2-3 inches this morning in Winchester.

I take objection to the comment that councils are bent – the one i work for is certainly not. There is only so much we can do with the money that central govt gives us and that has been cut by £40million in the last 5 years yet we still have to maintain services.

OK, maybe just the planning departments :-).

Only the best clubs get the big building contracts. Not that the contract is overpriced, but it stays amongst friends :-). Which again, can be a good thing.

Why buy new in the first place. There are pleanty of good quality 2nd hand cars out there which have already suffered the initial depreciation a new car does + it is a form of recycling.

Aye, I never go into 4 figures for a car!

Girls drive V8’s, go with a V10 or V12. Hummer would be a good choice for an eco vehicle, either that or a series one Landrover with the Merlin conversion. I’d go with the auto as well, yool get better milage with a manual but you have to pull your arm in from the window to steer when yoo change gears.

Hummers for the Army = a mans car.
Hummers for sale to the public = a hairdressers car. They really are rubbish.

Long way off topic now Moggs. 🙂 But you knew that…

We really are crap at dealing with it. Having been to Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Canada in Winter and seen proper snow I’m always almost ashamed of the UK when a slight flurry screws it up completely. Useless really!

Paul

We are.
But, how about if our councils were to spend a few million on some decent gritting machines, ploughs even? And then hit you with a £250 a year rise on the council tax? We don’t buy the kit, so we are useless…but we don’t want them to buy the kit because it would cost us all £25 a month….or, knowing how bent councils are, the money would be diverted to stupidity like town twinning. Or they wouldn’t pay o/time or night pay to the drivers.

So, we remain useless at dealing with severe weather. In this laptop/internet age, I’m not sure it’s a great loss to most people in terms of work. Obviously, manual / shop workers it’s a different story. But most of us sit on our ar5e shining a hole in our pants staring at a daytime telly AKA a PC.

We cannot trust a Government, central or local, with money.
They already squander a lot of it away and give you a poor service with the rest (Wife works for then so I know!).

Obama and the yanks “Yes we Can!”
UK. “Sod it, not my problem”
And therein lies the reason for a fecked up UK. IMO.

You need a big car with a big donk for this big wide brown land i’m afraid …those girly European putt putt things are just not suitable for the amount of distances you can chalk up in this country…i drive a 5 litre V8 and i make no apologies for it… i need it for driving interstate and for towing my boat

That’s a hell of a lump to put in a Mini!

BAE systems have a manufacturing floor that is self leveling, the engineers noticed that every month the floor recorded a ~1mm shift up and down after some investigation it was found to be due to the moons orbit over the factory.

Some of the tolerances for the Eurofighter are fantastically small (Microns), and the JSF is using the same alignment technology to get it right first time – every time.

Source http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2791900/BAE-shoots-for-the-moon-to-deliver-the-Typhoon.html

Cheers

Not quite.
I cannot tell you the process, (Cannot means not allowed) but the right first time for JSF is not, nothing like, the right first time you will find in a car plant. The parts will be a perfect fit, but it is not the traditional right first time.
The floor movements at Samlesbury/ Warton fall within the natural movements of the planets crust. The Warton site also suffers from the tide twice a day. It’s always been there, somebody found a way of measuring it to look smart. That’s why all sub-assemblies should be taken from their Assembly jig and dropped into an ICY jig (Interchangeability) to see if it fits to a consistant datum. The modern version of an ICY jig is to digitise everything with a robotic stylus. It’s not quicker, and gives you a lot of info to analyse thus adding yet more cost.
Aeroplane tolerances are wide to say the least. Most parts have EOP dimension of +-0.010″, which to an engineer is wide enough to drive a bus through.
I came into aerospace from real engineering, where we machined stuff to tenths of a thousandth of an inch. When I came to Aerospace in 1979, I didn’t think I’d need a micrometer! You can read a steel rule to 0.010″ (Well you could when the rules were made in Sheffield from real material and not the imitation Stainless Steel that is around now). Some rules were actually marked at 0.010″ and you could read those to 0.003″. You couldn’t really see more accurate than a third of a mark on a rule.
Obviously, holes for fitted bolts are very accurate, distance between specific holes are dead accurate. Mechanism’s are usually a -+0.005″. Critical “Tolerance stack” areas are also tightly controlled, but only at the points of contact. Eg a Wing stringer passes over “Mouse holes” in the Ribs but the rib flange contacts the stringer. The thickness of the Rib flange and the contact Pad of the stringer is controlled as a total of +0.00-0.008″ IIRC, otherwise the skin (Covers) would not sit correctly on them all. They dont anyway!……liquid shim or ally shims are used. The body of the stringer between the ribs can be -+0.010″. The wings are weighed as a pair, and if there is an imbalance, small counterweights are added to the lighter wing. Because you can’t take bits off the heavier wing. They were once made of lead, but it’s not PC anymore so tungsten is used because of it’s density (Pack a lot of weight in a small place). Or even steel if there is enough room.
Also, the components at the extremes of an aircraft are only aerodynamic shapes, and do not carry such high tolerances. Nose cone. Usually fibreglass and made in a mould. Once the mould is signed off, all parts will be same. So long as the attachment diameter is correct, and the thickness all over is correct, and obviously no cracks then it will be a good part.
Tailcones / Tailcones with EPU’s in them. Bent tin items. So long as they fit, an extra half inch long does not matter a jot. Again, as this is so far aft of the CoG, the parts are weighed and if necessary a weight is added to the front. Not usually necessary as I believe each A/c is trimmed for itself. Pilots correct me there please.
Wing tips and aileron/fin tips. SPF formed ally or rubber pressed halves welded together. Again, so long as they fit on, the tolerance to the actual tip is +- 0.030″.
A small airliner (A320 ish) length will vary by approximately +-0.5″, that’s a 1 inch range.

Somebody mentioned air temperature of the assembly, well, it is law for factories and workplaces to be minimum 20deg C (There is a max but I canny remember it) but if temperature is a factor, such as plastics then a temperature controlled environment is vital.

And, don’t forget that the parts grow and shrink back again with flight (Pressure) and with temperature. Concorde was 14 inches longer at mach 2 than it was on the ground. You could actually see gaps between the cupboards of the galley when in flight (All calculated for of course).

That’s a credit to all involved.
Well done.

4 snow-flakes hit my windscreen this afternoon. Each was about a millimetre (0.040″ in real money) diameter.
Cold as Canada though!