Billhook

6 hours ago, Vedhoggar said:

One of their favourite trees to bark strip if it will support their weight. 

Would they not strip the bark further down>  The top branches are a bit thin to support a grey squirrel

We seem to have several young Sycamores with similar symptoms to Ash dieback.  Is this a well known phenomenon?

Yes such bravery, especially going off on two tours or more, was that 28 missions before you had relief.

I said before  that they needed people of pilot quality to operate the turret, the radar and the signalling device and this gentleman had done more hours as an instructor in Canada than the pilot of his Lancaster!  But such was the anger at the bombing of our cities and the whole war , that  they were determined to do their bit.  The rear gunners were particularly vulnerable as the Germans would try to nail them first.  Also they could not wear a parachute which was kept behind in the fuselage so imagine trying to go back, find it put it on and exit while the craft may be burning or spinning out of control

It says on the web that the average life expectancy for a rear gunner early on in the war was five missions.

In Phil's log book one of his missions was eleven hours.!

Another thin he told me was that because they were isolated from the rest of the crew there was a real danger of frostbite,  Therefore they had heated flying suits with heated gloves and heated boots.  In the first part of the war before 1943 and Mustang escorts, they lost most of the bombers that went out.  This was reversed later but still it was so terrifying to be a rear gunner that some deliberately took a boot off to  get frostbite so that they could go off sick.  This became a court martial offence for lack of moral fibre.  One mission Phil, my friend, had a fault in his electric circuit and had the wonderful choice of a burnt foot or frostbite and court martial!

In another incident I was told at East Kirkby by another veteran, that there was an airman who had just done his two tours, nerves rattled, but he thought that he would just watch the Lancs taxiing out that evening to wish them well.  He stood in front of the latrines hut smoking a cigarette.  The rear gunners would just exercise their turrets to check they were revolving correctly as the aircraft taxied however one of the rear gunners accidently caught the trigger and it took the whole of the roof of the latrine off.  Did not do much good for his already shattered nerves!

2 hours ago, petercb said:

Fascinating so did a quick google search and found this

 

SpitfireSpares.com - warbird Gunsites

SPITFIRESPARES.CO.UK

 

Well done finding that.  I had not heard of the name of the infra red Z equipment.  Indeed when I took the gentleman to Coningsby, nobody there knew about it,  The good men that they were kept it secret even well after the war.

When we had looked around the Lancaster we went to have a coffee in the mess and a farmer had brought over a Dutchman who had been tending the war graves as a thank you.  He was looking through the rear gunner's log book and saw that he had done a raid on Flushing Island (Vlissingen)

"I vos zere!  You did fantastic job and ze Germans made us work for weeks with bulldozers trying to repair ze damage"

What was the chance of that encounter!

Just Jane resides at East Kirkby, near Spilsby and the museum there is well worth a visit.  You can book a taxi run  in the Lancaster.  There is a spooky old control tower restored to how it was in the war as well as a hangar full of aircraft bits from the war

I went down there a few years ago to witness the sound of twelve Merlins as the BBMF Lanc and the Canadian one came over while Jane was taxiing 

Just thought I would take the old girl out for a spin to practice my three point landings!

And nobody is going to argue with my pair of Browning 303s!

I would suggest that because the ivy was so dead and dry that it burnt quickly enough not to damage the bark before running out of fuel.  It was quite spectacular at night though!

We were cutting ivy off the trees in the wood which seemed to have been suffocated by it.  On the tall trees we just severed the main stems and eventually it died but remained on the tree

We had a small brash bonfire a couple of years later in the Winter, which must have been over fifty yards away and an ember flew into the dead ivy and the tree went up like a Roman candle.  None of the other trees were affected but I thought that this tree may have had it

However this year all seems well and it seems to have only been singed and has a full green canopy.  I think we were lucky!

Following the phone alarm trial I found this

I am nearly seventy years old and still razor sharp!

Heard a good talk on Radio  4 today

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_fourfm

My father inherited a large butterfly collection from a man in the village he grew up in .  He was always around to this man’s house as a lad not even ten years old, enthralled by the collection of South American Morphos and other highly coloured beauties.   He was very surprised when he was left the collection in his will in 1940.

I was always amazed that such brightly coloured insects should survive predators but this morning’s talk showed why .

I keep wondering what to do with them but at the moment I show them to people, especially children, who see them in a different and more intimate way than glass cases full of many other distractions.  Certainly  when I see the children sometimes many years later they often refer to the time they “ were allowed” to see the butterflies and moths, many of which are more beautiful and certainly more subtle in their colours 

On 23/04/2023 at 14:11, Doug Tait said:

 

I watched a documentary a long time ago by Eddie Izzard about languages. Part of it was he travelled to various places in Europe to ask farmers a question in Old Flemish I think. This is terribly inaccurate but something like "unt uh brunta coo, unt uh muchy milka". From Dumfries to Belgium, Holland, and so many other places, all understood enough to know he wanted to buy a lot of milk from a brown cow!

My wife is Danish and there are many words in the old Lincolnshire dialect that are similar.  Not surprising as we were under Danelaw for so long  (I still am!)  

This was interesting written in 1892  obviously Yorkshire was under Danelaw as well but a couple of words we use here every day are Gimme for ewe lamb and Clegg for Horsefly, Danish KLaeg

Yellow Hammer is another good example from Germany  In German it is Gelb Ammer the Ammer part means finch

By the way I have been introduced to an APP on my phone called Merlin which detects bird song and identifies.  All of you probably have it already as I am always the last to hear about these things but it is brilliant

I bought the Dnepr 650 after visiting Ukraine in 1993.  They copied the BMWs that the Germans left behind and I think made them out of recycled tank metal!  The number plate cost nothing extra to any ordinary plate and the two Airedales loved the ride and would sit in calmly in the local town when I went shopping.  I would return to find a crowd talking to them "Where ya off to duck"  etc

It would be quite a challenge to clone this plate to another Dnepr, I don't think it is possible to break any speed limits with one!

Had the boiler stove running up to the end of March and then only morning and evening in April.  Been so long since I used the solar heating that I forgot about it until today!  So heading for my first solar bath of the year, the two dozen tubes on the roof have heated the tank to 60 degrees C today

Here in Lincolnshire the first one today sheltering from a cold North East wind, probably wondering why he left the South African sunshine!

On 10/04/2023 at 16:43, AHPP said:

I snort laughed. 

I don't geddit!

On 03/04/2023 at 08:34, Anno said:

its not just Attenborough, you should have  noticed that over the last 2 decades the amounts of insects hiting the front of your vehicle when driving distances as decreased to practically nothing.

 

I have run a light trap to monitor moths on various sites and to collect my data for home, twenty years ago I was literally shovelling out large moths like yellow Underwings, trapped by the hundreds, these days I am lucky to hit double figures

Father used to run a moth trap together with an old surgeon friend and they used to log their count each day.  I think they sent the results eventually to the Norwich Natural History Museum.  Yes there were more moths  about and I rarely see them coming to the light at night.

There may be other factors to take into account such as the increase in bat numbers. Same with insects on windscreens.  Firstly there are so many more cars on the roads, secondly cars are more aerodynamic, and there is also the possibility that insects have evolved to avoid roads

But yes, it is true that there has been a general vast decline, except at our lake which also ruins my bat theory as there are so many pipistrelles there!

On 21/03/2023 at 11:42, GarethM said:

Don't think anyone has an adversion to bats, it's more the council's heaping on yet more surveys and cost before they'll even look at an application.

 

Last bat survey cost around 1300 plus the 600 for the basic survey. Always written in such vague noncommittal terms even when they aren't living in the building.

 

I would agree with having bat roosts built into one end gables and maybe bird nest boxes built into the brickwork at a so many per m providing it's say 3m above ground.

I built a serious des res bat box a few years ago, thought I had picked the perfect site and orientation, but so far not a sign.  However at the log cabin there is a lot of activity which I think is probably due to the insect life available on the lake.  They also like spaces in the foam insulation in the roof of our old disused potato store brick building.

On 03/04/2023 at 22:20, GarethM said:

4m is pretty much tractor loader territory.

 

Telehandlers are a bit of a one trick pony for farm work tho, as they don't have a PTO or 3 point so unless it's pallet forks and loading it won't get used.

I know ,I know , I should be posting about hookaroons, but,but but it is Easter after all.  I think I need to see a doctor!

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