The German Police Museum in Salzkotten

The oldest exhibit is these three Pickelhauben (=spiked helmets) in a glass case (which made for the lousy reflection). The Pickelhaube was originally designed for the prussian infantry in 1842 by King Frederick William IV of Prussia. English policemen's helmets still bear a decorative symbolic spike even today. 19th century german police wore it too; what is the spike for? To act as a lightning rod? or to be used to headbutt criminals? The curator disliked my sarcasm.

Next up was a set of police manuals and documents dating back to the Hitler era (the two top manuals on the outsides). Center top is a history of the police forces during the post WW2 British Zone occupation. The bottom row contains instructional manuals teaching the policemen how to trace evidence, criminal law etc etc. No politically correct books on manners or civil rights back then ;-)

Another display box showed the ranking insignia worn on uniform lapels. Presumably this is for recognition of rank between policemen; I doubt whether criminals really recognised or even cared about who was arresting them ;-)

Moving forward into the fifties/sixties, a police office scene showed inter alia the police-internal telex device, 5-hole paper tape code-reading tables included. The photo on the right shows the police-phone column placed on street corners, railway stations etc. The Brits had Tardis-like enclosed police boxes, we had these greenish columns. There's a lamp on the top which flashes when there is an incoming phone call. For outgoing emergency calls there is a lever-activated microphone/speaker unit on the front. All this before there were mobile phones of course. The wooden ledge around the column was meant to be used as a desktop by policemen to take notes in their notebooks, but soon was used by local drinkers to rest their glasses & bottles, I was told ;-)

Motorisation included this fifties BMW Isetta, probably incapable of catching anything! Surprisingly, the bicycles were not painted the standard police green.

Other motorisation shown included an MZ 2-stroke motorcycle as used by the East German police, not just behind the Iron Curtain but also along the transit motorways to Berlin from 1960s onward. You had to watch out for these when driving to West Berlin through the GDR.

After the Berlin Wall fell and Germany was reunited, a special government effort was made to boost the economy in eastern Germany and so police forces were made to buy these MZ 4-stroke motorcycles instead of their usual BMW bikes. Mind you, the socalled MZ had a japanese engine, the 660cc Yamaha. Not the fastest bit of kit, the single-disc font brake was less than adequate too ;-)

By far the most interesting (to me) bit of more modern kit in this terrorist age was this remote-controlled robot for inspecting suspect packages, parcels, luggage etc. (see left photo). There is a TV-camera at the top, with a strong light on top for night-time use. There is an arm with a 2-finger grip for taking hold of and carrying the suspect device for removal to somewhere safer, shown here as a wooden briefcase. Surprisingly for me, there was no blast-deflector shield to save the robot from some of any bomb-blast induced damage. The photo on the right shows the operator's trolley : two joysticks, eight unlabelled red buttons, ten numbered switches and a kill-button lower left. The straps let the operator detach the panel from the trolley and carry it (the panel) around on his chest. Sadly, I was not allowed to play with it :-(

A pleasant surprise : I met my old friend Ferdi (79) there whom I hadn't seen for 15+ years, so we retired to the bar to play catch-up :-)

Comments (3)
Cop Car wrote " If you really wonder about the spike atop the Pickelhaube : According to Wikipedia: "The early Russian type (known as "The Helmet of Yaroslav Mudry") was also used by cavalry, which had used the spike as a holder for a horsehair plume in full dress, a practice also followed with some Prussian models (see below)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickelhaube . If you knew that and were just being cheeky, you may safely ignore this email." From which I deduce the horsehair plume may have been dyed a specific colour, so that in a melee the cavalry riders might distinguish friend from foe ???
Cop Car disagrees " I'm not an expert, but I assume that the plumes were used only for dress-up affairs such as riding in review. As a majorette (1949-1953) I wore plumes on my shako that matched the preferred color of the school with whose band I was marching. Our plumes, however, were of feathers rather than of horsehair." Could be.
Henri (F) asks "No uniforms?" I didn't photograph them, but there were lots of uniforms, even a Gestapo uniform. Gestapo is an abbreviation of GEheime STAats POlizei, secret state police. But how could they stay secret if they wore a uniform ? ;-)

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on January 9, 2018 permalink Comments Email

Size Matters?

Blogreader Ed, a man who hails from Texas, picked up on Cop Car's comment ". . . European smart alecks" and sent me this map "... reminding you how tiny and insignificant y'all countries are in Yurp".

So, being "sometimes an arrogant asshole" (in his opinion), I just sent him this pic, quoting his own president, by way of reply ;-)

So does size really matter?

Comments (8)
Piet (NL) counters "Impressive map, Ed, but Texas is quite empty, only 40 people/sq.km. My own country (Netherlands) has 10 times that (~400 ppl/sq.km.)" The places with the highest population densities are the little tax havens : Monaco, Gibraltar, Malta, Guernsey, Jersey, even the Vatican are all denser than Holland. Not sure if the population density of Vatican City really requires double-bunking ;-)
Petra (A) clarifies "Actually, Stu, Trump doesn't have a red button. He and Pence each have an aide carrying a briefcase called the nuclear football. The button is fake news." Yes, Hollywood imagery to imply short response time?. Retaliation before the first strike hits as in the movie The Day After?
Cop Car wrote " I surely hope that Stu and his blog friends realize that for me to call ANYONE a "smart Aleck" is for the pot to be calling the kettle black. Having been born to a family of kidders, I only hope that I don't cross the line from kidding to being disrespectful. Dad will rise up from the grave to smack me should I do that. Pax" Accepted.
Doug (Canada) wrote in reply to Petra debunking the red-button myth "Damn because I thought this was for sure real :) " Heh heh ;-)
Cop Car also sent an empty mail, just with the header " And Texas isn't even the largest state in the USA" But since the body of the mail was empty, ah thort "Ah'll ask her" ;-)
Cop Car replied " Egad! Stu with a Texas drawl. What is the world coming to? The subject said it all, but thanks for checking ;) Alaska is, if I recall (too lazy to Google), about three times the size of Texas. Of course, if we wish to consider population, California comes out the winner. Population density? California isn't even close since it is our third largest state. We all get silly when it comes to "Mine's bigger than yours"! I truly believe that we are all in this world, together! " California densest? No, D.C. is denser (4100/sq.km), California just has 95/sq.km. Alaska has 0.5/sq.km.
Cop Car then replied " I'm laughing, Stu, because I think that syntax got to us. In fact, I meant my words, "Population density? California isn't even close since it is our third largest state. To mean just what you wrote - that California isn't even in the running for most densely populated state, because it is such a large state. Thanks for making it clear to all."
Carol (UK) notes "Recommended reading about population density : Stand on Zanzibar. Good book." Yes, I read it about 50 years ago, when it first came out. Good book indeed :-)

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on January 4, 2018 permalink Comments Email

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Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Poles Apart

This discussion started when I showed some non-pilot friends a fictional instrument approach plate for Santa Claus' airstrip at the North Pole which Earth-Bound Misfit posted on her blog. An astute retired geography teacher expressed doubt, explaining that although the South Pole is on land, the North Pole is on sea ice and thus Santa's airstrip would drift around with the sea-ice and so move away from the North Pole, requiring the airstrip and associated locator beacon (NDB) to be repositioned on a regular basis.

Another lady asked "True north or magnetic north? And how far apart are they? Hence this blogpost by way of illustration. The magnetic north pole moves around quite quickly. The map below shows (as little yellow squares) the measured position of the magnetic north pole over the last century. The landmass at the centre of the bottom of the (90° rotated) map is the coast of Greenland and the landmass taking up all the left side of the map is northern Canada. The green dot centre right indicates the True north pole; the faint grey lines are true meridians. The red line shows the position of the magnetic north pole during the 19th century (using a simulation), the purple line during the 18th century and the blue line during the 17th century. The position of the magnetic north pole depends on the position of the iron core within the Earth's mantle. Currently the magnetic pole is at about 87°N true, so the two poles are about 3° apart.

Not only that, I added, but the True north pole moves around too. The Earth nutates (= the axis wobbles) due to the influence of the moon and planets. The major spectral component of this nutation has a period of 18.6 years, the same as the precession of the moon's orbit. There is a highway in Mexico which documents how the Tropic of Cancer moves with this nutation see here. The nutation is small however, compared with the movement of the Magnetic pole. The largest movement of the fictitious airstrip is due to the drifting of the sea-ice though.

Global warming may soon cause the sea ice at the North pole to melt, so the airstrip will disappear and Santa may drown during his subsequent ditching.

There are neat features on the approach plate too; BOTH runway directions are labelled 36, implying a 360° track and the final approach course is 360° wherever you are coming from, so that statement is practically useless ;-)

Comments (4)
John (UK) asks "And how far north have you been yourself?" Well, I've been passenger on an airliner over a polar route, but that doesn't really count; and anyway, I didn't have a GPS with me :-( On my own two feet I've stood on the North Cape of Norway (that's almost 71° north, like Barrow in Alaska). SWMBO however, has been on an expeditionary ship around Svalbard (Spitzbergen), that's like 80½° north, like Ellesmere Island in Canada. They were counting polar bears and other fauna.
Cop Car wrote " When I was in the US Navy, I heard rumors of a phantom aircraft carrier, one that received no official recognition. My understanding is that it was actually Santa's home base. His workshop and home are there and the runway may be aligned to Santa's needs. Everyone knows that NASA tracks Santa's flight; but, few know of Santa's carrier. Obviously, there is much coordination between NASA and the Navy. (I'm still confused as to who actually runs the carrier: USNavy? NATO? UN? RussianNavy?) P.S. Oops! There I go spilling classified information again." I think you parsed "Phantom aircraft carrier" wrongly; they were referring to the F-4 ; also your claim is incredible : especially the bit about cooperation between the US Navy and anybody else ;-)
Cop Car objected to my sarcastic reply and wrote " Stu, I will smack you down! We US Naval types were always VERY cooperative (please understand that I was merely a reservist - an aircraft tin-bender mechanic). We not only cooperate with other uniformed services but we make it easier for the whole world to cooperate by maintaining the strontium clock at the US Naval Observatory. *wandering off grumbling about those European smart alecks*" That clock? No wonder I got tick-tocked off ;-)
David (NY,NY) tells me "There is a 'North Pole' in NY state too!" Yes, and in Alaska also. Trump's USA is bipolar [eg: "My nuke button is bigger than your nuke button" ] :-(

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on January 2, 2018 permalink Comments Email

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