radioman

Do you think the initials give it away? If the poster is truly female I'd hazard not Thai, the English is too good I'd say, even for a former Flash pupil probably. As to the poster being male or female seems of less import. Thailand it seems is where any boy can be a girl with no difficulty and so far as I know it's not on the list of reserved occupations!

As is the way of these things he may well not disappear and could well find himself elevated by his selfless action. After a suitable period of reflection he may well resurface. People who act in this way, unlike those who resign for more 'personal' reasons, and even sometimes those as well, often do.

Denny's moved into one of the Holiday Inn places but I've not been yet and will not get a chance for about a month.

It happens in the UK, usually only after some bizarre scandal or another, Profumo et-al. Though PM Macmillan resigned on health grounds the consensus seems to be that the Profumo affair played a large part in it.

The King was colour blind, all the hats were red.

There was some survey I read about global taxi prices somewhere, think Thailand came out as one of the cheapest and with flagfall at barely US$1 seems crazy to me. I would happily support a 60-90 Baht (US$2-3) flagfall charge. At least it might encourage some drivers to make some of the less appealing journeys they always seem to want to refuse now.

Wrong Email A Minnesota couple decided to vacation to Florida during the winter. They planned to stay at the very same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years earlier. Because of hectic schedules, it was difficult to coordinate their travel schedules. So, the husband left Minnesota and flew to Florida on Thursday. His wife would fly down the following day. The husband checked into the hotel. There was a computer in his room, so he decided to send an e-mail to his wife. However, he accidentally left out one letter in her e-mail address, and without realizing his error, he sent the e-mail. Meanwhile.....somewhere in Houston, a widow had just returned home from her husband's funeral. He was a minister of many years who was called home to glory following a sudden heart attack. The widow decided to check her e-mail, expecting messages from relatives and friends. After reading the first message, she fainted. The widow's son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and saw the computer screen which read: To: My Loving Wife Subject: I've Arrived Date: 16 May 2003 I know you're surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now and you are allowed to send e-mails to your loved ones. I've just arrived and have been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then! Hope your journey is not as uneventful as mine was. P.S. Sure is hot down here!

Peaches Geldof, age 25. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-26931337

It's usually recorded. RTAF has on site recorders that record all voice and radar plot data, they might also do screen recording. All the radars are connected to the SOC's, one in Surat the other in BKK (actually think there is another in CM or Udon but not sure). The traffic can be seen on overall displays so controllers in the SOC's can see what's going on from all radars fed in to the SOC on a common display. All this traffic is recorded at the SOC as well. The southernmost primary radars, that I know about, are at Hat Yai, civil and military but given they are referring to one in Surat Thani I'm guessing the Hat Yai radars were off, not at all uncommon in Thailand. The radar plot data is easily transferred, usually on a 9600 baud leased line modem connection. There's not a lot of data to transfer just updating the individual targets as they transit the coverage area.

I'm amazed they would have radar on at that time of day, all the ones I've ever been at they always shut down after 4pm. Nakhon Si Thammarat is about the most southerly part of Surat Thani. 200 nautical miles, about the maximum for a radar that RTAF has will see, is just about over Penang but to see at that range would need the plane to be at 26000 feet or more. So not impossible, but it's still a bloody mystery either way.

I'll bet the script for this one is well in the writing.

Thanks folks. Certainly from the website the impression would be this is more than some dodgy "International" fly by night outfit and they ofer minimum 2 year contracts which I guess cuts some of the potential for losing out with the 90 day visa scam. Good point Mekong, I can imagine it coming as quite a shock to some when Thailand starts filling up with a great number of neighbouring nationals. Then again I can quite imagine Thailand coming up with some bizarre hurdles designed to frustrate many job seekers. Will the restricted work list prevail? It might well see some significant additions. From all I know, very little admittedly, it seems Thai teaching salaries outstrip those in the PI about 3:1.

Thanks guys. we're checking it out a bit more and she's waiting on an email to explain the working week and a few other details before she sends her documents. I would presume a place like this plays straight with the visa and work permit needs so probably nothing to be concerned about on that score.

The supplied info also stated 2 months paid leave and the bit that had us scratching our heads and wondering, that the school week is Sunday to Thursday. That's just really strange for Thailand, outside of maybe Pattani I guess.

Thanks FM. Maybe the Singalore embassy would be the place to start. They've got quite a website http://www.anglosingapore.ac.th/ Google suggests they are quite an operation. It seems their target is mostly Singaporean expats, are there that many?

Anyone know anything about this place? A friend has a potential position offer there as a PhysEd and swimming teacher. Their request for documents indicates a starting salary of US$4500/month plus accom. 2 year renewable contract. She is from P.I. but has previously worked in Hong Kong and a couple of middle east countries. She is both properly qualified, not just from P.I., and also experienced in her job. I'm not aware of any scam involving offering teachers jobs but hey, TIT right. Anything to be querying the school about? Cheers

Wonder what it says in their "book" about flying. Doubt it's allowed.

Turning off the transponders kills the secondary radar that depends on returns from a ground interrogation. Primary radar works on reflections off the aircraft skin so it's a bit hard to avoid detection. Assuming of course a working primary radar in the flight path. Can't speak for Vietnam or Cambodia but in Thailand and Malaysia their blanket coverage is in reality full of holes either from questionable maintenance or simply switching them off to avoid paying the utility bill (Thai Air Force standard op procedure shuts down the long range defence radars outside of 9am to 4pm). Whilst in theory it's hard to hide from a good primary radar, and Malaysia and Thailand certainly have some good kit well located, it would be much harder to run away from the fact that the only reason it's not on radar is cos the radars were off.

If it was a terrorist act, still an IF, those who need to know it was already know. Bringing it to a wider audience would probably just make them look bad. Was the Kunming event claimed by the Uighers? The mobile phone thing happens often enough to be hardly a concern. Phone on another network gets disconnected but not registered on another network. Calls to the phone get a ring signal before the network figures it's gone, then it cuts off or goes to unreachable. Some news now that the plane turned back. Maybe suffered a complete comms loss electrical failure. That could have ended in a sea ditching but there will be fairly good indications of where from the radar data.

I hadn't realised the Uigher are also islamites but it sort of makes sense, in a way, I guess. If anything this reinforces my view that the likely cause of the MH370 disappearance has as much to do with domestic Chinese matters and Xinjiang separatists as anything else.

I think it would be hard to make a clear call on what happened with all that's in the public domain so far. For sure there is a lot more known than has been published to date. What I find interesting in this particular case is given the number of Chinese nationals on board, given Beijing was the destination and given the flight was a code share with China Southern the deafening silence almost from the Chinese authorities on this matter. We tend to think of suicide activisits as Mohamedans mostly perhaps from their being hoodwinked into a belief of martydom resulting from suicide in the name of their cause. Self immolation in Chinese annexes is not unknown though and the recent knife/sword attack at Kunmings railway station suggests a growing interest in expanding the disputes of people from Tibet and Xinjiang. Were this any sort of terror attack, and that's still very much an if right now, then I would have to think this has more to do with bringing domestic Chinese politics into the international discussion space rather than any simple religous nutjob event.

BBC saying both an Italian and an Austrian listed as being on the flight were not. Both reported passports stolen.

ATC will know what happened, though they likely are not saying as yet. In a hijacking the pilot would set the transponder code to report that or if the hijackers are sufficiently plane aware, thing 9-11, then they will simply switch it off. That drops it off the secondary surveillance radar but it will still show up on a primary radar. If a major malfunction occurred at 30000 feet or more then there would have been time for some sort of message to ATC, 200nm is no problem for an aircraft at that sort of height on VHF. My guess would be it either exploded or disintegrated in some big way. With the recent mass stabbings in Kunming and this being a flight of primarily Chinese the terror angle is a big possibility.

Apart from an early test at about age 14 I've never used a straight key, only an iambic paddle, and never a bug! Recall I had some code somewhere that would read transitions on one of the USB pins and generate both code and text. Sadly I had a friend who some years ago suffered a heart attack with significant brain damage. Since he was a long time code guy we figured we might get some reaction, sadly his almost vegetative state took even that capability away. Anywayyyyyyyy, all this gets away from it. THIS IS THE JOKE THREAD. Somebody tell some funnies.

Would be more like: . -. - . .-. .... . .-. . Ha, I can send and copy at 25wpm+ but writing it is painful!