patham

What a shame Fokker went under. Every once in a blue moon I get a flight on Alliance Air's F100's. Little dated, but goes just as well as anything else. And a little faster than the competitors turboprop Q400's. I think Alliance recently bought a whole new stash from Europe at bargain prices (less than $1M each if I remember) and now have the largest fleet of Fokkers around.

Spent a few days in Sydney as a family city break (from rural Brisbane). Trains were great, and didn't need or have a car. I gather as you get further and further out though, the odds of being a train route diminish, I have friends who are about 25 mins out of the CBD and they need to bus. Having said that, they have been there a year and still have not bought a car, they bus, train, uber and car-share. Brisbane - public transport is not so cool. I have a feeling public transport is about economies of scale. Sydney population is about 4.5 M people. Auckland 1.7 M, Brisbane about 2.5 M. The more people you have, the more intensive you can make the systems. BTW: I am not sure Ikea is the defining drawcard of a country. I would pay an entrance fee to Ikea if said fee enabled you to skip the long and windy footpath that leads you through the Quest of Mordor just to get the one item you are looking for. Tried it twice, no need to ever visit again (I hope).

I hope they have a flow chart for that process - its complex enough to need one.

What he said. Airfix back in the 80's was a lot closer to leading edge but I gather they dumbed themselves down a bit. The Japanese never let themselves go. I must admit in my day you could not get the Japanese, so I tended to stick to Airfix and Italeri. Ps. I just remembered my other kit that turned out awesome - 1:48 Douglas Skyraider, in Vietnam COIN setup. Its a really good subject with loads of interesting detail - just a bit like a scaled up P-47.

And that unique look is why I cannot bear to part with my half-started MH-53 kit.

Last week I could not spell finanace, now I are the minister of it. Not sure if this is a meme failure, or deeper levels of meme generation going on.

I might have had the perseverance to mask and paint the D-Day stripes, but big kudos to handpainting that cowling. If the decals for that were crummy I would have just changed the paint scheme.

Go for it. The worst that can happen is you superglue your fingers together (separate under water, do not them touch again for the next few hours is what worked for me) or nearly slice your finger off because you are using the wrong tool for the job (swiss army pen knife folding blade folded onto my finger). That one should have required multiple stitches, but because I was a boy, home alone - nothing a band-aid or 20 couldn't fix.

I have a cool book out from the local library on the SR-71 (aus tax dollars at work). Amazing how advanced the A-12 and SR-71 were for their time. I have not read it properly yet (my 10 year old called dibs) but two things on paging through were interesting: 1. The use of advanced plastics. The leading edges of the wings and chines are actually some form of plastic for better heat resistance. I always thought the plane had high tech alloys for that reason. 2. The leaking fuel tanks. I knew that the tanks were designed with expansion joints to allow movement at high temperatures when going fast, resulting in leaks whilst cold but this book goes into detail as to what magnitude of leak (i.e. gallons per minute for some, drops per minute for others) was acceptable for each tank whilst on the ground. Edit: looked up the leakage in the Book (Col Graham, titled SR71 Complete Illustrated History- he was pilot of them for 15 years). There were 15 leak measurement zones, the largest of them - the DR Bay Area was allowed to leak at 0.95 Litres/minute per side as per the maintenance manual. Apparently the planes had their own drip trays. Still nothing compared to a Landy and its oil though !

Those are really cool, and kudos to you in being able to keep the collection - they are darn fragile. In my teens that was all I did. Although as a teen I did not have the patience to do things properly - i.e I built first and painted later, never filed down bad joints etc. I had 1:72's of the B17, B24, Stirling bombers, C-47 etc. and 1:48's of some of the fighters P47, Spitfire, ME109 come to mind. They never survived various moves. In my last year at Uni & first year at work I got into it again. This time with the patience to do it properly. 1:72 of a C-119, and then the one I was most proud of: a 1:48 of a F-105 Thunderchief. Again - destroyed in moves. I have a 1:72 CH-53 Pave Low in the box (internals painted) that is waiting for me to start on it after a 20 year hiatus, my 10 yr old has a 1:72 F-15 Strike Eagle that he was given. Maybe its about time to get him started. My dream kit was and probably still is a 1:24 Stuka. Would need a big display case for that... If you want to see how awesome some scale modellers are in terms of the detail they can achieve, visit the modelling sections of the SAAF forum. I will never be at that level. https://www.saairforce.co.za/forum/viewforum.php?f=12

I think its a UAE Block 60 or F16F, with conformal fuel tanks. It does look like its loaded up for bear though. Looks totally different to the cleaner versions of the original F16A.

We had the sleeping patterns the other way round. Perfect sleeper for 4 months. About 8 years of absolutely pathetic sleep afterwards.

RIP. When I was young he was the only F1 driver I knew by name. And the more you learn about him, the more inspirational his story becomes. Apart from Mr Ryanair he is also one of the few that have made money in the airline business!

To extend to non-fiction, the First and the Last by Adolf Galland was a great book. As english speakers tend to believe that if it wasn't a Spitfire, its not worth talking about, its a really good book from the Luftwaffe perspective, and how professionalism was hindered by the political environment of the times. That reminded me to add KG 200 by Gilman and Clive to the fiction list.

Its a great little story. The version I had was halfway to being a graphic novel, being filled with the black and white artwork that really set the scene. Frederic was also a Vampire pilot, and I think that really came through to build up the depth of protagonist's character and experiences. I also have a thing for the Vampire. My earliest memory is being about 2 years old, and my father placing me in the cockpit of the Vampire gate guard at Thornhill (Gwelo/Gweru) (he was in the fire and rescue unit, so he would have known how to unlatch the canopy), and me screaming the house down! I recall how big and deep it felt and that I would never be able to get out by myself. Of course, you look into a typical fighter cockpit as an adult and its the other way round - you wonder how you would fit in....

Ticked off most of them. Dale Brown started off well with that one, but his sequels and spin-offs were never as good. Likewise the sequel to Catch 22 was shockingly bad and pretty much unreadable. One aspect of Goodbye Mickey Mouse - I have not been able to confirm it, but I am sure it was published with 2 different endings over the different editions. I can add Frederic Forsyth - the Shepherd (novella/ short story). For humour, add Donald Jack - the Bandy papers (4 or 5 books, only bother with the first 3). And, high literature it certainly wasn't, but as formative reading for youngsters - Biggles would be pretty important. I must add, Catch 22 and Bomber i would re-read about every year until one year flooding from a catastrophic highveld thunderstorm ruined my wall of bookshelves. Douglas Reeman had a couple of good ones on WW2 naval aviators if I remember. This is a good development on the thread, I need to get my brain cells casting back to see what I have missed.

Good memory jog. At one stage Telkom had the weekend special, so Fri pm to Monday am was download city, and all on one phone call. If you woke up and your download manager had done all its downloads overnight and was standing idle you felt cheated!

Yep - 100 Mbps is the theoretical limit from the NBN. The providers got into trouble by selling plans that offered that speed, when the real speed might be substantially lower. So now most providers will offer you 50 Mbps max, and if it looks like you are getting that at least, then they might deign to upsell you and open the pipe a bit more to the 100 Mbps theoretical limit. I still think the government interference and lack of free market options was a dismal choice. It certainly has not made things quicker and the technology limits now hardwired into the system means there is no cost-effective upgrade path as far as I can see. You know its bad when you can point to South Africa, Jhb in particular, as a better example of fibre implementation.

The Aussie traffic engineers are also useless. Merge lanes onto highways are too short, so the ongoing traffic does not get up to speed, which clogs up the merge. My favourite - terminate a major free flowing dual lane highway coming into the city into a small diameter roundabout that chokes up. Also car parks that route all inflows right past the entrance into a shopping centre, and then allow parks next to said entrance that would hold up traffic flow. Aussies just love being able to park by the front door, and even if their Landcruiser 200 will take a 50 point turn to get into the lines, and in that time all other thoughflow is halted and cars are backed up onto the street- well, its their right and they intend to use it. My 9 km car commute is 12 to 15 minutes at say 4:00 am, 20 minutes at 6:30 am and 40 minutes from 7:15-8:45 am. A 6:30 am start for me then. The cycle commute is 30-35 minutes in with the hills in my favour.

You lucky sod. in Oz, we have the monstrosity of government intervention into the free market called the NBN. Just like the Borg, you will be assimilated. Although when 5G comes along maybe wireless through the Telcos might be OK in the suburbs (in the city centre you can spring for fibre, but that option does not apply in the 'burbs). In any event, my house having a long driveway frightened off the NBN contractors for about 18 months after the rest of the suburb got wired up. Being government means no accountability. We finally got hooked up this week. We were given a HFC connection, effectively a cable TV or Sat dish cable. Ping = 17 mS Download 47 Mbps Upload 16 Mbps And this is a first world nation ! My buddy in Vancouver had better cable TV based internet when I visited him in 2001. But, seeing as we had a crummy ADSL connection at about 6 Mbps before this, a relative improvement.

I always try and get a window seat. On a trip Jhb to Harare at cruising altitude just north of the border I was idly gazing out and thinking how empty the sky was and what were the odds of seeing anything (at the time - 2014 -there were not a lot of flights going to or from Harare). Another jet just streaked past underneath at what seemed ludicrously close distance and gave me a hell of a startle. I often wondered why the air corridors need to be stacked up quite like that - everyone wants the exact same shortest route? There was the US Starlifter and German plane that collided over Namibia going in opposite directions back in 1990's if I recall.

I used to run Michelins tubeless about 8 years ago when they were cheap on CRC. They had zero issues with sealing and holding pressure back then. That's progress for you!

The logical side of your brain must be working overtime to re-assure the "Fight or Flight" side of the brain which would be telling you that you are in some serious trouble with the windscreen going to implode any second now.

Scaled Composites /Burt Rutans designs (which this is one, White Knight 2 pictured by Kosmonooit is another) often go for an edgy, more organic design which may or may not be strictly needed, but seems to be part of their signature look.

You must do well at spotting those 3 D pictures that are hidden in the blur of dots. Unlike me.