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Striker was designed by Alvis as a fast, hard-hitting, tank destroyer. It was member of the CVR(T) family of light armoured vehicles and had its origins in a series of staff requirements and design studies produced during the 1950s and '60s.
The requirement was for an air-portable reconnaissance vehicle that could also provide fire and anti-tank support. It became clear that a single vehicle could not meet the total requirement so it was decided to produce a family of armoured fighting vehicles. Size and weight was dictated by the wish to fit two vehicles into a C-130 Hercules aircraft.
A range of vehicles was produced called the Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) family or CVR(T). The family includes the Striker, the FV101 Scorpion reconnaissance and fire support vehicle, the FV103 Spartan armoured personnel carrier, the FV104 Samaritan armoured ambulance, the FV105 Sultan armoured command vehicle, the FV106 Samson armoured recovery vehicle and the FV107 Scimitar reconnaissance vehicle.
Striker entered service in 1976. Like others in the CVR(T) range it was initially powered by a Jaguar 4.2 litre engine and employed aluminium armour. The entire fleet saw the Jaguar engines replaced by a Cummins BTA 5.9 diesel engine under the CVR(T) life extension programme.
Striker is armed with the BAe Systems Swingfire anti-tank wire guided missile, five of which are carried in launcher boxes at the rear of the vehicle that are raised for launching only at the last minute. Five more missiles are carried inside the hull. Swingfire had a range of up to 4,000m and could penetrate up to 80cms of armour. It used semi-automatic command line-of-sight guidance (SACLOS).
Striker was designed to fight from cover: for example the vehicle could hide behind a ridge while the missile operator launched and guided missiles by remote control from a separate observation post. Striker was originally fitted with a folding flotation screen, later removed by the British Army. The prototype at the Tank Museum (above) still has its flotation screen. It is painted in the markings of L Battery, Royal Horse Artillery.
A total of 89 Strikers were built for the British Army of which some 48 remained in service until 2004. They served in armoured reconnaissance regiments, which had a troop of four vehicles in each of their three squadrons. Strikers were used by the British in BAOR and at home and saw active service in the Gulf War (1991) and the Iraq War (2003).
Strikers were withdrawn from British Army service in mid-2005 when the Swingfire and Milan ATGMs were replaced by the new American-produced Javelin. It can be used as a fire-and-forget weapon, i.e. does not need guidance all the way to the target, as required by both Swingfire and Milan.
A Coast Guardsman simulates being a survivor in the water during ice rescue training, while the Coast Guard station’s dog named Brizo watches over him at U.S. Coast Guard Station Alexandria Bay, New York, March 16, 2021. This station is unique, in that it has a dog as its mascot. Brizo is named after the ancient Greek goddess known as the protector of mariners, sailors, and fishermen. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Bernardo Fuller)
We tried to take advantage of the last warm weeks of the year by doing some swimming. I had to bring out the underwater case for my camera again. Here Joshua is shown trying to balance on a flotation noodle. I told him to try and hold it underwater but he could never get the balance right. I liked the colors and obvious fun in this shot.
For more of my creative projects, visit my short stories website: 500ironicstories.com
It's been a whirlwind of cities and revolving hotel doors (and yes, I've made a point of checking - every one of those hotels had a phone next to the toilet).
With a trip down this particular rabbit hole, the sounds of jet engines have become as lulling as any water noise, the hotels a haven as welcome as open fields and a trip through for fast food a welcome change to restaurants and the "dinner meetings".
So, a quick pop in to say "Hello" and a brief respite from my current realities as I open my eyes to one soft sunrise before pushing on for the next couple of weeks.
The Mount Elliott Mining Complex is an aggregation of the remnants of copper mining and smelting operations from the early 20th century and the associated former mining township of Selwyn. The earliest copper mining at Mount Elliott was in 1906 with smelting operations commencing shortly after. Significant upgrades to the mining and smelting operations occurred under the management of W.R. Corbould during 1909 - 1910. Following these upgrades and increases in production, the Selwyn Township grew quickly and had 1500 residents by 1918. The Mount Elliott Company took over other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s, including the Mount Cuthbert and Kuridala smelters. Mount Elliott operations were taken over by Mount Isa Mines in 1943 to ensure the supply of copper during World War Two. The Mount Elliott Company was eventually liquidated in 1953.
The Mount Elliott Smelter:
The existence of copper in the Leichhardt River area of north western Queensland had been known since Ernest Henry discovered the Great Australia Mine in 1867 at Cloncurry. In 1899 James Elliott discovered copper on the conical hill that became Mount Elliott, but having no capital to develop the mine, he sold an interest to James Morphett, a pastoralist of Fort Constantine station near Cloncurry. Morphett, being drought stricken, in turn sold out to John Moffat of Irvinebank, the most successful mining promoter in Queensland at the time.
Plentiful capital and cheap transport were prerequisites for developing the Cloncurry field, which had stagnated for forty years. Without capital it was impossible to explore and prove ore-bodies; without proof of large reserves of wealth it was futile to build a railway; and without a railway it was hazardous to invest capital in finding large reserves of ore. The mining investor or the railway builder had to break the impasse.
In 1906 - 1907 copper averaged £87 a ton on the London market, the highest price for thirty years, and the Cloncurry field grew. The railway was extended west of Richmond in 1905 - 1906 by the Government and mines were floated on the Melbourne Stock Exchange. At Mount Elliott a prospecting shaft had been sunk and on the 1st of August 1906 a Cornish boiler and winding plant were installed on the site.
Mount Elliott Limited was floated in Melbourne on the 13th of July 1906. In 1907 it was taken over by British and French interests and restructured. Combining with its competitor, Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited, Mount Elliott formed a special company to finance and construct the railway from Cloncurry to Malbon, Kuridala (then Friezeland) and Mount Elliott (later Selwyn). This new company then entered into an agreement with the Queensland Railways Department in July 1908.
The railway, which was known as the 'Syndicate Railway', aroused opposition in 1908 from the trade unions and Labor movement generally, who contended that railways should be State-owned. However, the Hampden-Mount Elliott Railway Bill was passed by the Queensland Parliament and assented to on the 21st of April 1908; construction finished in December 1910. The railway terminated at the Mount Elliott smelter.
By 1907 the main underlie shaft had been sunk and construction of the smelters was underway using a second-hand water-jacket blast furnace and converters. At this time, W.H. Corbould was appointed general manager of Mount Elliott Limited.
The second-hand blast furnace and converters were commissioned or 'blown in' in May 1909, but were problematic causing hold-ups. Corbould referred to the equipment in use as being the 'worst collection of worn-out junk he had ever come across'. Corbould soon convinced his directors to scrap the plant and let him design new works.
Corbould was a metallurgist and geologist as well as mine/smelter manager. He foresaw a need to obtain control and thereby ensure a reliable supply of ore from a cross-section of mines in the region. He also saw a need to implement an effective strategy to manage the economies of smelting low-grade ore. Smelting operations in the region were made difficult by the technical and economic problems posed by the deterioration in the grade of ore. Corbould resolved the issue by a process of blending ores with different chemical properties, increasing the throughput capacity of the smelter and by championing the unification of smelting operations in the region. In 1912, Corbould acquired Hampden Consols Mine at Kuridala for Mount Elliott Limited, followed with the purchases of other small mines in the district.
Walkers Limited of Maryborough was commissioned to manufacture a new 200 ton water jacket furnace for the smelters. An air compressor and blower for the smelters were constructed in the powerhouse and an electric motor and dynamo provided power for the crane and lighting for the smelter and mine.
The new smelter was blown in September 1910, a month after the first train arrived, and it ran well, producing 2040 tons of blister copper by the end of the year. The new smelting plant made it possible to cope with low-grade sulphide ores at Mount Elliott. The use of 1000 tons of low-grade sulphide ores bought from the Hampden Consols Mine in 1911 made it clear that if a supply of higher sulphur ore could be obtained and blended, performance, and economy would improve. Accordingly, the company bought a number of smaller mines in the district in 1912.
Corbould mined with cut and fill stoping but a young Mines Inspector condemned the system, ordered it dismantled and replaced with square set timbering. In 1911, after gradual movement in stopes on the No. 3 level, the smelter was closed for two months. Nevertheless, 5447 tons of blister copper was produced in 1911, rising to 6690 tons in 1912 - the company's best year. Many of the surviving structures at the site were built at this time.
Troubles for Mount Elliott started in 1913. In February, a fire at the Consols Mine closed it for months. In June, a thirteen week strike closed the whole operation, severely depleting the workforce. The year 1913 was also bad for industrial accidents in the area, possibly due to inexperienced people replacing the strikers. Nevertheless, the company paid generous dividends that year.
At the end of 1914 smelting ceased for more than a year due to shortage of ore. Although 3200 tons of blister copper was produced in 1913, production fell to 1840 tons in 1914 and the workforce dwindled to only 40 men. For the second half of 1915 and early 1916 the smelter treated ore railed south from Mount Cuthbert. At the end of July 1916 the smelting plant at Selwyn was dismantled except for the flue chambers and stacks. A new furnace with a capacity of 500 tons per day was built, a large amount of second-hand equipment was obtained and the converters were increased in size.
After the enlarged furnace was commissioned in June 1917, continuing industrial unrest retarded production which amounted to only 1000 tons of copper that year. The point of contention was the efficiency of the new smelter which processed twice as much ore while employing fewer men. The company decided to close down the smelter in October and reduce the size of the furnace, the largest in Australia, from 6.5m to 5.5m. In the meantime the price of copper had almost doubled from 1916 due to wartime consumption of munitions.
The new furnace commenced on the 16th of January 1918 and 77,482 tons of ore were smelted yielding 3580 tons of blister copper which were sent to the Bowen refinery before export to Britain. Local coal and coke supply was a problem and materials were being sourced from the distant Bowen Colliery. The smelter had a good run for almost a year except for a strike in July and another in December, which caused Corbould to close down the plant until New Year. In 1919, following relaxation of wartime controls by the British Metal Corporation, the copper price plunged from about £110 per ton at the start of the year to £75 per ton in April, dashing the company's optimism regarding treatment of low grade ores. The smelter finally closed after two months operation and most employees were laid off.
For much of the period 1919 to 1922, Corbould was in England trying to raise capital to reorganise the company's operations but he failed and resigned from the company in 1922. The Mount Elliott Company took over the assets of the other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s - Mount Cuthbert in 1925 and Kuridala in 1926. Mount Isa Mines bought the Mount Elliott plant and machinery, including the three smelters, in 1943 for £2,300, enabling them to start copper production in the middle of the Second World War. The Mount Elliott Company was finally liquidated in 1953.
In 1950 A.E. Powell took up the Mount Elliott Reward Claim at Selwyn and worked close to the old smelter buildings. An open cut mine commenced at Starra, south of Mount Elliott and Selwyn, in 1988 and is Australia's third largest copper producer producing copper-gold concentrates from flotation and gold bullion from carbon-in-leach processing.
Profitable copper-gold ore bodies were recently proved at depth beneath the Mount Elliott smelter and old underground workings by Cyprus Gold Australia Pty Ltd. These deposits were subsequently acquired by Arimco Mining Pty Ltd for underground development which commenced in July 1993. A decline tunnel portal, ore and overburden dumps now occupy a large area of the Maggie Creek valley south-west of the smelter which was formerly the site of early miner's camps.
The Old Selwyn Township:
In 1907, the first hotel, run by H. Williams, was opened at the site. The township was surveyed later, around 1910, by the Mines Department. The town was to be situated north of the mine and smelter operations adjacent the railway, about 1.5km distant. It took its name from the nearby Selwyn Ranges which were named, during Burke's expedition, after the Victorian Government Geologist, A.R. Selwyn. The town has also been known by the name of Mount Elliott, after the nearby mines and smelter.
Many of the residents either worked at the Mount Elliott Mine and Smelter or worked in the service industries which grew around the mining and smelting operations. Little documentation exists about the everyday life of the town's residents. Surrounding sheep and cattle stations, however, meant that meat was available cheaply and vegetables grown in the area were delivered to the township by horse and cart. Imported commodities were, however, expensive.
By 1910 the town had four hotels. There was also an aerated water manufacturer, three stores, four fruiterers, a butcher, baker, saddler, garage, police, hospital, banks, post office (officially from 1906 to 1928, then unofficially until 1975) and a railway station. There was even an orchestra of ten players in 1912. The population of Selwyn rose from 1000 in 1911 to 1500 in 1918, before gradually declining.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
For an old MOCpages contest in 2012. I was pretty happy with it at the time. There was a whole backstory, as follows.
Many thousands of years ago, when the Great Beings crafted Mata Nui, they built Toa to inhabit him. Many Toa were created by the use of Toa stones, which channeled the elemental power of the universe into Matoran. Not the Toa of Fluorine.
The power of Fluorine rejected the Toa stones, and reacted violently with Protodermis. But the Great Beings know that its unique powers were necessary for the inner workings of their creation.
So they made a Toa whose power was not contained within his body and channeled into a thousand uses and powers, but rather, stemmed from the very materials his body was crafted of.
The first Toa of Fluorine to be born died the same day, when the power of Fluorine reacted with the metal room he was crafted in. Two Great Beings perished in the toxic flames. Because the Great Beings had spurned the natural Elemental Powers of the universe and relied instead on their own processes, the Toa could not control his powers.
The Great Beings crafted three more Toa of Fluorine, each one perishing when his powers reacted with the environment. The last two survived long enough to show that they could, indeed, use the powers as they wished- but when their bodies contacted a Fluorine-reactant material they couldn’t stop the violent eruptions of energy.
Their fifth attempt was created as the others- a raw mess of artificial elemental energy just waiting to explode. But the Great Beings had one last hope. In the controlled conditions of their lab, they bonded all the surfaces of his body with other elements and materials to create non-reactive Fluoropolymers. He emerged from the lab strong, non-reactive- and entirely powerless.
This fifth Toa did not release his power unwillingly, nor could he access it willingly. It was trapped within a prison of atomic bonds. In light of this final failure, the Great Beings were on the verge of cancelling the project altogether when one of them had an insane and risky idea.
Why, he asked, should the entire Toa be converted into Fluoropolymer? Why not leave the Toa a single arm to channel his power with?
And thus Fluonek was born. His Fluorine energy was contained exclusively in his left arm and a few other relatively safe parts of his body. He was trained to never let anything touch those parts of him, and equipped with a Fluoropolymer shield for further protection.
The Great Beings also gave him a staff of the same powerful, artificial mineral that housed his power. He could channel his Fluorine power through it and draw power from it as he needed. And, of course, anything that touched it was history.
He traveled the Matoran Universe for millennia, using his vast destructive and creative capabilities for the greater good.
Unfortunately, he was working with a tribe of coastal Matoran when the Mata Nui robot collapsed. The immense force of the fall made water flood the beach and wash over him, reacting with his Fluorine arm. As the flames engulfed him he threw his Fluoropolymer shield to the Matoran, who all survived by using it as a flotation device.
See more photos of this, and the Wikipedia article.
Details, quoting from Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | Space Shuttle Enterprise:
Manufacturer:
Rockwell International Corporation
Country of Origin:
United States of America
Dimensions:
Overall: 57 ft. tall x 122 ft. long x 78 ft. wing span, 150,000 lb.
(1737.36 x 3718.57 x 2377.44cm, 68039.6kg)
Materials:
Aluminum airframe and body with some fiberglass features; payload bay doors are graphite epoxy composite; thermal tiles are simulated (polyurethane foam) except for test samples of actual tiles and thermal blankets.
The first Space Shuttle orbiter, "Enterprise," is a full-scale test vehicle used for flights in the atmosphere and tests on the ground; it is not equipped for spaceflight. Although the airframe and flight control elements are like those of the Shuttles flown in space, this vehicle has no propulsion system and only simulated thermal tiles because these features were not needed for atmospheric and ground tests. "Enterprise" was rolled out at Rockwell International's assembly facility in Palmdale, California, in 1976. In 1977, it entered service for a nine-month-long approach-and-landing test flight program. Thereafter it was used for vibration tests and fit checks at NASA centers, and it also appeared in the 1983 Paris Air Show and the 1984 World's Fair in New Orleans. In 1985, NASA transferred "Enterprise" to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.
Transferred from National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• • •
Quoting from Wikipedia | Space Shuttle Enterprise:
The Space Shuttle Enterprise (NASA Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-101) was the first Space Shuttle orbiter. It was built for NASA as part of the Space Shuttle program to perform test flights in the atmosphere. It was constructed without engines or a functional heat shield, and was therefore not capable of spaceflight.
Originally, Enterprise had been intended to be refitted for orbital flight, which would have made it the second space shuttle to fly after Columbia. However, during the construction of Columbia, details of the final design changed, particularly with regard to the weight of the fuselage and wings. Refitting Enterprise for spaceflight would have involved dismantling the orbiter and returning the sections to subcontractors across the country. As this was an expensive proposition, it was determined to be less costly to build Challenger around a body frame (STA-099) that had been created as a test article. Similarly, Enterprise was considered for refit to replace Challenger after the latter was destroyed, but Endeavour was built from structural spares instead.
Service
Construction began on the first orbiter on June 4, 1974. Designated OV-101, it was originally planned to be named Constitution and unveiled on Constitution Day, September 17, 1976. A write-in campaign by Trekkies to President Gerald Ford asked that the orbiter be named after the Starship Enterprise, featured on the television show Star Trek. Although Ford did not mention the campaign, the president—who during World War II had served on the aircraft carrier USS Monterey (CVL-26) that served with USS Enterprise (CV-6)—said that he was "partial to the name" and overrode NASA officials.
The design of OV-101 was not the same as that planned for OV-102, the first flight model; the tail was constructed differently, and it did not have the interfaces to mount OMS pods. A large number of subsystems—ranging from main engines to radar equipment—were not installed on this vehicle, but the capacity to add them in the future was retained. Instead of a thermal protection system, its surface was primarily fiberglass.
In mid-1976, the orbiter was used for ground vibration tests, allowing engineers to compare data from an actual flight vehicle with theoretical models.
On September 17, 1976, Enterprise was rolled out of Rockwell's plant at Palmdale, California. In recognition of its fictional namesake, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and most of the principal cast of the original series of Star Trek were on hand at the dedication ceremony.
Approach and landing tests (ALT)
Main article: Approach and Landing Tests
On January 31, 1977, it was taken by road to Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, to begin operational testing.
While at NASA Dryden, Enterprise was used by NASA for a variety of ground and flight tests intended to validate aspects of the shuttle program. The initial nine-month testing period was referred to by the acronym ALT, for "Approach and Landing Test". These tests included a maiden "flight" on February 18, 1977 atop a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) to measure structural loads and ground handling and braking characteristics of the mated system. Ground tests of all orbiter subsystems were carried out to verify functionality prior to atmospheric flight.
The mated Enterprise/SCA combination was then subjected to five test flights with Enterprise unmanned and unactivated. The purpose of these test flights was to measure the flight characteristics of the mated combination. These tests were followed with three test flights with Enterprise manned to test the shuttle flight control systems.
Enterprise underwent five free flights where the craft separated from the SCA and was landed under astronaut control. These tests verified the flight characteristics of the orbiter design and were carried out under several aerodynamic and weight configurations. On the fifth and final glider flight, pilot-induced oscillation problems were revealed, which had to be addressed before the first orbital launch occurred.
On August 12, 1977, the space shuttle Enterprise flew on its own for the first time.
Preparation for STS-1
Following the ALT program, Enterprise was ferried among several NASA facilities to configure the craft for vibration testing. In June 1979, it was mated with an external tank and solid rocket boosters (known as a boilerplate configuration) and tested in a launch configuration at Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39A.
Retirement
With the completion of critical testing, Enterprise was partially disassembled to allow certain components to be reused in other shuttles, then underwent an international tour visiting France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the U.S. states of California, Alabama, and Louisiana (during the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition). It was also used to fit-check the never-used shuttle launch pad at Vandenberg AFB, California. Finally, on November 18, 1985, Enterprise was ferried to Washington, D.C., where it became property of the Smithsonian Institution.
Post-Challenger
After the Challenger disaster, NASA considered using Enterprise as a replacement. However refitting the shuttle with all of the necessary equipment needed for it to be used in space was considered, but instead it was decided to use spares constructed at the same time as Discovery and Atlantis to build Endeavour.
Post-Columbia
In 2003, after the breakup of Columbia during re-entry, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board conducted tests at Southwest Research Institute, which used an air gun to shoot foam blocks of similar size, mass and speed to that which struck Columbia at a test structure which mechanically replicated the orbiter wing leading edge. They removed a fiberglass panel from Enterprise's wing to perform analysis of the material and attached it to the test structure, then shot a foam block at it. While the panel was not broken as a result of the test, the impact was enough to permanently deform a seal. As the reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) panel on Columbia was 2.5 times weaker, this suggested that the RCC leading edge would have been shattered. Additional tests on the fiberglass were canceled in order not to risk damaging the test apparatus, and a panel from Discovery was tested to determine the effects of the foam on a similarly-aged RCC leading edge. On July 7, 2003, a foam impact test created a hole 41 cm by 42.5 cm (16.1 inches by 16.7 inches) in the protective RCC panel. The tests clearly demonstrated that a foam impact of the type Columbia sustained could seriously breach the protective RCC panels on the wing leading edge.
The board determined that the probable cause of the accident was that the foam impact caused a breach of a reinforced carbon-carbon panel along the leading edge of Columbia's left wing, allowing hot gases generated during re-entry to enter the wing and cause structural collapse. This caused Columbia to spin out of control, breaking up with the loss of the entire crew.
Museum exhibit
Enterprise was stored at the Smithsonian's hangar at Washington Dulles International Airport before it was restored and moved to the newly built Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport, where it has been the centerpiece of the space collection. On April 12, 2011, NASA announced that Space Shuttle Discovery, the most traveled orbiter in the fleet, will be added to the collection once the Shuttle fleet is retired. When that happens, Enterprise will be moved to the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City, to a newly constructed hangar adjacent to the museum. In preparation for the anticipated relocation, engineers evaluated the vehicle in early 2010 and determined that it was safe to fly on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft once again.
2019 Route 66 Car Show
Oak Park Avenue & Ogden Avenue
Berwyn, Illinois.
Cook County, USA.
August 24, 2019
From wikipedia
The Amphicar Model 770 is an amphibious automobile which was launched at the 1961 New York Auto Show, manufactured in West Germany and marketed from 1961 to 1968. Production stopped in 1965.
Designed by Hans Trippel, the amphibious vehicle was manufactured by the Quandt Group at Lübeck and at Berlin-Borsigwalde, with a total of 3,878 manufactured in a single generation. Engine: Triumph four-cylinder engine of 1147 cc, 8:1 compression ratio, rated at 38.3 bhp
A descendant of the Volkswagen Schwimmwagen, the Amphicar offered only modest performance compared to most contemporary boats or cars, featured navigation lights and flag as mandated by the US Coast Guard — and after operation in water, required greasing at 13 points, one of which required removal of the rear seat.
The Amphicar name is a portmanteau of "amphibious" and "car".
Appearance
Front undersurface is slightly pointed and sharply cut away below. The wheels are set low, so that the vehicle stands well above ground level when on dry land. Front and rear bumpers are placed low on the body panels (but fairly high in relation to dry ground). The one-piece windshield is curved. The foldable top causes the body style to be classified as cabriolet. Its water propulsion is provided by twin propellers mounted under the rear bumper. The Amphicar is made of mild steel.
Powertrain
The Amphicar's engine was mounted at the rear of the craft, driving the rear wheels through a 4-speed manual transmission. For use in the water, the same engine drove a pair of reversible propellers at the rear, with a second gear lever engaging forward or reverse drive. Once in the water, the main gear lever would normally be left in neutral. By engaging first gear as well as drive to the propellers when approaching a boat ramp, the Amphicar could drive itself out of the water. .
Performance
The powerplant was the 1147 cc (69 in³) Standard SC engine from the British Triumph Herald 1200. Many engines were tried in prototypes, but the Triumph engine was "state of the art" in 1961 and it had the necessary combination of performance, weight, cool running, and reliability. Updated versions of this engine remained in production in the Triumph Spitfire until 1980.
The Amphicar engine had a power output of 43 hp (32 kW) at 4750 rpm, slightly more than the Triumph Herald due to a shorter exhaust.[7] Designated the "Model 770",[5] the Amphicar could achieve speeds of 7 knots in the water and 70 mph (110 km/h) on land. Later versions of the engine displaced 1296 cc and 1493 cc and produced up to 75 bhp (56 kW).
One owner was quoted "It's not a good car and it's not a good boat, but it does just fine" largely because of modest performance in and out of water. Another added, "We like to think of it as the fastest car on the water and fastest boat on the road."
Amphicar 1962.
In water as well as on land, the Amphicar steered with the front wheels, making it less maneuverable than a conventional boat. Time’s Dan Neil called it "a vehicle that promised to revolutionize drowning", explaining, "Its flotation was entirely dependent on whether the bilge pump could keep up with the leakage." In reality, a well maintained Amphicar does not leak at all and can be left in water, parked at a dock side, for many hours
History
Production started in late 1960. By the end of 1963 complete production was stopped.[15] From 1963-65 cars were assembled from shells and parts inventory built up in anticipation of sales of 25,000 units, with the last new build units assembled in 1965. Cars were titled in the year they actually sold rather than when they were produced, e.g. an unsold Amphicar assembled in 1963 or 1965 could be titled as 1967 or 1968 if that was when it was first sold, though the inventory could not be sold in the U.S. in the 1968 model year or later due to new environmental and USDOT emissions and safety equipment standards, they were available in other countries into 1968. The remaining inventory of unused parts was eventually purchased by Hugh Gordon of Santa Fe Springs, California.
Most Amphicars were sold in the United States. Cars were sold in the United Kingdom from 1964. Total production was 3,878 vehicles. 99 right-hand drives were converted from left-hand drives. Some were used in the Berlin police department and others were fitted for rescue operations.
Amphicar shows and rides
Amphicar owners regularly convene during the spring, summer and fall months at various locations nationwide for "swim-ins", the largest of which is held at Grand Lake St. Marys State Park, Ohio.
In 2015, the Boathouse at Walt Disney World's Disney Springs in Orlando, Florida began offering public Amphicar rides to visitors, charging $125 per ride for groups of up to three. Disney heavily re-engineered and enhanced the eight Amphicars of various original colors in its fleet for safety, reliability, and comfort.
The Romp by Chong Fahcheong a set of bronze statues of kids playing.
Usually standing on rocks 2 feet about the water.
Some kids told his dad that might need light jackets so one of the stores in Penticton donated the PFDs.
The Mount Elliott Mining Complex is an aggregation of the remnants of copper mining and smelting operations from the early 20th century and the associated former mining township of Selwyn. The earliest copper mining at Mount Elliott was in 1906 with smelting operations commencing shortly after. Significant upgrades to the mining and smelting operations occurred under the management of W.R. Corbould during 1909 - 1910. Following these upgrades and increases in production, the Selwyn Township grew quickly and had 1500 residents by 1918. The Mount Elliott Company took over other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s, including the Mount Cuthbert and Kuridala smelters. Mount Elliott operations were taken over by Mount Isa Mines in 1943 to ensure the supply of copper during World War Two. The Mount Elliott Company was eventually liquidated in 1953.
The Mount Elliott Smelter:
The existence of copper in the Leichhardt River area of north western Queensland had been known since Ernest Henry discovered the Great Australia Mine in 1867 at Cloncurry. In 1899 James Elliott discovered copper on the conical hill that became Mount Elliott, but having no capital to develop the mine, he sold an interest to James Morphett, a pastoralist of Fort Constantine station near Cloncurry. Morphett, being drought stricken, in turn sold out to John Moffat of Irvinebank, the most successful mining promoter in Queensland at the time.
Plentiful capital and cheap transport were prerequisites for developing the Cloncurry field, which had stagnated for forty years. Without capital it was impossible to explore and prove ore-bodies; without proof of large reserves of wealth it was futile to build a railway; and without a railway it was hazardous to invest capital in finding large reserves of ore. The mining investor or the railway builder had to break the impasse.
In 1906 - 1907 copper averaged £87 a ton on the London market, the highest price for thirty years, and the Cloncurry field grew. The railway was extended west of Richmond in 1905 - 1906 by the Government and mines were floated on the Melbourne Stock Exchange. At Mount Elliott a prospecting shaft had been sunk and on the 1st of August 1906 a Cornish boiler and winding plant were installed on the site.
Mount Elliott Limited was floated in Melbourne on the 13th of July 1906. In 1907 it was taken over by British and French interests and restructured. Combining with its competitor, Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited, Mount Elliott formed a special company to finance and construct the railway from Cloncurry to Malbon, Kuridala (then Friezeland) and Mount Elliott (later Selwyn). This new company then entered into an agreement with the Queensland Railways Department in July 1908.
The railway, which was known as the 'Syndicate Railway', aroused opposition in 1908 from the trade unions and Labor movement generally, who contended that railways should be State-owned. However, the Hampden-Mount Elliott Railway Bill was passed by the Queensland Parliament and assented to on the 21st of April 1908; construction finished in December 1910. The railway terminated at the Mount Elliott smelter.
By 1907 the main underlie shaft had been sunk and construction of the smelters was underway using a second-hand water-jacket blast furnace and converters. At this time, W.H. Corbould was appointed general manager of Mount Elliott Limited.
The second-hand blast furnace and converters were commissioned or 'blown in' in May 1909, but were problematic causing hold-ups. Corbould referred to the equipment in use as being the 'worst collection of worn-out junk he had ever come across'. Corbould soon convinced his directors to scrap the plant and let him design new works.
Corbould was a metallurgist and geologist as well as mine/smelter manager. He foresaw a need to obtain control and thereby ensure a reliable supply of ore from a cross-section of mines in the region. He also saw a need to implement an effective strategy to manage the economies of smelting low-grade ore. Smelting operations in the region were made difficult by the technical and economic problems posed by the deterioration in the grade of ore. Corbould resolved the issue by a process of blending ores with different chemical properties, increasing the throughput capacity of the smelter and by championing the unification of smelting operations in the region. In 1912, Corbould acquired Hampden Consols Mine at Kuridala for Mount Elliott Limited, followed with the purchases of other small mines in the district.
Walkers Limited of Maryborough was commissioned to manufacture a new 200 ton water jacket furnace for the smelters. An air compressor and blower for the smelters were constructed in the powerhouse and an electric motor and dynamo provided power for the crane and lighting for the smelter and mine.
The new smelter was blown in September 1910, a month after the first train arrived, and it ran well, producing 2040 tons of blister copper by the end of the year. The new smelting plant made it possible to cope with low-grade sulphide ores at Mount Elliott. The use of 1000 tons of low-grade sulphide ores bought from the Hampden Consols Mine in 1911 made it clear that if a supply of higher sulphur ore could be obtained and blended, performance, and economy would improve. Accordingly, the company bought a number of smaller mines in the district in 1912.
Corbould mined with cut and fill stoping but a young Mines Inspector condemned the system, ordered it dismantled and replaced with square set timbering. In 1911, after gradual movement in stopes on the No. 3 level, the smelter was closed for two months. Nevertheless, 5447 tons of blister copper was produced in 1911, rising to 6690 tons in 1912 - the company's best year. Many of the surviving structures at the site were built at this time.
Troubles for Mount Elliott started in 1913. In February, a fire at the Consols Mine closed it for months. In June, a thirteen week strike closed the whole operation, severely depleting the workforce. The year 1913 was also bad for industrial accidents in the area, possibly due to inexperienced people replacing the strikers. Nevertheless, the company paid generous dividends that year.
At the end of 1914 smelting ceased for more than a year due to shortage of ore. Although 3200 tons of blister copper was produced in 1913, production fell to 1840 tons in 1914 and the workforce dwindled to only 40 men. For the second half of 1915 and early 1916 the smelter treated ore railed south from Mount Cuthbert. At the end of July 1916 the smelting plant at Selwyn was dismantled except for the flue chambers and stacks. A new furnace with a capacity of 500 tons per day was built, a large amount of second-hand equipment was obtained and the converters were increased in size.
After the enlarged furnace was commissioned in June 1917, continuing industrial unrest retarded production which amounted to only 1000 tons of copper that year. The point of contention was the efficiency of the new smelter which processed twice as much ore while employing fewer men. The company decided to close down the smelter in October and reduce the size of the furnace, the largest in Australia, from 6.5m to 5.5m. In the meantime the price of copper had almost doubled from 1916 due to wartime consumption of munitions.
The new furnace commenced on the 16th of January 1918 and 77,482 tons of ore were smelted yielding 3580 tons of blister copper which were sent to the Bowen refinery before export to Britain. Local coal and coke supply was a problem and materials were being sourced from the distant Bowen Colliery. The smelter had a good run for almost a year except for a strike in July and another in December, which caused Corbould to close down the plant until New Year. In 1919, following relaxation of wartime controls by the British Metal Corporation, the copper price plunged from about £110 per ton at the start of the year to £75 per ton in April, dashing the company's optimism regarding treatment of low grade ores. The smelter finally closed after two months operation and most employees were laid off.
For much of the period 1919 to 1922, Corbould was in England trying to raise capital to reorganise the company's operations but he failed and resigned from the company in 1922. The Mount Elliott Company took over the assets of the other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s - Mount Cuthbert in 1925 and Kuridala in 1926. Mount Isa Mines bought the Mount Elliott plant and machinery, including the three smelters, in 1943 for £2,300, enabling them to start copper production in the middle of the Second World War. The Mount Elliott Company was finally liquidated in 1953.
In 1950 A.E. Powell took up the Mount Elliott Reward Claim at Selwyn and worked close to the old smelter buildings. An open cut mine commenced at Starra, south of Mount Elliott and Selwyn, in 1988 and is Australia's third largest copper producer producing copper-gold concentrates from flotation and gold bullion from carbon-in-leach processing.
Profitable copper-gold ore bodies were recently proved at depth beneath the Mount Elliott smelter and old underground workings by Cyprus Gold Australia Pty Ltd. These deposits were subsequently acquired by Arimco Mining Pty Ltd for underground development which commenced in July 1993. A decline tunnel portal, ore and overburden dumps now occupy a large area of the Maggie Creek valley south-west of the smelter which was formerly the site of early miner's camps.
The Old Selwyn Township:
In 1907, the first hotel, run by H. Williams, was opened at the site. The township was surveyed later, around 1910, by the Mines Department. The town was to be situated north of the mine and smelter operations adjacent the railway, about 1.5km distant. It took its name from the nearby Selwyn Ranges which were named, during Burke's expedition, after the Victorian Government Geologist, A.R. Selwyn. The town has also been known by the name of Mount Elliott, after the nearby mines and smelter.
Many of the residents either worked at the Mount Elliott Mine and Smelter or worked in the service industries which grew around the mining and smelting operations. Little documentation exists about the everyday life of the town's residents. Surrounding sheep and cattle stations, however, meant that meat was available cheaply and vegetables grown in the area were delivered to the township by horse and cart. Imported commodities were, however, expensive.
By 1910 the town had four hotels. There was also an aerated water manufacturer, three stores, four fruiterers, a butcher, baker, saddler, garage, police, hospital, banks, post office (officially from 1906 to 1928, then unofficially until 1975) and a railway station. There was even an orchestra of ten players in 1912. The population of Selwyn rose from 1000 in 1911 to 1500 in 1918, before gradually declining.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
ATLANTIC OCEAN (Aug. 4, 2017) A Sikorsky MH-60R "Sea Hawk" helicopter assigned to Helicopter
Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 74 approaches the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) for refueling. This was the first aircraft refueling after the ship earned its fuel certification.
The Sikorsky SH-60/MH-60 Seahawk (or Sea Hawk) is a twin turboshaft engine, multi-mission United States Navy helicopter based on the United States Army UH-60 Black Hawk and a member of the Sikorsky S-70 family. The most significant airframe modification is a hinged tail to reduce its footprint aboard ships.
The U.S. Navy uses the H-60 airframe under the model designations SH-60B, SH-60F, HH-60H, MH-60R, and MH-60S. Able to deploy aboard any air-capable frigate, destroyer, cruiser, fast combat support ship, amphibious assault ship, or aircraft carrier, the Seahawk can handle anti-submarine warfare (ASW), anti-surface warfare (ASUW), naval special warfare (NSW) insertion, search and rescue (SAR), combat search and rescue (CSAR), vertical replenishment (VERTREP), and medical evacuation (MEDEVAC). All Navy H-60s carry a rescue hoist for SAR/CSAR missions.
Design and development
Origins
During the 1970s, the U.S. Navy began looking for a new helicopter to replace the Kaman SH-2 Seasprite. The SH-2 Seasprite was used by the Navy as its platform for the Light Airborne Multi-Purpose System (LAMPS) Mark I avionics suite for maritime warfare and a secondary search and rescue capability. Advances in sensor and avionic technology lead to the LAMPS Mk II suite, but the SH-2 was not large enough to carry the Navy's required equipment. In the mid-1970s, the Army evaluated the Sikorsky YUH-60 and Boeing-Vertol YUH-61 for its Utility Tactical Transport Aircraft System (UTTAS) competition.
The Navy based its requirements on the Army's UTTAS specification to decrease costs from commonality. Sikorsky and Boeing-Vertol submitted proposals for Navy versions of their Army UTTAS helicopters in April 1977 for review. The Navy also looked at helicopters being produced by Bell, Kaman, Westland and MBB, but these were too small for the mission. In early 1978 the Navy selected Sikorsky's S-70B design, which was designated "SH-60B Seahawk".
SH-60B Seahawk
The SH-60B maintained 83% commonality with the UH-60A. The main changes were corrosion protection, more powerful T700 engines, single-stage oleo main landing gear, removal of the left side door, adding two weapon pylons, and shifting the tail landing gear 13 feet (3.96 m) forward to reduce the footprint for shipboard landing. Other changes included larger fuel cells, an electric blade folding system, folding horizontal stabilators for storage, and adding a 25-tube pneumatic sonobuoy launcher on the left side. An emergency flotation system was originally installed in the stub wing fairings of the main landing gear; however, it was found to be impractical and possibly impede emergency egress, and thus was subsequently removed.[citation needed] Five YSH-60B Seahawk LAMPS III prototypes were ordered. The first YSH-60B flight occurred on 12 December 1979. The first production SH-60B made its first flight on 11 February 1983. The SH-60B entered operational service in 1984 with first operational deployment in 1985.
The SH-60B is deployed primarily aboard frigates, destroyers, and cruisers. The primary missions of the SH-60B are surface warfare and anti-submarine warfare. It carries a complex system of sensors including a towed Magnetic Anomaly Detector (MAD) and air-launched sonobuoys. Other sensors include the APS-124 search radar, ALQ-142 ESM system and optional nose-mounted forward looking infrared (FLIR) turret. Munitions carried include the Mk 46, Mk 50, or Mk 54 torpedo, AGM-114 Hellfire missile, and a single cabin-door-mounted M60D/M240 7.62 mm (0.30 in) machine gun or GAU-16 .50 in (12.7 mm) machine gun.
A standard crew for a SH-60B is one pilot, one ATO/Co-Pilot (Airborne Tactical Officer), and an enlisted aviation warfare systems operator (sensor operator). The U.S. Navy operated the SH-60B in Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron, Light (HSL) squadrons. All HSL squadrons were redesignated Helicopter Maritime Strike (HSM) squadrons and transitioned to the MH-60R between 2006 and 2015.
The SH-60J is a version of the SH-60B for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. The SH-60K is a modified version of the SH-60J. The SH-60J and SH-60K are built under license by Mitsubishi in Japan.
SH-60F
After the SH-60B entered service, the Navy began development of the SH-60F to replace the SH-3 Sea King. Development of this variant began with the award of a contract to Sikorsky in March 1985. An early-model SH-60B (Bu. No. 161170) was modified to serve as a SH-60F prototype. The company was contracted to produce seven SH-60Fs in January 1986 and the first example flew on 19 March 1987.
The SH-60F primarily served as the carrier battle group's primary antisubmarine warfare (ASW) aircraft. The helicopter hunted submarines with its AQS-13F dipping sonar, and carried a 6-tube sonobuoy launcher. The SH-60F is unofficially named "Oceanhawk". The SH-60F can carry Mk 46, Mk 50, or Mk 54 torpedoes for its offensive weapons, and it has a choice of fuselage-mounted machine guns, including the M60D, M240D, and GAU-16 (.50 caliber) for self-defense. The standard aircrew consists of one pilot, one co-pilot, one tactical sensor operator (TSO), and one acoustic sensor operator (ASO). The SH-60F was operated by the U.S Navy's Helicopter Antisubmarine (HS) squadrons until they were redesignated Helicopter Sea Combat (HCS) squadrons transitioned to the MH-60S. The last HS squadron completed its transition in 2016.
HH-60H
The HH-60H was developed in conjunction with the US Coast Guard's HH-60J, beginning in September 1986 with a contract for the first five helicopters. The variant's first flight occurred on 17 August 1988. Deliveries of the HH-60H began in 1989. The variant earned initial operating capability in April 1990. The HH-60H's official DoD and Sikorsky name is Seahawk, though it has been called "Rescue Hawk".
Based on the SH-60F, the HH-60H is the primary combat search and rescue (CSAR), naval special warfare (NSW) and anti-surface warfare (ASUW) helicopter. It carries various defensive and offensive sensors, it is one of the most survivable helicopters in the world.[citation needed] Sensors include a FLIR turret with laser designator and the Aircraft Survival Equipment (ASE) package including the ALQ-144 Infrared Jammer, AVR-2 Laser Detectors, APR-39(V)2 Radar Detectors, AAR-47 Missile Launch Detectors and ALE-47 chaff/flare dispensers. Engine exhaust deflectors provide infrared thermal reduction reducing the threat of heat-seeking missiles. The HH-60H can carry up to four AGM-114 Hellfire missiles on an extended wing using the M299 launcher and a variety of mountable guns including M60D, M240, GAU-16 and GAU-17/A machine guns.
The HH-60H's standard crew is pilot, copilot, an enlisted crew chief, and two door gunners. The HH-60H was operated by Helicopter Antisubmarine (HS) squadrons with a standard dispersal of six F-models and two or three H-models before the transition of HS squadrons to HSC squadrons equipped with the MH-60S, the last of which completed its transition in 2016. It was also operated by HCS-5 and HCS-4 (later HSC-84), two USNR squadrons with the primary mission of combat SAR and Naval Special Warfare support which were deactivated in 2006 and 2016 respectively. The only squadron equipped with the HH-60H as of 2016 is HSC-85, one of only two remaining USNR helicopter squadrons (the other being HSM-60 equipped with the MH-60R). In Iraq, HH-60Hs were used by the Navy, assisting the Army, for MEDEVAC purposes and special operations missions.
MH-60R
The MH-60R was originally known as "LAMPS Mark III Block II Upgrade" when development began in 1993. Two SH-60Bs were converted by Sikorsky, the first of which made its maiden flight on 22 December 1999. Designated YSH-60R, they were delivered to NAS Patuxent River in 2001 for flight testing. The production variant was redesignated MH-60R to match its multi-mission capability. The MH-60R Seahawk was formally deployed by the US Navy in 2006.
The MH-60R is designed to combine the features of the SH-60B and SH-60F. Its sensors include the ASE package, MTS-FLIR, the AN/APS-147 multi-mode radar/IFF interrogator, an advanced airborne fleet data link, and a more advanced airborne active sonar. It does not carry the MAD suite. Pilot instrumentation is based on the MH-60S's glass cockpit, using several digital monitors instead of the complex array of dials and gauges in Bravo and Foxtrot aircraft. Offensive capabilities are improved by the addition of new Mk-54 air-launched torpedoes and Hellfire missiles. All Helicopter Anti-Submarine Light (HSL) squadrons that receive the Romeo are redesignated Helicopter, Strike Maritime (HSM) squadrons. During a mid-life technology insertion project, the MH-60R fleet shall be fitted with the AN/APS-153 Multi-Mode Radar with Automatic Radar Periscope Detection and Discrimination (ARPDD) capability.
The MH-60R is designed to combine the features of the SH-60B and SH-60F. Its sensors include the ASE package, MTS-FLIR, the AN/APS-147 multi-mode radar/IFF interrogator, an advanced airborne fleet data link, and a more advanced airborne active sonar. It does not carry the MAD suite. Pilot instrumentation is based on the MH-60S's glass cockpit, using several digital monitors instead of the complex array of dials and gauges in Bravo and Foxtrot aircraft. Offensive capabilities are improved by the addition of new Mk-54 air-launched torpedoes and Hellfire missiles. All Helicopter Anti-Submarine Light (HSL) squadrons that receive the Romeo are redesignated Helicopter, Strike Maritime (HSM) squadrons. During a mid-life technology insertion project, the MH-60R fleet shall be fitted with the AN/APS-153 Multi-Mode Radar with Automatic Radar Periscope Detection and Discrimination (ARPDD) capability.
MH-60S
The Navy decided to replace its venerable CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters in 1997. After sea demonstrations by a converted UH-60, the Navy awarded production contract for the CH-60S in 1998. The variant first flew on 27 January 2000 and it began flight testing later that year. The CH-60S was redesignated MH-60S in February 2001 to reflect its planned multi-mission use. The MH-60S is based on the UH-60L and has many naval SH-60 features. Unlike all other Navy H-60s, the MH-60S is not based on the original S-70B/SH-60B platform with its forward-mounted twin tail-gear and single starboard sliding cabin door. Instead, the S-model is a hybrid, featuring the main fuselage of the S-70A/UH-60, with large sliding doors on both sides of the cabin and a single aft-mounted tail wheel; and the engines, drivetrain and rotors of the S-70B/SH-60.
It is deployed aboard aircraft carriers, amphibious assault ships, Maritime Sealift Command ships, and fast combat support ships. Its missions include vertical replenishment, medical evacuation, combat search and rescue, anti-surface warfare, maritime interdiction, close air support, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and special warfare support. The MH-60S is to deploy with the AQS-20A Mine Detection System and an Airborne Laser Mine Detection System (ALMDS) for identifying submerged objects in coastal waters. It is the first US Navy helicopter to field a glass cockpit, relaying flight information via four digital monitors. The primary means of defense is with the M60D, M240 or GAU-17/A machine guns. A "batwing" Armed Helo Kit based on the Army's UH-60L was developed to accommodate Hellfire missiles, Hydra 70 2.75 inch rockets, or larger guns. The MH-60S can be equipped with a nose mounted forward looking infrared (FLIR) turret to be used in conjunction with Hellfire missiles; it also carries the ALQ-144 Infrared Jammer.
The MH-60S is unofficially known as the "Knighthawk", referring to the preceding Sea Knight, though "Seahawk" is its official DoD name. A standard crew for the MH-60S is one pilot, one copilot and two tactical aircrewmen depending on mission. With the retirement of the Sea Knight, the squadron designation of Helicopter Combat Support Squadron (HC) was also retired from the Navy. Operating MH-60S squadrons were re-designated Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC). The MH-60S was to be used for mine clearing from littoral combat ships, but testing found it lacks the power to safely tow the detection equipment.
On 6 August 2014, the U.S. Navy forward deployed the Airborne Laser Mine Detection System (ALMDS) to the U.S. 5th Fleet. The ALMDS is a sensor system designed to detect, classify, and localize floating and near-surface moored mines in littoral zones, straits, and choke points. The system is operated from an MH-60S, which gives it a countermine role traditionally handled by the MH-53E Sea Dragon, allowing smaller ships the MH-53E can't operate from to be used in the role. The ALMDS beams a laser into the water to pick up reflections from things it bounces off of, then uses that data to produce a video image for technicians on the ground to determine if the object is a mine.
The MH-60S will utilize the BAE Systems Archerfish remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to seek out and destroy naval mines from the air. Selected as a concept in 2003 by the Navy as part of the Airborne Mine Neutralization System (AMNS) program and developed since 2007, the Archerfish is dropped into the water from its launch cradle, where its human operator remotely guides it down towards the mine using a fiber optics communications cable that leads back up to the helicopter. Using sonar and low-light video, it locates the mine, and is then instructed to shoot a shaped charge explosive to detonate it. BAE was awarded a contract to build and deliver the ROVs in April 2016, which will be delivered in September 2017.
U.S. Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force – Southern Command conduct water survival training with U.S. Army soldiers from JTF-Bravo Medical Element at Soto Cano Air Base, June 13, 2017. This week-long training class went over different survival techniques, swimming tips, uniform flotation methods and physical training. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Scott Thompson/released)
Shortly after the high tide on April 28, 2013, pontoons at the Aberdeen casting basin began to “pop,” or float in the water-inundated basin. Crews then brought in tugboats to remove Pontoon S, a longitudinal pontoon.
Progress continues on the SR 520 Pontoon Construction Project, as the second cycle of new pontoons left the Aberdeen casting basin overnight April 28 and 29, 2013. The late-night timing coincided with the favorable high tide needed for float-out.
In the second cycle, crews built three longitudinal pontoons, two supplemental stability pontoons and one cross pontoon. The 360-foot-long longitudinal pontoons are the backbone of the new SR 520 floating bridge being built on Lake Washington; the supplemental pontoons provide stability and flotation, and the cross pontoons cap the bridge on the east and west ends. Crews will build a total of six cycles of new pontoons in Aberdeen.
Jubilee fountain, which was installed close to Victoria Bridge, was built to honour Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee visit in March 1977.
It shot water high into the air, and at night it lit up the city skyline with more than 90 lights.
In 1984 it sank due to a cracked weld in the main flotation chamber.
Further reading here:
www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-24/what-happened-queen-elizab...
Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
by navema
The Maid of the Mist is a diesel-engined steamship boat that takes passengers from the Canadian docks, past the base of the American Falls, then into the basin of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls. Operating from late April/early May (weather dependent) to October 24 each year, the Maid departs every 15 minutes, and the ride lasts approximately 20 minutes. Two 600-passenger boats, Maids VI and VII, are each 80-feet long.
For more info, visit: www.maidofthemist.com/en/
The Niagara Falls are voluminous waterfalls on the Niagara River, straddling the international border between the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. State of New York. The falls are between the twin cities of Niagara Falls, Ontario, and Niagara Falls, New York.
Niagara Falls is composed of two major sections separated by Goat Island: the Horseshoe Falls (about 173 ft tall, 2,600 ft wide), which today is entirely on the Canadian side of the border, and the American Falls (between 70–100 feet tall, 1,060 feet wide) on the American side. The smaller Bridal Veil Falls are also located on the American side, separated from the main falls by Luna Island.
Niagara Falls were formed when glaciers receded at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation (the last ice age), and water from the newly formed Great Lakes carved a path through the Niagara Escarpment en route to the Atlantic Ocean. While not exceptionally high, the Niagara Falls are very wide. More than 6 million cubic feet of water falls over the crest line every minute in high flow, and almost 4 million cubic feet on average. It is the most powerful waterfall in North America.
The Niagara Falls are renowned both for their beauty and as a valuable source of hydroelectric power. Managing the balance between recreational, commercial, and industrial uses has been a challenge for the stewards of the falls since the 19th century.
There are differing theories as to the origin of the name of the falls. "Niagara" is either derived from the name given to a branch of the locally residing native Neutral Confederacy, who are described as being called the "Niagagarega" people on several late 17th century French maps of the area. Or, it comes from the name of an Iroquois town called "Ongniaahra", meaning "point of land cut in two".
In 1848, demand for passage over the Niagara River led to the building of a footbridge and then Charles Ellet's Niagara Suspension Bridge. This was supplanted by German-born John Augustus Roebling's Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge in 1855. After the American Civil War, the New York Central railroad publicized Niagara Falls as a focus of pleasure and honeymoon visits. With increased railroad traffic, in 1886, Leffert Buck replaced Roebling's wood and stone bridge with the predominantly steel bridge that still carries trains over the Niagara River today. The first steel archway bridge near the falls was completed in 1897. Known today as the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge, it carries vehicles, trains, and pedestrians between Canada (through Canadian Customs Border Control) and the U.S.A. just below the falls. In 1941 the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission completed the third current crossing in the immediate area of Niagara Falls with the Rainbow Bridge, carrying both pedestrian and vehicular traffic between the two countries and Canadian and U.S. customs for each country.
On the Canadian side, Queen Victoria Park features manicured gardens, platforms offering spectacular views of both the American and Horseshoe Falls, and underground walkways leading into observation rooms which yield the illusion of being within the falling waters. The observation deck of the nearby Skylon Tower offers the highest overhead view of the falls, and in the opposite direction gives views as far as distant Toronto. Along with the Minolta Tower (formerly the Seagrams Tower, currently the Konica Minolta Tower), it is one of two towers in Canada with a view of the falls.
The Whirlpool Aero Car, built in 1916 from a design by Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres y Quevedo, is a cable car which takes passengers over the whirlpool on the Canadian side. The Journey Behind the Falls —accessible by elevators from the street level entrance – consists of an observation platform and series of tunnels near the bottom of the Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side. Elevators descend 150 feet through bedrock to tunnels that lead and to the Cataract Portal and the Great Falls Portal which is one third of the way behind the massive sheet of water. One can walk on to the Upper and Lower Observation Decks at the very foot of the Falls.
There are two casinos on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, the Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort and Casino Niagara. The former is situated in the Fallsview Tourist Area, alongside many of the area's hotels, whilst the latter is adjacent to Clifton Hill, on Falls Avenue, a major tourist promenade.
OVER THE FALLS:
In October 1829, Sam Patch, who called himself "the Yankee Leapster", jumped from a high tower into the gorge below the falls and survived; this began a long tradition of daredevils trying to go over the falls. On October 24, 1901, 63-year-old Michigan school teacher Annie Edson Taylor was the first person to go over the falls in a barrel as a publicity stunt; she survived, bleeding, but virtually unharmed. Previous to Taylor's own attempt, on October 19 a domestic cat named Iagara was sent over the Horseshoe Falls in her barrel to test its strength. Contrary to rumors at the time, the cat survived the plunge unharmed and later was posed with Taylor in photographs. Since Taylor's historic ride, 14 other people have intentionally gone over the falls in or on a device, despite her advice. Some have survived unharmed, but others have drowned or been severely injured. Survivors of such stunts face charges and stiff fines, as it is illegal, on both sides of the border, to attempt to go over the falls.
Other daredevils have made crossing the Falls their goal, starting with the successful passage by Jean François "Blondin" Gravelet in 1859. These tightrope walkers drew huge crowds to witness their exploits. Their wires ran across the gorge, near the current Rainbow Bridge, not over the waterfall itself. Among the many was Ontario's William Hunt, who billed himself as "The Great Farini" and competed with Blondin in performing outrageous stunts over the gorge. Englishman Captain Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel, drowned in 1883 after unsuccessfully trying to swim the rapids down river from the falls.
In the "Miracle at Niagara", Roger Woodward, a seven-year-old American boy, was swept over the Horseshoe Falls protected only by a life vest on July 9, 1960, as two tourists pulled his 17-year-old sister Deanne from the river only 20 feet from the lip of the Horseshoe Falls at Goat Island. Minutes later, Woodward was plucked from the roiling plunge pool beneath the Horseshoe Falls after grabbing a life ring thrown to him by the crew of the Maid of the Mist boat.
On July 2, 1984, Canadian Karel Soucek from Hamilton, Ontario successfully plunged over the Horseshoe Falls in a barrel with only minor injuries. Soucek was fined $500 for performing the stunt without a license. In 1985, he was fatally injured while attempting to re-create the Niagara drop at the Houston Astrodome. His aim was to climb into a barrel hoisted to the rafters of the Astrodome and to drop 180 feet into a water tank on the floor. After his barrel released prematurely, it hit the side of the tank and he died the next day from his injuries.
In August 1985, Steve Trotter, an aspiring stunt man from Rhode Island, became the youngest person ever (age 22) and the first American in 25 years to go over the falls in a barrel. Ten years later, Trotter went over the falls again, becoming the second person to go over the falls twice and survive. It was also the second-ever "duo"; Lori Martin joined Trotter for the barrel ride over the falls. They survived the fall but their barrel became stuck at the bottom of the falls, requiring a rescue.
On September 28, 1989 Niagara's own Peter DeBernardi (42) and Jeffery James Petkovich (25) became the first "team" to successfully make it over the falls in a two person barrel. The stunt was conceived by Peter DeBenardi, who wanted to discourage the youth of the time from following in his path of addictive drug use. Peter was also trying to leave a legacy and discourage his son Kyle Lahey DeBernardi (2) from using addictive drugs. Peter DeBernardi had initially expected to have a different passenger, however Peter's original partner backed out and Peter was forced to look for an alternative, and Jeffery Petkovich agreed to the stunt. Peter claims he spent an estimated $30,000 making his barrel including; harness's steel and fiberglass construction with steel bands and viewing ports. Peter's Barrel also included a radio for music and news reports, rudders to help steer the barrel through the falls, oxygen, and a well protected video camera to record the journey over the edge. They emerged shortly after going over with minor injuries and were charged with performing an illegal stunt under the Niagara Parks Act.
Kirk Jones of Canton, Michigan became the first known person to survive a plunge over the Horseshoe Falls without a flotation device on October 20, 2003. While it is still not known whether Jones was determined to commit suicide, he survived the 16-story fall with only battered ribs, scrapes, and bruises.
A second person survived an unprotected trip over the Horseshoe Falls on March 11, 2009 and when rescued from the river, was reported to be suffering from severe hypothermia and a large wound to his head. His identity has not been released. Eyewitnesses reported seeing the man intentionally enter the water.
L4.72W2.53H1.87M700 • Cₓ1.1 • 1.4MW, 8,834Nm, 12kHz, η>99%
18kg Li₂O₂ EVB, 40MJ/kg, 720MJ • 340kph • 0-100kph→1.8s, 1.5g₀
HH RIPSAW ⚡AV3F1 is the fastest and most maneuverable dual tracked ÆAV ever developed, with MC G-CNT STANAG 4569L6 NBC hull, forged β-Ti ERC, 2 × 2.8 × 0.4 m² CP, 406 mm ST, 528 mm AGC, Li-Fi, DBWL, TVS, TVPJ. Compared to analogous GP systems, CTT distributes vehicle's forces on a greater ground area, with enhanced handlings on harsh, steep slopes, better flotation over obstacles, lower rolling resistance, greater traction and acceleration, reducing soil compression and compaction without sinking on loose & impervious terrain even at low speed. Wheeled vehicles require much larger overall size and higher levels of mechanical complexity to achieve comparable cross-country mobility (e.g. G6).
REFERENCES
E.G.F. Regina 2025: X4æ specs & layout.
M. Guiggiani 2022: Vehicle dynamics science.
T. Li 2022: Vehicle/tire/road dynamics.
J.M. Jafferson & H. Sharma 2021: 3DP airless tires.
S. Arora & al. 2021: Heavy duty e-vehicles.
D. Venter 2020: ZA AFVs, pp. 38-44.
T. Yildiz 2019: Carbon fiber shipping container design.
W. Zhu & al. 2019: Ti-5Al-4Zr-8Mo-7V βc-Ti.
N. Pugh 2019: AdAstra 2 rover.
A. Walker 2018: DARPA GXV-T final demonstrations.
B. Maclaurin 2018: High speed off-road vehicles.
P. Nilsson 2018: TO of swing arm for CTTV.
C.C. Tutum & al. 2018: FGD & AM.
G. Palmer 2017: RSI Ursa rover 2945.
N. Aage & al. 2017: GVCMG for structural design.
R. McCallen & al. 2016: Heavy vehicle aerodynamics I-III.
A.M. Nawrat 2014: Tracked vehicle innovative control systems.
G. Mastinu & M. Plöchl 2014: Road & OTR vehicle dynamics.
A.L. Gain & al. 2013: TO using polytopes.
Ü. Özgüner & al. 2011: Autonomous ground vehicles.
A.F. Andreev & al. 2010: Ground vehicle driveline systems.
J.Y. Wong 2009: Terramechanics & off-road vehicle engineering.
V. Asnani & al. 2009: Lunar roving vehicle wheels.
T. Muro & J. O'Brien 2004: Terramechanics.
A.B. Pandey 2001: ASMHB, v. 21, pp. 395-404.
B. DeLong 2000: 4-wheel freedom.
S. Laughery & al. 2000: Vehicle mobility & Bekker's equations.
D. Cebon 1999: Vehicle-road interaction.
J.P. Kelche & al. 1997: FINABEL 20A5 runflat tires.
C.Q. Bowles 1997: ASMHB, v. 19, pp. 32-35.
G.W. Kuhlman 1996: ASMHB, v. 14, pp. 588-627.
S. Laughery & al. 1990: Bekker's terramechanics off-road vehicle model.
M.C. Bell 1987: G6-45 rhino 1981 blueprint 1/76 scale.
M.G. Bekker 1960: OTR locomotion.
M.G. Bekker 1957: OTR locomotion latest developments.
M.G. Bekker 1956: Land locomotion theory.
6DoF · ACOA · AM-SL · CBRN · GA · FGD · OSA · XFEM-TO · TSP · ISO668 · twistlock · runflat tire · NASA SEV · HAS
“APOLLO 11 PACIFIC RECOVERY AREA—A rescue helicopter hovers above the Apollo 11 spacecraft seconds after it splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:50 p.m. EDT July 24, 1969. The spacecraft turned apex down after impact, as shown here, but inflatable bags repositioned the spacecraft shortly after this view was taken. Splashdown and recovery took place 900 miles southwest of Hawaii eight days after astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., performed man’s first lunar exploration mission.”
Note the submerging parachute just below the surface, to the left of the capsule, along with the mostly radial scorch marks on the heat shield.
An absolutely wonderful read - by a shipmate onboard no. 53 - not bad for a Navy bubba: 😉👍
www.navyhistory.org/2012/02/navy-photographer-apollo-11-r...
Credit: Navy Historical Foundation website
youtu.be/y3KEhWTnWvE
Credit: YouTube/Ahmad F Elyan
Enough fond memories of July 1969. Back to today’s reality...
So, here we are, hoping that between SpaceX and Boeing, along with the SLS, and/or whatever combination there of, NASA, et al can/will safely get our asses back in space...eventually. Just space, let alone the moon. By that time, if/when we do actually return that is, authorization to orbit & land may have to be granted by the Taikonauts that are already there, along with the payment of some sort of fees. Or tariff possibly? Idk, I’m a socio-economic idiot. Whatever it may be, hopefully it'll be less than the current Russian ISS taxi service.
Mars?...my long beleaguered Browns will have been to a Super Bowl or two or four before an American sets foot on the red planet. Depressing...to a degree. The Lombardi Trophies at least will be nice. ;-)
Might as well start getting desensitized to this now:
amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/01/07/opinions/china-moon-landing-ou...
Credit: CNN
i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--yI7eKaiA--/c...
Credit: JALOPNIK.com website
When there is no real will, resolve or imperative, this is what happens. I know it’s only a couple of articles; however:
spacenews.com/is-the-gateway-the-right-way-to-the-moon/
Credit: SPACENEWS website
forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=pn599mjc1hg...
Credit: NASA Spaceflight.com website
Back to the past, and an opportunity to promote this again. It's amazing, and highly entertaining (to me at least):
3d.si.edu/apollo11cm/boxes/play-cm-2016-09-26/cm-exterior...
Credit: Smithsonian Institution/AUTODESK
2012 Route 66 Car Show
Oak Park Avenue & Ogden Avenue
Berwyn, Illinois.
Cook County, USA.
September 8, 2012
In 2019, the owner left earlier than expected..
From wikipedia
The Amphicar Model 770 is an amphibious automobile which was launched at the 1961 New York Auto Show, manufactured in West Germany and marketed from 1961 to 1968. Production stopped in 1965.
Designed by Hans Trippel, the amphibious vehicle was manufactured by the Quandt Group at Lübeck and at Berlin-Borsigwalde, with a total of 3,878 manufactured in a single generation. Engine: Triumph four-cylinder engine of 1147 cc, 8:1 compression ratio, rated at 38.3 bhp
A descendant of the Volkswagen Schwimmwagen, the Amphicar offered only modest performance compared to most contemporary boats or cars, featured navigation lights and flag as mandated by the US Coast Guard — and after operation in water, required greasing at 13 points, one of which required removal of the rear seat.
The Amphicar name is a portmanteau of "amphibious" and "car".
Appearance
Front undersurface is slightly pointed and sharply cut away below. The wheels are set low, so that the vehicle stands well above ground level when on dry land. Front and rear bumpers are placed low on the body panels (but fairly high in relation to dry ground). The one-piece windshield is curved. The foldable top causes the body style to be classified as cabriolet. Its water propulsion is provided by twin propellers mounted under the rear bumper. The Amphicar is made of mild steel.
Powertrain
The Amphicar's engine was mounted at the rear of the craft, driving the rear wheels through a 4-speed manual transmission. For use in the water, the same engine drove a pair of reversible propellers at the rear, with a second gear lever engaging forward or reverse drive. Once in the water, the main gear lever would normally be left in neutral. By engaging first gear as well as drive to the propellers when approaching a boat ramp, the Amphicar could drive itself out of the water. .
Performance
The powerplant was the 1147 cc (69 in³) Standard SC engine from the British Triumph Herald 1200. Many engines were tried in prototypes, but the Triumph engine was "state of the art" in 1961 and it had the necessary combination of performance, weight, cool running, and reliability. Updated versions of this engine remained in production in the Triumph Spitfire until 1980.
The Amphicar engine had a power output of 43 hp (32 kW) at 4750 rpm, slightly more than the Triumph Herald due to a shorter exhaust.[7] Designated the "Model 770",[5] the Amphicar could achieve speeds of 7 knots in the water and 70 mph (110 km/h) on land. Later versions of the engine displaced 1296 cc and 1493 cc and produced up to 75 bhp (56 kW).
One owner was quoted "It's not a good car and it's not a good boat, but it does just fine" largely because of modest performance in and out of water. Another added, "We like to think of it as the fastest car on the water and fastest boat on the road."
Amphicar 1962.
In water as well as on land, the Amphicar steered with the front wheels, making it less maneuverable than a conventional boat. Time’s Dan Neil called it "a vehicle that promised to revolutionize drowning", explaining, "Its flotation was entirely dependent on whether the bilge pump could keep up with the leakage." In reality, a well maintained Amphicar does not leak at all and can be left in water, parked at a dock side, for many hours
History
Production started in late 1960. By the end of 1963 complete production was stopped.[15] From 1963-65 cars were assembled from shells and parts inventory built up in anticipation of sales of 25,000 units, with the last new build units assembled in 1965. Cars were titled in the year they actually sold rather than when they were produced, e.g. an unsold Amphicar assembled in 1963 or 1965 could be titled as 1967 or 1968 if that was when it was first sold, though the inventory could not be sold in the U.S. in the 1968 model year or later due to new environmental and USDOT emissions and safety equipment standards, they were available in other countries into 1968. The remaining inventory of unused parts was eventually purchased by Hugh Gordon of Santa Fe Springs, California.
Most Amphicars were sold in the United States. Cars were sold in the United Kingdom from 1964. Total production was 3,878 vehicles. 99 right-hand drives were converted from left-hand drives. Some were used in the Berlin police department and others were fitted for rescue operations.
Amphicar shows and rides
Amphicar owners regularly convene during the spring, summer and fall months at various locations nationwide for "swim-ins", the largest of which is held at Grand Lake St. Marys State Park, Ohio.
In 2015, the Boathouse at Walt Disney World's Disney Springs in Orlando, Florida began offering public Amphicar rides to visitors, charging $125 per ride for groups of up to three. Disney heavily re-engineered and enhanced the eight Amphicars of various original colors in its fleet for safety, reliability, and comfort.
Due to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions and a broken foot that I could not get treated due to the Covid-19 restrictions, I have not been able to shoot new photos since January.
This is a photo from the solar eclipse in August 2017. We flew across the lake to other side in our 2-person home built hovercraft. IT is powered by a 16 horsepower ride-on lawnmower engine.
During the eclipse, the lake became very quiet, all the boat motors were off, and the birds thought it was evening and began tweeting away.
We were the first people to have watched this eclipse via hovercraft in the United States, as visibility first began on the west coast and this is in the coastal hills of Oregon.
The 2nd person to watch from a hovercraft was at Ochoco Resevoir in eastern Oregon, where Matthew, famous for his Delorean modeled hovercraft, was also watching the eclipse.
I suspect Matthew, plus us, were probably the only people in the world to have watched this eclipse via hovercraft :)
You can see large cracks and peels in the original blue coating.
After the eclipse ended, the Sheriff's Marine Patrol unit went around checking everyone on the lake for proper licenses, flotation devices, safety equipment etc. When I flew up on shore, the deputies were on the dock checking every boat that came into the dock. They looked right at me - and ignored us! I think they had no idea what to do about checking a hovercraft. They literally checked every boat on the lake - including kayaks and canoes - but ignored us. How weird!
At the moment, I have stripped all of the blue coating off, from the engine forward and am prep'ing to recoat it in Piper Cub Yellow. The top surface is aerospace fabric (Stitts Poly-Fiber for those familiar with homebuilt aircraft) and will be coated with a layer of adhesive, then 3 layers of an ultraviolet protectant, and then 3 layers of the final cover. I am pretty sure I did not order enough of the protectant or final color and will need to order more before I can finish. (See flic.kr/p/2jdBYnH for the final color.)
This photo was taken with a Nikon 1 J3. I do not own this camera but had picked it up, used, for my daughter, who has it now. I do still shoot with other Nikon 1 cameras though.
Harrods is a British luxury department store located on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, London, England. It is owned by Harrods Ltd, a company currently owned by the state of Qatar via its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies, including Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air Harrods. Recognised as one of the world's leading department stores, it is visited by 15 million people per year.
The store occupies a 5-acre (2 ha) site and has 330 departments covering 1.1 million sq ft (100,000 m2) of retail space. It is one of the largest and most famous department stores in the world.
The Harrods motto is Omnia Omnibus Ubique, which is Latin for "all things for all people, everywhere". Several of its departments, including the Seasonal Christmas department, jewellery departments and the Food Halls, are well known.
Harrods was also a founder of the International Association of Department Stores in 1928, which is still active today, and remained a member until 1935. Franck Chitham, Harrods' president at the time, was president of the Association in 1930.
History
In 1824, at the age of 25, Charles Henry Harrod established a business at 228 Borough High Street in Southwark. He ran this business, variously listed as a draper, mercer, and a haberdasher, until at least 1831. During 1825, the business was listed as 'Harrod and Wicking, Linen Drapers, Retail', but this partnership was dissolved at the end of that year. His first grocery business appears to be as 'Harrod & Co. Grocers' at 163 Upper Whitecross Street, Clerkenwell, E.C.1., in 1832.
In 1834, in London's East End, he established a wholesale grocery in Stepney at 4 Cable Street with a special interest in tea.[16] Attempting to capitalise on trade during the Great Exhibition of 1851 in nearby Hyde Park, in 1849 Harrod took over a small shop in the district of Brompton, on the site of the current store. Beginning in a single room employing two assistants and a messenger boy, Harrod's son Charles Digby Harrod built the business into a thriving retail operation selling medicines, perfumes, stationery, fruits and vegetables. Harrods rapidly expanded, acquired the adjoining buildings, and employed one hundred people by 1881.
However, the store's booming fortunes were reversed in early December 1883, when it burnt to the ground. Remarkably, Charles Harrod fulfilled all of his commitments to his customers to make Christmas deliveries that year—and made a record profit in the process. In short order, a new building was built on the same site, and soon Harrods extended credit for the first time to its best customers, among them Oscar Wilde, Lillie Langtry, Ellen Terry, Charlie Chaplin, Noël Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Sigmund Freud, A. A. Milne, and many members of the British Royal Family. Beatrix Potter frequented the store from the age of 17. First published in 1902, her children's book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was soon on sale in Harrods, accompanied by the world's first licensed character, a Peter Rabbit soft toy (Peter and toys of other Potter characters appeared in Harrods catalogues from 1910). In 1921, Milne bought the 18-inch Alpha Farnell teddy bear from the store for his son Christopher Robin Milne who would name it Edward, then Winnie, becoming the basis for Winnie-the-Pooh. In December 1926, Agatha Christie, who visited Harrods as a girl, marvelled at the spectacle of the store's Christmas display. The store has also featured in fiction, for example Mr. Bean (played by Rowan Atkinson) visited Harrods to buy Christmas decorations in the 1992 Mr. Bean episode "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean".
A chance meeting in London with businessman, Edgar Cohen, eventually led to Charles Harrod selling his interest in the store for £120,000 (equivalent to £14,110,759 in 2021) via a stock market flotation in 1889. The new company was called Harrod's Stores Limited. Sir Alfred James Newton became chairman and Richard Burbidge managing director. Financier William Mendel was appointed to the board in 1891 and he raised funding for many of the business expansion plans. Richard Burbidge was succeeded in 1917 by his son Woodman Burbidge and he in turn by his son Richard in 1935.
On 16 November 1898, Harrods debuted England's first "moving staircase" (escalator) in their Brompton Road stores; the device was actually a woven leather conveyor belt-like unit with a mahogany and "silver plate-glass" balustrade. Nervous customers were offered brandy at the top to revive them after their 'ordeal'.
The department store was acquired by House of Fraser in 1959, which in turn was purchased by the Fayed brothers in 1985.[28] In 1994, Harrods was moved out of the House of Fraser Group to remain a private company prior to the group's relisting on the London Stock Exchange.
Qatar Holdings ownership
Following denial that it was for sale, Harrods was sold to Qatar Holdings, the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar in May 2010. A fortnight previously, chairman of Harrods since 1985, Mohamed Al-Fayed, had stated that "People approach us from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar. Fair enough. But I put two fingers up to them. It is not for sale. This is not Marks and Spencer or Sainsbury's. It is a special place that gives people pleasure. There is only one Mecca."
The sale was concluded in the early hours of 8 May, when Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani came to London to finalise the deal, saying that the acquisition of Harrods would add "much value" to the investment portfolio of Qatar Holdings while his deputy, Hussain Ali Al-Abdulla, called it a "landmark transaction".[28] A spokesman for Mohamed Al-Fayed said "in reaching the decision to retire, [Fayed] wished to ensure that the legacy and traditions that he has built up in Harrods would be continued."
Al-Fayed later revealed in an interview that he decided to sell Harrods following the difficulty in getting his dividend approved by the trustee of the Harrods pension fund. Al-Fayed said "I'm here every day, I can't take my profit because I have to take a permission of those bloody idiots. I say is this right? Is this logic? Somebody like me? I run a business and I need to take the trustee's permission to take my profit." Al-Fayed was appointed honorary chairman of Harrods, a position he held for six months.
With the previously operating Disney Cafe and Disney Store, the Disney at Harrods partnership added the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique salon on 25 November 2013 to those stores.
Significant event timeline
Harrods Furniture Depository in Barnes, London
1824: Charles Henry Harrod (1799–1885) starts his first business as a draper, at 228, Borough High Street, Southwark, London.
1834: Charles Henry Harrod founds a wholesale grocery in Stepney, East London.
1849: Harrods moves to the Knightsbridge area of London, near Hyde Park.
1861: Harrods undergoes a transformation when it was taken over by Harrod's son, Charles Digby Harrod (1841–1905).
1883: On 6 December, fire guts the shop buildings, giving the family the opportunity to rebuild on a grander scale.
1889: Charles Digby Harrod retires, and Harrods shares are floated on the London Stock Exchange under the name Harrod's Stores Limited.
1905: Begun in 1894, the present building is completed to the design of architect Charles William Stephens.
1914: Harrods opened its first and only foreign branch in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It became independent of the British shop in the late 1940s, but continued to trade under the Harrods name, for many years the only Harrods outside Britain.
1914: Harrods buys the Regent Street department store Dickins & Jones.
1914: Harrods Furniture Depository built in Barnes, near Hammersmith Bridge.
1919: Harrods buys the Manchester department store, Kendals; it took on the Harrods name for a short time in the 1920s, but the name was changed back to Kendals following protests from staff and customers.
1920: Harrods buys London department store Swan & Edgar and Manchester retailer Walter Carter Ltd.
1923: Mah-Jongg, a lemur, was sold to Stephen Courtauld and Virginia Courtauld (née Peirano). Mah-Jongg lived with the Courtaulds for fifteen years, accompanying the couple on their travels and changes of residence, including Eltham Palace in the Royal Borough of Greenwich.
1928: Harrods buys London department store D H Evans.
1946: Harrods buys the Sheffield department store John Walsh.
1949: Harrods buys William Henderson & Co, a Liverpool department store.
1955: Harrods buys Birmingham department store Rackhams.
1959: The British department store holding company House of Fraser buys Harrods, fighting off competition from Debenhams and United Drapery Stores.
1969: Christian the lion was bought at Harrods by John Rendall and Anthony 'Ace' Bourke. The lion was set free in Kenya after reaching maturity.
1983: A terrorist attack by the Provisional IRA outside the Brompton store kills six people.
1985: The Fayed brothers buy House of Fraser, including Harrods Store, for £615 million.
1986: The small town of Otorohanga in New Zealand briefly changes its name to Harrodsville in response to legal threats made by Mohamed Al-Fayed against a person with the surname of Harrod, who had used the name "Harrod's" for his shop.
1990: A Harrods shop opens on board the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California, which was then owned by the Walt Disney Company. Harrods gives right to Duty Free International for a licence to operate a Harrods Signature Shop at Toronto Pearson International Airport's Terminal 3 (closed shortly after)
1993: An IRA terrorist attack injures four people.
1994: The relationship between House of Fraser and Harrods is severed. Harrods remains under the ownership of the Fayed family, and House of Fraser is floated on the stock exchange.
1997: An English court issued an injunction to restrain the Buenos Aires Harrods store from trading under the Harrods name, but the House of Lords in 1998 dismissed Fayed's lawsuit.
1998: The store in Buenos Aires closed after racking up large amounts of debt, there had been offers to buy the store from Falabella, El Corte Inglés, Printemps and more but Atilio Gilbertoni the owner of Harrods in Buenos Aires did not accept the offers as he wanted to keep the controlling stake in the brand
2000: A Harrods shop opens on board the Queen Elizabeth 2, owned by the Cunard Line.
2006: The Harrods "102" shop opens opposite the main shop in Brompton Road; it features concessions like Krispy Kreme and Yo! Sushi, as well as florists, a herbalist, a masseur, and an oxygen spa. The store closed in 2013.
2006: Omar Fayed, Mohamed's youngest son, joins the Harrods board.
2008: Harrods opens at Heathrow Airport (Terminal 5).
2010: Fayed announces he has sold Harrods to the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). It has been reported that the QIA paid £1.5 billion for the Knightsbridge store, in a deal signed in the early hours of 8 May 2010.
2010: Harrods looked at the possibility of expanding to China and opening a new shop in Shanghai. Michael Ward, managing director of Harrods, said, "There are other areas of the world where we could operate profitably." The number of Chinese shoppers visiting Harrods was increasing, and the average spent by a Chinese shopper was three times that of any other nationality.
2012: The figurative sculptures that once adorned the Harrods food hall are consigned for sale at West Middlesex Auction Rooms. The two Mermaids supporting a giant Clam and the Stag and Boar sheltering under an English Oak are purchased by Greaves & Thomas for inclusion in an elaborate fountain for Ryde, Isle of Wight.
2017: Harrods Bank, operating since 1893, is sold to Tandem and rebranded to Tandem Bank.
2020: After lockdowns and restriction during the covid pandemic, Harrods made a loss of £68 million in 2020, reduced staff numbers, paid no dividend to its owners and said that no dividend was likely for another two years, and faced a strike by dozens of restaurant workers.
Products and services
The Egyptian-style clothing department at Harrods
The shop's 330 departments offer a wide range of products and services. Products on offer include clothing for women, men, children and infants, electronics, jewellery, sporting gear, bridal trousseau, pet accessories, toys (including Christmas and signature teddy bears), food and drink, health and beauty items, packaged gifts, stationery, housewares, home appliances, furniture, and much more.
A representative sample of shop services includes 23 restaurants, serving everything from high tea to tapas to pub food to haute cuisine; a personal shopping-assistance programme known as "By Appointment"; a watch repair service; a tailor; a dispensing pharmacy; a beauty spa and salon; a barbers shop; Ella Jade Bathroom Planning and Design Service; private events planning and catering; food delivery; a wine steward; bespoke picnic hampers and gift boxes; bespoke cakes; bespoke fragrance formulations; and Bespoke Arcades machines.
Up to 300,000 customers visit the shop on peak days, comprising the highest proportion of customers from non-English speaking countries of any department store in London. More than five thousand staff from over fifty different countries work at Harrods.
In October 2009, Harrods Bank started selling gold bars and coins that customers could buy "off the shelf". The gold products ranged from 1 g to 12.5 kg, and could be purchased within Harrods Bank. They also offered storage services, as well as the ability to sell back gold to Harrods in the future.
Harrods used to provide paid "luggage room" services for storing luggage/ items; however, post COVID they stopped providing this service.
Royal warrants
Harrods was the holder of royal warrants from:
Queen Elizabeth II (Provisions and Household Goods)
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (Outfitters)
Charles, Prince of Wales (Outfitters and Saddlers)
Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (China and Glass)
In August 2010, in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, chairman Mohamed Al-Fayed revealed that he had burnt Harrods royal warrants, after taking them down in 2000. Harrods had held the royal warrants since 1910. Describing the warrants as a "curse", Al-Fayed claimed that business had tripled since their removal. Prince Philip removed his warrant in January 2000, and the other warrants were removed from Harrods by Al-Fayed in December, pending their five-yearly review. Prince Philip had been banned from Harrods by Al-Fayed. Film of the burning of the warrants in 2009 was shown in the final scene of Unlawful Killing, a film funded by Al-Fayed and directed by Keith Allen.
Memorials
Since the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed, Mohamed Al-Fayed's son, two memorials to the couple commissioned by Al-Fayed have been erected inside Harrods. The first, located at the base of the Egyptian Escalator, was unveiled on 12 April 1998, consisting of photographs of the two behind a pyramid-shaped display that holds a wine glass smudged with lipstick from Diana's last dinner as well as what is described as an engagement ring Dodi purchased the day before they died.
The second memorial, unveiled in 2005 and located by the escalator at door three is entitled Innocent Victims, a bronze statue of the two dancing on a beach beneath the wings of an albatross, a bird said to symbolise the "Holy Spirit". The sculpture was created by William Mitchell, a close friend of Al-Fayed and artistic design advisor to Harrods for 40 years. Al-Fayed said he wanted to keep the pair's "spirit alive" through the statue.
After the death of Michael Jackson, Al-Fayed announced that they had already been discussing plans to build a memorial statue. This was unveiled in April 2011 at the rear of Craven Cottage football ground (Fulham F.C.) but removed in September 2013 on the orders of new club owner Shahid Khan.
Dress code
In 1989, Harrods introduced a dress code for customers. The store turned away people whose dress is not in compliance with the code. Forbidden items include cycling shorts; high-cut shorts, Bermuda or beach shorts; swimwear; athletic singlets; flip flops or thong sandals; bare feet; bare midriff; or wearing dirty or unkempt clothing. Patrons found not in compliance with the code and barred from entry include pop star Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Luke Goss, a Scout troop, a woman with a Mohican hair cut, and the entire first team from FC Shakhtar Donetsk who were wearing tracksuits.
As of 2023, Harrods takes the following position: "We do not have a specific dress code for entry into the store, including any of our restaurants. However, we do reserve the right to refuse entry to anyone who is not deemed to be appropriately dressed. Sportswear, including trainers, shorts, and tracksuits, are permitted across all areas of the store and restaurants."
Size
The store occupies a 5-acre (20,000 m2) site and has over one million square feet (90,000 m2) of selling space in over 330 departments making it the biggest department store in Europe. The UK's second-biggest shop, Selfridges, Oxford Street, is a little over half the size with 540,000 square feet (50,000 m2) of selling space. By comparison Europe's second-largest department store the KaDeWe in Berlin has a retail space of 650,000 square feet (60,000 m2).
Criticism
Harrods and Mohamed Al-Fayed were criticised for selling real animal fur, provoking regular protests organised outside Harrods. Harrods is the only department store in Britain that has continued to sell fur. Harrods was sharply criticised in 2004 by the Hindu community for marketing a line of feminine underwear (designed by Roberto Cavalli) which featured the images of Indian goddesses. The line was eventually withdrawn and formal apologies were made.
Harrods has been criticised by Guardian journalist Sali Hughes as "deeply sexist" for making female employees wear six kinds of makeup at all times without requiring this of male employees. Harrods was criticised by members of the Black community after the Daily Telegraph reported that Harrods staff told a black woman that she would not be employed unless she chemically straightened her hair, stating that her natural hair style was "unprofessional".
Harrods' restaurants and cafes included a 12.5% discretionary service charge on customers' bills, but failed to share the full proceeds with kitchen and service staff. Several employees joined the UVW union, which claimed that 483 affected employees were losing up to £5,000 each in tips every year. A surprise protest and roadblock organised by the union outside Harrods during the January sales of 2017 was followed by an announcement that "an improved tronc system" would give 100% of service charges to staff.
Litigation
In 1986, the town of Otorohanga, New Zealand, briefly changed its name to "Harrodsville". This was a protest in support of a restaurateur, Henry Harrod of Palmerston North, who was being forced to change the name of his restaurant following the threat of lawsuits from Mohamed Al Fayed, the then owner of Harrods department store. As a show of solidarity for Henry Harrod, and in anticipation of actions against other similar-sounding businesses, it was proposed that every business in Otorohanga change its name to "Harrods". With the support of the District Council, Otorohanga temporarily changed the town's name to Harrodsville. After being lampooned in the British tabloids, Al Fayed dropped the legal action and Harrodsville and its shops reverted to their former names. The town's response raised widespread media interest around the world, with the BBC World Service and newspapers in Greece, Saudi Arabia, Australia and Canada covering the story.
On 27 October 2008, in the case of Harrods Ltd v. Harrods Limousine Ltd, the Harrods store applied to the Company Names Tribunal under s.69(1)(b) Companies Act 2006 for a change of name of Harrods Limousine Ltd, which had been registered at Companies House since 14 November 2007. The application went un-defended by the respondent and the adjudicator ordered on 16 January 2009 that Harrods Limousine Ltd must change their name within one month. Additionally the respondent was ordered not to cause or permit any steps to be taken to register another company with an offending name which could interfere, due to its similarity, with the goodwill of the applicant. Finally, Harrods Limousine Ltd was ordered to pay Harrods' costs for the litigation.
Controversy
Asma al-Assad, the wife of the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, used an alias to shop at Harrods despite economic sanctions imposed by the European Union that froze funds belonging to her and her husband.
The Apollo 11 Command Module "Columbia" is photographed being lowered to a transport dolly aboard the U.S.S. Hornet, prime recovery ship for the historic lunar landing mission. The flotation ring, attached by Navy divers immediately after splashdown, has been removed from the capsule.
Taken from deck level, at nearly the same time:
history.nasa.gov/afj/ap11fj/nasm/AS11-1052C-S69-21793cut.jpg
Credit: Apollo 11 Flight Journal website
OAK HARBOR, Wash. (Aug. 22, 2018) Pilots from Electronic Attack Wing, U.S. Pacific Fleet (COMVAQWINGPAC) return to shore after simulating cold-water immersion and flotation training during the Growler Week Knife Run at Naval Air Station (NAS) Whidbey Island. Growler Week Knife Run is an annual 5k run with survival and emergency scenarios conducted by COMVAQWINGPAC to simulate and train survival skills for pilots and also promote camaraderie between squadrons of the air wing. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Scott Wood/Released)
August 11, 2018
We booked a sunset tour with Bay Voyager tours. That's our little boat coming in now!!
California Trip 2018 - (Day 2)
San Francisco, California - USA
Photo by brucetopher
© Bruce Christopher 2016
All Rights Reserved
...always learning - critiques welcome.
Tools: Canon 7D & iPhone 6s.
No use without permission.
Please email for usage info
"Begun in 1960, ASSET was originally designed to verify the superalloy heat shield of the X-20 Dyna-Soar prior to full-scale manned flights. The vehicle's biconic shape and low delta wing were intended to represent Dyna-Soar's forward nose section, where the aerodynamic heating would be the most intense; in excess of an estimated 2200 °C (4,000 °F) at the nose cap. Following the X-20 program's cancellation in December 1963, completed ASSET vehicles were used in reentry heating and structural investigations with hopes that data gathered would be useful for the development of future space vehicles, such as the Space Shuttle.
Built by McDonnell, each vehicle was launched on a suborbital trajectory from Launch Complex 17B, Cape Canaveral, attaining speeds of up to 6,000 m/s before making a water landing in the South Atlantic near Ascension Island. Originally, a Scout launch vehicle had been planned for the tests, but this was changed after a large surplus of Thor and Thor-Delta missiles (returned from deployment in the United Kingdom) became available.
Of the six vehicles built, only one was successfully recovered and is currently on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.
The photo is of the first ASSET sub-scale re-entry vehicle launched 18 September 1963. Unfortunately, the flotation equipment malfunctioned, preventing planned recovery."
Above per Wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASSET_(spacecraft)
Interesting reading here, entertaining the idea of a "shadow/ulterior-motive" program of the USAF...cool...I think. Who knows how much farther we'd be along at this point if true & would have been pursued...either that or the fallout would’ve mutated us into C.H.U.D., or hastened our extinction...hard to tell with the human race:
www.astronautix.com/a/asset.html
5.75" x 9.5".
We tried to take advantage of the last warm weeks of the year by doing some swimming. I had to bring out the underwater case for my camera again. Here Joshua is shown floating on a ring in the pool. I blindly placed the camera underneath him and took a shot looking up at the sky. The colors, bubbles, and waves proved to be very interesting.
For more of my creative projects, visit my short stories website: 500ironicstories.com
(view from mine vehicle, en route from the office to the working floor)
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These facilities are at the Continental Mine (= Continental Pit) in Butte, Montana. The town is known as the “Richest Hill on Earth” and "The Mining City". The Butte Mining District has produced gold, silver, copper, molybdenum, manganese, and other metals.
The area's bedrock consists of the Butte Quartz Monzonite (a.k.a. Butte Pluton), which is part of the Boulder Batholith. The Butte Quartz Monzonite ("BQM") formed 76.3 million years ago, during the mid-Campanian Stage in the Late Cretaceous. BQM rocks have been intruded and altered by hydrothermal veins containing valuable metallic minerals - principally sulfides. The copper mineralization has been dated to 62-66 million years ago, during the latest Maastrichtian Stage (latest Cretaceous) and Danian Stage (Early Paleocene). In the supergene enrichment zone of the area, the original sulfide mineralogy has been altered.
The Continental Mine was started in 1980 by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company - it is currently owned by Montana Resources. The mine targets a low-grade copper and molybdenum deposit on the eastern side of the Continental Fault, a major Basin & Range normal fault in the Butte area with about 3500 feet of offset. The mine's rocks consist of BQM with disseminated copper sulfides, plus copper- and molybdenum-bearing hydrothermal veins that intrude the BQM. Minerals at the site include chalcopyrite, molybdenite, malachite, azurite, tenorite, and cuprite. The latter four minerals are secondary copper minerals, produced by alteration of the primary copper sulfides.
When I visited in 2010, the Continental Mine was making 50,000 to 52,000 tons of ore each day. This mine can operate down to an ore grade of 0.1% copper. Most of the mineralization is disseminated copper, but veins are also present. Two stages of mineralization occurred in the Butte area - a porphyry copper system and a main stage system with large veins. The bottom of the porphyry copper system is ~ less than 12,800 feet below the surface. Veins peter out at 5600 to 5800 feet below the surface. At the Continental Mine, veins are small - they're veinlets less than 6 inches wide.
Mining is done 24 hours a day, 365 to 366 days per year. There's 1 to 2 days of down time at the mill. During those days, mining stops and waste material is moved. The ore:waste ratio is 8:10 (= strip ratio). The alluvial overburden consists of 7 paleosol horizons, including some caliches - the lime content results in an average pH of 8. The caliche material can be used to treat acidic materials.
This mine has 14 shovels and 15 trucks. A large Bucyrus shovel can load a 240-ton truck in three passes. The mine's benches are forty feet tall. Blasting is done with ANFO - ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. 0.65 pounds of explosives are used per ton of rock. The mine uses ~45 megawatts of power per day, which is about the same as the city of Butte itself.
Continental Mine ores are crushed in two stages. The crushed ores are then sent to the mill, where they are ground down to the fineness of talcum powder. Flotation and lime are used in procesing. Sulfides are collected. 1% of the mined material goes to the concentrator. 99% of mined material becomes tailings. The tailings powder is wet (33% solid and the rest is water) and piped uphill to a pond. The tailings pond water has a pH of 10. Water from the pond is recycled to make tailings slurry. 27 million gallons a day enters the pond. An earthen dam around the pond is designed to withstand a powerful earthquake.
Copper and molybdenum concentrates produced at the Continental Mine are not smelted locally - they are not even smelted in America. Concentrates are sold around the world, where material is smelted and the metals are produced. America shipping rocks overseas and buying back the finished product is the behavior of an underdeveloped country - America is not interested in smelting anymore - a sad reality.
"An ore deposit is a mine if it can stand total mismanagement and still make money."
S66-18602 (16 March 1966) --- Astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and David R. Scott sit with their spacecraft hatches open while awaiting the arrival of the recovery ship, the USS Leonard F. Mason after the successful completion of their Gemini-8 mission. They are assisted by U.S. Navy divers. The overhead view shows the Gemini-8 spacecraft with the yellow flotation collar attached to stabilize the spacecraft in choppy seas. The green marker dye is highly visible from the air and is used as a locating aid. Photo credit: NASA
Our personal Easter Special Loco-motive (aka The Kinetic Choo Choo)
pedal transport. Conductor alerting at-grade crossing, Jr. getting sun-burned,
Engineer keeping chains oiled, wheels on-track as we skirt a narrow gauge Yellow Brick Rail Road. Toot Toot ! ! (flotation optional..see next photo)
In action on the street
www.youtube.com/watch?v=90qn-ojoow8&feature=related
with a later two wheeled creation..Whymcycle 'Blue" now in the National Korean Bicycle Museum..
This drop-test model of ESA’s IXV Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle will be among the attractions on display at this year’s ESTEC Open Day on 5 October.
IXV’s sleek lifting body design gives a clue to its purpose: the flight version will be launched 420 km into spacE by a Vega rocket before beginning a long glide back through the atmosphere.
In the process, IXV will gather data on reentry conditions to help guide the design of future spaceplanes.
The IXV replica seen here was last year dropped by helicopter into the Mediterranean to demonstrate that the design would endure splashdown – note the flotation balloons.
The flight model, meanwhile, has been put through its paces at ESA’s test centre next door, with everything needed to recreate every aspect of the launch and space environment under one roof.
Credit: ESA/S.Ferreté
The Mount Elliott Mining Complex is an aggregation of the remnants of copper mining and smelting operations from the early 20th century and the associated former mining township of Selwyn. The earliest copper mining at Mount Elliott was in 1906 with smelting operations commencing shortly after. Significant upgrades to the mining and smelting operations occurred under the management of W.R. Corbould during 1909 - 1910. Following these upgrades and increases in production, the Selwyn Township grew quickly and had 1500 residents by 1918. The Mount Elliott Company took over other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s, including the Mount Cuthbert and Kuridala smelters. Mount Elliott operations were taken over by Mount Isa Mines in 1943 to ensure the supply of copper during World War Two. The Mount Elliott Company was eventually liquidated in 1953.
The Mount Elliott Smelter:
The existence of copper in the Leichhardt River area of north western Queensland had been known since Ernest Henry discovered the Great Australia Mine in 1867 at Cloncurry. In 1899 James Elliott discovered copper on the conical hill that became Mount Elliott, but having no capital to develop the mine, he sold an interest to James Morphett, a pastoralist of Fort Constantine station near Cloncurry. Morphett, being drought stricken, in turn sold out to John Moffat of Irvinebank, the most successful mining promoter in Queensland at the time.
Plentiful capital and cheap transport were prerequisites for developing the Cloncurry field, which had stagnated for forty years. Without capital it was impossible to explore and prove ore-bodies; without proof of large reserves of wealth it was futile to build a railway; and without a railway it was hazardous to invest capital in finding large reserves of ore. The mining investor or the railway builder had to break the impasse.
In 1906 - 1907 copper averaged £87 a ton on the London market, the highest price for thirty years, and the Cloncurry field grew. The railway was extended west of Richmond in 1905 - 1906 by the Government and mines were floated on the Melbourne Stock Exchange. At Mount Elliott a prospecting shaft had been sunk and on the 1st of August 1906 a Cornish boiler and winding plant were installed on the site.
Mount Elliott Limited was floated in Melbourne on the 13th of July 1906. In 1907 it was taken over by British and French interests and restructured. Combining with its competitor, Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited, Mount Elliott formed a special company to finance and construct the railway from Cloncurry to Malbon, Kuridala (then Friezeland) and Mount Elliott (later Selwyn). This new company then entered into an agreement with the Queensland Railways Department in July 1908.
The railway, which was known as the 'Syndicate Railway', aroused opposition in 1908 from the trade unions and Labor movement generally, who contended that railways should be State-owned. However, the Hampden-Mount Elliott Railway Bill was passed by the Queensland Parliament and assented to on the 21st of April 1908; construction finished in December 1910. The railway terminated at the Mount Elliott smelter.
By 1907 the main underlie shaft had been sunk and construction of the smelters was underway using a second-hand water-jacket blast furnace and converters. At this time, W.H. Corbould was appointed general manager of Mount Elliott Limited.
The second-hand blast furnace and converters were commissioned or 'blown in' in May 1909, but were problematic causing hold-ups. Corbould referred to the equipment in use as being the 'worst collection of worn-out junk he had ever come across'. Corbould soon convinced his directors to scrap the plant and let him design new works.
Corbould was a metallurgist and geologist as well as mine/smelter manager. He foresaw a need to obtain control and thereby ensure a reliable supply of ore from a cross-section of mines in the region. He also saw a need to implement an effective strategy to manage the economies of smelting low-grade ore. Smelting operations in the region were made difficult by the technical and economic problems posed by the deterioration in the grade of ore. Corbould resolved the issue by a process of blending ores with different chemical properties, increasing the throughput capacity of the smelter and by championing the unification of smelting operations in the region. In 1912, Corbould acquired Hampden Consols Mine at Kuridala for Mount Elliott Limited, followed with the purchases of other small mines in the district.
Walkers Limited of Maryborough was commissioned to manufacture a new 200 ton water jacket furnace for the smelters. An air compressor and blower for the smelters were constructed in the powerhouse and an electric motor and dynamo provided power for the crane and lighting for the smelter and mine.
The new smelter was blown in September 1910, a month after the first train arrived, and it ran well, producing 2040 tons of blister copper by the end of the year. The new smelting plant made it possible to cope with low-grade sulphide ores at Mount Elliott. The use of 1000 tons of low-grade sulphide ores bought from the Hampden Consols Mine in 1911 made it clear that if a supply of higher sulphur ore could be obtained and blended, performance, and economy would improve. Accordingly, the company bought a number of smaller mines in the district in 1912.
Corbould mined with cut and fill stoping but a young Mines Inspector condemned the system, ordered it dismantled and replaced with square set timbering. In 1911, after gradual movement in stopes on the No. 3 level, the smelter was closed for two months. Nevertheless, 5447 tons of blister copper was produced in 1911, rising to 6690 tons in 1912 - the company's best year. Many of the surviving structures at the site were built at this time.
Troubles for Mount Elliott started in 1913. In February, a fire at the Consols Mine closed it for months. In June, a thirteen week strike closed the whole operation, severely depleting the workforce. The year 1913 was also bad for industrial accidents in the area, possibly due to inexperienced people replacing the strikers. Nevertheless, the company paid generous dividends that year.
At the end of 1914 smelting ceased for more than a year due to shortage of ore. Although 3200 tons of blister copper was produced in 1913, production fell to 1840 tons in 1914 and the workforce dwindled to only 40 men. For the second half of 1915 and early 1916 the smelter treated ore railed south from Mount Cuthbert. At the end of July 1916 the smelting plant at Selwyn was dismantled except for the flue chambers and stacks. A new furnace with a capacity of 500 tons per day was built, a large amount of second-hand equipment was obtained and the converters were increased in size.
After the enlarged furnace was commissioned in June 1917, continuing industrial unrest retarded production which amounted to only 1000 tons of copper that year. The point of contention was the efficiency of the new smelter which processed twice as much ore while employing fewer men. The company decided to close down the smelter in October and reduce the size of the furnace, the largest in Australia, from 6.5m to 5.5m. In the meantime the price of copper had almost doubled from 1916 due to wartime consumption of munitions.
The new furnace commenced on the 16th of January 1918 and 77,482 tons of ore were smelted yielding 3580 tons of blister copper which were sent to the Bowen refinery before export to Britain. Local coal and coke supply was a problem and materials were being sourced from the distant Bowen Colliery. The smelter had a good run for almost a year except for a strike in July and another in December, which caused Corbould to close down the plant until New Year. In 1919, following relaxation of wartime controls by the British Metal Corporation, the copper price plunged from about £110 per ton at the start of the year to £75 per ton in April, dashing the company's optimism regarding treatment of low grade ores. The smelter finally closed after two months operation and most employees were laid off.
For much of the period 1919 to 1922, Corbould was in England trying to raise capital to reorganise the company's operations but he failed and resigned from the company in 1922. The Mount Elliott Company took over the assets of the other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s - Mount Cuthbert in 1925 and Kuridala in 1926. Mount Isa Mines bought the Mount Elliott plant and machinery, including the three smelters, in 1943 for £2,300, enabling them to start copper production in the middle of the Second World War. The Mount Elliott Company was finally liquidated in 1953.
In 1950 A.E. Powell took up the Mount Elliott Reward Claim at Selwyn and worked close to the old smelter buildings. An open cut mine commenced at Starra, south of Mount Elliott and Selwyn, in 1988 and is Australia's third largest copper producer producing copper-gold concentrates from flotation and gold bullion from carbon-in-leach processing.
Profitable copper-gold ore bodies were recently proved at depth beneath the Mount Elliott smelter and old underground workings by Cyprus Gold Australia Pty Ltd. These deposits were subsequently acquired by Arimco Mining Pty Ltd for underground development which commenced in July 1993. A decline tunnel portal, ore and overburden dumps now occupy a large area of the Maggie Creek valley south-west of the smelter which was formerly the site of early miner's camps.
The Old Selwyn Township:
In 1907, the first hotel, run by H. Williams, was opened at the site. The township was surveyed later, around 1910, by the Mines Department. The town was to be situated north of the mine and smelter operations adjacent the railway, about 1.5km distant. It took its name from the nearby Selwyn Ranges which were named, during Burke's expedition, after the Victorian Government Geologist, A.R. Selwyn. The town has also been known by the name of Mount Elliott, after the nearby mines and smelter.
Many of the residents either worked at the Mount Elliott Mine and Smelter or worked in the service industries which grew around the mining and smelting operations. Little documentation exists about the everyday life of the town's residents. Surrounding sheep and cattle stations, however, meant that meat was available cheaply and vegetables grown in the area were delivered to the township by horse and cart. Imported commodities were, however, expensive.
By 1910 the town had four hotels. There was also an aerated water manufacturer, three stores, four fruiterers, a butcher, baker, saddler, garage, police, hospital, banks, post office (officially from 1906 to 1928, then unofficially until 1975) and a railway station. There was even an orchestra of ten players in 1912. The population of Selwyn rose from 1000 in 1911 to 1500 in 1918, before gradually declining.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
....I stopped at a bench to take in the view, have a snack and some water when this boat camp speeding by. The warm spring weather has brought out the boaters. Soon Okanagan Lake will be full of speed boats, sail boats, house boats, water skiing, wakeboarding, swimmers, kayaking, canoeing, kids on flotation devices and sun seekers.
I like the colour of the boat. It goes so nicely with the blue water and the white wake from the boat. The dog in the back of the boat was so cute. He was looking up at me as they were speeding by.
Okanagan Lake as seen from Kalamoir Regional Park, West Kelowna, BC
SwimRun athlete, Ronen Erlich, wears a neoprene jammer swimsuit to add lower body flotation and hand paddles to increase propulsion.
Competitors in the SwimRun event participate in teams of two people and perform a series of alternating swim and run legs. Besides their swimsuit, race cap, bib and timing chip, racers are allowed certain optional approved gear items but they must start and finish the race with all their chosen gear.
For more information or to sign up for next year's SwimRun event to be held Saturday, May 2, 2020, click on SwimRun.
JTH_6382_cr
The principle used to simulate weightlessness in a huge tank of water is called 'neutral buoyancy'. A neutrally buoyant object neither floats nor sinks. For an astronaut to be neutrally buoyant in water, the natural tendency to float or sink is counteracted by weights or flotation devices.
Here ESA astronaut André Kuipers is seen during EVA training in NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) at the Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas.
Although it is not exactly the same as being weightless in space, astronauts and cosmonauts practice in neutral buoyancy how to move large objects. You can still feel the pull of gravity while neutrally buoyant, and the drag of moving about through the water slows down your movements – but it is the closest you can get to microgravity on Earth.
The full spacewalk, or Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA), training for the ISS is traditionally done at the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory and at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, in Russia. With over 18 hours of EVA time in space under his belt, Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang is currently the most experienced spacewalker in the European Astronaut Corps.
For more information:
www.esa.int/esaHS/SEMVVX2MDAF_astronauts_0.html
Credit : ESA/A. Kuipers
As he egresses Command Module 'America', USN Captain Eugene Cernan, Commander, Apollo 17, is welcomed back to Earth by USN Lieutenant Jonathan Smart, Officer In Charge, UDT 11 Recovery Team, 19 December 1972.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
AWESOME
"We leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."
YET, here we are, FORTY FIVE years later, pretty much with our thumbs up our...along with seemingly ever-dwindling peace and/or hope.
NOT so awesome.
Far right you can see a diver deploying the weight chain.
Bottom right shows how the chain would bwe jettisoned after it goes slack when the descent weight hits the bottom.
Bottom left shows ascent weights being jettisoned to allow the vessel to rise, and flotation bladders to give greater freeboard if the hatch needed to be opened while still in the water at the surface.
Lent by James Cameron.
Kubinka Tank Museum. Танковый музей в Кубинке.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_2_Ka-Mi
The Special Type 2 Launch Ka-Mi (特二式内火艇 カミ Toku-ni-shiki uchibitei kami?) was the Imperial Japanese Navy's first amphibious tank. The Type 2 Ka-Mi was based on the Imperial Japanese Army's Type 95 Ha-Go light tank with major modifications, and was a capable armoured fighting vehicle on both land and at sea.
History and development
Type 2 Ka-Mi tanks without their flotation devices fitted
As early as 1928, the Japanese Army had been developing and testing amphibious tanks and created several experimental models such as the SR-II, the Type 1 Mi-Sha and the Type 92 A-I-Go which either never made it off the drawing board or were produced only as one-off prototypes for concept testing. In 1940, The Navy took over development of amphibious vehicles and two years later came up with the Type 2 Ka-Mi. The Type 2 Ka-Mi was designed for the Navy's Special Naval Landing Forces for the amphibious invasion of Pacific Islands without adequate port facilities, and for various special operations missions.
Only 184 units of the Type 2 Ka-Mi were built, beginning in 1942, due to the number of complex components and due to the fact that it had to be nearly completely hand-built.
Design
The Type 2 Ka-Mi was based on the Army's Type 95 Ha-Go light tank, but with an all-welded hull with rubber seals in place of the riveted armor. It was intended to be water-tight. Large, hollow pontoons made from steel plates were attached to the front glacis plate and rear decking to give the necessary buoyancy. The front pontoon was internally divided into eight separate compartments to minimize the effects of damage from flooding and shellfire. These flotation devices could be jettisoned from inside the tank once the tank landed and commenced ground combat operations.
The Type 2 Ka-Mi's gun turret with a high-velocity Type 1 37 mm gun and a coaxial Type 97 light machine gun was able to rotate 360°. A second Type 97 light machine gun was located in the tank's bow. Occasionally Type 2 Ka-Mi's were armed with a pair of naval torpedoes; one on either side of the hull. The Type 2 Ka-Mi could also be launched from the deck of a submarine.[3]
The Type 2 Ka-Mi was capable of attaining speeds of 10 km/h in the water with a range of 150 km through two propellers situated at the rear of the hull, powered by the tank's engine. Steering was in the control of the tank commander, who operated a pair of rudders from the turret through cables.
That the crew included an onboard mechanic is an indication of the complexity of the design.
Combat Record
The Type 2 Ka-Mi came into active service after the initial successful campaigns of World War II, and was thus too late to be used in its original design mission of amphibious landings. Many units were assigned to naval garrison detachments in the South Pacific Mandate and in the Netherlands East Indies.
The Type 2 Ka-Mi was encountered by the United States Marine Corps in the Marshall Islands and Mariana Islands, particularly on Guam, where it was dug into the ground and misused in static defense positions.It was also encountered in combat by U.S. Army forces at Aitape and Biak during the New Guinea campaign and during the fighting on the Philipine island of Leyte in late 1944.According to Ralph Zumbro in his book 'Tank Aces',several Ka-Mi were destroyed by Army LVT-1's off the coast of Leyte during history's only Amtank vs. Amtank action. A handful more were captured by Army troops on Luzon in 1945,but had not entered combat.A number of photos exist of these vehicles,as well as several others captured by Australian and Commonwealth troops.In common with most Japanese Armor,it was no match for Allied tanks or anti-armor weapons.
Легкий плавающий танк, созданный с использованием некоторых узлов и агрегатов легкого танка "Ха-го". Один из наиболее удачных образцов японской разработки. Создан фирмой "Мицубиси" в 1941 г. В 1942 – 1945 гг. изготовлено 180 единиц.
КОНСТРУКЦИЯ И МОДИФИКАЦИИ
"Ка-ми" – корпус сварной, герметичный, коробчатой формы. Башня – сварная. конической формы, без командирской башенки. Вооружение: 37-мм пушка Тип 1 и спаренный с ней 7,7-мм пулемет Тип 97. На двух кронштейнах в кормовой части башни мог крепиться вертлюг для зенитного пулемета Тип 97. Над верхним люком-жалюзи моторного отделения устанавливался обтекаемый воздухозабор- ный короб, защищенный от брызг крышкой с отгибами. Для придания танку плавучести спереди и сзади крепились стальные понтоны, которые на берегу легко сбрасывались без выхода экипажа из машины. Движение на плаву – с помощью двух гребных винтов.
ТАКТИКО-ТЕХНИЧЕСКИЕ ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКИ ПЛАВАЮЩЕГО ТАНКА "Ка-ми" Тип 2
БОЕВАЯ МАССА, т: 12,5 (с понтонами), 9,57 (без понтонов).
ЭКИПАЖ, чел.: 5.
ГАБАРИТНЫЕ РАЗМЕРЫ, мм: длина – 4830 (с понтонами 7420), ширина – 2790, высота – 2340, клиренс – 355.
ВООРУЖЕНИЕ: 1 пушка Тип 1 калибра 37 мм, 2 пулемета Тип 97 калибра 7,7 мм.
БОЕКОМПЛЕКТ: 132 выстрелов, 3500 патронов.
БРОНИРОВАНИЕ, мм: лоб корпуса -14, борт – 8, корма – 6, крыша и днище – 8,5, башня – 6-13,2.
ДВИГАТЕЛЬ: Тип 1, 6-цилиндровый, дизельный, воздушного охлаждения; мощность 120 л.с. (87,6 кВт) при 1800 об/мин.
ТРАНСМИССИЯ: редуктор, коробка передач с понижающей передачей (8 + 2) и отбором мощности на гребные винты, карданный вал, соединенный коническими шестернями с валами бортовых фрикционов, одноступенчатые бортовые редукторы.
ХОДОВАЯ ЧАСТЬ; четыре сдвоенных опорных катка на борт, два поддерживающих катка, ведущее колесо переднего расположения (зацепление цевочное); подвеска – типа Хара; гусеница мелкозвенчатая, с открытым шарниром и одним гребнем, шириной 305 мм, шаг трака 84 мм, число траков – 103.
СКОРОСТЬ МАКС., км/ч; по суше – 37, на плаву -10.
ЗАПАС ХОДА, км: 170.
СРЕДСТВА СВЯЗИ: радиостанция и ТПУ.
Lower section of Waggon Creek, West Coast. Here the limestone walls are about 6m high on either side with no way out except the way you came in.
Waggon Creek develops into a cut that runs for about 3.5km between steep limestone walls covered in moss and ferns. I had to swim the deeper sections using my pack for flotation, quite unnerving as the water was black with tanin and I had thoughts of massive eels playing through my mind! A stunning place though, and one I might not get back to again.
Take a look at my Waggon Creek album which contains this plus many more images taken along the length of the cut that I was able to explore. Unfortunately the water was very cold and the cut acted as a wind tunnel once the morning breeze came up, it wasn't too long before I was chilled to the bone and I had to turn back.