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I've got a question that hopefully some of the aircrafty types on the forum could answer. Regarding old surplus aluminium aircraft rivets: I've been told that they go a bit hard and brittle over time and are not much good to use when they're like that. I was also told that you can anneal them to make them useable again. Hoping someone might be able to shed some light on the subject.

The closest I have to anything like that is this Continental R-670 pot. It has around 1500cc displacement and is in good nick despite the outside appearance. Has valves, rockers, pushrod tubes and exhaust header. It's got a coating of protective gunk inside covering what looks like a chrome bore. Unfortunately I don't have the machining skills of Al Hackel or the equipment to make a motor out of it. If I was mad enough I'd give it a crack. I doubt my little mill would have the accuracy for a job like that.

This bloke in the U.S., Al Hackel, built a custom chopper using a single pot from a Wright R975-46 9-cylinder radial engine. Displacement is around 1700cc, which is a pretty big thumper. He made the bottom end himself, conrod, crankcase, crankshaft etc., but got someone else to make the cam. It has a piston from a Continental engine. Mated to a Harley gearbox. This is his Instagram page on it for anyone interested: https://www.instagram.com/alhackel/ There's a short video on there of a bloke kickstarting it at a show.

Were there around a couple of hundred Indians sitting on top of the jets, expecting a free trip home? 😄

Ion Idriess books are all worthy reading, if a little dated today. There's a historian lady in Kalgoorlie (Moya Sharp) who has an amazing website covering the history of the Kalgoorlie Goldfields. It's mind-boggling what she's dug up. She originally had two women helpers, but it appears they have both passed on, so she's running it solely on her own now. She covers everything from tragedies, to family histories, to gold and lease scams and gold stealing, individual prospectors stories, train crashes, and histories of a multitude of Goldfields ghost towns. Some of the tragedies of the Goldfields would make you weep, especially the ones involving children. Life was hard and short for many, back in the "good old days". There are enough stories on this website to keep you occupied for months, if not years. I'm about to give her a few bucks to support her site, because she has done such an amazing job of recording the history of the Kalgoorlie region. https://www.outbackfamilyhistoryblog.com/about/

Victoria used to produce a good Prospectors Guide. I have a couple of copies from different eras.

I have been to a military air show in India. Unpredictable, with no crowd line.

I've got a copy of the Ion Idriess book on prospecting for gold somewhere. Haven't read it in many years but I remember it as a good read.

Amir’s birthday is the 24th of January. The date is the number of words at that point in the sentence, the twenty fourth word. In a road with exactly 26 houses, if Em lives at number 13 and Bea lives at number 2, logically what number house does Elle live at?

My wife and I moved into this house with our two young toddler sons just before Christmas 1978. The temps were very high that year, so we had a reverse cycle wall mounted unit installed in the lounge room. We rarely used the heater function, because the house had ducted gas heating. In hot weather my wife used to sleep in the lounge room. The unit is still working and was a boon for my daughter last week.

This bloke needs help:

Here is a perfect example of why the tank needed help. This Ass is wearing a thong

What images like this?

We've got a big 3HP Mitsubishi reverse cycle air conditioner that cools virtually the whole house when it's running, and we keep the house closed up. The unit isn't that expensive to run, but we've got 6.8Kw of solar panels on the roof that do a good job of keeping the power bill down. The original unit went well for 18 years, then a power surge blew the circuit board in the A/C section on the inside wall. It effectively meant we had to scrap it. No-one would accept responsibility for the power surge. We know it was caused by tree loppers a few streets away, they dropped a limb over a power line, and when Western Power restored the power again, it surged and blew the board. WP refused point blank to accept any responsibility and our insurance company declined to pay for repairs or replacement, because the power line didn't fall on our property. So we had to wear the $1800 cost to replace the entire unit. We bought an identical unit, as the Mitsubishi A/C's we have, have performed so well. We have two other units in 2 bedrooms, they are 1HP each, and they have been in service since 2005 and still work admirably. Evaporative A/C's are alright up to a point, then you have to open up the house to get rid of the humidity buildup.

You mean to tell us? - that an image of Trump wasn't in the first results?? 😄

An American holidaying in Queensland has posted on Facebook he is thinking of moving here and has asked for tips on things like guns, weed, accents including pronunciation and Aussie slang etc. He was advised to be himself and pick it up as he goes along. Some replies clarified things like thongs vs flip-flops, and ass vs a**e. I was going to post a photo of each of the last pair, and did an image search for "ass". I was looking for a photo of a donkey. I couldn't get over it. Try it yourself.

If you think Top Gun is bad, check out the Indian version "Fighter" - also heavily subsidised by their military. At least it has Bollywood dancing as well though.

Our little wheel around refrig unit created plenty of water for the pot plants on our recent 40¯ day.

Still riding after more than 40 years and still never had a bike accident on road and only a few falls offroad- worst bent a clutch lever. That includes racetrack fun and even been a Monkey on a ballistic racing LCR sidecar. Current beasty is a 167hp BMW k1200R, only 121,000 km so well run in. For it's 21st birthday it's getting a diff rebuild as a O ring was leaking, plus new rubber and rear disc. I got through the early silly years by always having a mature attitude to my skills development and knowing every car is probably trying to kill you. I always use the Piano principle- "unless a piano falls from the sky and hits you in the back of the head - I should have seen it coming". No amount of skill overcomes a poor attitude.

Let's not forget the only army that actually scared the Japanese and German soldiers were Aussies. And the first to stop both in their tracks. Same as Vietnam war, the Vietcong were shit scared of the small group Aussie patrols. The yanks were just hopeless. Movie and TV from US is generally propaganda eg U571 a bullshit movie about yanks getting the Enigma machine first when it was the British. Or the recent series Landmen which glorifies oil. Or Topgun heavily subsidised propaganda by the military. The list goes on...

We must have had a very inefficient evap ducted unit in the house I rented in Bendigo. It really did nothing discernable to the temperature, but we could feel the humidity. Refridgerant airconditioners seemed to get the temperature down to where it was needed. But, jeepers, it was expensive to run.

I like our evap ducted unit. I like the humidity.SWMBO wants to replace it with a refrig type.

I have had quite a few old bikes but only one brand new one. It was an RT1 Yamaha in 1971. 360cc trail bike, I rode it on long road trips too. I still have two of them but probably can’t kick start them any more.

I got the humour, but the thought just saddens me.