Text 14104, 76 rader
Skriven 2011-02-12 21:31:29 av Stewart Arnett (3:772/100)
  Kommentar till text 13967 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: The Smolensk crash on April 10, 2010
============================================
Hello Robert.

06 Feb 11 07:12, you wrote to me:

 RB> Stewart Arnett wrote to Robert Bashe on Saturday February 05 2011 at
 RB> 22:12:

 SA>> Does making an offer count? both yachts I bought after offering
 SA>> the previous ownes a sum of  money and both accepted I paid and
 SA>> ended up with two , one is listed in the international 1/4 ton
 SA>> registry in England (http://www.quartertonclass.org click on the
 SA>> fleet and look for my name it's there with a photo)...

 RB> A real beauty! But the picture's too small.

that's all they alow.

 RB> As for your enthusiastic descriptions - hey, I thought you were
 RB> around
 RB> the average age here, 60-70. What you describe sounds positively
 RB> athletic ;-)

I am 62 (49er) but I don't live a sedentary life style, I've been bouncing
round in boats since I was six, that includes Kayaks, dingies sailing and
rowing, I do plenty of walking and jumping around on yachts keeps me fairly
agile. At one time I was one of the top Sea Kayakers around I have a thousand
mile HKG medal one of six awarded, my cousin Derek Cox and another Kiwi, Paul
Caffyn also have one. Paul was a bit extreme, he cirumnavigated Australia in a
kayak, Derek and I just done some bloody long trips to get ours. Most of my
boats have been around 8 metres (25ft) but number three was a 62 1/2 foot gaff
rigged steel Ketch that I had for about a decade and I exchanged it for a house
on an Island called Waiheke. A suburb of Auckland reached by regular high speed
ferries, the yacht was for sale on an auction site a couple of months ago for
under 100,000 nz dollars, the Waiheke property has a GV of 3,000,000 nz dollars
so I think I made out of the deal. I've been out today for a sail, rowed out to
the yacht in a rubber ducky that lives on the back seat of my car and then
rowed back when I got back to the mooring, sailed out to a local volcano called
Rangitoto had lunch and a couple of wines then sailed back. probably cost 10
dollars in fuel for the car and the diesel for the boat a cheep day out.


 SA>> The GPS knows what ground level is as upto 12 salelites keep it
 SA>> informed, elevation is the distance between the GPS and the
 SA>> general mass of earth below the GPS at that instance in time
 SA>> unless you set it up differently default is to sea level at a mean
 SA>> planet wide it can be et to read above earth level (so my book
 SA>> says). It is pretty accurate allowing for the time delay of the
 SA>> transmitted data updates,

 RB> And I still have problems with obstacles such as trees. Even assuming
 RB> the GPS system can get the position of an aircrast, the position of
 RB> the ground underneath it and do the subtraction to get the actual
 RB> altitude in real time - something that seems pretty far out to me -
 RB> you still have the problem of obstacles on the ground that are not
 RB> detected by GPS.

The ground level is in the map on the GPS and info is relayed at the speeds of
light, that is 1.8026175x10 to the 12th Furlongs per fortnight so it is pretty
quick to update in comparison to the aircraft speed of about 1,612,800 furlongs
per fortnight ;-) GPSs don't know trees, that's up to the pilot to know!

RB> Again and again: if the system were as foolproof and reliable as
 RB> claimed, why isn't it routinely used? The chance that the "evil
 RB> Americans" shut down the system is, barring some kind of security
 RB> emergency, since it would affect American planes too - nearly
 RB> negligible. I still have the feeling that there's a fly in the
 RB> ointment somewhere.

Aircraft GPSs are available for sale so it must be something they use in them.

cheers

Stewart

--- GoldED/2 3.0.1
 * Origin: The RockBBS Auckland NZ 64-9-5799604 (3:772/100)