idahoblues
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 27 Mar 2009
- Messages
- 20,253
A lorra lorra lakes
A lorra lorra lakes
We came back to our lakeside van yesterday and were greeted by the righteous noise of two adult male swans fighting it out to the death. This is what they do, and are renowned to be the most villeanous nastiest most violent Waterfowl on planet earth. Somewhat akin to what human beings are on the animal side of things.
After about five minutes of tusseling and wing biting and pecking and kneck wrestling I decided to step in as a crowd had now gathered. I could not get to them on the lake and all I had in my hand was a packet of Mcvities dark chocolate and a Hovis seeded batch, so thinking on my feet I quickly opened up the chocolate biscuits and lobbed about three in their general direction. Each biscuit hit the mark, but all to no avail as the melay of murder most fowl continued to it's final fruition.
After another ten minutes one of the swans appeared to get the upper hand and had grabbed it's opponant by the kneck and was climbing on top to drown it. A couple of young lads on the opposite bank were trying to reach out to them and then both swans came within their range.
He grabbed one of them by the kneck and led it onto the embankement. The other swan climbed out in persuit, so his mate stuck out his foot to stop and seperate it..
A passing car screeched to a halt accross the road wherupon a lady with tourretes went into a rage about kicking swans. All the other people on the embankement tried to explain that she had not seen the bigger picure of the death fight and was therefore not fit to pass comment (a bit like the pakistani bro's cowardly attack on the woman police officers at the airport)
After lots more fooking this and fooking that and fooking t'other, the Haven security team arrived, as all mayem was now breaking loose. The two swans seperated were now getting their breath back and watching the human contingency bringing it on. The human encounter was more a case of posturing, puffing and blowing than the actual swan fight itself, which would have resulted in the death of one of them as they tired. Those brave lads really did save the day.
Anyway I lost all my remaining chocolate biscuits as we went back to our van, the packet had been opened and I forgot so they all tipped on out. If there had not of been people around I would have picked them up and pocketed them as they were three quid from the rip off site shop. We had to have seeded toast for supper!
I never managed to film the encounter but this video's more or less a full replication of what took place.
They are nasty bastards and like you say they're not easily scared. We had a gite in France last year and there were a couple roaming about - major planned expedition to put stuff in the recycling bins!I recently stopped 2 adult swans and 4 grown cignets from kicking the crap out of a young swan that had obviously got into their patch of canal in Skipton. They were very determined and not scared of me. Thankfully I managed to give it a few minutes to escape. 100% they would have killed it.
watching this now on Disney+ - the guy at the end (fuck off ****) I am assured is Paul Mullin the Wrexham striker lol
It's true. He's called 'Welshpool'.
I am amazed you can make such an appraisal after sniffing all that glue.View attachment 138264
This is what an absolute dogshit night of flying over the North Atlantic looks like for a trip from Chicago (KORD) to Milan (LIMC) on a preflight planning weather map! Doesn’t get decent until we reach Scotland!
As you can see, most of the turbulence is affected by the jet streams, especially orally where the Arctic Jet (northerly one) starts to run into the Tropical Jet (more southerly one). Where the streams of air start to clash, or run in parallel, their disparate airspeeds greatly disturb the air, thus turbulence. Also, where they buckle and change direction (big curves, often turning back on themselves), this also creates significant airflow disturbances. It’s just like a fast running river…of air, hence jet “stream.” The turbulence is running the rapids, and we have classifications, just like rapids (Occasional Light, Ocnl-Continuous Light, Cont Light-Ocnl Moderate, Cont Moderate. This probably where one’s flying experience stops, because we will go to almost any altitude to get out of Cont Mod. It’s called “Moderate” but it is strong jolts, both horizontally and vertically, often including minor altitude and airspeed deviations. Beyond Moderate comes Severe, which is temporary loss of control of the aircraft, both altitude & airspeed, and required aircraft inspection when you get on the ground!
- The route is the magenta line.
- The green shaded areas are areas of predicted turbulence from Govt Aviation Weather sources.
- The orange areas are areas of predicted turbulence based solely on a mathematical calculation of wind direction and speed.
- The big thick blue arrows are jet streams, with the boxes telling you the altitude of the jet core and its wind speed.
- The red boxes are areas of thunderstorms.
- The white circles with 4 letter identifiers are en route and ETOPS alternates for the flight.
- The big box across the top is an altitude slider, so I can try to plan the best altitude through all that shit. That often means climbing and descending and climbing again along the route, which burns more gas, costs more money, but allows the cabin crew to do service and passengers to try to enjoy the flight, all while probably adding time to the flight. A balance of all of those factors that have nothing to do with weather are included in the weather analysis when it comes to safety, efficiency and customer service.
George doesn’t read weather maps, unfortunately, but with AI, he soon might!
One last nugget: Above a certain altitude (18,000 feet in the USA, but much lower, maybe 5,000 to 7,000 in many European areas) aircraft DO NOT fly an actual altitude, they fly a specific PRESSURE “altitude.”
In short, all aircraft set their altimeters to the same SET pressure and then fly the altitudes off the altimeter, even though it is not an actual altitude, either Above Ground Level (AGL) or above Mean Sea Level (MSL). That pressure is 29.92 inches of mercury in the US and 1013 Hectopascals in Europe and most of the world.
We don’t start sniffing the glue until we get to the first green “pickle”! That way, we are oblivious to the bumps and giggling like schoolgirls!I am amazed you can make such an appraisal after sniffing all that glue.