Unthreaded
Make that IL-76

Hi Robin
This my favourite IL-78 take-off video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JemlhkWUzfo

Mike: the transport aircraft supporting the Solar Impulse is an Ilyushin 76. Here's a video of its takeoff: LINK. Now that's what I call environmentally friendly. Says a lot about solar power.

HaroldW
Thanks. Very interesting tactics. The aeroplane has been maintaining 8,000 feet for some time now so I am not sure that I understand the "avoiding front" explanation they have made. It seems to me that rather than making the case for renewable power, this flight, however heroic, actually makes it clear that solar power is useless for commercial aeroplanes. Solar Impulse has a massive support operation including a large jet transport. Even then it can only carry one rich man without his luggage across the ocean. In the Duxford museum there is (or certainly used to be) a Vickers Super VC10, formerly owned by BOAC, which almost 50 years ago regularly carried 150 or so passengers and 10 crew across the Pacific with their luggage. Solar Impulse, progress? I think not.

Connie St Louis, the lecturer in science journalism who stirred up the twitter storm that led to the forced resignation of Nobel Prize winner Sir Tim Hunt, and who is herself at the centre of controversy over dubious claims in her CV, has in the past written about man-made climate change and how belief it is being damaged.
http://conniestlouis.com/2011/06/28/in-media-res/
In the US, this is the result of clear political and quasi-religious propaganda from the likes of oil company lobbyists, Fox News, and Glenn Beck, and in the UK from James Delingpole and Lord Nigel Lawson.
It is time for everyone who supports academic freedom and freedom of speech and who deplores PC witch-hunts to sign the online petition calling for Sir Tim Hunt's reinstatement.
https://www.change.org/p/university-college-london-reinstate-tim-hunt-2

Mike Post --
Your guess is correct. A team member posted "Solar Impulse is not flying west. It turned around but is not going further. We are in a holding, waiting to cross a front! "

I have just been looking at the Solar Impulse website. According to the "controls" page, it is heading about 280 degrees (not sure if magnetic or true). Is there an explanation for this? Avoiding weather perhaps?

@Phillip Bratby
there's quite an incestuous cluster of planning functionaries in the Temple Area of Bristol cheek by jowl with literally dozens of planning lawyers. who are presently gorging on literally billions in government officials screw-ups and eco-subsidy.
Palatial offices aplenty and as we have found an ingrained culture of back scratching.

This IS hot off the press, Miliband was on R5 at 11.45 as his local pit closed
428 out of work as Hatfield pit closes a year early ..cos of Milibands Climate Act
"the move has been brought forward unexpectedly...Miliband said he was trying to arrange a meeting with the energy minister tomorrow and has called a debate in the House of Commons on Thursday."
Manager said “The problem was ...Government ..doubling their very own top-up carbon levy from £9.54 to £18.08 per tonne of CO2 ...result was that the energy companies stockpiled coal in advance of the increase in April destroying the market ".
I wonder what Miliband's projection was for it to be ?
... He'd be commiserating with more redundant power plant and factory workers if he'd actually got elected and been implementing his policies now.
- "Hatfield is in the Don Valley constituency? If so where is Caroline Flint, MP for Don Valley and Shadow for Energy?"

Yes Mike, that's scary. How about this LINK? More environmental friendship. (And the windmill in the background lends a nice touch.)