Thread: Battle over banning noise complaints against military gun range goes to court

Fuckem. The army were there first. It's a disease that is slowly strangling this once great country and our ability to do fun things anymore. It's a rural area so if you buy it..do your homework first.stay in caravan for a week or so.look at a map and see what's around,go knock on a few doors,and if you don't like what the noisy neighbours are up to...well Karen,go live in inner city triple glazed apartment. Country is country.

Originally Posted by Sid_cruiser

Also a local, just outside the 2km radius. Dont care about the machine gun noise and also enjoy seeing the military activity in the area between the RIFLE range and camp in Rolleston, it was here before we purchased land and built.

BUT, the bigger picture is the fact the army is loosing too many staff due to families not wanting to do their time in the desert, so Rolleston is being turned into home base, which will see a whole lot more activity in the Selwyn district. If the army just came out and applied for Resource Consent for what they really want, the whole town of West Melton would be up in arms, so they are doing the slippery slope; 2km zone, then it will be artillery etc etc.

(The locals are pretty battle ready; quarries & chicken farms have been defeated so far)

Quarries and chicken farms were not there in 1942.

There's a forum member who was the Range certifying officer for West Melton a wee way back. He may pop up and allay your fears that the range could be used for Artillery: to my knowledge its only certified for small arms (unsure of calibre limitation) hand grenades and bulk explosives no greater than 0.5 kgs.

Karen wouldn't have been hatched in 1942 either... Karen's didn't get listened too in 1942,they were rightly treated as whinging crazy cat ladies and they stayed away from everyone else.

The sad thing is those same Karen's that stop chook farmers from making a living then go on social media and bitch n moan about the price of eggs.

@Micky Duck, you been on the juice a bit tonight and I mean that in a good way as your above posts are a hoot 👍

I’ve seen a few Karen’s & Ken’s move out into the country and start complaining about the farm I worked on, they complained about our cows in our boundary paddock next to their property, complain about the smell of cow shit wafting through the air, farm bikes operating in early hours as we got the cows in, complain about when we ploughed up a field and there was some dust, complain about the planted maize which restricted their view and again complained when we got in contractors to cut the maize as they worked all hours of the night

We always told them, country life is different and encouraged them to go back to where they came from!

Whatawhata rifle range has the same issue with a housing development built nearby as home owners complained about that range which has been in operation since WW2

Guilty as charged.have drunk to excess ,have consumed a huge four stubbies over last three months.

The Army bang away and nothing gets said, but someone let off some fire works and all hell breaks loose on local FB.

A number of years ago the army let off an explosion which as substantially larger that any thing past or present. I was home and outside at the time and it was a biggy.( may be cloud bounced it down) any way man down the road claimed damage to this house. Don't totally be-leave it as he was the only one , but that started the anti movement plus they started a couple of large serious out of control fires all painted them in a bad light.

Originally Posted by XR500

Quarries and chicken farms were not there in 1942.

There's a forum member who was the Range certifying officer for West Melton a wee way back. He may pop up and allay your fears that the range could be used for Artillery: to my knowledge its only certified for small arms (unsure of calibre limitation) hand grenades and bulk explosives no greater than 0.5 kgs.

.5 kg sounds way to small for the size of the area , we blew up a 250lb squib up at Kiapara . And there was a small explosive range at Hobsonville , up to 1 kg . The West Melton area would be to small? for Artillery but probably big enough for light mortars?.
To have any idea as to what the Army could do with the area , you would need to have access to current Defense Publications .

Originally Posted by Localman

The Army bang away and nothing gets said, but someone let off some fire works and all hell breaks loose on local FB.

A number of years ago the army let off an explosion which as substantially larger that any thing past or present. I was home and outside at the time and it was a biggy.( may be cloud bounced it down) any way man down the road claimed damage to this house. Don't totally be-leave it as he was the only one , but that started the anti movement plus they started a couple of large serious out of control fires all painted them in a bad light.

Yeah, that was just plain stupidity. Broke all the range rules of NEQ's permitted on the range and got in a power of shit for setting off 6 claymores all banked together with det cord. One was the stated max permitted. And on a cloudy day just makes it a whole lot worse. Certainly didn't help their reputation for sure.

Cloud makes things really bad, as it reflects the explosive shock wave back to the ground, bounces off, hits the cloud, bounces down etc etc etc.

We blew up a 5 tonne WWII aerial bomb dropped on Japanese warships hiding up the Mekong river. It missed and buried itself in the clay banks of the Mekong, only to turn up 60 years later in a clay pit for a brick making plant on the outskirts of Phnom Pehn. We set it off 18 km away from the capital, in a shallow hole. No one down town heard a thing.

A fortnight later we had a weird heat/cloud inversion thing happen. The team were setting off tiny basic charges, about the size of a couple of bic lighters. 70 guys on the basic deminers course, so 70 lots of these tiny charges going off sporadically. But the sound bounced off the clouds, all the 18km back into town and caused pandemonium, as it sounded just like mortars being fired. 5 tonne vs 50 grams. Sound can do weird things.

Years ago back when I did the Easter bunny hunt out of Alex, one of the farmers was giving us the show around.
Went past the woodshed and yards and across the road was a small house originally used by the workers. Since sold off to some townies from somewhere as a holiday home. And they were there for Easter.
Commented to the farmer basically that we wouldn't shoot any bunnies around the yards across the track. You know being courteous and safe and all that.
It was a curt "bugger them, they are in the country now and better get used to it".
In saying that we still didn't even spotlight close to their house because it wasn't really kosher to us

Originally Posted by Localman

The locals are not complaining about the noise, in fact the machine guns were firing away today, back ground noise. It's what they are not telling us that is more of a concern. Soon as they change things who knows what they might want to get up to. As said people are happy the way they operate at the moment but if they suddenly started operating 24/7 that would upset everyone.

This is speculation and the divisive, polarising sort of argument put forward by agents provacateurs to undermine confidence in our due process and rules based community.