RE: What Music Are You Listening To Now?

Currently playing on my WinMedPlayer: Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons from the Pixies.

Songs likely to come by in the next hour, and songs which came by today:

Ya soshla s uma – TATU (the Russian version of All the things she said)
Driving on 9 – Breeders
Leuchtturm – Nena
Fire, water, burn (Jamaica version) – Bloodhound Gang
Clint Eastwood – Gorillaz
Crash – The Primitives
In the neighbourhood – Tom Waits
Hey You – Rock Steady Crew
Praise Yolu – Fat Boy Slim
Wodka – Belgian Asociality
Der Meister – Rammstein
Take stuff from work – King Missile
Kill the Poor – Dead Kennedys
Lovely Day – Bill Withers

…and it goes on and on and on and on. There are over 1000 mp3’s on my HDD (quite a few of them legally) so i usually turn on shuffle mode and get a rather interesting mix of music.

RE: how fast have you personally been

210 kph+ in a Citroen BX 1.9TZI. I had to get rid of that thing some two months later because of a torn engine block…

RE: Interesting Vautour Pic

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 03-01-03 AT 07:03 PM (GMT)]I don’t think the Mirage III-version of the Cyrano was tested on Vautours, i think those great birds only entered test programs in the early 1970s when it was the Mirage F1’s radar which had to be tested.

348 was only one of the Vautour airframes used for such trials. Other ones which did radar trials i know of are 337, 348 (of course, it flew in the airshow circuit after CEV retirement from 1991 to 1996 and is definately the best vintage aircraft i’ve ever seen), 355, and possibly 347. All four were of the IIN variant. The CEV used more Vautours, as they were very large and easily adaptable airframes for test work. Prototype 002, 301, 302, 303, 304, 351 and 363 also were used by CEV, mostly from Brétigny (south from Paris, now closed) and Istres (west from Marseille). I could find of one Vautour IIB used by the CEV at Cazaux (this one is not too far from Bordeaux, the French like to have their test bases near major cities) for testing of guided bombs, this one was 640. Apart from the early serials (so up to 304), all were former AdlA aircraft. Phantom, you might be interested to know that the French actually did consider (albeit for a short time) getting F-4s to replace the Vautour 😀

This one appears to be 348 in it’s current condition… i’m not completely sure though.
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pegase-meeting/museum/grandes/dijon15.jpg

Most interesting Vautour is probably 302 which undertook nuclear trials, flying through mushroom clouds above the Pacific and sniffing radiation. For some strange reason, the aircraft never was returned to France and it should still be stored at Hao in the Tuamatou islands.

In addition to Skythe’s link to the excellent Vautour pages, i recommend http://pdennez.free.fr/AVIONS/html/av425.html from the Des Hommes et des Ailes-pages. It’s in French but i’m sure you can filter some interesting info from that page.

RE: planes you would like to own

“Can you think of any others?”

Well, there are still a few other rough-it-out aircraft on the market. The PC 6, SM-92 Finist, Helio Courier… All a bit smaller as the An-2 though.

Of course it is rather strange calling the An-2 a small
plane… it has a cabin cross section comparable to a DC-3,
though obviously not as long.

Annushka is quite big. It seats 11 paratroopers, and there’s still room for a toilet in the back. A few variants have large cargo doors so they can carry a small vehicle.

Considering it first flew in about 1947 and is still used
for “covert drops” of special units it is a rather
remarkable plane. (Only undervalued in the west I might
add… it was widely used and liked in the Sov Union.)

Even better… it’s still in production. Vietnam recieved a few as-new from the PZL-Mielec plant in Poland in 2000 (production hasn’t officially ended there), and China still builds them in a new variant with winglets. And all still with the good old ASh-73 radial engine 😀 It is indeed a delicious aircraft to fly (impossible to stall that one), maintain (simple piston engine, even more dead simple surfaces and structures), and most important: use.

RE: OK, so what did Santa bring?

Uderzo and Goscinny are French. One is from Corsica (i think it’s the dead one – he died halfway making Asterix and the Belgians), the other one is from the Marseille wherabouts. Most other European cartoons are Belgian though. Franquin (Gaston Lagaffe), Hergé (Tin Tin), Morris (Lucky Luke) and Peyo (the smurfs) are Belgian.

RE: Word Association Game

Abundance

RE: Dumb as dog…t!

Got 65%, but with all civvie/light stuff questions guessed. The quiz was IMHO a bit too Britain-centered anyway, especially in the civ and vintage parts of it. But hey, it was a fun pastime.