Flyby PC

Geothermal heating isn't new. I'm actually installing it. If you check the temperature behind your refridgerator, you'll find it's warm. Heat you remove from inside the fridge has to go somewhere. A fridge wastes that heat, a heating system captures it. Geothermal heating uses the same physics, but in reverse. You remove heat from the ground and discharge that heat in your building. 50m of buried ground loop will give you 1Kw of heat energy. It isn't free exactly, it's true you don't pay for the heat input, but you do have to run two pumps to force your coolant round the ground loop and also around your underfloor heating system. It is pretty efficient, but can be dear to install. I like the idea, but it won't save the world. It should however deliver me from the scandalous daylight robbery of fuel duty which we pay in the UK. Edit - There is a similar idea using a heat exchanger which works using air. Provided you have a temperature gradient higher than five degrees from inside to out, you can get a heating system to work which doesn't need a ground loop. Kinda like air conditioning in reverse. It's supposed to work, but I already had 170m of 2m deep trench dug when I heard about it, and the heat exchanger was more expensive. These systems are slow response however, and rely on continual running in the background, but they do deliver. Edit 2 - You can also fling your ground loop in a loch or lake, and it will also work.

I saw that ConradB. As I recollect, there was general agreement that global warming was happening, but massive dispute about the cause, and deep suspicion of those jumping on the bandwagon. It's only when Governments decide to stop making cars and selling fuel that I might think they're serious. I'm very suspicious why saving the world raises so much revenue which doesn't get spent on saving the world. I don't have the answers, but I don't like all the plundering going on. Our oceans are being emptied of fish, our rain forests and habitats are disappearing. If the ECO lobby can stop that, or even slow it down, then until something better turns up, I feel inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, however big that doubt might be.

Yes, Cumbria got it worse than us. Terrible pictures. Folks get so upset about the lack of flood defences, but if we're all in for more and more rain, I think the answer involves a lot more broad leaved tree planting up stream to slow down the run off of water from the hills. We seem to battle flooding when it's at it's strongest, but it strikes me we need an earlier intervention. I think I'm ok however. My floor level will be about 600mm higher than the worst ever flood level on record. Doesn't sound much, but once a river has burst it's banks, it takes a huge amount of water to raise the level. I'm not complacent, but I've done all I can. Local Enterprise Body hold all the commercial land locally, but wouldn't sell any land to my business, which only left the flood plain. Real nice of them. They've been a bigger threat to my business than any global warming. Edit - You're right ConradB, this flooding isn't tidal, and the answer to this flooding is trees. Nature vs Nature. As for global warming? This was our second '100 year flood' in 4 years. - I'm agnostic about it.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul comes from stone meant for St Peter's Cathedral in London was used for St Pauls instead. I doubt this meant stone was actually literally stolen, no Cathedral would want that reputation, but I suspect the supply of Portland Stone for St Pauls was so stretched that progress with St Peters had to wait from time to time. - But I'm guessing this part. Some people say it refers to money, not stone, but I was told it was the stone. On a closely related subject, I believe it was only in the 1950's that you were finally allowed to bring dressed stone into London. Prior to that, it could only be brought in to be dressed by London Stonemasons. These trade guilds were very powerful once upon a time, but they also delivered a level of excellence in craftsmanship we really haven't seen since. The only thing grand about a modern building is the price.

There are lots of common expressions which stem from stonemasonry, many of which I've forgotten already, one I remember is being 'sent to coventry', ie nobody speaks to someone after doing something wrong. I medieval times, most cities were established and being run by Trade Guilds, like Carpenters, Tailors, Stonemasons, etc, and in many cities tradesmen required the freedom of that city to practice their trade. If the tradesman was no good, or broke the law, he'd be banned from the city, and if he wanted to make living, he'd need to move to an 'open' city where such misconduct was overlooked. Coventry was one such city, hence, following some misdeed, someone might be sent to Coventry. Like I say, there are loads of terms derived from stone, but I'd need to think a while to recall more. On the level, all square. Sure I'll remember more... One has to do with heretics being burned at the stake...... it'll come to me....

Not to worry Widowmaker. Just revise the expression to 'Freeze the balls off a polar bear'. Vulgarity restored, and everything is tickety boo again.

I don't agree 100%, but respect other peoples pursuit of highest possible immersion factor. There is a lot of truth to what you're saying Creaghorn, but this is a simulator, and even with the best monitor, you're going to see a pixelated image greatly inferior to 'true' eyesight. It's the same argument over whether the TAC is radar, or the aid which compensates for the lost definition of your eyesight which you can't avoid using pixels. I don't doubt you wouldn't know whether evey bullet strike was hitting, but very little of the supporting evidence is possible at the moment. It's highly unlikely you're going to see buttet strike, but nor will you see the enemy pilot panic to see where the rounds are coming from, nor indeed do the AI aircraft take appropriate evasive action when under effective fire. It may be true that the amount of debris we see is a bit too much, but if it is, I'm happy to let it be, if only to compensate for the other visual clues which cannot be replicated. I do know exactly where you're coming from though... I recently went clay pigeon or skeet shooting. I haven't shot for years, but never with a shotgun. With rifles on targets or tracer in a machine gun, you get feedback to correct your aim. I found it very frustrating using a shotgun for the first time, because when you miss, there's nothing to guide you to correct your shots onto the target. Did I miss by a mile or a few inches??? I always dismissed shotguns as 'grape shot' weapons to take out moving targets, and a bit 'easy' to count as true marksmanship, but I've a lot more respect for shotguns now. Be lucky if I hit 10%, but good fun. (But recoil? - Please! Try an SLR with the gas cranked up! - That's recoil).

It's incidental to this thread but might be on interest - I remember the Battle of Britain ace Peter Brothers saying on TV that in a dogfight, those pilots who were better at aerobatics and could execute rolls, loops etc perfectly were often shot down because the enemy knew where they were going to be. If you tried a manouvre and made a complete arse of it or rolled out of it half way, you didn't find the enemy waiting for you because he couldn't predict where your aircraft was going to be. He reckoned he owed his survival to not being a very good pilot. Edit - Just checking my facts and see Air Commodore Peter Brothers CBE, DSO, DFC* died in December last year. Don't know how I missed hearing that. Rest in Peace.

I'm not a real flyer, so never been told the right names for manouvres, but when somebody mentioned snap rolls, I immediately thought of the rolls you see in flights like the Red Bull Air races, where the pilot snaps through 90 degrees, inverted, 270 deg, then back to level. It's a roll, but the pilot has absolute control to stop & start his roll. However, I'm now more enlightened, and now assume this first manouvre to be a 'snap roll' - http://www.k4.dion.n.../shiden-kai.mpg Have I got that right? If that link doesn't work, it's the Shiden-kai video here - http://www.k4.dion.ne.jp/~suppon/

You know there used to be a sky writing effect you could probably attach to your Se5a? It's a CFS3 effect, so should work fine. It used to be at Reg's hangar, as part of the Henschell 123 package. I don't see the immediate link, but I'm sure it'll still be in there somewhere, perhaps coming with the plane itself. - http://www.regshange...%20Hs123%20.htm You got three colours, red white or blue. It wasn't brilliant by comparison with the normal stuff at Reg's / Groundcrew, but it was definitely ok, and a it was fun trying to write something, but it's actually pretty hard. Edit - It's not at Reg's, but it is still at the Groundcrew site - (bottom link in common files). - http://www.regshange...20Hs%20123A.php

Its good UKW. Like some of the filters etc. It's not a criticism, but an option for the future, especially if you want to work with moving images. If you open Virtualdub, in the pull down menu, go to 'video', then 'filters'. A sub menu opens up, and you want to press 'add...' In the next list of filters, add in 'Null Transform'. Come out of the list, back to the 'add...' level, and you'll notice a new 'cropping option'. When you press cropping, you can crop and play about with your image. This means for static images, but more fun with video, your own plane doesn't have to be nailed centre screen all the time. You can offset it, and get more varied composition. Be warned, your cropping doesn't maintain the height to width ratio, so you can leave your image distorted until you've had some practice. There are better plug in filters for cropping which do hold the ratio, but Null Transform is there as a default. Virtualdub is an excellent tool.

Good call Pacman! I see it now. (I had even wondered if it was photoshopped. Glad I kept my trap shut . ).

Don't agree with No 6, the plug hole circling in the same direction. Charlie Boorman and Ewan McGregor tried it out on their motorcycle trip The Long Way Down when they crossed the equator, & it did change direction as I recall.

Today in 1916, short story author Hector Hugh Munro (pen name Saki) was killed by a sniper during the Battle of Ancre, last phase in the first Battle of the Somme. He wasn't the most famous author, but amongst his works he wrote "When William Came" in 1913, a ficticious story set in the future when London and the British Isles had been successfully invaded by Germany. Intended focus the mind during the growing pre-war tensions, it predicted WW1, and British life under occupation. It's probably more interesting for what it is, rather than the text itself. The film "Riddle of the Sands" was on UK TV a couple of days ago, and it too was a pre-war (1903) fiction written by Robert Erskine, and although it was a childrens adventure story, it too predicted WW1. Strikes me the turn of the Century must have been not unlike the Cold War, with life under perpetual threat of war. Perhaps the enthusiasm of 1914 had been something of a relief, to actually 'get on with it'.

Superb Growler. Seen a lot before, but more than half are new to me. Especially like the dog. And the decoy. And the kid who ate glue. And the happy plane. And the sniper. And......

Yeah, not keen on servos. Hate electric stuff, but hydraulic rams would do it. Lots of control, but light to the touch. Not a great fan of cables though, they stretch and are difficult to join. I'm not faulting your preference Zoom Zoom, just thinking what I'd find easiest to build myself with the knowledge I have. I expect you're doing exactly the same. I can picture how a hydraulic solution would work, but I don't know how I'd communicate the sensitivity and smoothness of a joystick output to the hydraulic pump. I reckon I could get the movement right, but it might feel very mechanical and nothing like an aircraft. Think this is closer to your solution - but I don't see how it works 100%.

They call it a gimble Zoom Zoom. Two pivots at 90 degrees gives the movement, with either servo motors turning them, or hydraulic rams actuating them. I reckon I could make a gimble work with steel section and a few decent bearings, (might even support my weight), but I don't know enough to make the rams work the movement through a computer. Sure it can't be hard, and there's probably a utility control unit you could buy which would cope with what, 4 rams? - maybe 6 if you want a flat spin or dramatic shake when crashing. Hydraulic rams might be quieter than compressed air, (but I'm no expert). You could have a strobe behind your head to simulate hits. I suspect you wouldn't need full 360 movement, especially if your cockpit was enclosed. Even a little movement could still be quite convincing. Everything else, guages etc is essentially just presentation, but if the control gubbins worked well, it would be worth a little effort to at least get real gauges to function. I reckon a simple motor with an offset 'hammer' would simluate the clatter of guns. Probably take a while to get a working prototype safe enough for a kid to use. Even a rather big kid.... Nope. I have never given it a moments thought.

Don't know if they're ready, but by the nature of it, I think a flight sim will be one of the easier things to transfer into virtual reality. Your cockpit is fairly static relative to you, and most of the interaction with other characters is less complicated than it might be for other types of game because there's no acute scenery perspective apart from clouds, and most of the action is at some distance. When I was a kid, I looked forward to the day when you and your mates could play together on computer, and put yourselves into historical contexts like Waterloo or Trafalgar. I thought it would be awesome for the spectacle, and good fun to recognise your pals visually inside the game. - (As in they actually looked like your pals, expressions and all). Not so hot to see them killed, but it is a game... I have to say, graphics are still lacking a little bit for full on 3d, but with trackir and teamspeak, we're not that far away in flight sims. You can't see your mates faces, but then in the real world you wouldn't either. The overall realism, or immersion factor at least is pretty good. Depending on the nature of how these games progress, I think it's only a matter of time before they feature heavily in our education systems, and teaching, especially history, will never be the same again. I actually think it's inevitable, and the potential is tremendous. Imagine your whole class standing in a London Street during the blitz, or any other historical scenario you can think of. You can go to the moon, swim coral reefs... the sky's not the limit.

I think it's a language thing Fortiesboy. Just a wrong word here and there and it reads totally differently. I read what Gous says as someday we'll wake up to the fact that those who start the wars aren't the people who have to fight them. Don't think he's trying to be provocative. That about right Gous?

Just a heads up for a forthcoming program in the UK. It's WW2 I'm afraid, so it is firmly 'OT', but I think it'll be of interest to most of us. Monday 2nd Nov Channel 4, 9pm. The Great Escape - The Reckoning. You may or may not know, but the famous film 'The Great Escape' is based on a true story. After the escape, 50 of the escapees were indeed shot / murdered by the Gestapo. As I understand it, this program is the story of how the RAF tracked down those responsible after the war. For those who don't get Channel 4, I think there's also a book about to come out - http://rafpolicehistory.blogspot.com/2009/03/raf-police-great-escape-murders.html I have a dim recollection of reading something a few years ago that some of this was very cloak and dagger, (yes literally), because the post war 1948 Govt stopped these enquiries, effectively letting some of these men escape justice. If my memory is correct, some shadowy figures in the UK had other ideas...

I think I remember reading somewhere, but don't ask me where, that one of the biggest weaknesses in the Tiger was its success, and its crew believing themselves invincible. They simply pushed their luck and came unstuck. The other weakness was it's need for infantry support. It's machine guns had limited flexibility, so if you stripped away it's infantry support via mortars or artillery, the Tiger would often withdraw or fall victim to infantry at close quarters, often dropping mines directly in front. I believe that's how the Soviets dealth with them at Kursk, and didn't even make a big issue of it. From what little I've read, I don't think the Russians were as rattled by Tigers as the D-Day forces. I suspect because the Tiger was less superior to their own heavy tanks than it was to the Sherman. That's not really fair to the Sherman, because the Allies didn't have a heavy tank as such, so the Sherman had to fill a gap it was never meant to fill. Every weapon system is only as good as it's missing countermeasure. I also remember a veteran British tank gunner talking about his wartime experience in a Sherman. He said you could take out a Tiger head on, but it was very dodgy. You had to close the range first of all, then hit the lower part of the Tigers gun embrasure so your round deflected through the weaker armour over the drivers head. I also suspect you had to be pretty quick about it. He survived the war, but not in the same Sherman he started out with. I don't recall whether he was in a Sherman Firefly. Yes, the movie is 633 Squadron. Worth watching for the Mossies. The second one with 633 squadron (David McCallum??) is more of the same tosh, trying to make more of the bouncing 'Highball' bomb. Again, it's good to watch for the Mossies in it.

On a roll.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8327914.stm Want one of them Santa.

Hey, incidental link - http://news.bbc.co.u.../8347063.stm?ls Love the V for victory.

You know in the UK the only licence you need to legally fire a tank cannon is a shotgun license? Learned that from Suggs on Salvage Squad. (They fixed up a tank).

Don't know what jobs a degree in Sports Technology gets you, but with a conviction for indecency he won't be working with kids or in schools. That's assuming he doesn't get kicked out of course. He's just another embassador for our drink fuelled culture.