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  2. It's not just heavy trucks, anything with wheels will do it. You see corrugations on a lot of tracks that mainly only have Toyotas traversing them.
  3. Yesterday
  4. If it's the heavy trucks that are causing the corrugations, how do you explain corrugations in minor roads? I have an unsealed road beside my place. It starts at the intersection with the sealed highway. The road is mainly used by light vehicles, and when a heavy does use it, the speed is low because they have either just turned into the road or are coming out of a dip where the creek crosses the road. Also, the distance between the crests of the corrugations is shorter than the footprint of a truck tyre. After following the conversations here, I get the feeling that no one watched the video which show a demonstration of how these corrugations form.
  5. nomadpete

    Funny videos

    And how many proven Ukrainian submersibles could we buy with whatever cash was left after that? What war plan scenario showed that a couple of big outdated subs would win, against any believable agressor?
  6. Random history borrowed from another thread..... 25 years ago today, a big clash of the superpowers - the “Hainan Island Incident”, which is described in a book “Pacific”, by Simon Winchester. Hainan Island incident - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org U.S. intelligence gathering plane operating in the South China Sea, whose air and water China considers its territory, the U.S. not so much. Chinese jet, flown by Lt. Cdr. Wang Wei -who had intercepted US planes before, getting close enough to display his email address on a paper sign through the cockpit- gets a bit too close this time and collides with the U.S. plane. Wang’s plane is heavily damaged, goes out of control, he ejects, parachute malfunctions, he disappears into the sea. The U.S. plane, with 23 aboard, heavily damaged but still flying, makes an emergency landing without Chinese permission (none of their distress calls had been responded to by the Chinese) at a sensitive military base on large Hainan Island (which is a long time target of US spying) on the SE coast of China, surrounded by armed troops upon arrival, who force their way into the plane. (Plane was later retuned to the U.S. , dismantled in wooden boxes, on a Russian cargo plane.) What was going through their minds…. “For the next 26 minutes, the crew of the EP-3 [US plane, after it was stabilized following a big rapid descent after the collision] performed an emergency plan which included destroying sensitive items aboard the aircraft, such as electronic equipment related to intelligence-gathering, documents and data. Part of this plan involved pouring freshly brewed coffee into disk drives and motherboards and using an axe from the plane's survival kit to destroy hard drives.[15] The crew had not been formally trained on how to destroy sensitive documents and equipment, and so improvised. As a result of the destruction, the plane's interior was later described as resembling "the aftermath of a frat party".[12] The air crew was interrogated and held for over a week, diplomatic crisis, etc etc. Among other things China learned from the plane in its possession —although the crew destroyed a lot of info and spying equipment aboard - including after landing while Chinese troops banged on the windows and shouted at them with bullhorns to come out— China learned that the U.S. could track its submarines via signals intelligence. The end was a letter, or letters, “the two sorries”, issued that allowed each country to save face. 25 years ago today (Bush’s first foreign policy crisis.) Could’ve been a lot worse. Let’s avoid this kinda stuff in future, shall we? Air and sea patrols have continued since then, but US crafts have learned to be much more careful since. Imagine if this incident had occurred while Trumpster was *resident…
  7. I almost posted this in Funny Videos thread..... the joke's on us. It's time I sign up for Mandarin lessons.
  8. onetrack

    Brain Teaser

    Paint the town red.
  9. red750

    Brain Teaser

    Yep.
  10. I ran into a bloke years ago, back in the 70's and he was doing interstate work with an F-700 with the five speed box. He jokingly said he only had to change gears three times between Melbourne and Brisbane. The only Macks I've driven were the old B model and a V8 R model. I can't remember what transmission the V8 had but it had some legs. Good torque as well. The old B model was a bogie drive with the 55 mph diff. It was more like driving a tractor than a truck.
  11. onetrack

    Brain Teaser

    "I see trees of green, red roses too..."
  12. It was more likely the increased speed of trucks with pneumatic tyres that created the corrugations, not the move from solids to pneumatics. Pneumatic tyres on trucks started to appear in 1920 and by about 1925, virtually all trucks were on pneumatics, only the big heavy haul low loaders still used solid wheels and they only travelled at low speeds. People forget about the early low motoring speeds and the low speed limits. In the 1920's to even after WW2, the speed limit for "heavy" trucks in Australia was 15mph (25kmh). "Heavy" was 3 tons or more. Truckies fought for higher speed limits and were often fined for driving "at dangerous speed" - like 25mph (40kmh). During WW2, military convoys ran at 30mph (50kmh) maximum speed to save on tyre wear and preserve road surfaces. Trucks were geared to be flat out at low speeds. Ford V8's were the fastest trucks around, they could do 40-45mph, but that was well over official truck speed limits. WW2 trucks were all geared to about 35 mph maximum speed. The big Military Federals and Reos were flat out at 28mph, they had 10:1 diff ratios for heavy haulage. Bedfords were happiest at about 30mph, they start to scream their guts out at 35mph, and if you could get them to 40mph, that was their absolute limit. Roads were simply poor in the pre-WW2 era and it took a while after WW2 for roads to be upgraded. The 1950's saw a lot of road improvements, widening and sealing. When the first post-war Kenworths and Macks arrived here in the late 1950's, they could do 100kmh (62mph) - but the official maximum truck speed limit was still only 80kmh. So you risked serious fines for doing more than 80kmh. When I bought my first Mack F-700 (cabover) in 1975, the Mack did over 100kmh, but the truck speed limit was still 80kmh. It took until about 1978 to raise the truck speed limit to 100kmh, and that was only after a lot of arguments against raising it. And when you see this (video below), you start to understand that a lot of roads and drivers are still not up to their trucks capabilities. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18cqZRTEaz/
  13. Pete, I guess also as truck design advanced, the extra weight would play a part as well.
  14. It shakes bolts out of trailers which is the biggest cause of flat tyres on those roads. Frustrating for the truckies blowing $500 tyres.
  15. Good point. Normally I'd spend most of the day in air con, but for some people they'd be on their feet on the hot ground all day. I hope they had better boots than the Mack ones.
  16. I read a book once about trucking. It said corrugations and bull dust only appeared with pneumatic tyres. When trucks had solids, up to the 1920s, it wasn’t a problem.
  17. Ditto, looks great, you deserve it.
  18. Marty_d

    Funny videos

    I think that may be a better outcome than sticking with it. Short term cost to save a lot more in the long term.
  19. That looks like a nice spot, Octave. I trust you have an enjoyable stay.
  20. So, I wonder how they would've performed walking on hot ground during Summer? Bitumen can get up to 70°C in Summer, and ordinary rocky clayey ground generally isn't far behind, temperature-wise.
  21. Couldn't hear the people next to me at the Shed speaking, due to the racket of rain on the perspex skylights.
  22. red750

    Brain Teaser

    Correct.
  23. Grading after rain works in some areas where they get rain, but you'd be waiting a long time between grades in a lot of this country Nev. A lot of the country has a six to eight inch annual rainfall if you're lucky. That's where water trucks come into the equation.
  24. facthunter

    Funny videos

    I don't see the Clunkers analogy, We have had to extend our Collins class subs service life. The Yanks have trouble building enough New Nuclear ones for themselves. Who signed up to AUKUS in the First Place? Now we are stuck with it.. Pull out and we may lose the Lot as it would then be Australia Breaking the deal. Nev
  25. It wouldn't be a bad job grading those roads if you liked a bit of solitude. I've seen quite a few setups where they have two graders and a joint camp. I ran into one bloke once who worked on his own. He had a donga with everything in it, sleeping quarters, kitchen and bathroom. The 40' trailer also had the spare space for a fuel tank and genset. He had a satellite dish as well. He would estimate the distance of a day's work and tow the donga trailer and Toyota behind the grader to where he was going to make camp for the night, then set up camp and do a grade down to the start point and back. You'd need a compact, self contained camp like that if you were moving camp daily otherwise it would drive you mad. He worked equal time job sharing with another bloke. I can't remember what hitch they'd do, it might have been two weeks on/two weeks off.
  26. You have to grade them AFTER rain, not just scrape the top few inches. Nev
  27. Geez it's cold and wet here at 1500 feet alt. The ground is saturated. , Wet until Sunday. Celebrating because rain is good and it's a long while since we got soaking steady rain It's not the Kind that Causes Flooding. Nev
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