Ops-Normal.org

I have an App on my iPad that shows the sky and where all the stars are. Select Menu/Moons/Earth and you get a red arrow that points in the right direction. Turning the iPad around and tilting it until the arrow disappears and there is your target. Look out of the window and Hey Presto! There she is...

It's not just the sand dancers... Dotter No.4 lives just by the Seven Sisters tube station, so they were pretty close to the start of the last national riot. The perpetrators there were the usual suspects from the Broadwater Farm estate. Mostly third generation from Caribbean origin grandparents. Th...

I was a qualified MAD Operator and I admit it was great fun. My last working day at Waddington was spent snow-blowing the main runway. Next day I finished 'clearing' and was on the train to Lyneham, flew out that night and two days after blowing snow, I was lugging 66 pounds of approved baggage up t...

Rioting, mayhem, burning and looting is part of our national heritage. Battle of Peterloo anyone? Watt Tyler and the Peasants Revolt? They'll never be a majority, there will be a pogrom long before that can happen. There always is - it's human nature. ...and it's what I'm more afraid of than anythin...

... the Crew Chief who had been standing under the starter exhaust for #1 engine ... The hot exhaust is not nice but it is not unheard of for a starter to "let go" its blades, whereupon the hot sharp high velocity blades hurtle out of the exhaust. I never stood under or near ANY of the st...

I left the Steel River and headed south in search of fame and fortune at the age of 16. Since then my speech has morphed into a mixture of all the places I have been and, although folks can tell I'm from somewhere north of Enfield, it's not obvious exactly from where. This morning on BBC's Breakfast...

I once met a German tank driver. His description of the battle at Alamein and his subsequent capture makes a mockery of all the tactical talk about the event. They had no idea what was going on and drove around randomly "We see zer tank, we shoot zer tank. Boom! Boom! Sometimes we shoot zer Bri...

33 Squadron exists and operates Pumas out of RAF Benson.

having it transferred up the structure could be time consuming Dad was a signaller in the wartime navy. Being a teenaged Ordinary Signalman in a destroyer, during action stations his position was in the wheelhouse/ops room. The radio operator would write down the message as received and Dad's job w...

The "King" (or Queen) that I met reared up in front of me and we were literally face-to-face. They can lift a third of their body off the ground and strike that distance plus a bit from a forward thrust. He (she) was just warning me off, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this now. 'Little'un...

I have an original iPod 'Touch' (bought in 2008) that must have been charged/half-charged at least two and a half thousand times now.
A full charge lasts a day in normal use, but I don't watch film clips on it just listen to music and use facebook/e-mail.

Going to rake up all the leaves from the back lawn this morning At least you don't have to worry that it might be a King Cobra's nest. m I only ever met the one 13 footer face-to-face and although I quite like snakes, it's not an experience I would want to repeat. They nest in a pile of leaves and ...

So, any intervention must take place in Libya itself, to prevent the migrants from boarding. Are we up to the job? I don't think so. So, we are back to my previous suggestion. On arrival on EU soil, send single males back to where they claim to have come from. In their own place they can then apply ...

SOPS 's copied article says pretty much what I hinted at. The EU's own figures indicate that less than 20% of the people claiming asylum in Europe say they are from Syria and >75% of them are single males. One man asked by an Al Jazeera reporter why he was alone, said he had left his family behind ...

Those - and the H2S derived radar that lay at the heart of the NBS. The date "1943" was firmly stamped on scanner data plates.

Air above me is apparently Good, probably due to a total lack of any kind of industry on Tynside now Same on Teesside, tony . You can see the Cleveland Hills from Hartlepool these days. And I ran away from life on steel river Luck or not I gladly took the break The odds were low the chances nearly ...

When I went into the State of Brandenburg the wall was long gone. We were off to MTU to talk about engine maintenance, but on the other side of the Brandenberg gate the architecture changed and gave a tangibly depressing air to East Berlin. Once you got out into open country it was quite pleasant. L...

The Mk1 & Mk 1A had combined pressure heads at the wingtips. The B Mk2's had separate pitot heads and flush static vents either side of the nose. Both types displayed significant "Mach Tuck" and the Auto Mach Trim was a critical system. From my Vulcan days I can say that we maintenance...

I missed Fish and Chips. Definitely. Battenburg cake. Rhubarb Jersey milk On the other hand, back here in UK I miss... Durian (£25 in Wing Yip last time I was there) Decent Papayas like I grew in the garden "Cats eyes" Proper Laksa (deep frozen Bunga Kantan is available at a price but no f...

Without wishing to be taken the wrong way, we have all these ordinary folks fleeing Syria (and other countries) to escape extremists, but their problem is, the extremists got here before them. All those "Foreign Fighters" in their country come from somewhere, many of them from Europe. This...