Saturday, 30 August 2025

Signal Complexities!

 There is more to Train Driving?

Understanding your road (Track) is only the beginning of a more complex observation and trust in the signal control centers is the start of being a driver, wither passenger, underground or freight!

The driver must be watching and have good eyesight to obstacles on the road, from engineering workers, to the public and criminal activity, while speeds must be kept to, there are changes at times that have to be heeded?

On the Tube, Metro, Underground there may be slightly different rules, but crossing tracks is out of the control of the drivers and today much of it is in the hands of automation and now A.I. and in the near future more driver less trains will be in service all over the place!

Automation came in because of human error, due to being slack, lazy, but more likely tiredness and the actions leading to serious accidents from the introduction of railways and the underground?

Water Sports!

 Not near the Sea?

Since many people do not live near the sea, they have to find a alternative such as rivers, lakes and reservoirs that are the next best thing for small dinghies, water boarding and canoeing many other types and they are very popular!, 

Perhaps because in some cases they are safer, but on lakes and rivers currents do remain a danger to paddle boards and rafters, even in controlled environments, when errors of judgement are made?

Jet skiing and many motors sports can be done on a lake are worth the practice before doing on the sea and that applies to all the above since the sea is unpredictable than being flat calm in some cases!

Saturday, 2 August 2025

Helicopters SAR and Civil!

 Search and Rescue and Civilian Usage?

Many helicopters most people think are for rich people who want privacy in travel, but they are wrong since many are used to ferry workers to our oil and gas rigs in the north sea and from time to time island communities in Scotland and the Scilley off Cornwall, Rathlin off N-Ireland and many other places to!

Helicopters are now common as air ambulances, saving may lives and transporting sick people over great distance from hospital to hospital apart of traffic and work incidents? 

Small types to large ones are employed in these essential roles in our modern world, getting over mountains and water are some of the key aspects of their roles!

Others are used by the national grid in relations to getting engineers to remote places to repair power lines after storms and bad weather, if not civil disturbances and deliberate acts of vandalism

 Meanwhile many are being replaced in some areas of work by drones, that are cheaper and can go places helicopters cannot, but they will also provide services in cities to move donor/ harvesting materials, blood samples and other, which cuts out getting stuck in traffic?

Other machines provide a taxi services for racing jockeys and moving materials that may be urgent for one reason or another and they also come in varied sizes!

The most common types in the U.K. Are the Airbus H135/145, Bell 207, Leonardo A189, 109, 139 and others in the family, the Airbus H225 is mostly deployed to gas and oil rigs and fitted out for 30-+, while the Sikorsky S-76 is the most popular air taxi and the S-92 for search and rescue?