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Stalins Organ

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Posts posted by Stalins Organ

  1. I have watched clips of hobbyists flying RC models that were large, fast (especially the jet powered ones), and were capable of flying fairly high. These sparked some concern in me about possible collisions with GA aircraft. Normally, the RC guys do not fly near airports or other high traffic areas, but GA pilots sometimes just go out and wander around, and one might not know when one was going to pop up where the hobbyists were flying that day.

    hobbyists are required to fly lower than 400 feet - which is below the minimum allowed altitude for a/c unless tehy ahve a legitimate reason for doing so (eg landing and taking off, medical evac, crop/fire/dispersant spraying, etc)

    so your basic GA pilot should never, ever, be less than 100ft seperated from a RC a/c.....yeah...right!

    Here is the FAA web page of news releases regarding unmanned aerial systems (UAS) - which is the technical term these days

    the FAQ page linked from there is probably the best palce to start

  2. The changes are in airspace use - at the moment most airspace is restricted to manned aircraft.

    The rule changes will allow unmanned aircraft into some of it under some conditions.

    Drones are currently fee to operate, IIRC, up to 500 feet and some distance away from airports. Within those limitations you can do anything you like - "spy" on your neighbours - IIRC LA real estate agents have been using them for taking overhead photos of sections for example. The LA police are concerned about this because their helicopters also sometimes operate in this airspace.

    So the changes to rules are for safety reasons - to lay out how manned and unmanned a/c can operate in the same airspace.

  3. Depends what you mean by civilised.

    You might consider Gauls/Celts/Britons civilised in a tribal, druidc and primitive way - they had some pretty awesome metalworking skills, inventing chain mail for example, and their chariot axles, gold working and cavalry were all better than Roman equivalents.

    their society was also relatively peaceful - or at least it was not egregiously expansionist as Rome was, nor as far as we know was it as riven with intenecine warfaer as classical Greece - possibly because the areas were relatively sparsely populated (not that they didn't have war of course)

    Contemporary with them are the Germans, who appear to have been considerably more primitive in a technological sense (the Romans took no technology from them, they rode barebacked and some used hardened sticks as spears) and given to warfare.

    Of course pretty much all we know about these 2 branches of ancient Europeans comes from the Romans - but at least they considered both to be barbarians so we may presume some equality of bias!

  4. Looking at he explosion - would you really expect an RPG to generate enough overpressure insude teh tank to eject het commander like that?

    I've no great experience in tank explosions - but this one looks like there was a big explosion INSIDE - something like ammo going up so as to cause a "jet" out the available aperture - ie his hatch.

    I guess an RPG may have hit poorly stowed ammo in the turret to do that?

    either that or it has been photoshoped in! :)

  5. I think it may be a hardware problem - my old desktop meets teh physical requriemetns with a 256mb video card....but it is a much smaller number than the NVidia 8600 specified as "minimum" - 5200.

    So I've ordered up a 512 card with a much larger number than the ATI card required for "optimal" performance - fortunately brand new AGP cards are still available and cheap :)

    Should be here by tomorrow and perhaps I will owe Steam an apology!!

    We'll see......

  6. I select it from the Steam menu, a little window pops up for a couple of seconds saying "Preparing to play X-com" then that little window goes away and nothing further happens - no messages, no errors, no game - I left it for 3 hours while I went & did something else once.....so it's not just a matter of waiting for it to launch!!

    i've asked on the Steam forum & Steam & 2k help - no useful answers yet

  7. Ranger 33,

    . I can't find it, but there's one like that for the KV-2, together with someone's girlfriend, in a big hat, sitting sidesaddle on the 152mm--which has a nice 88mm hole right through it.

    I have sen a photo like that in "Soviet Panzers (sic) in Action" - an old Squadron/Signals publication from 1973 I have somewhere - it is a thin soft cover that is all German photos of Soviet tanks from the early days of WW2 - I have always thought the hole was quite small, but I'll check it out at home tonight.

    The book is fascinating and a little revolting in places - eg IIRC 1 page has several photos of some T28's & towed artillery said to have been KO'ed by stka's - one T28's front-left MG turret is blown off, and the gunner's body is visible arched up out of the hole - blackened and sans his right arm!! :( He "features" in at least 2 or 3 of the photos.

  8. I didn't say that the west was planning to withdraw "everyone" - I said:

    so to me it seems completely analagous to vietnam, where the Govt exists solely while it has vast amounts of support from overseas - and once that is gone (end of 2014??) it is just a matter of time until it falls.

    for me at least, small combat groups are not "vast amounts of support" - perhaps you read that differently.

    Yes they operated in the 1990's as a fairly conventinal force - against other fairly conventional forces - alboth sides being what we would probably describe as being "irregular" - but they have not done that for 10 years now - I suspect they may have changed their tactics.

    AFAIK Pakistan and militant moslems from around the world still seem to be supporting the Taliban

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