En Passant

It's one of those awful to diagnose intermittent issues. Sometimes it's fine, other times not so much, which is how it's been for the whole period for me though I suspect I'm not on as much as some.... eh TOC? . YMMV.

Well, this morning it's back to 30 second refresh/edit times for me at least it seems .

Gz Wills, Had hopes of a 2nd win in the only pool I ever did previously, but well done sir a fine victory.

To be honest the thought has occurred to me that if somebody with a better aim has another pop at Trump this will be left as something of a two (or so) horse race. I always do terribly in this, almost hate to pick anyone for it. And yet I still prefer to pick people to live than die because.....reasons.

Lag/Latency for two or three days now. Definitely the site not you.

3rd Feb 49 The Specials - Gangsters 48 Stranglers - No More Heroes +4 41 The Selecter - On My Radio 31 Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing 27 Kate Bush - The Man With the Child in his Eyes -3 25 Plastic Bertrand - Ça Plane Pour Moi 22 Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back In Town -3 17 Electric Light Orchestra - Evil Woman 14 Supertramp - Breakfast in America 14 Manfred Manns Earth Band - Blinded By The Light 13 Madness - One Step Beyond 12 Eagles - Hotel California

Sorry yes, I cant help myself sometimes.

An alternative value to the usually accepted one for improving.

This has a visual of a daytime approach to 33 so you can see exactly what might well have happened and why it's idiotic to have these military helo's crossing a busy commercial approach (at least from a safety perspective if not a political one). ETA: Oh and this guy at least partly confirms what I suspected, the military aren't even on the same frequency so whilst ATC can hear them the civilian pilots cannot. Thus the pilot of the airliner will have had no idea of what was being communicated to the Blackhawk. So the helicopter pilot knows he's supposed to be maintaining visual separation but the jet crew have (as far as I can tell yet) no clue about its presence at all (from rt at any rate). Sorry if I appear to be belabouring this subject, but the topic is an area I have a little knowledge of. (Unlike the more obscure deadpool picks where I'm constantly amazed at who all these folks are and that they even existed) Turns out it was a exactly that an Air Ambulance but in this case a Mexican Lear Jet on a special case - not a helicopter as local air ambulances invariably are. Less information about on this one yet as compared to the DC crash.

First thing I tried. Doesn't matter to me of course since I'll just turn them all off again anyway, but it's a warning for anyone else to whom this might matter I guess. Curious.

15 Minutes or so. Sums up what probably happened better than you will find on commercial news in weeks. Oh, and not off topic even a little bit Uli . Somehow don't feel quite right even putting a smiley on a post like this even if it's unrelated but dno.

I'd turned it off yoinks ago (as it was making pages twice as long in some cases) and just tested this. Only problem I see with it is no way to get back an individual signature after you choose the option not to show it - the icon with the x to hide it appears at the top right of the sig itself so vanishes along with the signature. So sorry LadyFiona I can't view your sig now even if I wanted to as you were the test case as the last post here . Unless there's something I'm missing of course which is highly likely.

Completely unsurprisingly we're not the only ones wondering what the military were doing - the Grauniad has this article. For those that don't want to read the whole link the salient points are: At a guess, the military will try to blame ATC. And won't answer questions about this (or any other) flights on the grounds of 'National Security' - but that's just a (pessimistic) stab in the dark by me right now. If nothing else 10 hours a day six days a week is a ludicrous burden on people doing a highly stressful job on which thousands of lives depend (67 of whom have just paid the price).

So I'd have thought, and yet it was there and they've said it was a training flight. If it wasn't there to 'dodge' civilian aircraft (yeah, nuts as that is) why was it there at all? Maybe as @One shot Paddy says, it's some kind of 'absolutely necessary' (cough) on the site training for the pilots of say 'Marine One' - though I hesitate to imagine the brouhaha if that turns out to be the case. Have to see over the coming days I suppose. Well, ATC just have to deal with what they get sent don't they? Even if they fucked up why are they having to deal with a military helicopter in the first place? Also I'm nothing but a lapsed ppl, but there used to be separate ATC in the UK for military and civilian and communication between the two wasn't all it might have been. Still we're talking the days of Upper Heyford mandatory radio area in the UK not about the US at all so things may be different there and now.