LPTP Thread #7 - - and away we go!

Bill592
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I'm back from Mars ) Clue

I'm back from Mars )

Clue #4

Phil
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Also an easy one Bill. You

Also an easy one Bill. You should at least try to challenge me.

Your map of the Melbourne area is the last known flight path of Santa and his sleigh during his last delivery.

Unknown to him, the hydraulic retractor for the tail hook had failed and the tail hook was hanging down ( he DOES deliver to carriers you know.)

During climb out from Asia he had peaked a bit too high and snagged the moon unintentionally causing it to lose enough inertia to go into a decaying orbit. Hence the impending doom of Melbourne.

Phil

Mike Hewson
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Tuesday 12th August 5:39am

Tuesday 12th August 5:39am local time Melbourne (AEST), should be a good show if there are no clouds .... :-)

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Mind you a big block V8 with a blower and nitrous injection is a rather rowdy combo. :-)

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

mikey
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RE: Mind you a big block V8

Quote:
Mind you a big block V8 with a blower and nitrous injection is a rather rowdy combo. :-)

But they SMELL GREAT when they run!!!

Bill592
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Mornin Everyone !LMAO ! Well

Mornin Everyone !
LMAO ! Well Phil, I gotta hand it to ya. Once again, you are close, very close. You seem to have an intuitive 'Knack' for these things ......
However, I must inform you and everyone that Mike has SOLVED this thing !!!
Mike, you are of course correct. I'm marking you down as 2 - Ø in LPTP puzzle solving !
I'll let Mike explain it when he gets around to it. I am too drained, both physically and emotionally )))

Now you have to GET UP early on that day Mike )))

Bill

Quote:

Tuesday 12th August 5:39am local time Melbourne (AEST), should be a good show if there are no clouds .... :-)

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Mind you a big block V8 with a blower and nitrous injection is a rather rowdy combo. :-)


[/b]

Phil
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Back in the 80s I used to

Back in the 80s I used to race my 68 Mustang in the E.T. brackets at Orange County Raceway in California.

Then they started requiring silly things like radiator overflow tanks and driveshaft safety loops. A lot of us quit over that stuff. Now days we wouldn't even THINK of not having them.

A big sigh for the good ol' days.

That was a fun car. I took a $500 beat up old Stang and spent $6000 rebuilding it. Half of that was in the 289 motor. Keep in mind this was 1983 dollars. After installing the Shelby body stiffeners I was able to take 25 mph interstate onramps at 70 mph. Even though I raced at the drag strip it was built for cornering, as more than one Porsche driver found out the hard way.

Alas, I went and got married and the car had to go. Twelve years later after my divorce I thought maybe the car wasn't such a bad deal after all...

Disconnect the exhaust from the headers, change out the jets in the carb for larger ones, fasten your seat belt, and smell the 96 octane (leaded) with a bit of additive coming out of an 11:1 compression motor. Oh Yeah!!!

Phil

Bill592
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Howdy Phil ! and Good (early)

Howdy Phil ! and Good (early) Morning all 04:30AM Local time here.
The 68 and 69 Mustangs were awesome ! I am not a 'Car Guy' I don't live, eat, sleep, breath cars ( I know some that do) but, I do like them.
The fastest thing I ever owned (which was really not all that fast) was an 1985 Iroc Camero (completely stock)
During aaaah 'Testing' on local roads I had it up to about 135mph on a couple of occasions ) That was about as fast as it could go.

Ah Yes, the good ol' days )))

Bill

Quote:

Back in the 80s I used to race my 68 Mustang in the E.T. brackets at Orange County Raceway in California.

A big sigh for the good ol' days.

Disconnect the exhaust from the headers, change out the jets in the carb for larger ones, fasten your seat belt, and smell the 96 octane (leaded) with a bit of additive coming out of an 11:1 compression motor. Oh Yeah!!!

Phil


mikey
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RE: Howdy Phil ! and Good

Quote:

Howdy Phil ! and Good (early) Morning all 04:30AM Local time here.
The 68 and 69 Mustangs were awesome ! I am not a 'Car Guy' I don't live, eat, sleep, breath cars ( I know some that do) but, I do like them.
The fastest thing I ever owned (which was really not all that fast) was an 1985 Iroc Camero (completely stock)
During aaaah 'Testing' on local roads I had it up to about 135mph on a couple of occasions ) That was about as fast as it could go.

Ah Yes, the good ol' days )))

Bill

My good old days were a bit earlier then that, I had a Fiat X19, a mid engined sports car with a small 4 cylinder engine in it. I got to 'testing' it one night on the then pitch black roads near Norfolk Navy Base and got it up to 110mph with the headlights down, but it would drop to only 105mph with the headlights up. They were pop up headlights and the Chevelle with the big V-8 couldn't, or wouldn't go faster then about 107mph, so I would pass him with the headlights down to the point where I couldn't see the road anymore, pop up my headlights, let him pass me and do it all over again, we did that for more then 20 miles!! Then we made the turn onto Va Beach Blvd, along the water, and he turned into a neighborhood, I kept going, MUCH slower of course, and got busted for doing 35mph in a 25mph zone, I was PI$$ED!!! BUT later on I was thankful the cop caught me when he did and not a few miles earlier.

MUCH later on I bought a '41 Willys Jeep and mostly rebuilt it in my spare time. I put 5:38 gears front and rear and it would go anywhere and do anything, except go thru water over it's hood! It also had a 4 cylinder engine in it but it would do about 70mph on the hi-way and climb near 45 degree hills with no problem. It had no top so got REAL cold in the winter time, a friend of mine was rebuilding his Chevelle and wanted a bigger fuel pump, so he gave me his old 4gph electric fuel pump and I put in my Jeep. I wired it thru a coke machine type security switch and when I turned the switch no power went to the fuel pump. I put the key switch in the fender so it looked like a security system, at the time, so few people messed with it. People are more aware now and it was in fact pretty lame, but it worked!

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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OK, here's the trick :-)

OK, here's the trick :-) :

Well it will be the International Space Station passing over Melbourne tomorrow morning, which fits the clues. Magnitude is brightness as we perceive, the more positive is the dimmer and the more negative the brighter. The Sun is at ~ -27, the Moon ( full ) is at ~ -13, the brightest star other than the Sun is Sirius at ~ -1.5. So the clue ' Magnitude (minus)-3.1 Est.' ie. -3.1 is between Sirius and a dull Moon.

Now the diagram is the clincher. It indicates a start and a finish of something along a path ( so that's the 'median' bit ), the key here being the curve's shape becomes less straight to the southeast of Melbourne, and trending northwards. This is the typical path of a satellite when plotted on planar projection ( map ), if it has the typical inclined orbit to progressively view all of the Earth's surface as the orbits proceed. That's a short jump to thinking of the ISS which can be quite bright, but only as an estimate that crucially depends upon the momentary orientation of it's large solar array collector arms - which make up most of the reflecting surface.

Hence you go to Spot The Station and find the nearest match for NW to SE passage !

Now interestingly they also quote the re-supply vehicle ATV5 ( ie. Ariane 5 ) for the ISS as well. This makes perfect sense as that is going to be scooting along the same general orbit in order to gently close range and finally dock with the ISS. That was my alternate guess ..... but I was otherwise entertained by looking up all sorts of occultations of planets with the Moon in the near future, nothing fitted however.

.... and I do fail on the 'Werewolves of September'. That's probably a red-herring to throw me off the trail. :-)

I will seriously make an attempt to consider the possibility of contemplating getting up at 5:30am to look at it. What ???

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) BTW : you don't see the ISS simply because it is there overhead of you at some time, but also because the angles b/w the ISS and the Sun, and the ISS and you are about equal for the majority of the reflecting surfaces. So for Earthbound humans that means around the times of local sunrise and sunset.

NB : long before the absolute scale of the solar system was known to a reasonable degree, it was the timings of events that governed the study of solar system orbits. Occultation refers to one object covering another to our view and so - assuming straight line travel of light rays - serves to indicate moments when things line up. That could be predicted from whatever model of motion you had, and at least as precise as you could measure time on the day. Today this culminates in the high grade timing measurements of binary pulsar systems where the blocking of one component's radiation by the other is an excellent input into the modeling of those systems ie. testing general relativity.

( edit ) Oh, I am not a 'car guy' either. I just watch. Much safer! Next month is our Sandown 500 which we attend regularly. Firstly it's the sound which all rev-heads love. Then there is the feeling, in this case the vibration in belly as the beasts tear past. And of course the smell which is usually an 85 octane ethanol combo. Yeah, deep sniff that one trackside. Finally there's the conquest/tribal/domination thing, right ? :-) :-)

Our fave spot is the last chicane b/4 the main straight. A classic passing opportunity and thus much argy-bargy and failure there-of. Don't be a racer, be the panel beater. :-)

Well I say panel beater, but most teams just bolt on a new one. There is actually a hot market for bashed panels from the more famous drivers and teams : two years ago I could have bought Craig Lownde's crinkled engine bay hood for about ~ $1K AUD. Mount it on the living room wall perhaps ?

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Bill592
Bill592
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Howdy Everyone ! Mike, nice

Howdy Everyone !
Mike, nice job on figuring that out ! (I'm not surprised )
The intent of my admittedly lame riddle was that the thread would end at the 'midpoint' of two events. 1. The Aug 12th overflight of the space station over Melbourne and, 2. The full moon on Sept 9th (hence the werewolves of Sept. bit )
Close Enough ! This thread will end on or about August 26th )
I used this ISS Tracking site to copy that map and find the estimated magnitude. If you want to try and spot the space station in your area, just type in your location and the site will display the times it can be seen and, what direction to look.
I first spotted the space station a couple of years ago (purely by chance) I looked up and saw an object brighter than Jupiter crossing the sky and thought, "What the H is that ?" It looks quite impressive !

Bill

(edit) If that link doesn't work - copy and paste this

http://iss.astroviewer.net/observation.php

Quote:

OK, here's the trick :-) :

Well it will be the International Space Station passing over Melbourne tomorrow morning, which fits the clues. Magnitude is brightness as we perceive, the more positive is the dimmer and the more negative the brighter. The Sun is at ~ -27, the Moon ( full ) is at ~ -13, the brightest star other than the Sun is Sirius at ~ -1.5. So the clue ' Magnitude (minus)-3.1 Est.' ie. -3.1 is between Sirius and a dull Moon.

I will seriously make an attempt to consider the possibility of contemplating getting up at 5:30am to look at it. What ???

Cheers, Mike.

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