Normally graphics are meant to be nice and simple to allow easy interpretation. It should be clear what the sign means from the picture and the words should just be an extra. For many years I thought the “stone chip” road sign was actually a hammer hitting the road and making chips of stone fly around. It took me years to see half a car there.
I was filling the car up with petrol at my new favourite local petrol station and I spotted the warning sign.
Warning Sign At Petrol Station
Most of these signs seem to make sense to me but I’m really struggling to see what the “stop motor” picture is. I can see a key and then a face mask?? I honestly have no idea and I’m glad there was English written on the warning because I wouldn’t have figured it out. Not that I leave the engine running when I fill up with petrol but, you know.
There have been quite a few roadworks where I live mostly due to cracked water pipes. Apparently these water leaks are due to the ground shifting in the extremely dry weather and old pipes get cracked. There were four leaks in the village. I think there are now only two. One of the works was in my street and there was a diversion in place in case you need to get to the other side of the “square”.
World’s Shortest Diversion?
I genuinely had to look at this really hard to figure out what it meant. But it does make me chuckle.
I’m still playing Gran Turismo occasionally. I’m slowly working through the challenges and completing racing tasks. It’s still great fun and a really nice way to shut the brain off.
How It’s Going – Gran Turismo
I have currently driven a total of 8395.10 miles. I think my favourite statistic is that my average fuel consumption is 35 litres per 100km driven. The real car I drive can do 2 litres per 100km. I suspect that in the future, driving virtual cars will be the only way to enjoy the noise and feel of these vehicles. They should be banned already. Oh, by the way, electric cars aren’t the answer either – they won’t save the planet, they will only save the car industry.
I’ve been playing Stray on the PS5 recently with guidance from Legend and it’s been really enjoyable. A Lovely story with a completely believable world. The detail was amazing and I’m looking forward to exploring the game some more, there are a few trophies I’d like to get.
I have spoken before on here about how lucky I feel I am to live in the Medway Valley Villages. Nestled between two large conurbations these villages have a country feel with the convenience of town living. We also have large skies and here are two photographs not that far apart in time show the glorious colours of our atmosphere.
It’s been a while since my last update to the list of airports and countries I have visited as part of my around the world flight in short hops. I can now confirm that I have reached all seven continents and am about to start making my way back home to the UK. There are some other communications from the first part to the second. So, here are the places I have been since the last communication and since updating X-Plane a short while ago.
Klyuchi Air Base Airport, Russia Adak Airport, Alaska, U.S.A. Lihue Airport, Hawaii, U.S.A. Pacific Missile Range Facility, Hawaii, U.S.A. Wheeler Army Airfield, Hawaii, U.S.A. Kahului Airport, Hawaii, U.S.A. San Francisco International Airport, California, U.S.A. Monterey Regional Airport, California, U.S.A. San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport, California, U.S.A. Santa Barbara Airport, California, U.S.A. Naval Outlying Landing Field Imperial Beach, California, U.S.A. San Felipe International Airport, Mexico Loreto International Airport, Mexico La Paz International Airport- Manuel Márquez de León, Mexico Los Cabos International Airport, Mexico Mazatlán International Airport, Mexico Tepic International Airport, Mexico Lázaro Cárdenas Airport, Mexico Chilpancingo National Airport, Mexico Puerto Escondido International Airport, Mexico Commercial Cd Ixtepec Airport, Mexico Ángel Albino Corzo International Airport, Mexico Toncontín Airport, Honduras Juan Santamaría International Airport, Costa Rica Enrique Malek International Airport (DAV), Panama Ruben Cantu Airport, Panama Tocumen International Airport, Panama Enrique Adolfo Jiménez International Airport (ONX), Panama Airport Antonio Roldan Betancur, Colombia Olaya Herrera Airport, Colombia Aeropuerto Antonio Narino, Colombia Aeropuerto Mariscal La Mar, Ecuador FAP Captain José Abelardo Quiñones González International Airport, Peru Jorge Chavez International Airport, Peru Aerodromo Maria Reiche, Peru Juan Simons Vela Airport, Peru Juan Mendoza Airport, Bolivia Diego Aracena International Airport, Chile San Pedro de Atacama Aerodrome SCPE, Chile Las Breas Airport, Chile Aeropuerto de Fiambalá, Chile Aeropuerto Internacional Domingo Faustino Sarmiento – San Juan, Argentina Santo Domingo Airfield, Chile Mocha Island airport, Chile Melinka Airport, Chile Caleta Blanco Airport, Chile Drummond Twins International Airport, Chile Porvenir Airport, Chile Almirante Schroeders Airport, Chile Ushuaia Airport (USH), Argentina Guardiamarina Zanartu Airport, Chile – moved to X-Plane 12 O’Higgins Skiway, Antarctica RAF Mount Pleasant, Falkland Islands, UK
Boeing 737-800 Antarctic Ocean
So, that’s all the continents completed. Now to head up the east coast of South America, North America and then home to good old Great Britain – not so great these days!
I’ve spent time jumping on and off of Twitter over the last little while. I’m fascinated to try and find out what’s going on with the world and this country but it all horrifies me so totally I have decided to try and ignore it. I can’t do much about any of the utter desperation and shit that this country is being put through by the last twelve years of tory rule, so I’ve decided to try to make sure I can look after myself and those I care about. If you are watching the news over the recent weeks following the utter thickness bullshit of a PM and you still choose to vote tory then you are a dick.
We shouldn’t be raising interest rates to stop inflation. The inflation isn’t caused by people spending money. It’s caused by energy shortages and greedy corporations. Raising interest rates will harm the poorest and those who have no money to spend. Funny that a tory government gave the Bank Of England the power to control interest rates along with the duty to control inflation because then all the blame goes onto the BoE.
We shouldn’t be taxing rich people less to “encourage growth”. We should be taxing rich people more and passing that to those who are struggling. We shouldn’t be borrowing money to give direct to the privatised companies to subsidise energy bills. We should be taxing those companies to give money to the poor. The money being borrowed is going to be paid back by tax payers in the future. So we are taking money from tax payers in the future to subsidise the profits of companies and shareholders. This is a classic tory move.
Also, most of our energy companies are owned by foreign states. France, Germany and The Netherlands own most of our energy companies via their STATE OWNED energy companies. Fuck this government and the tories of the 80s for selling off utilities owned by the people. What an utter failure of an experiment this style of capitalism has been.
We can wait until the next general election and we can vote for whichever candidate has the best possibility of kicking out the incumbent tory. This is the fucking least we can do. The experiments in greed that have been running since the 80s both here and in the USA have failed utterly. We need a tightly regulated capitalism, we need state owned utilities. We need state owned mass transit. If, after the next general election there is a single tory MP then I will be ashamed of this country [more than I currently am].
Personally I think we are due a revolution. A change. A republic. New rules. New systems. A style of government that thinks about the future and the poor. Perhaps we have universal basic income? Perhaps we move away from individual transit to mass transit. Perhaps we move to sustainable high density housing. We need to change the world and we can do that by being trailblazers in a world that will survive. Let’s be clear, our current systems are going to cause pain and death and wars in less than 50 years.
The problem is that this country is full of people too tied to the rules. Just look at the fawning over the royal family when the queen died. What a fucking disgrace. Such reverence being paid to an institution built on greed, slavery and theft. The power came from enslaving other countries and stealing their preciousness. It’s hard to explain this to people because they don’t want to listen. We can’t discuss these things because the entire state is build around the Crown. We’ve been like this for over a thousand years. Fuck this country.
So, vote the fuckers out.
Although I’d prefer to be in the streets shouting “viva la revolution”.
I went on a day trip the other day to RAF Brize Norton. This place is the airport for the British military and there’s a lot going on. The best bit was being shown around the actual C17 that took the dead queen from Edinburgh to RAF Northolt.
Feeling Mean – Might Post
So, not much to write here but plenty to see so here are a few of the photographs I took that day:
View From The Sun Roof – C17
A Good Undercarriage Picture
A Very Powerful Blower
Cheeky Italian Number
It’s hard to write stuff when it feels as though the whole country has gone mad. I am, broadly, terrified at the prospect of what the next few years will do with the utter shit we have in leadership. I don’t think I can write down just how much I hate the tories and everything they’ve done to destroy this country over the last twelve years. They are such a bunch of empathy lacking cunts that I fail to be surprised anymore at the levels of sheer shittery they are willing to throw around at the poor and yet enrich themselves. Viva la revolution!
On Friday I was chatting to the Legend and I said I wouldn’t buy X-Plane 12 because XP 11 is pretty good and most of my payware might not transfer over. Well, it took all of about 12 hours to change my mind and buy X-Plane 12 even though it’s the development product. It took a while to download because I got the scenery for the whole world – why wouldn’t you!
I had to set up the joystick and configure the keys so they work as I like. This didn’t take a massive amount of time but it’s frustrating when all you want to do is fly around and see the world.
Citation X in the Andes
The scenery is amazing. I have turned most graphics settings up to maximum and this works well with my RTX graphics card. I’m getting >20fps which for a flight simulator, especially X-Plane, is pretty darn good. Also, using the taskmaster I can see that the GPU is being used at around 90% and this pleases me. It’s worth having something you’ve paid for working as it should.
Citation X in the Andes
I’ve added in some of my custom scenery and it seems to be working well. So, I have my airport in Keswick, which doesn’t exist in reality but it does mean I’m in the Lake District immediately and can fly around and bomb shit.
F-14D in the Lake District
Now all I have to do is continue my flight around the world and get back to the UK so I can attempt to learn more. My payware aircraft from XP11 kinda work. I’ve tried the T-7 and as long as I keep the throttle high enough it seems to work ok. If I drop the throttle to idle the engine dies and that’s a touch embarrassing.
Citation X in the Andes
I’m somewhere in Chile at the moment and I’m heading to an airport on Antarctica. I have no idea what will exist when I get there and I’m only doing it so I can say I’ve “been” to every continent in my around the world flight. Here’s to many more hours of fun.
The other day the family went for a walk around the local reservoir. It’s not that far and quite a quiet and picturesque place to be. It was calming. While there I took part in a photograph competition between some of my close friends. We also built a tree swing and had some fun rushing in an arc.
Burham Brick Lime and Cement Company
The area we walked through used to be a brick factory. It’s next to the river and in the old days bricks were cooked (?) here after the materials were taken from the North Downs. Then, they were placed on boats and shipped to wherever needed them. I do believe some ended up in Buckingham Palace.
Anyway, you can always find interesting things just lying around. Sometimes these are burnt out vehicles but other times these are discarded bricks with interesting insignia. See the picture I took of a 1910 brick. Someone somewhere will find that brick very interesting.
Yesterday a few of us went canoeing and kayaking [whatever the difference] on the Great Stour. We went from the Grove Ferry Picnic Site to somewhere near Lampen Stream. It was a lovely couple of hours on the river.
This summer I spent a little time at RAF Cranwell and slightly longer at RAF Syerston with a short, unplanned, stop in Newark. This is my story of the National Air and Space Camp 2022. For various reasons I changed from a full week attendance to just half the week. I travelled up to Nottinghamshire [RAF Syerston] on the Wednesday morning, leaving Kent early to get to NASC in time to do some work. The first morning my job was to build Lego, so just like a day at home then! In the afternoon there were some aircraft practices as part of the Industry Day where people come in to sell their companies.
The airshow consisted of displays from a Chinook, a glider performing aerobatics – which was my second favourite, a Puma, a Juno, the Red Arrows, a Typhoon and Spitfire, TWO F-35s did a fly by and tight turn, and there might have been something else that was little but I didn’t pay attention. Of the displays the Typhoon is clearly my favourite, the noise was lovely. The glider came second and I was so impressed with the manoeuvrability and aerobatic ability – a super display.
Spitfire – RAF Syerston National Air and Space Camp
On the Thursday I was helping organise and run the robotics stand. We had a really keen bunch of cadets and I was super impressed with their dedication to the cause. They worked from 0900 to 1700 with minimal breaks trying to solve the problems we had given them. It’s nice to have the cadet contact and be around people who are keen to solve problems and try to work hard.
Juno – RAF Syerston National Air and Space Camp
Friday was meant to be simple, just a rerun of Thursday but we left some kit at RAF Cranwell where we were staying overnight so I offered to go and get it. My car then decided to hit me with a serious YOU MUST STOP warning just as I detoured through Newark because there were road closures and accidents causing massive traffic problems around the A1 junction. I pulled into a one-way street and found a parking place. Very soon the traffic was terrible all around. My predicament, after checking some basic things from internet searches, was that it was likely the car needed towing to Kent. So I had some stuff at RAF Cranwell, some at RAF Syerston and I was in the middle of the two.
Puma – RAF Syerston National Air and Space Camp
People at the camp organised some transport and I managed to collect my things after a relaxing cuppa and bowl of chips at a pub next to a canal. Eventually I called the AA and they came out and I met the man at my car, once I had most of my stuff. He plugged a gizmo into the car OBD2 port and read through the error readings. He deleted the error codes that the car had generated saying that if something is really wrong then it would come back with an error eventually. I let him do his job. I don’t know how these things work. The car worked fine. The AA man followed me back to RAF Syerston and the car behaved.
Since then I have managed to drive home, around town, to Bluewater and back. The car seems back to normal. I have also bought an OBD2 thingy so I can plug in and see data for myself. I might have to delete further error messages so it’s worth getting although I haven’t played with it yet. NASC was good fun in all.
So, imagine asking a psychic for help with a missing persons case. In many ways this is understandable as when people are at their lowest there’s some comfort that things like that might work even if you know it’s mostly rubbish. People will grasp at straws. Consider those who use alternative medicine for anything, but worst of all, those who have cancer and give up medical treatment because their alternative medical practitioner says it won’t work. I saw the text of a psychic’s prediction of where a missing person would be or was. I’m not really sure. It is pretty terrible. Let’s look at it.
Psychic Messages – 1
Psychic Messages – 2
So, here are the guesses within these messages:
street.
abandoned house.
older guys.
18 or 19.
motorcycle.
mound of dirt.
grey jogging bottoms.
dirt bikes.
warehouse.
house.
kid.
pile of dirt.
construction site.
mound of dirt.
When we look at the types of building mentioned we have about four different things, this covers all bases. It doesn’t matter what reality was, this psychic will score a hit. Given that there was an image sent to her of the person outside a building in a street this isn’t very psychic. Then we can look at the description of a person hanging around with other people. Well, I don’t see that very often do I. That’s an amazing prediction or seeing or whatever the fuck. If teenagers are out somewhere then there’s a high chance some of them might have a dirt bike or a motorbike. All of this is just stuff that happens and none of it is specific to this particular situation.
I think my favourite part of the whole prediction is the dirt aspect. Can you tell me somewhere that isn’t close to dirt or a pile of dirt? Oh, and the joggers? The psychic had an image of the person who went missing. Also, grey joggers are probably very common. All of the psychic predictions in these messages are just listing very common things.
What these people rely on is confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. Humans find it really hard to think against things that they really want to be true. Everyone would like the idea of existing after we die and so we create stories to make it as true as possible. It’s a shame we live in a world where people can defraud or give false hope to others in their time of need.
So, I went to see Combichrist. Originally the tickets were for 2020 but we all know the heap of shit that this world turned into in late 2019. It has taken two years and finally I got the chance to see this amazing band (again). Luckily for me I did see them at M’era Luna two weekends ago as they replaced a band who had pulled out. This was my first time at a venue called the Islington Assembly Room – it was easy to get to and seemed very nice inside. The floor was wood and bouncy – I suspect it has been used as a ballroom in the past. The floor got slippery as soon as there was some beer on it.
First band up was a French (?) female rapper called Mimi Barks. I really enjoy her show. I liked the music and her anger. She seemed fierce. Not only that but she was in the pit for Combichrist and also sang a song with Priest and the Combichrist finale.
Mimi Barks – Islington Assembly Hall
Next up were Priest who, as soon as they appeared on stage, I was convinced I had seen before. Smith couldn’t remember seeing them so I searched this website and found them! I had seem them with my niece one time when we watched Aesthetic Perfection. I will say that this time I thought the singing was better but overall I wasn’t that bothered by their show or music. Just not up to my incredibly high level of tastes!
Priest – Islington Assembly Hall
Then we get Combichrist. I did not recognise any of their first three songs, but then Throat Full Of Glass came on and I was happy. I was on the edge of the pit, I wasn’t quite feeling it as much as at M’era Luna. I think I would say that the pit was more violent and a harsher environment than in Germany and so I wasn’t comfortable getting in. Also, a big part of me just wanted to watch the show. There was a fat twat in the pit who was out of control – I had to move away from the edge of the pit because I was likely to sharply elbow him if he bounced into me. He was a grade A twat.
Combichrist – Islington Assembly Hall
Part of me finds it quite fascinating to watch bands up close because you start to see just how much of a job it is. You can see the musicians “acting” on stage, creating a show. I think I had always thought that they got excited for the music they were creating and lost control but that is the job for the audience. The band is there to create that atmosphere. Occasionally I see this in performers, there’s an almost dead look in their eyes, there’s only so much you can do night after night. At this gig I only really noticed this in one of the band members, I guess there’s only so much adoration you can cope with?
Anyway, Elliot Berlin was in the band and I’m a fan. He did two things I thought were amazing. During the very last song he crowd surfed while playing a big fat tom-tom. Earlier in the gig he had jumped off the stage and got into the circle-pit and played guitar while people moshed around him and that for me is the highlight of the show!
Elliot Berlin – Combichrist – Islington Assembly Hall
THREE YEARS. That’s how long it had been since I’d been anywhere other than the south east of the UK, Lincolnshire or Cornwall [which was twice this month]. Three years since Smith and I had travelled to Germany to see a collection of bands, dress in weird shit and have a great time. The wait was worth it. 2022 was a great year for M’era Luna and I had an amazing time. There was news to make this year’s event even more interesting: a band had to pull out and they were replaced by Combichrist!
The journey out to Germany went well. The Eurotunnel was on time and Smith and I made it to our standard hotel in Bochum with time to explore the centre of the city and get some food. Most of the centre looked like Harlow – a new town in the UK. But we did find a street with some life and many restaurants. It was a hot evening with temperatures hitting 30C. After food and a couple of drinks we headed back to cheap hotel and planned Friday.
We arrived at Hildesheim early and queued for entry into the camp site. Once in we chose a spot far enough away from the noise and close enough to the car. Then we went for a walk to see how the grounds had changed in the three years since we had been there. Friday night is normally disco night but we didn’t go to that. Instead we found a bunch of Germans who we knew and spent some time with them, drinking their beer. It was good fun. The real music started at 1100 on Saturday though.
As with previous years this is where I just copy my notes from my phone. I can’t remember every band or song. I can’t remember what I thought about them. So I make notes as I go and then regurgitate them here. What follows is pretty much, word for word, my notes. Occasionally I will add detail for particular bands as I have remembered more from those appearances.
SATURDAY
Enemy Inside – main stage -I enjoyed this. They had a female lead singer and it was rock/metal.
Enemy Inside – M’era Luna 2022
Rave The Requiem – main stage – I also enjoyed this, christian sounding metal. There were references to religious passages and I couldn’t tell if they were critical or supportive after that.
Ambassador 21 – club stage – industrial punk and was great. I really loved this show.
Ambassador 21 – M’era Luna 2022
Schattenmann – main stage – actually really enjoyable. Heavy songs. Singer had a chainsaw. Flames from front of stage.
OST+Front – main stage – Enjoyable, very similar to when we last saw them. German new metal. Female dressed in various outfits.
Lacrimas Profundere – main stage – Waiting for Faderhead tbh. Opening bars were really good. But everything else was not. Went to sit in the shade at Club stage.
Solitary Experiments – club stage – perfectly fine but his voice isn’t strong enough. A bit boring really.
Faderhead – club stage – AMAZING. Totally loved this. This was the best attraction on Saturday.
Faderhead – M’era Luna 2022
Blut Engel – main stage – halfway through when we arrive. Everything Is Black playing. Next song had 4 girls on stage. 4 songs then left to:
In Strict Confidence – club stage – 3 good songs.
Nitzer Ebb – main stage – probably great if you are off your head. Nice beat stuff. But boring live.
SUNDAY
Hell Boulevard – main stage – they sang hit me baby one more time.
Aeverium – main stage – elements of thrash, not really. But I enjoyed it.
Unzucht – main stage – Fuchs yeah. I do love a bit of Unzucht and they were really enjoyable. Great fun.
Feuerschwanz – main stage – medieval rock shit
Combichrist – main stage – Andy and I started the pit and it was good. Thank god. This made the weekend worth it. Totally loved the show.
Combichrist – M’era Luna 2022
Rotersand – club stage – amazing. Really enjoyable. People came and thanked us for starting the pit during the Combichrist show.
Rotersand – M’era Luna 2022
Nachtmahr – club stage – good show. Two dancers.
Eisbrecher – main stage – amazing show, really good fun.
And there we have it. A great weekend. Such a shame there were massive delays getting back into the UK but that’s the sort of shit we have to put up with now I guess a bunch of arseholes lied to us. One of the best bits of the weekend for me was Smith’s realisation that paying to have a shit in the posh loos was worth it and made things soooo much better.
I have recently spent some time in the glorious county of Cornwall. It was my first time there in over two years, much like it’s a new thing for anyone to go anywhere at the moment. It was lovely.
We stayed at a campsite near St Stephen and close to St Austell. We did some things. It was great. Plenty to do and plenty of relaxing to do also. The first night we had fish and chips from a shop in St Austell, a place which seemed dead on a Sunday night.
Tropical Biome – Eden Project
Monday was all about getting some clothes bought from a shop in Truro, then we headed to the Maritime Museum in Falmouth. This had some lovely exhibits from the history of sailing and water transport. I also saw a real angler fish and I was unhappy at how small it was. About 12cm long. That is about as long as they grow. I was disappointed. Tuesday we went to an aviation museum because it can’t all be boring stuff. Then we visited Carne beach which was lovely. Dinner took place in Mevagissey.
Sexy Bridge
Wednesday’s main event was admiring the Eden Project and learning about the world’s plants and ecosystems. Thursday we visited HMNB Devenport and met with my Marine Commando nephew for a guided tour of HMS Albion, a look at some of the marine landing craft and also a sneaky look at some of their weapon systems.
Eden Project
Friday we visited a police officer friend of mine on the Rame peninsula and played frisbee golf at Mount Edgecombe country house. It was a great day. The following Saturday we travelled home to chill out a bit as Sunday we visited more friends and toured their orchard.
It’s been two weeks since I last published a communication and I’m aware some people out there read this website so this is here to hold the fort. I’ve spent quite a while wondering about the correlation between my mental and emotional health and communications on this site. I use to wonder whether, when feeling rough, I didn’t have the energy and ability to communicate on this site. But in the past when I have looked at the months when I know I was mentally fucked and the communications on here I write more in those times then when I’m fine. It would appear this site is a distraction from the emotional reality of the world. I use writing here as a distraction or somewhere to let my mind go rather than what’s happening to me.
So, the lack of recent communications, which is far below stable-me output, is to do with the fact that I have very good things on my mind. Life has taken a turn and it’s for the good. I hope to resume a more normal service in the future as this place is a source of pride for me. I like writing here and attempting to communicate to the world. I like being a presence for anyone to see. When I get to the point of writing more I am sure that I will still be gloriously happy. Which I am currently.
I’ve just returned from the first summer camp we’ve had for three years. In pre-pandemic times we would head off for a week each summer and spend that time at a RAF Station and have great fun doing activities. This year we booked accommodation at RAF Henlow and organised our own camp. Normally HQ would allocate us to a camp somewhere in the country but all the systems aren’t working very well yet, they’ll get there. So we drove ourselves to RAF Henlow and settled into the cadet block there, Barrack Block 56.
Required Kit For A Week
Our first day at camp was getting unpacked, checking the block and sending the cadets on a FAMEX. We also booked into the cinema in Royston to see Top Gun Maverick. It was much better on second watching and I didn’t expect that to happen! Sunday was a trip to Wyboston Lakes and an assault course in the morning followed by time on the inflatables in the lake. It was great, even with the A&E visit that was required.
Prank War Escalation
LJ and I had a bit of a prank war going on and the picture above was the point at which we decided just to make it a verbal roasting war rather than anything physical. We could both see it was going to get out of hand! Monday was a multi-activity day with some cadets going flying with 5AEF at RAF Wittering, some cadets went to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford and others went for a trip around a nuclear bunker and some high ropes. Great fun was had by all. In the evening a pilot mate of mine came and gave the cadets a talk about the flying industry.
British Antarctic Survey Twin Otter
Tuesday we visited RAF Honington to see what the RAF Regiment and Force Protection get up to. We might have had some instruction on small burst weapons during the day and then had a visit to the heritage centre detailing all the exploits of the Regiment.
Wednesday was a visit to the RAF Centre of Aviation Medicine at RAF Henlow followed by weapon training. In the evening I ran a DCCT range over the other side of the airfield at the Force Protection flight.
Thursday was a trip to the Shuttleworth Collection for a private tour and trip on a bus that was over a hundred years old. There were a few planes flying and that was nice to see. RAF Henlow not being a flying base.
Not A Tiger Moth
Thursday evening was another session in the DCCT range and virtually all cadets gained their L98A2 trained shot badge with the excellent guidance of the staff. It’s a pretty good achievement. Friday was the reverse of Monday with 12 more cadets getting airborne at RAF Wittering and the others heading to the bunker and high ropes.
High Visibility Paint Testing Platform
Friday evening was paper plate awards and chill time. TR and I went to visit the Officers’ Mess and checked out the bar. Saturday we tidied up, somehow loaded our transport of all the kit and headed home after lunch. It was a great week and another memorable camp. Such excellent fun and hopefully an amazing experience for our cadets. RTU was around 1500 hours and then the buses were tidied and parked up. We arrived back at the same time as the Army section which caused some issues in the car park but it all worked out in the end. I’m looking forward to next year.
This weekend has been pretty awesome. Smith and I drove down to Cornwall yesterday to see the band Nine Inch Nails. There aren’t many bands that would have the draw to get us to travel the width of the country but NIN are one of them. Firstly we stayed at a hotel in Okehampton which was on the route and far enough away from Eden to make the journey home this morning less by an hour. While waiting in Okehampton I persuade Smith that we should try and see a viaduct!
Meldon Viaduct – Okehampton
We parked near the reservoir and walked down by the river to the viaduct. Climbed up and walked the length of the bridge/viaduct. On the return journey we saw Dartmoor ponies and they were rather cute. We also got up close and personal with the dam holding back the reservoir waters.
Meldon Reservoir – Okehampton
After the walk and some food we drove to Eden. Parking was at the top of the project but there were shuttle buses up and down before and after the concert. It was lovely wandering through the biomes with 6000 other metal fans. It was absolutely pissing it down outside at this point with a lightning storm. The noise of this inside the biomes was like a small jet taking off, quite spectacular.
First band on were Yves Tumor. Not really my thing. Listened to a couple of songs but left it at that. Wandered around for a while.
Yves Tumor – Eden Project
Nine Inch Nails were quite spectacular. There wasn’t much interaction with the crowd from Trent Reznor. But is was still an amazing show. I hadn’t noticed until right towards the end of the concert that the biomes had lights and lit up as part of the show. The sound quality was really good and the fact there were only 6500 people attending made it quite an intimate venue. It’s the largest concert I’ve been to for years (mostly because of covid).
NIN – The Eden Project
Andy disappeared into the pit on the second song which was “Wish” from The Downward Spiral. I maintained my composure until they started playing March Of The Pigs and I joined in with the pit. I didn’t stay there, I just hovered on the edge and enjoyed the show.
At one point Trent spoke and said there were two things that happened this evening that had never happened at any other gig. First, he made a mistake playing one of his songs and secondly, there was a rainbow. The rainbow was enjoyed by the crowd, it was quite life-positive-affirming.
NIN Rainbow
It was a great concert. As we left and walked up the winding path to the main entrance my niece called both of us and drunkenly chatted which was pretty funny. Also, the biomes were lit up thus:
I’ve written here about my current Flight Sim challenge which is to fly around the world in short stages. Each leg is somewhere from 50 miles to 2000 miles, sometimes you have to fly over the Pacific and there isn’t a load of airports there. I’m currently in Peru and my previous journey had me landing at Aerodromo Maria Reiche in Nasca. While heading there I flew over the Nazca Lines and so I decided to download a scenery pack and go back and see what it looks like. I didn’t want to zoom over at 500 knots so decided to take a Grumman Goose out for a trip. As I’m heading to Lake Titicaca next I might make that trip in the Goose and land on the lake. It’s not very fast so I’ll have to see how much time I have. I might take the T7 to closer to the lake and then swap.
