A Rooten' Tooten'

Wednesday

Allow me.  I'd better explain that, it's a bit of a reach.  So, today is 02/10/2019 - or Day Two of October, pronounced "Too", and that's how today's title came about.  Aren't I clever?
     Okay, now that I've loaded up a pair of photographs ahead of typing this at work - today's bus journey now taking 80 minutes rather than 40 thanks to road-works although the killing rage has started to settle thanks for asking - which I mentioned yesterday, you can see some evidence of my assertion that Popular Mechanics may prove to be a fruitful source of material.  Check out the below -

And also -

     Let's look at the latter in a little more detail. 
     "Army could make body armour based on pearls and LEGO" - come on, how can you not be interested in a topic like that?  I will be clicking on that, believe me.  "Everything Happening at the Area 51 Raid Today" is obviously dated as that was back in September, and we all know how that went - 75 attendees out of three million is pretty pathetic.  "The Government Has Banned Flights Over Area 51" is hardly news, because it's not news, overflights have been banned for decades; face it, do you think the South Canadian Air Force would allow any nosey parker in a plane to sneak over and peek at all their top secret planes of the next generation that will make the F17 look like something Orville Wright dreamed up?*
     The particle beam stuff I mentioned yesterday.

     Now, motley, lets sit down with a pot of tea and some toasted crumpets!

Yum!

      Ah, remember the days when we routinely tormented and tortured the hapless motley?
     Now, on with the show!

You What?
Conrad is unsure exactly how he came upon a Youtube time-lapse video of a couple of nerdy types assembling the Apollo Lunar Lander, except he did.  Art?

The article in question

     If this thing looks complicated and fiddly, that's because it is.  The time lapse of Nerd Number Two whizzed by in mere seconds, yet in real time it took him 2 hours and fifteen minutes to complete.  This is a consequence of it having so many pieces.  If Art can put down his plate of coal -

CAUTION!  Only for nerds with patience
(Also, some people have too much time on their hands)

     As you can see, the level rating for this is "Expert", which I believe follows on from the "Creator" branding, and look how many parts it has - over 1,000 - which also explains the two hours-plus completion time.  And, it you dare to mention the word "hoax" I will send a dose of withering sarcasm down your wifi connection so strong it will uncurl the corkscrews in your cutlery drawer.
     Another question arises in Conrad's fetid mind: what do you do with this thing once you've completed it?  It's a fair size, horizontally and vertically.  Do you let it sit on a shelf amongst all your other Lego Creator stuff?  Because you'll need a lot of large shelves, considering the size of those Star Wars kits -

4,700 pieces and yours for £975

    
Right - NOW For The Polish Tank Destroyer!
Thanks to Tom (the ardent swain of Darling Daughter) about this one.  He initially thought it was the Finns who were plotting mass tank-destruction, then realised it was the Poles and pulled up a picture on his digital devil's device.  Art?

And it was this very picture

     The vehicle is a hybrid of Polish and British, the bang-kill-you-dead bit being the contribution Perfidious Albion made towards it; Javelin anti-tank missiles.  These things have a range of about 5 miles, and you can just let one loose in the general direction of the Ruffians enemy, because they can hunt remotely for tanks.  When the hapless hunk of heavy metal is spotted, the Javelin sneakily goes up and down in a parabolic arc, meaning it will come down vertically on the victim, on the horizontal armour which is always thinnest.  As you can see, the beast above mounts 24 missiles, meaning 24 destroyed tanks as the makers claim a 98% accuracy rate.

Tsar Putin is unhappy.  Bad Poles!  Naughty Poles!

     The article this came from gloatingly described how a couple of these mobile missile mounts could shred an entire Ruffian armoured regiment, and although they didn't add "Tee Hee!" at the end, you could tell that's what they were thinking**.

"Army could make body armour based on pearls and LEGO"
<tries to think of a thin pun involving swine, fails, frowns horribly and scares colleagues>
Okay, I did have a look at this PM article, and bless me, it is interesting. 
     Okay, normal body armour tends to be made of either steel plates, which are very heavy, or Kevlar, which is expensive and no lightweight, either.  Same with helmets.  To make a bulletproof helmet has remained a pipedream since the First Unpleasantness, since it would require metal so thick the wearer would need a neck-brace made out of scaffolding.  Art!  Put that plate of coal down!

The stuff itself

     The 'pearls' bit comes from mimicking the nacre that oysters form when creating pearls, as this stuff is both amazingly strong and lightweight, just the combination you want in body armour.  The 'Lego' bit comes from how the raw material of nacre, calcium carbonate - you might know it better as chalk - is assembled a la the plastic bricks, which is what creates the strength.
     It also has a certain degree of flexibility, which again is what you want in body armour; excessively stiff materials are more likely to fracture under impact and cause an even worse wound than without body armour.

As we remember from yesteryon and the Canuckistanians in Normandy

Finally -
I discovered the reason why my endurance test into work yesterday took so long; at the right moment I happened to be looking out of the window, whereas yesterday I was nose deep in either a Cryptic Crossword or a book.
     Roadworks.  I may be able to get a photograph tomorrow.
     So, roadworks.  A stretch of the A627 of about fifty yards length has been coned-off, creating a single-lane, which, thanks to the sheer volume of traffic into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, has creating a tailback miles long.  Hence the veins in my forehead throbbing dangerously.

<loud swearing>

*  Rhetorical question.  The answer is "No".
**  Tee hee!

What A Blast!

And Then Some
For Your Humble Scribe is once again referring back to "The Guns Of War" by George Blackburn, and the awesome expenditure of ammunition by the gunners of the Canuckistanian (I think I like that name quite as much as "British American" and may alternate between the two, just to confuse you*) 4th Artillery Brigade.
     Here an aside.  At one point in August one of the 25 pounder's NCO's asks an officer to time his crew with a stopwatch: they manage to fire off 17 rounds in a minute, which is faster than most infantrymen could fire a rifle.

Our hero

     Anyway, during the last three weeks of July, the 4th are firing off colossal amounts of shells. Ol' Geo illustrates this by explaining that over 3 weeks  the regiment's guns fire 93,000 rounds, averaging 195 rounds per gun; for three days they averaged 469 rounds per gun, and on July 21st they averaged 1,000 rounds per gun.  That's eleven tons of HE fired per gun.
     Now, you know I loathe Shakespeare with a passion, so I shall invert one of his sayings here and say that all this artillery fire was most certainly not "a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing", because the British American's Intelligence reports, as well as prisoner of war interrogation, showed that even the hardest-bitten SS troopers were getting to dread making an attack on the Allied lines; they knew that the instant they got out of cover they would immediately be shelled (literally) to bits.

Say "Uncle"

     You may not have read my notes about Mike, Uncle and Victor fire calls**.  If a Forward Observation Officer called in a Mike fire plan, all the guns in the division would fire - all 24 of them.  For an Uncle call, all the guns in an Army Corps would fire - over 200 guns.  For a Victor fire plan, everything in range would open up, meaning possibly 800 guns. Under this kind of hell, as the Teuton high command ruefully admitted, any attack mounted would be stopped (again, literally) dead.
     You don't often get any appreciation if you're a gunner, as the impression is of sitting in comfort miles behind the lines, drinking tea and nibbling on biscuits.  Not quite true, and if Ol' Geo heard you say that, he'd skin you.

Aha!  Found the source of the cover illustration on "The Guns of War"
(A SOUTH CANADIAN artillery crew!)

     Now, motley, we are going to go shopping for BOOKS!  Hours and hours roving round bookshops!  What a treat, eh?  Motley?  Why are you weeping?

Apologies To Our Ruffian Friends!
(Both of them)  More about that nuclear cruise missile prototype that exploded in August.  News has slowly - oh so verrrrrry slowly for Tsar Putin does not like to be seen with egg on his chin - emerged that a total of nine people were injured, and nine killed outright when the prototype blew up.  Rosatom, the Ruffian nuclear industry, confirmed that seven of their colleagues were killed when a reactor apparently blew up.  The nine injured are likely to have been seriously irradiated as well, poor devils, and there may be more deaths.
     Popular Mechanics, where I got my update from, also states:  "Rosatom said it was working on a number of experimental technologies, including “miniaturised sources of energy using [fissile] materials,” though a spokesperson did not explain how such research was related to the explosion".

An artist's impression

     Well, let Conrad tell you how that research is related to the explosion.  The Ruffians are trying a modern iteration of that South Canadian nuclear nightmare, SLAM, which was a monster in both senses of the word.  Art?

The engine

     Clearly, this thing was enormous.  The Ruffians are trying to create a workable weapon considerably smaller than the above, which is where Rosatom and it's scientific staff come in.  The South Canadians abandoned SLAM over 50 years ago because of the insurmountable problems it created, so one wonders what on earth Tsar Putin is playing at with this particular project***.  So he can gloat over it when it trundles past him in a Red Square parade?

I was thinking of adding in an item about a Polish tank destroyer, but I think we've had enough of matters martial so far.  Bring on something light and frothy!

First Bus
O the tale of woe.  It continues.  One feels that, were First Bus in charge of Perfidious Albion's war effort in the Second Unpleasantness, we'd have capitulated three days before war was declared.
     Today your humble scribe was standing in Oldham Bus Station, waiting for a bus.  And waiting.  And waiting.  We were already late because football match crowds of passengers were getting on an already crowded (SINGLE DECKER!) bus until it was standing room only, on the way into Oldham.  This is the 409 service we're talking about, "one better than every 10 minutes" lie the posters.

Lies made concrete

     Except whilst I was standing wand aiting for the normally-reliable 83, which showed up 20 minutes late, over the space of 12 minutes there were 4 x 409s.  Obviously at least two of these were late, which was why the single decker had been so rammed.
     Then the traffic into Manchester was awful and a journey that normally takes 35 to 45 minutes took over an hour.
     My plan had been to get into the office for 09:00 and blog away at BOOJUM! for an hour before starting work, but - alas, 'twas not to be.  Hence me typing this at lunchtime.  I hope you feel my pain.
     Okay, it wasn't light or frothy, but it was entertaining for you, watching an old man rant, and cathartic for me, venting my Frothing Nitric Ire

Finally -
I can't load up any photographs from my phone since I am typing this from work, but I think Popular Mechanics may prove to be a fruitful source of material, judging from the fingernail links at the bottom.  "The US has given up on particle beam weapons" is one such example, and I'm glad about that - they had me worried.

Groovy experimental prototype!

*  Don't complain.  It's excellent mental training.
**  If not, WHY NOT!
***  If it works, the South Canadians will promptly copy it.