patham

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.

Good point. We see the videos on how conventional planes crab and waggle wings in windy landing conditions, and that is with the plane and pilots on the centreline axis. Could be very interesting if the pilots reference frames are substantially off the axis. Although maybe with a monster like that they only fly in near-ideal conditions.

I have heard they rate it in terms of km/hr the tape can withstand - is that correct?

Most of its pretty well worn by the time its tossed out. But all through the year you will see people put big ticket items out in the hopes that someone will take them and save them the hassle of a dump trip. Occasionally you get the community newspaper reports along the lines of "I just left my mower outside for a few minutes whilst I had a drink and now someones taken it" as people mistakenly think that anything on the grass verge is up for grabs.

There's an app for everything ? The youth of today have it easy, now in my day we had real first world problems. For strictly enforced on scavenging I think read "ever enforced", those utes are like flocks of vultures circling the streets on that first weekend before scheduled pick-up. I think the higher the property values of the suburb the more of them get tempted to come in the hopes of striking it lucky with rich peoples disposals.

Kerbside collection for the big ticket items should be coming up in a few weeks GrahamS2 in our neck of the woods. The suburb looks like a tip, as the council trucks never start on the date they say they will. Its not the neighbours that bargain hunt, its the scavengers from the poorer end of town that are professional pickers who come in their old utes and trailers to take what they can get. They can be fussy and just take what works for them, I've seen them just cut and take plugs off old appliances which hardly seemed worth it. But it is a great opportunity to declutter and throw out the stuff you should not have brought over in the first place (like the dishwasher - as they are all built in here). I gather there are some councils in WA who do not do area wide kerbside collections, but allow you to do a once-off skip bin per year, so you call in, have a skip delivered to your house, you fill it with the junk, and off it goes at the councils cost. Our weekly bins are also colour coded like that, except rubbish is weekly, garden waste and recycling alternate. And the worst is going off on a long holiday, and not knowing what the cycle is when you get back. Definitely need to take a walk along the street to gain a consensus of what bin to put out (as some people get it wrong anyhow).

You mean SA is Marileze bevok ?

JB Hi Fi in particular are renowned for hoiking up their prices quietly, and then a week later putting on a big yellow sticker with 30% (or whatever) off and dropping it back to about what it was earlier. Basically a case of Buyer, Beware. Shop around and pay no attention to the promoted notional discount.

Been there, done that awesomeness. A game drive is one thing. Paddling on the Zam, avoiding the hippocrocoducks, coming up close to the ellies and buffaloes is something totally different. You feel very small and vulnerable. My GF and I were the only clients on the canoe safari, so we had our own private guide. On one of the islands he took us on a walking safari up to the ellies in the reeds as the wind was in our favour. I had an 18 mm lens on my film camera and we got so close the head did not fit in the frame. The other memorable moment was an unseen hippo, grazing in the daytime on an elevated river bank, out of our viewpoint from the canoe. The hippo got a fright, thundered to the river and did a swan dive from height into the river. Right above us, as we were paddling hugging the bank. So we can claim to be one of the few people to have seen the underside of a hippo..... That was scary, we paddled like crazy to get the hell away from him. Cool memory refresh - thanks.

That diesel is so sweet its unreal. I load up with 4 people, luggage and food for a week, and the engine feels nothing, there is still more than enough power and torque for effortless highway cruising and overtaking. Unfortunately, as its the cool car in the family it has been co-opted as the school run vehicle, so even though I paid for it and its in my name I only get to drive it on the weekend.