Hitting the "k"
825m eh? Do I smell a Special Projects Bureau project in the offing.
1km would be something to aim for (rather than a passing airplane)
Did water rocket threaten Brum airport Airbus?
The British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) last week called for action to control the use of drones, citing several examples from the the latest UK Airprox Board report (PDF) of UAVs menacing airliners. The report contains details of seven such incidents, four of which fell into the most serious category A, "where a …
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Wednesday 3rd February 2016 11:12 GMT Red Bren
Re: proper posh notw (was Strongbow?)
Brew XI? If you think that's proper beer you must have literally been drinking piss before. My local in Leeds had a beer festival and with Brew XI on hand pump. Having only ever seen it served by electric pump in Birmingham, I thought I'd give it one more chance. I shouldn't have bothered!
What I could never understand was having presumably tried and failed with 10 previous recipes, the brewers stopped at 11. Did they just give up?
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Monday 1st February 2016 16:48 GMT Arthur the cat
Extreme water rocket
A barking mad friend of mine (Hi Dan) has a design for a water rocket that uses an oxygen bottle (as in oxyacetylene welding) pumped up to its maximum pressure. I'm not sure which is scarier, the speed and altitude it could reach or the thought of it coming down in a random location.
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Monday 1st February 2016 17:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Extreme water rocket
We used to use Oxy bottles when working opposite the houses of westminster
friday lunch was a laugh, putting the bottle on the ground and launching it across the thames
by wacking the valve off with a sledgehammer
Oh and we never got to the other bank, my guess is the bottles were nearly empty
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Monday 1st February 2016 18:59 GMT Dave 32
Re: Extreme water rocket
I had a buddy, who owned a welding shop, and was carrying an Oxygen cylinder down a flight of concrete stairs into the shop. It slipped as he neared the bottom, and the bottom step sheared off the valve. That cylinder shot across the shop (narrowly missing one of the workers), and then smashed through a six inch thick poured concrete wall, before embedding itself some distance into the adjacent hillside!
Dave
P.S. Ohoh. Now, we've done it. There will be a rash of out of control Oxygen cylinders in the news now.
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Monday 1st February 2016 22:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Extreme water rocket
Ruptured oxygen cylinders can do much more exciting things in enclosed spaces than just generating some delta-v and some overpressure, so long as there are some hydrocarbons around and a source of ignition, such as a cylinder impacting a hard surface and causing a spark. It always used to make me nervous watching people treat both oxygen and acetylene cylinders as if they weren't potential instant death. Familiarity breeding contempt, I suspect.
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Tuesday 2nd February 2016 00:24 GMT Jan 0
Re: Ruptured oxygen cylinders
That's still small beer compared with a few litres of liquid oxygen. Want to see steel burn to white hot rust? Want to see diamonds on fire beneath the surface? Now, you're talking, but let's escalate to chlorine trifluoride! (Is there anything in a normal home or workplace that won't burn spectacularly in ClF3?)
Ok, I'll admit I haven't gone beyond "LOx".
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Tuesday 2nd February 2016 09:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Ruptured oxygen cylinders
"(Is there anything in a normal home or workplace that won't burn spectacularly in ClF3?)"
Find out or die trying (probably the latter.) Was this the one that even the US decided not to try out as a rocket propellant (the people who thought it might be clever to add beryllium to improve specific impulse)?
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Tuesday 2nd February 2016 13:20 GMT bpfh
Re: Ruptured oxygen cylinders
The same US who spilt 900 kg of ClF3 in the late 40's onto a concrete floor and the foot of concrete caught fire, then it burned through another 3 feet of gravel...
The Bofh in me can think of several uses for this. The fact that it cannot be put out by CO2, Halon or FM200 is just an added bonus...
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Tuesday 2nd February 2016 20:29 GMT Graham Dawson
Re: Ruptured oxygen cylinders
"That's still small beer compared with a few litres of liquid oxygen. Want to see steel burn to white hot rust? Want to see diamonds on fire beneath the surface?"
And when the insurance claims start piling in, all these memories will be lost, like tears in rain.
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Monday 1st February 2016 17:02 GMT Arthur the cat
Just remembered
Many years (~3 decades) ago in a supermarket I saw a woman trying to get a 2l bottle of coke from the top shelf. She managed to drop it in such a way as to punch a hole in the bottom, at which point the bottle flew down the aisle and demolished a stacked display at the end, leaving several wet, sticky and exceedingly disgruntled shoppers in its wake. Highly amusing for those who weren't sprayed.
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Tuesday 2nd February 2016 15:38 GMT Arthur the cat
Re: Just remembered
Are you, in fact, a sitcom character?
Not last time I looked, but with decades of acting as a sysadmin as well as doing my main job because no-one else in the department/company(*) knew what they were doing(**), if I were, it would be The IT Crowd.
(*) delete depending on which job.
(**) In one startup I got in late to find a clueless colleague trying to dig the "no user maintainable parts" potting compound out of an early Ethernet switch "because the bloody thing didn't work". They tend not to when one device you connected for testing is on 10.0.0.* and the other is on 192.168.1.*
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Monday 1st February 2016 18:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
That video of the landing is a perfect example of 'ground rush' where so many amateur parachutists end up with broken ankles/legs.
I have done 9 jumps, 3 of them free fall from 3000ft, and one minute you are way up in the air, then all of sudden you are back to the 'real perspective' we know on ground level - the temptation to stick you leg out at this stage is immense, and people that don't train properly (or are taught incorrectly) come a cropper.
Keep you legs together (ankles and knees together), slightly bend the knees (so you have a 'spring'), and let the ground come to you.
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Monday 1st February 2016 21:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
Just because
Just because it was the size and shape of 2x2litre pop bottles, doesnt mean it was soda powered.
Pop bottles are a good substitute for the cardboard bodies you get with "Starter" rocket kits; and with a multi-motor set-up, can easily reach 1.5Km.
My son and I used to regularly get his toy rocket up to over 1Km using motors bought from the local hobby shop - until the casing cord broke and the cap and parachute floated off into the grounds of the local government military research establishment (since privatised).
I would be more worried it was a test run for some Jihadi's, prior to trying it with a Stinger.
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Tuesday 2nd February 2016 01:32 GMT aberglas
Just imagine if the bottle hit the plane
One might wonder what damage a PET bottle could do to a 100 ton airliner, but there are little known electromagical undynemical effects that can cause a few ounces of plastic to instantly turn solid airplanes into piles of scrap metal. Even if the rocket did not actually hit the airpane, the shock of seeing it is likely to give the pilot an irresistible urge to push the nose into the ground.
And of course, that is nothing compared to what a small drone could do...
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Wednesday 3rd February 2016 06:47 GMT an-ominous-mass
Was not me
A long time ago three of us ran carbon arc search lights on the roof of a night club.
Around the time of the first batman movie so of course we tried that.
From our rooftop we saw the police strangle and kill a guy.
An adjacent new building structure fail rather badly with the obligatory miraculous escapes.
Who the most popular drug dealer was.
Who the night club owner got his drugs from.
Who the nightclub owner told police was selling drugs.
Numerous accounts of drunken Adam & Eve biblical encounters.
One night one of my colleagues pointed the lights at a 737 on final approach.
Civil aviation were somewhat "upset"
Got rather boring after that.
There after we pointed in one direction only and our excuse was now "well you flew into them"
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Thursday 14th April 2016 08:50 GMT Juan Inamillion
Cracking one off
Many decades ago I was working for a drug research company. In the lab was a large extractor room, the fans were seriously strong. Even so, when the valve on a bottle of compressed ammonia refused to budge there weren't many takers for attempting to delicately 'tap it' open with a hammer...
Incidentally, a comment earlier about greasing the valve - IIRC depending on the contents of the cylinder grease is the LAST thing you want on the valve...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
