Now Anna’s all high,
Her wedding is nigh.
I hope we’ll all be invited,
by this couple to be united.

I just hope that Flood’s wife,
won’t look like a dive
We don’t want him confronted
with a wife that’s unwanted
So nasty he might,
re-hijack this site.

As sincere as i can be,
i do ask you to invite me.
And the rest of us, a lovely bunch
For the whole wedding day, starting with lunch.
Then there’s time to drink the beer
To end the day in a festive cheer.
And wish you both the best of luck,
you know what comes now, yes it is ****

Get your hashpipes out, and have a Cheech & Chong marathon.

Monty Python, Andy Kaufman, Tommy Cooper, Peter Sellers, WC Fields… I would have added Rowen Atkinson too if he hadn’t let Mr Mean run completely out of hand.

I never really understood stand-up comedians though. Go up on a stage, make some slightly abnormal observations about everyday life, and that is supposed to be funny for a crowd of office workers having an evening off sitting around a table with a pitcher of beer. I can do that. In fact, i think i am doing that right now. And is it funny? Nope. Would i like making money that way? Yes, but i think there are better ways to make a lot more money on people being made drunk with beer-by-the-pitcher.
But then again, if the audience settles with stale US beer from a pitcher, i’m sure they’ll think i’m funny too.

Sorry for going all nerdish about this, but i’ve just finished some work on the Yak-41…

If the RD79 engine hadn’t been so troublesome to develop, the Yak-41 could have been operational around 1985-1987, at which point it would have set a complete new standard in STOVL aircraft. Remember that in those days, it were still under-equipped, under-ranged, no-payload and no-range Harrier GR.3/SHarrier FRS.1/AV-8C flying operationally in the West. Opposed to that, the -41 (the name Yak-141 was only adopted later when the project was as good as dead anyway) was supersonic, had BVR AAMs, and was in most other respects also very comparable with then-modern conventional fighter jets. It has to be said that the engine blast of it taking off in VTOL appearantly asked a lot from the surfaces it would operate from, but today that doesn’t seem to stop the STOVL JSF from being developed either.
Also, i think the moveable nozzle of the RD79 is an absolutely lovely design. Rolls-Royce and Lockheed seem to agree.

As for choppers, i think the Kaman H-2 Tomahawk was pretty interesting. If this one hadn’t been cancelled, we might have gotten large Hind-like attack & assault helos in the USAr later on.

And for transports, only one word.
Ekranoplans.

So the Aardpiglet is growing as planned… 😀

Have you read ‘Over the Beach’ by Zalin Grant? About F-8 jockeys during the Vietnam war, definately a nice read considering the authors you mentioned.

F-15E’s were built from fy 86 on, so the oldest ones are closing on 20 years now. The bulk is from fy88-89-90 though, and some fifteen were ordered in the late 1990s as attrition replacements (officially) / production-line savers (unofficially).

There are no 300 F-15Es, there are some 215-220 built.

There’s a whole USAF contingent at Lajes too. And if i think a little bit, this might well be the whole issue here… lemme guess, a Portugese took some photos of certain aircraft parked on the USAF ramp.

The answers are up, i didn’t have time yesterday since i had to finish something on the Yakovlev jump-jets (members of Spotting Group Volkel or other AIM-readers will find out shortly).