[Richard]

Today has brought two further items in the form of news reports.

Boeing is accused of questionable standards  developing their 737 Max simulator.

Today’s tone of suggestions about the recent crash now have darker shade.

I guess both issues have legs as the press were once wont to say.

[Richard]

I can understand why they might not have told you there and then, apart from the fact that they were busy trying to avoid a rather less satisfactory situation. However, and I mean no offence by this statement, you might not have been fully able to take it all in at the time. Nor might you have wanted the additional information overload when just getting by was closer to what you, or at least your body was trying to achieve, one breath at a time. On balance, I suspect that they pretty much did what was essential, and achieved what was needed. You came out the other side of that tunnel  in rather better shape than might have been the case. That counts for a huge amount, in fact it is everything in my book.

[Richard]

I am glad that things sound to be getting better so that you have been released to go home, even if you need a wheelbarrow to go home from the pharmacy. It is a situation that many others understand and to which they relate. I have just swallowed, or in some cases chewed, inhaled or used 10 different preparations by 07:25 in the morning.

There was some considerable discussion about magnesium products, I have no knowledge of such preparations but I also noted a reference to Ramipril. I have had issues with that, I have had issues with several other blood pressure pills as well. It can cause throat, tongue and coughing issues, so I now use a different preparation. My wife had a rather more severe reaction during a procedure. Her tongue swelled causing complications as it compromised her breathing. She had her treatment changed to overcome the risk of a repeat performance and has had no further issues during any other procedures. I still have throat and coughing issues though they are due to a totally different cause.

Enough gloom and doom, take care, keep even and enjoy what life is throwing in your path.

 

[Richard]

There has been no news on this matter. Does anyone know if Graham is doing OK? I really hope so.

[Richard]

I suggest that your statement and mine are compatible. We may never know how controlled the last parts of the flight were, but it clearly did not end well. Why it ended badly will require careful and possibly expensive analysis until then speculation should be stilled. I hope that the precise analysis of who did what and when will emerge, but I admit to lacking enough forensic skills to interpret any night-time video. The black boxes are reported to have been damaged with the loss of some data, that would not be a good start.

Can we agree that no one gains from a mess like this?

[Richard]

I did not see any of last night’s coverage so cannot fuel that discussion. Today’s reading is far more focused after trying to sift through the speculative dross. The plane has been reported as climbing to 8000 feet above sea level, an increase of over 4000 feet above sea level, as the airport is above sea level. At that point all information abruptly ceased. The experts commented that this is not the usual signature of an engine failure, as the craft is certified to fly on one engine and on board services should not be imperilled. Today’s comments suggests that a return was attempted, though given the now apparent failure of electrical and radio service one might speculate how likely a controlled return would be. I will leave that to others. I do have my own private thoughts, but they are hardly relevant so have no value and can add nothing. Information is all, and it should be called evidence but these days who will know?

That is as far as I want to stray onto the grass marked speculation. The refusal of the Iranians to allow either Boeing or the USA to play any part in the black box analysis might be a complicating factor. To clarify, they can and should legally take control of the investigation in this way. I am not implying any malign intent by this action.

[Richard]

The major issue space. Usually, his means valleys that can be dammed to hold the water.

At least batteries can be placed in a range of possible locations, possibly including shopping malls that no longer attract enough customers. Don’t laugh, they are starting to go begging and do have somewhat easy access and many of the necessary facilities laid on. Some are already ear marked to be redeployed as fulfilment centres for internet orders, others are sat rotting.

[Richard]

I cannot comment on the BBC coverage except that perhaps they did not have access to the video at the time. Today there is very open discussion of the domed plane’s apparent attempts to return, on fire and ‘with bits falling off’. Concern is being expressed that the investigation may be hampered by political posturing over by whom and how black boxes may be examined. An engine may have failed but the question being asked is why no radio messages or SOS?

Speculation is unlikely to help anyone.

[Richard]

Bob, I think you posted a link to the item on your machine

(file:///C:/Users/Bob/Downloads/EN_Oil%20Discharge%20Manual.pdf)

The reference to C:/users/Bob/Downloads suggests it is not an internet link.

It is an old issue, in the sense that I have heard people fuming about it for many years, even back in the 1950s. Other variations do crop up from time to time with white to grey lumps of something not nice also wash up on beaches.

[Richard]

The unfortunate even in Iran involving a 737 will add a little more doubt to the Boeing mix. Though in this case there is less reason to suspect they were at major fault. There are many possible players, so only a fool or wild guess person would try to call out odds. So, no doubt every newspaper and pundit will want to rush in blindly.

[Richard]

Could it be because the previous model and did not want you to land, so they brought out the MAX with the hard landing option function?

Seriously, there is something bad about their operation. Could it be that they outsourced too much and found out later that the plugs might fit together, but the interworking did not fit the story?

[Richard]

I am aware of the reputation of the goat, or many would have it the ‘desert maker’. They will eat plants roots and all and that is not all they will eat, I have seen them settle into a nice(?) snack of cement powder bags. This research may or may not be the entire picture. However, it is an interesting brick for the ‘wall of knowledge’. I had in mind the far more rapid transformation of the Aral Sea with almost equally devastating effects. Cotton production does appear to be a root cause of many recent issues.

[Richard]

I suspect the answer is even simpler than that, crops use solar energy to grow, remember photosynthesis and all that. Even crops that have not had human effort and have been growing for millennia have done so without any obvious effect on solar production. What can have an effect is local farming habits that affect the micro climate, that can have a knock on effect. Rain forests grew over time and this reduced atmospheric CO2, slaughter them and expect a local climate impact, burn them and produce two effects, more CO2 and local climate changes.

Wind is the product of pressure differences between areas. These are usually caused by temperature differences. Hot air rises and though atmospheric movements appear easy to explain, they are complex and not easily analysed. While wind turbines, or windmills before them do not affect the fundamental fact that high pressure needs to flow towards lower pressure areas. The flow may be very slightly slowed down by barriers of all sorts, buildings, hills, mountains and so on but it will still find a way. As Ed said at best we could only harvest a tiny amount of the total energy available, the turbines are low down relative to the total sum of winds, which are far stronger at higher elevations. Interestingly, they can also flow in different directions at different elevations, certainly not so easily explained. The current crop of wind harvesters reach a height of what, 400 metres, unlike buildings, hills or mountains they do not block the wind they absorb a small amount of its very local energy. However, they can have other effects such as long tails of eddy currents. I understand that silting and scouring round the base of the marine installations can be an issue in some cases. In some areas fish are finding them a safer area in which to spawn and breed. Weeds grow attached to the bases and the local sea area may be slightly calmed, so yes there are impacts. Unfortunately birds are negatively impacted, as they cannot easily identify the hazard of whirling blades with obvious detrimental effects on them. While I am not a fan of land installations, which can cause a range of issues from noise, visual intrusions, bird strikes through to basic NIMBY, Even they potentially cause less impact than many alternatives, such as coal and combustion generally. How many people and animals died from the combustion pollution?

Tidal barrages have been modelled to produce quite severe effects in unsuitable cases with silting in the basins expected to either require considerable dredging or reducing their life spans. Dams and river diversions can be highly detrimental to whole areas. While intended to increase agricultural production they have laid waste to the area. They have brought up salt levels creating salt pans out of lakes or deserts out of land. These then affected the local climates.

[Richard]

Looking at our directly wired dedicated, fused switch heating installation, I wondered, are indirectly wired boiler setups, i.e. via a three pin plug allowed? You would need to break into the supply run with a socket and plug to allow the insertion of a UPS.

One day I might give the router a UPS. Then I should I provide the switches, PCs and server with a UPS as well? Where would it end, include the TV as well?

[Richard]

Because we have a house covered by wireless phones to avoid the dash to the nearest example when it rings I installed a small UPS to drive the base station. A UPS to support the heating service is certainly an option. However, you might need a bigger example than expected to cope with the inrush as the system starts up, the average draw across even a multi hour break should not be that large as the system probably does not run for more than a few minutes every hour.  I would hope that a well insulated place should be able to survive our typical outage, 40 minutes is typical, an hour or two unusual. Night-time lighting could be a slightly bigger issue, though torches meet that need at a push.

[Richard]

The news reports I have seen paint a complex picture of the Australian situation. Some currently burning areas are not the usual dry areas, but wetter spaces, even rain forests not used to such events. The presence of very hot dry winds, made hotter by the fires have propelled the conflagration further and faster than ever. Reports spoke of fires starting miles from the original fire point as the winds carried more than just embers to catch anything available. Creating firebreaks would take huge resources in terms people and machinery and it is almost certainly too little too late however much our limited resources could deliver. There are still nearly three months of the risk season still to run.

The problem of strange vested interests preventing the right things may have played a part, just as it has in preventing flood management in this country. If it can be shown that daftness via ignorant ‘green’ practises of land and scrub management played a part, strong action could be warranted, but the horse has gone, probably incinerated to death and the stables are burnt down. Even the scrub and detritus has now been consumed.

Returning to the original post, thank you RSB, you asked what we could do to help. Sadly, at this distance and at this late stage I cannot see what practical assistance could be offered. We no longer have skills to offer for rebuilding, we do have surplus grenwash lobbyists, but they are no use to anyone. Moral encouragement, which in practise means no more than honey coated words is about all we can do.

As for not chasing trump’s coat tail. The PM has refrained from support, though how to deal with the mad mullahs remains a thorny question. Appeasement has been as successful as it always is, i.e. a total failure as Iran has sought to smear its loathsome version of Shia practises to counter those equally unpleasant ones of the Sunni sphere. Sadly, I see little chance of change, verily it is Shia agony on the Sunni side of the street. Containing that is not going to be easy, too many have been born into and nurtured on hate.

[Richard]

There is another problem, domestic systems cannot supply the grid during power outages, due to the risk to line workers and others. This is one of the reasons they are line synchronised, if the synchronising source is lost, the domestic system should shut off, meaning that the home is in darkness. It is possible, but can be difficult and expensive to have a main supply isolated domestic set up as building control and the area supply authority area must agree. I understand that a few isolation systems have been approved for some distribution zones when they are supplied and installed by approved companies.

Portable generators can be used but not as part of the building wiring. Even using low voltage lighting from a battery supply can become challenging to approve if it is part of the domestic building wiring. The difference between ‘building wiring’ and standby systems can become subject to tedious discussions if it looks slightly ‘installed’. Several people I know still carry the scars from their battles to get approved systems.

[Richard]

Stored water is useful, the UK have had one or two schemes for years, but one should question the comparative efficiencies of different systems. Any efficiency comparison must take account of their space requirements and what might be termed their opportunity costs. I am disappointed that for a small, but quite damp land we fail to capture more of the potential tiny hydro schemes. They might only serve a couple of properties, but the total contribution of many small scale schemes is worthy of consideration. They tend to provide more stable output with fewer short-term variations. Coupling such ideas with better flood management schemes requires rather more joined-up thinking than is usual. However, it could offer a financial return on the flood prevention investment deployed.

Battery storage does offer one potential advantage in that it provides a sink load when production is high but demand is weak, a problem that is feared by many distribution organisations. However, batteries can only take so much load and only if they are already partially discharged. (The Germans have faced a situation of either considering paying people to use excess power or already doing so when peak output ran embarrassingly ahead of demands. I cannot now remember the exact details.) Spain has limits on domestic solar installations because of fears about the impact on their distribution network. Load management is a fiendishly complicated issue with different loads and power sources. Each has their own complex characteristics, make a mismatch and pay the price with an outage. Some have proposed hydrogen storage as yet another alternative ‘load’ and Toyota are currently going for hydrogen schemes as a research and feasibility study.

Dealing with waste in the most environmentally valuable way is another area of concern. While pure, (OK impure if you prefer the term) incineration does clear biohazardous waste, the concerns about resultant effluent can be an issue. Chemical digestion to produce harvestable and gas could be an alternative. Some sewage works have done so for years offsetting their power requirements by on site power and heat generation.

In short, we need to stop thinking in silo fiefdoms, with all the ‘my-silo is better than-your-silo’ claims that it entails. There is no one answer, the solution is an evolving mosaic of solutions.

 

[Richard]

Bob, I have no doubt that the effectiveness of both wind turbines and solar panels are being improved as time passes. Your statement confirmed that production varies considerably. Some wind driven devices do even have to be stowed during adverse weather. The ideal situation is one where conditions show the least variation couple with tolerant devices able to adapt to the widest range of conditions. Ideally a robust storage system would absorb excess production during high output periods to load top periods of less favourable conditions. Like wise as you said not all solar systems are created equal, some have poor conversion factors compared to the very best. All systems I have heard discussed tend to lose a small amount of their capability each year, this is usually allowed for in the quoted output figures. Sadly when sun energy falls lower, so does the solar system output. In a tiny but related example, I have spent today recharging solar lights, they had enough light energy to recognise that light existed, but not enough to charge them to run for more than a few minutes at night. Once recharged they will give about 10 nights of operation. I know that the solar cells in question are largely dodgy, low efficiency rejects  produced only to mop of what would otherwise be waste.

I am not saying that the whole idea is bunkum, it is clearly not, problems exist to be solved and the wit of the human has to find ways to respond. The big outage last year showed how vulnerable the distribution system is to out of specification events, e.g critically excessive failures of both spinning and non-spinning systems. That was considerable worsened by out of specification trains that needed a roving engineer complete with laptop to restart them. They failed when power issues fell within the specified range but the trains did not meet the specification, oops.

The fact that named international backsliders exist, should not stop others from putting in the grunt to move forward. But it is a pipe dream to imagine that all can be or will be fixed within impossible time frames. It will take a range of solutions to a range of different problems, the challenge is developing and matching solutions to the specific problems

[Richard]

Yes Drezha, that was pretty much my point of view. If, and today it remains a big if, she does get to do what she thinks she wants there is a lot of other organising that needs to be done. Part of that work is finding out exactly what the place’s own thoughts are on the need for special tools. Graphical work tools are well outside her needs, it will mainly be research and writing. She already has strong thoughts on the absence of value in ‘Bing’, they are not positive! Her thoughts are it could find anything useful if it had a crowd of helpers. I am keen that she rushes slowly, anything necessary could be ordered within a day or so. However, defining necessary is the tricky part.

[Author]

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