We get a lot of correspondence on this topic too – tb

More on carbon!!!

Peter Holmes

For all of you out there in Oz and any where else across the globe, who have fought so hard to tackle the hideous enemy of our planet, namely carbon emissions and that bogus god you worship named "Climate Change" or "Global Warming", there is some really bad news that will really upset your day and be very painful for you to process. But it is my duty to pass it on to you anyway.

The recent volcanic eruption in Iceland, since it first started spewing volcanic ash, has, to this point, negated every single effort you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet.  Not only that, this single act of God has added emissions to the earth estimated to be 42 times more than can be corrected by the extreme human regulations proposed for annual reductions in the year 2050.

I know, I know.... (have a group hug)...it's very disheartening to realise that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kid's "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet flush reservoir, selling your 4X4 and speedboat, going on holidays to a city park instead of New Zealand, nearly getting hit every day and freezing your butt off on your bicycle, replacing all of your 60¢ light bulbs with $10 light bulbs ...well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tube in just two weeks.

The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere during that eruption has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon.  And, those hundreds of jobs you helped move to Asia with expensive emission’s demands on businesses... you know, those businesses that are creating even more emissions now than when they were creating jobs in Oz, well that must seem really worthwhile now.

I'm so sorry. And I do wish that there was some kind of a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud but the fact of the matter is that the brush fire season across the western U.S.A. when it starts, will negate your efforts to reduce carbon emissions in our world for the next two years.

So, grab a Coke, give the world a hug, and have a nice day!

And!!

In 2006 the UN Food and Agriculture Organization came out with a report saying that livestock is responsible for 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions on earth. Sensible people thought that seemed more than a little too high, and the tree huggers crabbed it and shouted it from, well, the tree tops. But, I don’t think anyone ever bothered to check into it.

Now the UN says they were just joking.

In the 2006 report, they included greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock, but also for transportation, fertilizer production, land clearance (assuming all pasture land would otherwise be and was previously covered with trees), and vehicles used on farms. I suspect that they did not consider that if you were not growing livestock that you would have to replace it with crops,  that or kill off some people.

But the authors of the UN report did not use all the associated "costs" when comparing other sources of greenhouse gas emissions, such as transportation. This should have been obvious to anybody who read the report, but most people, including me, never bothered to look past the headlines. (See HERE)

It seems like worldwide problems with global warming, pollution, oil consumption, water shortages, and the baggage retrieval system at Heathrow airport are more or less directly related to the global population. If the human population stops growing, these concerns will be much easier to handle.

Two ways to stop population growth are (a) kill off a bunch of people, or (b) stop making so many new ones. (If it comes to the crunch, I think I prefer (b) - tb). Most countries baulk at going around and killing off bunches of people, and in most poor countries it is socially advantageous to have a mess of kids.

SO!!!  Realistically, if you’re really worried about the state of the globe, the only sensible thing to do is to go and kill yourself.

Oil changes.

Most of us have changed the oil and filter in our cars, it’s a blokey thing, something we just do. The girls don’t do that, they take their cars to the man who does the job for them - so!, are we the smart ones?? – have a look HERE

BP’s disaster

That oil rig that caught fire and exploded on the 20th April, 2010, where 11 men are still missing, and are not expected to be found, belonged to Transocean, the world’s biggest offshore drilling contractor. The rig was originally contracted to BP through to the year 2013 and was working on BP’s Macondo exploration well in the Gulf of Mexico when the fire broke out. The rig costs about $500,000 per day to contract.

The full drilling spread, with helicopters and support vessels and other services, costs closer to $1,000,000 per day to operate. The rig itself cost about $350,000,000 to build in 2001 and would cost at least double that to replace today.

It is a floating rig and is capable of working in water up to 10,000 ft deep and represents the cutting edge of drilling technology. It is not moored because anchoring it to the ocean floor would be too costly and the anchors and chain would be too heavy to suspend from the floating structure. Rather, a triply-redundant computer system uses satellite positioning to control powerful thrusters that keep the rig on station within a few feet of its intended location, at all times. This is called Dynamic Positioning. The whole thing is now on the ocean floor.

The rig had apparently just finished cementing steel casing in place at depths exceeding 18,000 ft (that's 5½ klms). The next operation was to suspend the well so that the rig could move to its next drilling location, the idea being that a rig would return to this well later in order to complete the work necessary to bring the well into production. It is thought that somehow formation fluids,  oil and gas, got into the wellbore and were undetected until it was too late to take action. With a floating drilling rig setup, because it moves with the waves, currents, and winds, all of the main pressure control equipment sits on the seabed – the uppermost unmoving point in the well. This pressure control equipment – the Blowout Preventers, or ‘BOP’s” as they’re called, are controlled with redundant systems from the rig. In the event of a serious emergency, there are multiple Panic Buttons to hit, and even fail-safe "Deadman" systems that should be automatically engaged when something of this proportion breaks out. None of them were apparently activated, suggesting that the blowout was especially swift to escalate at the surface.

The flames from the fire were visible up to about 35 miles away. Not the glow – the flames. They were 200 – 300 ft high. All of this will be investigated and it will be some months before all of the particulars are known. For now, it is enough to say that this marvel of modern technology, which had been operating with an excellent safety record, has burned up and sunk, taking souls with it.

It’s a sad day when something like this happens, when men die, when huge environmental damage is done and when it happens to something on the cutting edge of our capabilities. We can do better.

The photos show the progression of events over the 36 hours from catching fire to sinking.

You can see them HERE

Hello, Hello!!!

We don’t know where this pic was taken and we don’t know who these healthy lads are, but we’d love to know and we’d definitely love to know who’s who, can anyone help???

Ray Thompson has sent us a nice little poem – you can read it HERE

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