How safe is your flight?

 Air crashes are rare, it's not often you see a major accident involving one of the big carriers.  What you don't get to hear about is how often flights have a problem that could be serious if not dealt with properly. Sadly crews in many of the accidents don't respond properly.
 Humans are actually not very good at monitoring things, the more complicated something is the less well adapted we are are watching it.
 Your sitting there minding your own business and everything is good, and suddenly you get an alarm, flashing lights and the auto pilot says bugger this matie it's all yours!
 That emergency actually takes even an experienced pilot time to work out whats going on, tests have shown it takes between about 10 seconds to as much as a minute for a pilot to take in whats going on and react properly. All too often they don't react properly, you'd be surprised how often even so called experienced pilots will pull back on the controls to dive a plane (the wrong way) this has caused more than one fatal accident.
 In the last 24 hours we've had an Airbus have to make an emergency landing due to smoke in the cockpit from an electrical fire (a cause of several fatal crashes) A Boeing 737 and an Airbus both having to land after engine failure, and a Boeing 777 had a delayed takeoff after a power bank caught fire as a passenger was boarding.
 Now in theory all twin or four engine aircraft should be able to fly nicely with one engine out, all pilots practice this. Yet every so often a crew will get it wrong, shutting down the wrong engine caused at least one crash (they shut down the good one). So who knows if your crew will be switched on and alert......
 By the way I'm not afraid of flying... I'm just afraid of crashing....

 Being serious the odds are well in your favor. The chances of being killed in an aircrash are VERY small.  Your much more lightly to die in your car.

How old is your flight???

 The age of an aircraft your flying in usually doesn't cross your mind as you walk up the steps, the plane is nice and shiny, the logo is bright and fresh and the seats are clean.  Thing is these are repainted or replaced every so often, these often hide the real age of an aircraft.
 Now to be fair a properly looked after older aircraft isn't necessarily more dangerous that a newer one.... that's if it's maintained properly. Trouble in maintenance is expensive, taking a plane out of line for a small job can cost an airline dearly, so there's a natural tendency to "see how it goes" if it's not something serious.  Trouble is small problems become big problems at 35.000 feet.

 Take the Iran Aseman flight 3704 an ATR 72-200 that crashed into mount Dena on the 18th feb this year killing all 65 persons aboard.
 This aircraft is over 24 years old. Now as I say that may not be a factor in the accident, but how many people drive a 24 year old car never mind fly in something that age.

 The Antonov that crashed in Russia  on the 11th Feb was a mere eight years old.

 So next time you board a plane ask the crew how old the aircraft is and see what expression you get on their face, that might tell you more than their answer.....

Margam park wander

 Being pretty shattered today but wanting to get out into the sunshine I went to Margam park, it's not too far and I had an hours break.
 Here's the results! No editing, just run through my resizing program, so if they are a bit iffy it's down to me not bothering.

Make your own war film!

 Step one.
 Make a WW2 war film!   WW1 films mean digging trenches and lots of mud, anything from the middle east means going somewhere sunny like Spain and that costs money.

 Location.
 Just about anywhere will do, don't worry that your location looks nothing like the actual place your supposed to be, hardly anybody bothers to make it look right.

 Plot.
 This is dead easy.  Small group of soldiers behind the German front lines just after D-day is a popular one. Any reason will do, they are lost, or looking for the secret German nuclear bomb, or zombie Germans... Honestly anything will do, the dafter the better.

 Costumes.
 Ok, you have to be careful here, uniforms are expensive and they get ruined easily. Best bet is buy anything you can find in the Sunday market. Don't worry if they don't match hardly anybody knows soldiers are issued with matching uniforms.

 Weapons.
 This is one where you can save a ton of money. Don't hire expensive blank firing replicas, and the loads of expensive ammunition to go with them. Just rent the plastic or rubber "prop" versions.  Ok these don't actually fire but if your actors "shake" the guns and shout bang very loudly nobody will notice (every other war films does it)
 You can add a HUGE muzzle flash when you get the Chinese CGI company to add the other effects like explosions. Again don't worry that the real guns made hardly any actually muzzle flash, the punters wont know.

 Actors.
 This is dead easy.  All you need is your mates from the pub, a few fishing friends and the wife's brother as he speaks a few words of German.  Oh and most important of all, remember to have the squad leader a grizzled old veteran in his 60's.  Ignore the fact that the squad leader would actually have been about 23. Every other war film gets away with it, why shouldn't you?

Military advisor.
Don't bother, spend the money down the pub.  So you get a few things wrong, like the uniforms, the weapons, the location, the way the soldiers move, the food, the explosions, the wrong tanks.

Nobody cares.... because no buggers going to watch it anyway, cause it's shit! Like all the other low budget war films.....

Water

 a few images of water from my wander today.

New small EDC torch

 This came about pretty much by accident, while looking at one thing on ebay these torches came up in with other products the seller had. As the price was silly I ordered one.

 The torch runs off a single triple A battery, it has a tail clicky button and just the single mode, it wont tail stand because the button is jusr proud of the bottom.
 It has a sturdy-ish pocket clip, thats reversible so you could clip it your hat peak if needed.
 It's listed as 3000 Lm, that must be Chinese Lm, I figure it's really around the 100+ Lm, maybe 130-ish max.(compared to a known 130 Lm torch)
 It has a largish hot spot and good soft fall off to a medium size spread, plenty of light for walking around at night.
 I haven't tested runtime yet but I'd be guessing around 30 to 45 minutes with an alkaline battery, I don't know if it'll run off rechargeable.

3.5 inches long (90mm aprox)

I got it from seller dingding 18738, and it cost £1.84 when I bought mine (I've no connection to the seller or company)

 To be honest for the price it's great, bright enough to be really handy, small enough to go in a shirt pocket.

Shown here compared to a double A battery (note the torch uses one tripple A)

Contrail.... or Chemtrail..????

Is this just a standard aircraft contrail... or is someone spraying strange chemicals (chemtrails) to turn all the locals into zombies... if so it's working...

Fungi, ducks, fountains and other pics...

 Got out yesterday with the cameras, even had an assistant to carry my big (which was nice as my back was bad) I had planned to shoot some video on the go-pro but St Fagans was fairly busy so I'll go again on a quieter day for that.
 All shot on Canon this time.

Swans and early morning light, Plus Margam castle

 Some more pics from the Nikon.

Branch ends and dogface...

 NO it's not a new tv series, just some odd pics I've shot over the last few days while still playing with the nikon.