My Heart Bleeds

Australia beat Wales 20-19 in the Third Test held in Sydney to complete a three match whitewash on the current tour sending them homeward to think again.

Alenia C-27J Wins Australian Airlift Contest

It’s been a long time coming but at last we know what the incomparable Caribou replacement will be.

And I heartily approve, believing from the word go that the Spartan would be the right choice.

But it still can’t do what the ‘bou ‘bou would do as the first aircrew to try and land it on an unprepared rising strip in the3 New Guinea Highlands will discover!

The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) chose the Alenia C-27J Spartan to replace a fleet of 14 DHC-4 Caribou STOL airlifters that have already been retired. The 10-aircraft deal will be conducted via the U.S. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system, with L-3 acting as the prime contractor. Alenia and L-3 formed a partnership to sell the C-27J to the U.S. armed forces. The RAAF also evaluated the EADS CN-295 for the Air 8000 requirement.

The contract is worth about $1 billion, including support equipment and several years of training and logistics support. According to the Pentagon’s notice of potential sale, the aircraft will be equipped with a full U.S.-made electronic warfare suite. The notice added that the C-27Js will also help replace 12 C-130H airlifters that the RAAF plans to retire. The first C-27J will be delivered in 2015, with initial operating capability to follow by the end of 2016.

Alenia said that the aircraft will be new-build, thereby safeguarding the workforce in Italy. There had been speculation that the RAAF would be offered C-27Js being built for, or already flying with, the U.S. Air Force. That service decided last January to withdraw its fleet of C-27Js as a budget-cutting measure, having already received 13 of a planned total of 38. The decision has been challenged in Congress, and might be overturned.

May 11, 2012, 2:03 PM

Alenia C-27J Wins Australian Airlift Contest
Chris Pocock
Fri, 11 May 2012 15:10:00 GMT

The Tough One for the Big Country

Toyota have just released a version of the the legendary Land Cruiser just for Australia.  The Big Country is harsh and unforgiving.  Only the strongest survive.  Range Rovers, Discoverys and Mercedes Benz G-Wagens wilt and die as the Outback pounds them into submission, breaking their suspensions and ruining their power trains.  90% of 4WDs in the Outback are Toyota Land Cruisers!  And for good reason….they are just about the toughest thing this side of an Abrams MBT.

The Land Cruiser GX is specially built for Oz.  This is not the Land Cruiser of Surrey and Bridge of Allan providing Young Mothers with the idiotic notion that their darling kiddies will be safer in a big vehicle on their half mile trip to school.

No this is a real Land Cruiser with vinyl mats, vertically hinged rear doors and a snorkel designed to go where none can go.  This is a tough mutha for a tough country

Melbourne

This is why Melbourne is the World’s Most Liveable City…

All things Must Pass

Time for a change.  Black is boring.  And for you Holden lovers this is what an FJ (my first car in Melbourne, the World’s Most Liveable City) would look like if it were built today.  Please GM, pretty please….

A Bad Sport Week

 

It’s been a very bad week in sport for me.  Australia got dumped out of the Cricket World Cup (Ponting and the team must die), Mark Webber didn’t win the Aussie Grand Prix at Albert Park and today Wasps were unceremoniously beaten 39-3 by Northampton Saints.

The only ray of sunshine was Australia topping the medal table in the World Track Cycling Championship and particularly Anna Meares showing Victoria Pendleton how it’s done by winning three Golds.

Final score Australia 8 Golds, UK 1 Gold.  A harbinger of London 2012?  Let’s hope so.

When the War is Over...

Australia is doing its best to tidy up all the loose ends of the Vietnam War which still exercise and distress people.  The remains of the crew of a Canberra bomber shot down near the Laotian border (but in Vietnam) 39 years ago have been located and are to be repatriated back to Australia.


But there are still some frayed ends: for example the civilian medical staff who served in field hospitals etc. alongside their enlisted mates but have never been classified as war veterans and so are not entitled to receive benefits.  I hope that their case is successful and that the Aussie spirit of a fair go prevails.