Reuse
Surely this is just a modern use for the famous Australian Bushwacker?
Snakes on a Plane meets The Simpsons as airline creates ‘whacker’ to scare reptiles away from parked A380s
Australian airline QANTAS has developed a piece of technology dubbed a “wheel whacker” to help stop snakes and scorpions boarding planes it has parked due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Australia’s borders are currently all-but closed and QANTAS has ceased international flights other than government-run repatriation flights that …
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Friday 4th June 2021 08:36 GMT Anonymous Custard
K.I.S.S.
For readers who hoped the wheel whacker was a masterpiece of aerospace engineering and composed of exotic materials, we have bad news: the whackers are just broom handles. Each whacker is, however, labelled with the name of the A380 to which it is dedicated.
You say this like it's a bad thing?
Why go for something highly technical, complicated and expensive when something simple and cheap will do the job just as well, or perhaps even better (or at least more reliably). The age-old K.I.S.S. principle in action...
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Sunday 6th June 2021 14:21 GMT beep54
Re: Call that a snake?
When I visited an uncle in Kansas on his farm, fresh water was somewhat scarce and we had to use the outhouse for doing #2 (we could pee in the toilet all day but it was only flushed just before bed). There was a long stick in the outhouse. I asked what it was for and was told it was to check for snakes in the crapper. Lordy, I HATED using that outhouse.
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Monday 7th June 2021 17:10 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: Call that a snake?
The Stately Manor (which is soon to be someone else's Stately Manor, as Secret Headquarters have been fully relocated to the Mountain Fastness) is situated in an area known informally as the "Bat Capital of Michigan". Large brown bats and small brown bats are very common and will establish colonies in any building they can get into.
The city containing the SM is the county seat, and has a lovely courthouse in the Second Empire / Italianate style in the town square. During the summers discrete signs are posted in its restrooms urging patrons to check for bats clinging to the underside of the toilet seats, lest they1 suffer an unpleasant surprise.
Bats are, I suppose, less distressing than pythons in this particular context. But the rabies rate is around 3% in the brown-bat population, and rabies treatment2 isn't much fun, though I understand it's better than it used to be.
1The patrons, though I suppose the sentiment could be applied to the bats as well.
2Which you'll probably want to get, should you have any reason to suspect you were bitten. Good luck catching the bat that bit you to have it tested.
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Friday 4th June 2021 10:03 GMT Eclectic Man
Re: Australia's thought of that
I was all set to go for a walk, now I'm too scared (I live in Reading, UK, and I'm a WIMP).
When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
(Kipling* - 'The Female of the Species', 2nd verse)
*The writer one, not the one who bakes 'exceedingly good cakes'.
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Saturday 5th June 2021 21:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
A colleague in South Africa was rock climbing. As he levered himself up to a ledge - he came face to face with a Puff Adder. He let go and dropped.
It was said that they also liked to sun themselves on suburban street pavements - and are reluctant to move away. IIRC they are very fast strikers - with a sideways strike.
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Friday 4th June 2021 11:28 GMT Howard Sway
Each whacker is, however, labelled with the name of the A380 to which it is dedicated
Why? Does each plane need a bespoke broom handle design to have it's wheels whacked? Or has someone with far too little work to do thought up a new rule to occupy themselves?
"George! You used the wrong stick AGAIN! This is your final warning!"
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Friday 4th June 2021 16:42 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: Each whacker is, however, labelled with the name of the A380 to which it is dedicated
Because each need to be FAA and EASA certified and so costs $10,000
Its use is documented in a 1000 page binder with monthly service notice updates and another document telling you how to apply the first set of updates..
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Friday 4th June 2021 18:10 GMT Eclectic Man
Re: Each whacker is, however, labelled with the name of the A380 to which it is dedicated
I presume that it is in case one of the whackers goes 'missing', so that the relevant team cannot just acquire another aircraft's whacker. Not that any Australian or USA employee of an Australian airline would behave in such a dastardly manner, of course.
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Monday 7th June 2021 17:10 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: Each whacker is, however, labelled with the name of the A380 to which it is dedicated
It's probably as much to keep them uniformly distributed among the planes as anything else. Otherwise a tech would likely grab one from the first plane they passed by, and then leave it at another plane, and soon the whackers would be unevenly distributed and either you'd have five at your plane or none at all.
Labeling them is an incentive to keep one (or N) at each plane.
Simple human nature.
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Friday 4th June 2021 13:05 GMT disgruntled yank
Love the southwest
Many years ago, my father flew out to southern Arizona for an interview with a mining company. There had recently been a case in the national news of a boy bitten by a brown recluse spider: I think the Air Force may have flown the antivenom from wherever it was to the kid's city. Anyway, poisonous spiders were on my father's mind, and he asked whether this town had problems with brown recluses or black widows. Nah, said the company guy, the scorpions eat them all.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
