Terror, it's about 3 foot high!

Today, I learned a new type of terror.
I had to give a talk about the weather (and my job) to a group of Primary 2 children - ages 5-6. 25 of them. I'm not really that good with kids, so trying to aim the talk at the right level was hard enough, working with the teacher to control the children was even worse and I made the usual mistake - open questions! Ah, I'm a fool!
I was told, "never ask questions with more than two answers," and "never ask any question that could lead to a story about the weekend," but I ended up doing exactly that... Not horrifically but I guess I'm just not cut out to work with sprogs very much.
Having said all of that, I actually think it went quite well. I've got no idea what a good lesson is with kids that age (should have asked Kate for advice!) but their teacher seemed pretty pleased. I'd taken a load of the old school met kit that we have as back-ups, sunshine recorder (looks like a crystal ball on a stand), an "aspirated psychrometer" (two thermometers with a clockwork fan attached), hand-held anemometer (wind measuring thingy in black Bakelite - very 50s retro), small Stevenson Screen, satellite images and charts.
I had a few print outs of my favourite images such as a global map with nothing on it then ask the kids how many lightning strikes they thought would have happened in half an hour world wide (they thought 31) and then show them. In this case I'd printed out another chart with the strikes shown, and there were a few hundred at least. Certainly impressed the teacher, and I think the kids liked it.
So, although not a full win, I think I came out ahead. If nothing else when the children came in and saw all the kit laid out one of the lads said , "he's got cool stuff!" I liked that kid then.

Well, apart from that, I've had a couple of chances to get some pictures from work, and I think a few of them were alright. Comments welcome.
Firstly a Pax (passenger) transport that popped up:

Then a Merlin:

Then a Hawk (in this case from the centre of aviation medicene):

And finally some of our guys in the sun:

I need to use a bit of a faster shutter speed but had dropped it to get a bit of blur on the blades.

My timing SUCKS. Seriously.

This will probably be my last post from the South Atlantic (this trip...) and five days ago I was really looking forwards to coming home.
I still am, mostly, but some things have happened in the last few days to make me wish for a bit longer here.
Since my last entry I was invited to go on a capability day by the RIC (Roulement/resident Infantry Company) which was the Rifles and is now the Green Howards (Yorkshire) where they showed us what they do, where they do it and make lots of things go BANG!
It was a good chance to see the range they use, for which we forecast, but most of us haven't been there. I got a panoramic of the range (which won't be posted) and some rather decent shots of things going bang. As I'm a civvie I wasn't allowed to shoot anything but did get to play with a sniper rifle that had been made safe.


Managed a couple of trips into Stanley and the road has been refilled. The first time I drove it, I managed to hold 40 odd mph for most of the way, feeling safe all the time. Unfortunately the last time the pot holes were starting to reappear. Not as bad as before (see previous entries) but enough to make 40 unsafe for many stretches. Ahh well, had decent stereo in the L200 each time so the trip was still good.
After this I got on another flight, this time on a Hercules C-130k. Supposed to be to the South Sandwich Islands but owing to a lack of air refuelling aircraft we only went to South Georgia. "Only" of course being relative.

When I can I'll stick up more photos, or have a look at my Flickr account, the link is in the "links" section on the right.
The Herc is an interesting aircraft, it was pretty full and all of us wanted the good photos. We were flying pretty low, about 1000 ft above the water, we were all wearing immersion suits (bit like dry suits) and one side door was open, as was the top part of the rear ramp. As there were protective nets over all the open doors to get clear shots you had to bag one of the small windows or get right up to the net. One guy had positioned himself lying down to get his lens out of the side door but was not going to move. I tried to get decent pictures then move out of the way, getting blatted by the wind and bounced by the aircraft.

On the way back we were escorted in by an F3, which was pretty damn cool!

The weather forecast was pretty much spot on for the whole trip, which is very satisfying.

The big bit of news this week: a couple of weeks back a new teacher came to the school here, called Kate. We got on great and a couple of days ago hooked up. I'm going to try to get a few pictures of her to put up, if she'll let me.
Yes, that's right, I'm no longer single.
The week before I fly 8000 miles away.
Arse.
You see what I mean about my timing? We both knew the situation at the start and are both a bit bummed by it. Her tour down here is for 2 years so there's a good chance I'll be back down before she leaves but even so it's not the best. We're going to see how things turn out but for now we'll enjoy the next couple of days together.
So I've gone from really looking forward to going home to wanting more time here. I never keep it simple, do I?

Queen of the skies

Had a couple of days off last week and managed to get up for a flight. Well, I say "managed," I got back to find a note shoved under my door that the aircrew had called us up and asked if we had anyone that would want to go flying so it wasn't me at all...

Anyway, we went up in a VC-10

and flew around for a bit, refuelling a couple of Tornado F3s

then playing "target" for them, (yes the nav is waving)

before we went around the Islands at fairly low level

and did a pass over Stanley and a few practice landings at MPA.

During this time, we (Yvonne, myself and a few others from the camp) had the chance to sit in the jump seat of the cockpit for one of the touch-and-go landings.

(I can't remember but I think in the two pictures to the right the crew are going "What's that?" "What?" "Up there?" "Oh crap, I dunno!"

That's where they touch down then power on and take off again. Smoother than most other aircraft I've been on, and more power as well, but then the idea of the VC-10 was "let's take an airliner and strap on four fighter engines!"

Managed to get a picture of the base and, 0ddly enough, in this image, I CAN see my house (well room) from here!

Didn't get any pictures from the seat cause I was too busy enjoying myself! Maybe next time.

Where will you be, the day after next Thursday?

Had one of those days today. The Reds turned up, which was cool, and I got asked if I wanted to do a detachment down south for a few months.


So, next week I'm catching a plane.




To the Falkland Islands.

Yeah, 8000 miles south for three months.
Yikes.

First I've got to sort out everything up here, get an ID, get checked out on Landrovers and get vaccinations for Yellow Fever, Polio and Tetanus.
I should be able to keep everyone up to date but there may be longer than average gaps between posts...

And again, yikes.