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I got this for Xmas about the same time, along with a Radioshack 150 in 1 electronic project kit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_%28game%29 http://i.imgur.com/lPa6tJU.jpg
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Jul 8, 2013 00:13
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Retarded Pimp posted:I got this for Xmas about the same time, along with a Radioshack 150 in 1 electronic project kit. Wow, I found one of these at my grandparent's house when I was a kid and had no idea what it was. Now I do.
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Jul 8, 2013 00:31
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Crap British planes reminds me of the Vickers Type 161: This was built in 1931, with guns that pointed upwards so that the plane could attack enemy airplanes or airships from below. It was also a push-prop design, a biplane, had a really weird engine configuration and was 15 years behind the times in general.
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Jul 8, 2013 04:13
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Someone in the 90's thread posted this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t_jNV-K5zw In Australia we had the same, but with credit cards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlHsh2L8jKU They were phased out recently when 7-11 brought out Mobil's outlets. There was a host of other issues like low sales at stores or the fact there wasn't any sign system on credit cards so people could rock up with stolen cards and go wild.
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Jul 9, 2013 04:17
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WebDog posted:In Australia we had the same, but with credit cards. Mobil here in NZ had the same setup, although it also accept EFTPOS since that's basically the default payment system here instead of cash and has been for as long as I can remember. The biggest problem it seems to face here was that it was HORRIBLY unreliable, as in it refused to even read your card something like 90% of the times I ever tried it. That, and fuel stations don't make any money on fuel and actively encourage you to come into the store and buy their overpriced junk food anyway. All got ripped out probably 8 or 10 years ago as far as I can remember.
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Jul 9, 2013 04:43
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WebDog posted:In Australia we had the same, but with credit cards. As far as I know, most gas stations in the US have these, and of course stolen credit cards are a problem with them. It's just part of the current continuing trend of trading security for convenience. Edit: The Speedpass had the potential to be even worse, as you don't even need the card in hand, just the key chain.
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Jul 9, 2013 04:43
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Speedpass loving rocked before there were CC readers in every pump.
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Jul 9, 2013 06:40
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From a few pages back:Axeman Jim posted:The biggest need for new trains was in the London area, where some of the stock had passed half a century in service and was literally falling to pieces. It all was also completely in violation of modern safety and disabled access requirements. I remember riding in these up until a couple of years ago  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_DM_class_electric_multiple_unit Definitely not a failure as they were in service so long, but they were in a pretty grim state even by the early 90s when I first started catching the train. Obviously absolutely no regard for health and safety and nothing in the way of disabled access. --- These things also stayed in service well after they should have been replaced  Nothing like waiting for the bus driver to reconnect the overhead wires when you're running late for work.
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Jul 9, 2013 12:40
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dissss posted:These things also stayed in service well after they should have been replaced Trolleybuses still function in my city and they totally own, dewiring happens incredibly rarely. Also they are more comfortable than normal buses
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Jul 9, 2013 12:55
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Inspector_71 posted:Speedpass loving rocked before there were CC readers in every pump. It's still around https://www.speedpass.com/ And it's definitely not an obsolete technology, it's one of the first consumer-level examples of RFID tags and those things are everywhere.
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Jul 9, 2013 15:44
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WebDog posted:
We have the same thing in the UK. Stolen cards are only good if you have the owners pin though.
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Jul 9, 2013 16:54
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If we're talking weird old airplanes that never made it then I want to get into it. I'll start with a classic, the XP-79: This is hallmark Jack Northrop flying wing design at it's weirdest. It was originally intended to fly with a rocket engine than ran off corrosive acid so they protected the pilot by making the airplane structure out of magnesium. During the design phase they did switch back to a couple of turbojets. This airplane was designed to have four .50 caliber machineguns in the wings, but was also intended to ram enemy planes, and survive, the concept was that giving it a tough reinforced leading edge on the wings would enable it to fly right through the wings and tails of other aircraft and shear them off. Oh and for fun the pilot is prone in there. Well he was. In the only test flight of the XP-79B the pilot was killed during a bailout when he was struck by the falling plane.
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Jul 9, 2013 17:11
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theironjef posted:This airplane was designed to have four .50 caliber machineguns in the wings, but was also intended to ram enemy planes, and survive, the concept was that giving it a tough reinforced leading edge on the wings would enable it to fly right through the wings and tails of other aircraft and shear them off. Okay, so for any aviation goons, how plausible is this? It seems like such a magnificently stupid idea that I'm really curious about whether or not it's even vaguely possible that it would ever come even remotely close to working.
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Jul 9, 2013 17:17
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theironjef posted:If we're talking weird old airplanes that never made it then I want to get into it. I'll start with a classic, the XP-79: I'm pretty sure I've seen this plane in tons of sci-fi, all over the place.
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Jul 9, 2013 17:22
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I'm your aviation goon, I'm sitting in my office in an air and space museum this very moment. In the days this airplane was designed, the enemies of the US were still operating large slow bombers, your Junkers 290s and Heinkel 111s and so on. They were not especially fast or dodgy and it would be about as easy to shear off their wing and tail tips as it would be to shoot them. Way more dangerous though which is why this idea died and didn't really come back. ^^^Yeah, sci-fi loves flying wings. And why not, they're proven fliers and they aren't especially popular, plus we had a shining moment of them actually being around in the 50s which was a total melting pot for rad sci-fi ideas. The story of Jack Northrop and his B-35/B-49s is so sad. Especially with the little coda of when the folks building the B-2 showed him an early secret mockup well after he was so old he couldn't talk anymore (he grabbed a sheet of note paper and wrote "I now know why God has kept me alive all these years"). theironjef has a new favorite as of 17:30 on Jul 9, 2013 |
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Jul 9, 2013 17:26
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Wanamingo posted:Okay, so for any aviation goons, how plausible is this? It seems like such a magnificently stupid idea that I'm really curious about whether or not it's even vaguely possible that it would ever come even remotely close to working. Ramming wasn't uncommon during WWII. I don't mean kamikaze attacks, I mean the idea of ramming another plane to bring it down while you survive. The Luftwaffe equipped a squadron late in the war for that specific purpose.
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Jul 9, 2013 17:45
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theironjef posted:This airplane was designed to have four .50 caliber machineguns in the wings, but was also intended to ram enemy planes, and survive, the concept was that giving it a tough reinforced leading edge on the wings would enable it to fly right through the wings and tails of other aircraft and shear them off. That is incredibly badass.  This is the best thread.
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Jul 9, 2013 17:46
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Code Jockey posted:That is incredibly badass. Here ya go! There's a wiki page for everything! Wikipedia posted:
e: Miiight want to take the above quote with a bit of salt.
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Jul 9, 2013 20:07
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Next on the docket: That's the BV 141, a German reconnaissance aircraft that was built and successfully flown, but lost out to the FW 189 for a production contract. It was decidedly stable and offered an incredibly wide field of visibility for the crew. It's not broken, that's the whole airplane. Earlier models had a full tailplane surface but they stripped it down to half to increase visibility a little more.
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Jul 9, 2013 20:48
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theironjef posted:Next on the docket: Jesus, it's like one of those hanging sculptures where the entire thing is stable due to meticulously calculated weight balances but looks decidedly unstable. This is a real wacky plane, is what I'm saying.
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Jul 9, 2013 20:58
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At some point in time I would have read through this entire thread ... but ... since I can't remember, does anyone know if we've had the 'Barcode Battler' yet? That thing was truly completely junk.
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Jul 9, 2013 21:00
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Call Now posted:Trolleybuses still function in my city and they totally own, dewiring happens incredibly rarely. Also they are more comfortable than normal buses Yeah we still have them and I still catch one most mornings they're just newer, bigger models with fancy mod cons like a low floor and cabin heating. They still come off the lines frequently though which I think is a combination of hilly terrain, poor network maintenance and badly trained drivers.
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Jul 9, 2013 21:13
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Phanatic posted:It's still around It seems kind of redundant nowadays. I guess it's handy for parents of teenagers who need to use the car but don't have their own debit/credit card?
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Jul 9, 2013 21:48
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theironjef posted:Next on the docket:  Another aircraft maker from the time I like was Henschel, who in 1941 drew up plans for this neat little push-prop plane, the Henschel P.75:  Now, at this point a few of you may be thinking that you've seen these designs outside of WWII before. You may very well have, if you ever played Crimson Skies:  
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Jul 9, 2013 22:10
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Inspector_71 posted:It seems kind of redundant nowadays. I guess it's handy for parents of teenagers who need to use the car but don't have their own debit/credit card? The point is that it's just hanging off your keychain, you just wave it in front of the pump and it's tied to your card. You don't need to go into your purse or pants, grab your wallet, extract your card, swipe it, take the card out, curse, turn it around, swipe it the correct way, maybe punch in your zip code, and put your card away. Yes, all that's a decidedly first-world problem, but convenience sells.
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Jul 9, 2013 22:21
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Phanatic posted:The point is that it's just hanging off your keychain, you just wave it in front of the pump and it's tied to your card. You don't need to go into your purse or pants, grab your wallet, extract your card, swipe it, take the card out, curse, turn it around, swipe it the correct way, maybe punch in your zip code, and put your card away. Yes, all that's a decidedly first-world problem, but convenience sells. I use the PayPass chip in my credit card to pay for my groceries. Or anywhere else that takes it. I'm a germophobe and I hate touching the PIN pad. It's also a lot faster.
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Jul 9, 2013 22:50
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Obselete Train/Plane chat has been amazing in this thread, but I'm going to take it to a Bus tip: The Saverstrip. Saverstrips were purchased from Newsagents by Mums in West Yorkshire for schoolkids. I've tried Googling it but basically they were limited run cardboard strips you bought for coming/going to school in the late 80s/early 90s. Kept in a vinyl holder, you slotted them into the slot by the driver and got on, with a satisfying 'KER-CHING' noise, that stamped the bus number on it (see above) and clipped a square off the side. The saver bit came from it was always 12 for the price of 10, depending on how far you were going, ranging from 5p a trip upto the high end £1.50 a go (possibly more, mine was always 15p a go) Kind of a proto Oystercard really. I think they became obsolete by 92/93? The buses removed the mechanical payslots and it was all cash from then on, which was obviously a good idea increasing the time for 50-60 kids to get on a bus by x3. An idea ahead of its time but also open to abuse by the fact of Bus Drivers not caring about the kerching ching ching when 30 odd all get at once in the school bus park. Much like Oyster on certain buses in London in fact.  Link to the machines that did them: http://www.ticketmachinewebsite.com/apps/photos/photo?photoid=41334404
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Jul 10, 2013 00:45
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Britain doesn't have schoolbuses? Finally, an area where the US pulls ahead in education unless you live within 2 miles of the school, then your rear end is walkin
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Jul 10, 2013 00:53
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Ofaloaf posted:Blohm & Voss loved the poo poo out of asymmetric designs, most of which were designed by one Dr. Vogt. They also made some other kickin' rad designs which, sadly, never made it off the drawing board, such as the BV 170, a tri-engine plane with a planned bombload of 4400 lbs: Curtis actually built one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XP-55_Ascender  Another oddball, the Flying Pancake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Pancake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vought_V-173.jpg
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Jul 10, 2013 01:07
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A Pinball Wizard posted:Britain doesn't have schoolbuses? A lot of countries don't have school buses, but they tend to have functioning mass transit systems.
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Jul 10, 2013 01:15
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A Pinball Wizard posted:Britain doesn't have schoolbuses? Nope, what you'd get (in my day anyway at Highschool, bear in mind I left 1995) were Public buses at the end of the school day at 2:50pm roll into the drop off point at the front of school, just off a main road, wait for the kids to roll out at 3, get on and go to you nearest stop near home. No such thing as Schoolbus picks you up from outside your house, more carpooling on a morning, walk in, or walk home, depending how far you lived away. Big rear end yellow schoolbuses we saw in films, and then my American Ex-girlfriend taught me what a Shortbus was about 6 years ago. Edit: Clarification Also people got picked up by family, carpooled, lifts home etc. That's my experience, in West Yorkshire. It'll be different for all UK goons up and down the UK. Goldskull has a new favorite as of 01:25 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 01:21
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theironjef posted:^^^Yeah, sci-fi loves flying wings. And why not, they're proven fliers and they aren't especially popular, plus we had a shining moment of them actually being around in the 50s which was a total melting pot for rad sci-fi ideas. The story of Jack Northrop and his B-35/B-49s is so sad. Especially with the little coda of when the folks building the B-2 showed him an early secret mockup well after he was so old he couldn't talk anymore (he grabbed a sheet of note paper and wrote "I now know why God has kept me alive all these years"). A recent flying wing was the McDonnell Douglas A-12 Avenger II, also known as the Flying Dorito:  It was supposed to be a carrier-launched stealth attack plane to replace the A-6 Intruder, but the U.S. Navy hosed up the contracting.
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Jul 10, 2013 01:26
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This used to be an awesome thread. Then train/plane chat took over. Almost as bad as when flag chat takes over the D&D pictures thread.
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Jul 10, 2013 01:36
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^^ Don't forget when the Macro thread goes Latin for a while.Retarded Pimp posted:Curtis actually built one. So did the Japanese in the waning days of WW2- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyushu_J7W 
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Jul 10, 2013 01:41
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Goldskull posted:Obselete Train/Plane chat has been amazing in this thread, but I'm going to take it to a Bus tip: The Saverstrip. Toronto still uses these for GO Transit, or at least they did a few years ago when I was taking it for uni.
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Jul 10, 2013 01:54
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theironjef posted:Next on the docket: This plane was actually the inspiration for this race car:  The guy standing next to it is Smokey Yunick. Story goes, he was a bomber pilot in WWII and had a chance encounter with a BV 141 over Germany one day late in the war. His claim to fame once he became a racing mechanic was his aerodynamic prowess, and in 1964 he built this car after realizing that the design offered less frontal area than a traditional car for drag. Another great feature of the car was based off of the Mosquito and Spitfire rudder design. The gas and brake was one pedal, it went by pressing down and stopped by lifting up. Neither design caught on even though both worked in practice. The car was written off in a crash preparing to qualify for the Indianapolis 500. Smokey himself is a great read for both successful and failed inventions, in addition to his wartime heroics and general status as a legendary crumudgeon. Seizure Meat has a new favorite as of 03:44 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 03:42
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The beasties of Formula 1 F1 in the 70's was a melting pot of ideas as all sorts of exciting technological advances, such as downforce, no longer did cars require bigger engines to go faster, they just used wings to keep the car pressed down onto the road. More with less. Unsurprisingly this resulted in a cut-throat arms race between manufacturers and the ruling bodies of F1 in the two decades to come. The downforce phase generally started in 1969, with delicate fins that made cars resemble creations from the Wright Brothers.  Consequently the idea era took off and so did the tech war between manufacturers as other teams added onto concepts, such as Matra featuring electronically tilting wings that were in tandem with the brake pedal. But these novel devices came at a great risk and the materials of the time just couldn't hold up to the stresses and wings were ordered to be kept low on the body. So a solution was needed to keep the edge. Tyrell P34 Six legs goooood, four legs baaaaad.  The concept wasn't as insane as the shocked gasps from the initial unveiling might have made you think. The idea was that the smaller wheels would reduce weight on the front and allow for more downforce. The car was a surprisingly strong performer, yet only winning once. However issues arose with difficulties in creating the ten-inch tires and subsequent alterations impacted it's performance and so the car was retired. In 1978 something came along that utterly changed everything. The Lotus 78 introduced the concept of ground effect - that is cars were aerodynamically shaped so that the oncoming air pressure would help keep them down, allowing for faster speeds in the corners. Brabham BT46 Something that sucks too well.  The idea of using a fan wasn't entirely new, in 1970 it had been used in the States with the Chaparral 2J "sucker car" - and was banned. In Lotus's interpretation the car's fan was driven by the engine, meaning the faster the car the more it stuck to the track. Despite movable aerodynamic devices being illegal, they snuck around this by claiming the fan cooled the engine (Something the 78 was prone to). They also hid the fan with a dusbin lid. Once the speed kicked in the car would drive as if it was on rails. Niki Lauda discovered that to corner you actually had to go faster as low revs dropped the grip. It also seemed immune to oil slicks. A side effect was the driver would be subjected to high lateral g's leaving them exhausted. While the car won the Swedish GP in 1978, resulting in the only car with a 100% win rate, the outcry from the others teams led to it being banned. Lotus 88 Skirting around the rules. It's 1981. Ground effect was producing immense cornering speeds at the cost of the poor drivers who were suffering from trying to haul cars around tracks while having their bodies melted with G-forces. Teams with less funding were also struggling to cope as being unable to hire wind tunnels their knock off attempts resulted in cars rocking on their suspensions and unpleasant to drive. While regulations were coming in to limit or stop such designs, the pinnacle of this era has to be the Lotus 88.  Sideskirts had been banned in order to keep competitiveness up as cornering speeds were now creating records up to six seconds faster than before. And skirts made of rubber meant in the event of a breech the car would hurtle off the track at enormous speeds. There was also an enforced ground clearance of 6cm so that the vacuum wasn't as intense. Yet the rules only stated the ride hight was only allowed in the pits Gordon Murray from Brabham to develop the BT49C that featured a hydropneumatic suspension that lowered the car at speed. Other teams copied by using a switch. Lotus's solution was to turn the entire car into a ground effect system. To mitigate the driver being crushed to death it featured a twin chassis with the inner holding the cockpit in suspension. It was arguably the most comfortable of all the ground effect era cars to drive. However the 88 never ran as the FIA judged the twin chassis as a movable aerodynamic system and banned it. Williams FW08B Anything you can ban, I can ban better... The late 80's in F1 was marked by shocking crashes that proved cars were becoming too fast for the sake of driver control and crowd safety. However some old ideas came back. Such as Williams revising six wheels.  Flipping the concept tried by Tyrrell and using regular tires, this was the last hurrah in the tech race insanity that drove the ground effect era. Initially created to make the most of ground effect the longer chassis improved the grip to insane levels, the lift to drag ratio was 13:4. The other unintended advantage was that with four wheels at the back, the rearmost tires could be used as slicks when it rained, as the tires in front kept the water off. Despite being immensely heavy it steered rather well and was reported to have incredible traction out of slow corners. The FIA caught wind of this and banned the car outright so it never got beyond the testing stage.
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Jul 10, 2013 06:48
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Goldskull posted:Obselete Train/Plane chat has been amazing in this thread, but I'm going to take it to a Bus tip: The Saverstrip. We still use those (same format, different design/coloring) in Denmark, they've been in use for at least 40 years now. Mostly because they just work. In fact, I've got one right here on my desk at work, for 10 trips between Helsingør and Aarhus. It's a strip of cardboard worth ~$550 and you don't want to cut two squares by accident. No refunds. There is an electronic replacement, similar to the Oyster card. Unfortunately, due to a characteristic Danish insistence on doing everything custom-made our own way (see the posts on the IC4 debacle earlier in the thread), there have been massive issues with it, including such basic ergonomic failures as the check-in and check-out spots being almost indistinguishable from each other. It's so bad that they've had to delay the phasing out of the old punch card system by two years.
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Jul 10, 2013 07:31
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Speaking of weird aircraft, my Dad was an engineer for Avro Canada back in the day. They built this, the VZ-9 Avrocar: It's basically a jet-powered flying saucer meant to work kind of like a helicopter. It didn't work. Dad claimed it was the origin of the Hanger 18 captured UFO mythology, because apparently a local newspaper got pictures of it (it was a classified project at the time).
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Jul 10, 2013 07:48
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leidend posted:My family moved to New Zealand out of fear of nuclear war. It was considered inevitable by a lot of people at the time. This is a very old post to reply to, but, I recently found this while cleaning out our server room:  Wangwriter  We used to have Wangs (well before I started here), and they were all replaced by IBM kit (An AS/400, iSeries, System i, whatever they want to call it currently). We're actually installing a brand new AS/400 with 16 power7+ chips and an all SSD SAN in a couple of weeks. 
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