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Just now, Ralph said:

I may be remembering this incorrectly but I'm sure we also used to see Shackletons in the 80s doing this then the Boeing AWACS. All flying from Lossiemouth.

 

 

Yes, the Shacks were used in the SAR role a fair bit, had been one of their key roles before ASW took over.  The Nimrod (a.k.a. "The Mighty Hunter") was designed from the ground up to be an ASW aircraft in the main, with the ability to maintain patrols for around 10 to 12 hours or so at a time.  There were also a few Nimrods built purely as "intelligence gathering" aircraft, and these had no SAR capability, other than being able to act as a radio relay.

 

The Searchwater radar on the Nimrod was a fantastically able bit of kit, capable of detecting a submarine snorkel or periscope from many miles away.  This ability to detect small objects in the ocean also made it a great bit of kit for SAR, although that wasn't really what it was designed for.   Like a lot of aircraft, the Nimrod was designed mainly to do one job, but ended up being very good at a few others, that hadn't really been thought of during the design stage.  Being able to stay airborne for a long time without AAR, and then being given an AAR capability for the Falklands, that meant it could stay airborne for days if need be, was a useful attribute.  Comfortable, too, with a dozen or so comfy seats down the back, a good galley and a constant supply of pots of tea going up and down the aircraft.  I've got around 400 hours on Nimrods, almost all in MR2s flying from St Mawgan, with 42 Squadron.

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9 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

Not really.  When the Nimrod fleet was still active they didn't really provide any significant maritime surveillance coverage around UK waters.  99% of the time patrols were either up around the Iceland-Faroes gap or in the North Atlantic.

 

 

Before the Russian summer fleet can loiter off the Scottish coast it first has to transit those areas the UK military previously had the ability to patrol. The notion that a Soviet battle fleet could sneak to the territorial limit of UK waters unobserved would have been unthinkable 30 years.

 

AIS is excellent and allowed me to sail across the Channel with much less big-ship anxiety but it depends on vessels voluntarily transmitting a digital radio squawk every minute or so. It only takes a second to switch off the box of tricks that generates these squawks hence it is of no significant in a military scenario.

 

The civilian Coast Guard contracted further 10 years ago and now has little visual coastal presence. There is the newer NCI coverage with its volunteers looking out from clifftop stations, often abandoned CG huts, however they go home at sunset.

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20 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

Before the Russian summer fleet can loiter off the Scottish coast it first has to transit those areas the UK military previously had the ability to patrol. The notion that a Soviet battle fleet could sneak to the territorial limit of UK waters unobserved would have been unthinkable 30 years.

 

AIS is excellent and allowed me to sail across the Channel with much less big-ship anxiety but it depends on vessels voluntarily transmitting a digital radio squawk every minute or so. It only takes a second to switch off the box of tricks that generates these squawks hence it is of no significant in a military scenario.

 

The civilian Coast Guard contracted further 10 years ago and now has little visual coastal presence. There is the newer NCI coverage with its volunteers looking out from clifftop stations, often abandoned CG huts, however they go home at sunset.

 

 

We never did really have a capability for tracking surface ships in UK waters, on a 24/7 basis,  though.  The radar on Nimrod was very good, but wasn't an all around surveillance radar for tracking surface ships at range, it was primarily an ASW radar.  IIRC, there was only ever one Nimrod kept on SAR standby out of the whole fleet, the main difference being that it wouldn't have a weapons load, just the SAR gear (air-dropped dinghy and survival packs, inherited from the Shackeleton).  During the time I was flying trials in Nimrods, we always had weapons loaded, and often had a "600lb Special Weapon" (a.k.a. "The Bucket of Sunshine") mounted on the aft station in the bomb bay (unless I was using the Special Weapon wiring harness for instrumentation and camera control cabling)..

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1 minute ago, JSHarris said:

We never did really have a capability for tracking surface ships in UK waters, on a 24/7 basis,  though.

 

I bet the on-shore Naval radar on the hill north of Portsmouth (Sampson?) does a good job for its section of coast. What's the range of something like that?

 

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SAMPSON is primarily an AEW and missile defence radar, capable of tracking multiple fast-moving targets, using what was (at the time) a really innovative multiple, independently steerable, beam-forming capability.  The facility on the hill is now mainly a training facility, as the old ASWE establishment was demolished a few years ago (it was my parent establishment when I did a tour as OiC Funtington and OiC Fraser in the late1990s).

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1 hour ago, JSHarris said:

flying from St Mawgan, with 42 Squadron.

So pre 1992 then.

I grew up 6 miles from Kinloss and about 8 from Lossiemouth. During the cold war my dad used to love to tell us that if there was a nuclear attack we were so close to two main targets that we would not feel a thing. "Melt the skin right off your face before you blink". Happy times!

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28 minutes ago, Ralph said:

So pre 1992 then.

I grew up 6 miles from Kinloss and about 8 from Lossiemouth. During the cold war my dad used to love to tell us that if there was a nuclear attack we were so close to two main targets that we would not feel a thing. "Melt the skin right off your face before you blink". Happy times!

 

Yes, pre-"options for change" which closed loads of places, including the establishment where I worked (I ended up moving from Cornwall to SW Scotland).  Looking back through my logbook it seems most of the Nimrod test flight stuff was in the early to mid 1980's, mostly associated with the acceptance to service of Stingray I think.

 

Somewhere I've still got one or two of the car stickers that someone at St Mawgan made up to poke a bit fun at the anti-nuclear protesters who had a semi-permanent camp outside the old nuclear bomb dump there.  They mimicked a design used by CND, and had an orange mushroom cloud in the centre, with "Nuke 'em till they glow" as the text around the outside...

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5 hours ago, Dreadnaught said:

I bet the on-shore Naval radar on the hill north of Portsmouth (Sampson?) does a good job for its section of coast. What's the range of something like that?

 

 

Was it updated to match the radar tower of a Type 45 destroyer, which would make sense given the @JSHarriscomment about its training function.

 

I think Eisenhower's D-Day HQ was based up on those cliptops behind Portchester.

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10 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

Was it updated to match the radar tower of a Type 45 destroyer, which would make sense given the @JSHarriscomment about its training function.

 

I think Eisenhower's D-Day HQ was based up on those cliptops behind Portchester.

 

 

I haven't been up there for years, but we had the prototype T45 radome at Funtington for about a year, doing trials to assess various attributes of the composite structure (there are several different radar and comms systems inside that octagonal pyramid).  Wouldn't surprise me to find that's now been relocated to the land test site on the hill.

 

The day rooms in the mess at Southwick still had the Operation Overlord maps etc up on the walls last time I stayed there, which would have been on the Advanced Underwater Warfare Course, sometime in the early 1980's at a guess.

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I thought they meant it was the other way round ie house being built twice expensive however looking at it probably not. Polycarb ha I was thinking this bloke is going to regret these cheap materials but perhaps perspective changes if you're in his position

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The battens under the polycarb looks nice now, but it will look hideous in a couple of years, when it all goes green, and they discover that it's near-impossible to clean...

 

(I speak from experience, having built a boat shed at the last house with a thick polycarb roof).

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Not my cup of tea but a little better now it’s finished, that polycarbonate will make a racket in heavy rain!!!! But better with the timber rails. Having done my build through illness, he is a twit for not going fir blood stuff and checkups.

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6 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

What are these filtration systems like is mains water that bad for you? I just fancy a softener

 

 

His description seemed to suggest it was just a standard triple filter.  Expensive to run, as the cartridges need changing every 3 to 6 months.  If you just want to take chlorine out, then a carbon filter will do the job, but it really needs a 5 micron filter in front of it to make sure it doesn't get prematurely clogged. 

 

If looking to fit one, then I suggest ignoring the standard 10" or 20" filter housings, and going fora 10" jumbo housing, as it will have a much better flow rate.  Block carbon filters are more user-friendly than granulated carbon, as they need far less flushing after replacement.

 

TBH, I'd only bother if you live in an area where the water is heavily chlorinated, where a carbon filter will make a very noticeable improvement.

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Tonight's episode was surely a lesson in over developing a difficult site .  Can't afford to build the house, I know lets build a smaller one first to sell to finance the big one. Oh hang on nobody will buy the small one while the big one is still a building site next door.

 

Makes our build the new house before selling the old one look like a walk in the park.

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This was one of the saddest episodes of Grand Designs that I have ever seen.

 

When you pay for professional advice, I really do think they need to take some responsibility. There was no way that house was ever being built for £1.8m. Also he said that the budget included £250k of professional fees, so was the budget actually £1.55m. When the architect was standing there saying how much he loved the curves I just kept thinking that curves are way more expensive to build. I hope his fee was fixed!

 

The owner also needs to take personal responsibility. Basically he couldn't afford the house. If he couldn't borrow that much money it was presumably because he was trying to borrow more than 3-4x his income. I also wonder that his income hasn't been steadily falling over time. I think using all your savings and borrowing up to the hilt to build a house on an expensive and uncertain site is crazy. You just do not have the room to manoeuvre if things go wrong. I can understand how easy it is to get carried away though.

 

I am not sure why you would want an outdoor pool in such an exposed location.

 

I really am enjoying this series of Grand Designs as the people are actually building houses. A few series back it was trying too hard to be different, a particular low point for me was the guy doing some kind of boat conversion.

 

 

 

 

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i read the latest posts on this thread, not realising that the house was the one that i have grown to hate at Saunton sands.

 

I surf / sup round that way and its fugly as, i know the construction had been going on for years, but not the actual massive issues with it.

 

I might have to force myself to watch the episode.

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