Not being in with the in crowd what is this thread all about???

Boy, do I have to agree with that. Not long ago, I had to ask what “the boo…” was all about. Felt like i was back in prep school 60 years ago. (Or whatever you call it…public school?) This forum suffers badly from “you boys all knowing each other,” and though it’s very cute that Nigel knows exactly what Monty is up to, the rest of us don’t give a scheiss. Bravo 24 is exactly right. Go pick up the frickin’ phone and spare us your in-crowd giggles.

F7F Tigercat.

In all seriousness are the wings really so sharp they can cut paper?

I believe that’s a myth that can probably be traced back to people inadvertently walking into the leading edge and getting a nasty cut, which it will certainly do, just as walking into a stationary prop will do it.

Always found it a bit odd they’re outside the cockpit.

My late friend James Gilbert, who had lots of TM time, once told me that it was not unusual for a rear-seater reaching up to get the other pilot’s attention by tapping him on the shoulder to inadvertently turn off one or even both mags.

you did say that airshows are stupid.

Yes, you’re right, and I didn’t make it clear that I meant air shows as presently constituted, filled with “death-defying” acts (and too often they attempt to defy but lose) that, as Nachtjagd says above, fly too low and too close to the edge of the airplane’s (and usually the pilot’s) performance envelope. Probably all started with the inverted ribbon cut, which was a big deal when I started seeing air shows in the late ’60s. (First one I ever attended, at Reading, Pa., a “crazy flying farmer” in a Cub–Dick Schramm–was killed not 100 feet from where I was photographing outside the crowd line.)

Probably the ultimate safe acts are the military teams, who do broad maneuvers designed to -look- scary but that are, of course, actually performances of extreme precision. I’ve never flown with the Blues or Thunderbirds, but I have flown as a back-seater with the Breitling L-39 team, and I was amazed at how comfortable and seemingly safe their maneuvers were.

Air show are death waiting to happen. Does the act of standing atop an airplane wing while strapped to it by stainless-steel cables show talent? No. Just calculating bravery, which too often fails them. We’ve seen several “wing-walkers”–they really don’t walk at all–die in horrendous fashion in the last several years. Air shows are stupid. The common excuse is that they “display the wonders of flying to the general public,” when actually what they do is display the awful consequences of flying badly to every newspaper reader and TV viewer in the country–and much of the rest of the world–when something like this, which is truly worthy of the media expression “If it bleeds it leads,” happens. This is promoting aviation? I don’t think so.

Here in the U. S., one of the positive effects of the infamous sequestration has been the cancellation of a number of air shows. Good.

Did somebody drive a tug over that right wing support, or is that the way it’s supposed to be?