Triumph

Good job, Roland. How long was it before you got you hearing back? ;-)

Wot Pardon ? The first one went off with a crack (which carried about 50yds) like a 4" shell and smashed one of the bits of timber inserted to slow it down. The second was packed much tighter with half a sleeper but still managed an impressive bang ! ttfn Roland

I was

Gentlemen,

As a slight aside but hopefully just as interesting when my brother and I worked for ABB robotics we were sent to ABB Sweden on a course for the maintenance of the latest 6600 and 7600 Robots.

The axis two pivot pin consisted of a pin approx 100 mm in Dia about 300 long which connects two castings together. To remove this pin from one half required a hydraulic puller of several tons force, in the hundreds, but before the puller could work you had to inject into pockets around the pin Silicon at very high pressures to cause the casting to expand the hole so that the puller could under great pressure remove the pin. Fortunately we only ever did this on the course because if you ever had to part these castings you were in serious Do Do's as one of the castings would be broken and that would be the only reason for parting.

Martin P

Somewhere on the web are pictures of RAF erks taking the (swing) wings off a Tornado, broken down somewhere isolated (Gibraltar ?). To achieve this, the RAF had to fly out a Belfast (biggest transport aircraft they could get!) with a Dewar of liquid nitrogen to shrink the hinge pins. There are some nice pics of huge clouds of condensed water vapour and LN2 boiloff surrounding the wing and the attendant erks.