joke taken!

I usually am for “owners can do what they like” but cant deny I would like to see that Spit in a better paint scheme (mind you when I have my own it will look like its not been restored at all, scuff marks, oil stains, the lot!) I just hate gloss.

I agree with you on this. It even has a name: patina. A plane, and any vehicle for that matter, cannot have enough of it.

Tillerman.

…..and eventually want to move on to the other EU languages such as German, Italian, Portuguese and re-new my French.

Want a challenge? Go for Hungarian. Seems to be a language which is very hard to learn.

Tillerman.

I recently watched ‘Blues Brothers 2000’. One word, no, two,: Absolute Crap. I was shocked, so bad as it is. An insult to the original ‘The Blues Brothers’ from 1980, which was, and still is, brilliant. Every now and then I watch it again. Full of great music and performance scenes, great artists and not in the last place, lots of funny quotes.

Tillerman.

Actually I enjoyed watching the programme. I particularly liked the bits about the old production hall in Schwerin, Germany. I didn’t know it was still extant, complete with the slipway for floatplanes to the nearby lake. The hall is now in use as a storage shed for yachts, but there are still some relics from the 1920’s when it was in use as a production facility for Fokker aircraft. There was still an old wooden sign pointing to “Halle 2”, the second production hall (now gone). I found it impressive that still no one had taken it away.

Tillerman.

Some interior shots of the B-314 replica @ Foynes:

http://www.ruudleeuw.com/foynes06.htm

Tillerman.

Not a DC-7 but a -6. Painful to watch nevertheless…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TAQSsP-Ngw

Tillerman

I have a little book which was published (in Dutch) by the Germans early in WWII, after the Netherlands had surrendered to the Nazis and was occupied by them. The book was probably distributed for free back then by the German occupational forces.

It was meant as an aircraft recognition book for Dutch civilians. What makes the book so special is that the ‘Axis countries and their allies’, Germany, Italy, Japan, Finland, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia are called ‘Friendly States’, and the ‘Enemy States’ are Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States of North America.

The book shows B/W photographs of nearly every aircraft which was in service in those years. For the Axis aircraft, only the manufacturers, designations and purposes are mentioned (eg. Fiat G50, aka “Freccia”, single seat fighter), all other information was considered classified at the time.

For most of the ‘enemy’ aircraft a silhouette was also pictured, and a brief description was given of manufacturer, dimensions, engine power, crew numbers and armament.

I got this book from my father, who as a little boy had to watch the bombing of Rotterdam from one of the outskirts of the city in 1940.

Some kind of a treasure to me.

Tilleman.