Skyfaring
Feature image: A British Airways Speedbird departs LHR for a glorious sky. (Simon Allardice | flickr.com CC BY 2.0) Skyfaring. A Journey with a Pilot. by Mark Vanhoenacker Published by Chatto & Windus, London, 2015 ISBN 10: 0701188669 / ISBN 13: 978-0701188665 They are all too rare – those timeless books that not only describe flight perfectly, but also convey all the beauty, poetry, wonder … Continue reading Skyfaring
Triple Tale
Feature image courtesy of Zoggavia.com Every airplane has a life story. I couldn’t possibly tell them all, but I can trace the star of my Connie Crossing article, G-AHEL Bangor II, thanks largely to the remarkable research and image collecting of Paul Zogg at zoggavia.com A new world order G-AHEL started life on Lockheed’s Burbank production line in 1944, as just the 17th C-69 laid … Continue reading Triple Tale
Big Beginnings
After walking around the F-111C in my last post (and sorry for the delay until this one, by the way), I thought it would be fitting to round out the F-111 story with some images from the other end of its life cycle. So, Pig fans – or, more accurately, Aardvark Admirers – enjoy. Each image opens to about 2000px on its long side, and such detail as I could … Continue reading Big Beginnings
Big Pig
While it’s easy to be unkind about the big, heavy and expensive F-111 Aardvark, it was definitely a multi-tonne Mach 2 marvel for its time. So as a special treat, here’s a bit of a walk-around of the Royal Australian Air Force’s A8-134, now thoroughly ‘de-fanged’ and permanently retired. #134 (cn D1-10) is a General Dynamics F-111C on long term loan from the RAAF to the … Continue reading Big Pig
Fallen
Featured image by Tijl Vercaemer CC BY 2.0 In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. Lt.Col. John McCrae MD, Canadian Expeditionary Force April 25th is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand – a day of commemoration centred on the … Continue reading Fallen
Missing …reprise
People are still moved by the loss of VH-UMF ‘Southern Cloud’ in 1931 – with all eight souls aboard – and especially the agonising 27-year wait to discover their fate. Following my March 21st article on the crash, airscape was contacted by Ken Watson who is affiliated with Australia’s Civil Aviation Historical Society and Airways Museum at Essendon, Victoria. As the repository of our civil airways and … Continue reading Missing …reprise
Jenny lessons
The Curtiss Jenny hardly needs an introduction. Designed for Glenn Curtiss by Benjamin Thomas, who had worked at Sopwith Aviation, the original JN1 was a heavy, underwhelming performer. The subsequent JN2 and JN3 improvements weren’t much better. However, Curtiss hit gold with the JN4. Mild-mannered, manoeuvrable and robust, the definitive JN-4D variant made up the bulk of a 6,813 airframe production run. An estimated 95% of … Continue reading Jenny lessons
Aviation related Soviet propaganda
My friends at Apron6 have shared these great Russian aviation posters. For all its flaws, communism certainly spurs its graphic artists to achieve more… Now, can you help by translating the headlines for us? Continue reading Aviation related Soviet propaganda
Rose coloured plexiglasses
Feature image: US Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Mallory S. VanderSchans This is an article about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Kind of. And from a somewhat different angle… Oh, and I can’t promise you’ll like it. Rose coloured plexiglasses So have you made up your mind about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter yet? Because if you’re still sitting on the fence, I suspect you’re … Continue reading Rose coloured plexiglasses
Missing
Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared in perplexing circumstances just over one year ago now, on March 8th, 2014. Plenty has been published about that tragic anniversary already, but it brings to mind the equally shocking and mysterious disappearance of an Australian airliner many years before… An aviation mystery that would only be solved by the sheerest chance – and only after almost thirty years. Operating successfully March 21st, 1931 was … Continue reading Missing
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