At night i either use a stand, or just lay on my back. It isn’t the brightest low-light viewer, but the magnification is enough for an occasional spectaculair view. Two passing sattelites and a number of shooting stars is good enough to mellow out 🙂

As for the ‘gross generalisation’ comment:
Any idea how stupid some of you gents sound thinking a description of an individual’s treatment during eviction for reasons usually found only in dictatorial countries is a gross generalisation? Sounds pretty paranoid to me.

Pumps for the water? No, it’s actually a big work project. Buckets!

Isn’t that car on the left a Ford Capri?

Arthur’s here – and i was wondering about that quantity-list myself. It was a bit too general to really get into it, besides it’s not quite as specific as it seems. No separate mentioning of the A-7Es and NF-5s, more Starfighters than ever were operational… Nah.

That pic of 01 you posted is a lot darker than i remember it to be – but you’re right, the camo pattern is definately different. Looking at the Gambia-pic, the blotch of green paint below the cockpit there is definately painted over the demarcation line of the top/side camo and the blue underside, i guess a bort number has been overpainted.

As for the aircraft being a K or KM – that pic of yours with the ‘confirmed’ KM has a pretty large blade aerial on the rear fuselage, which isn’t on the Gambian machine. So i reckon it’s a standard Su-25K, likely a new-built from Tblisi.

Damn, didn’t know it was photographed from that close. Anyone contacted Brian Robbins yet concerning that Frogfoot? It does look an awful lot like the Su-25KM which was on display at Le Bourget in 2001, it could well have been on a sales tour.

As for the Frogfeet leaving the Prerov pile (the report at Touchdown mentioned them as wingless ones, so i guess they were part of the pile to the back of the hangar) to Kazakhstan, those are definately the shady deals i am thinking of. Definately an interesting destination, my dark and speculative side is mumbling something like “…spares…North Korea… they did MiG-21s too you know….” but i’m going to ignore that voice for now.

Forgot to mention: the only visual difference between the one or two Hunchback-Frogfeet built as Su-25T and the later Su-25TMs is a built-in ladder in the nosewheel door. The -T’s didn’t have this. So next time you see a Frogfoot at Addis-Abeba, checking that would be nice 😉

‘Roger & me’ is still one of my favourite documentaries (the only one i think better was The Atomic Café), from that one and TV Nation i think Michael Moore is one of the more gifted documentary-filmers around. But i think he went astray with Bowling for Columbine. It was just too over-the-top. It really looked like it was made to fit a certain agenda rather than film-first and conclude-later. Never mind i agree with quite a lot of Moore’s points, i do like to think that they are my own opinions rather than having them laid out for me (or stuffed down my throat).

I will definately go and watch Fahrenheit 9/11. Not as a documentary, but as an essay. Unfortunately, i don’t think Moore will return to making real documentaries because he’s too busy with being an Angry White Guy himself. Which is a real shame.

PS – Does anyone know if the team behind The Atomic Café did any more docus? Even though it was in fact just a collage of 1940s and 1950s nuclear agitprop, i’d love to see more of that. Besides, i think the time would be right for a Soviet-variant of the Atomic Café… i still have a photo somewhere of me buying kvas in front of a four-story mozaic showin little children to be happy because of Mister Atom, in Rostov i think (no, not Chernobyl 😉 ).