Flyby PC

Ha Ha. ........another one bites the dust! Hey! Hey!

Well perhaps, but I've reason to believe that when you're an RAF pilot, nonchalantly posing for cameras is a big part of the training.

This is my Dad flying as wireless operator in Gibraltar, 1938. That's him in the back. Edit - An his logbook showing some of his sorties in K - 5935.

I watched one about Taranto, but it was set in daylight. Easy mistake to make. I once made a clip about Operation Jericho but forgot there was snow on the ground. Small error but still shouldn't have made it.

Where's UKWidowmaker with his Spitfire Ale Advert? Spitfire Ale - Downed all over Kent. (Just like the Luftwaffe). (Sorry German buddies, but it was a funny advert.)

Speaking from direct experience, the country I live in is diseased with indifference and cynicism. I was lied to by a Bank, and fought for 2 years for justice. They screwed up opening my business account, and for all that time, I demanded to see the application form I believed they had lost. Not the Bank, the Ombudsman, the Ombudsman's appeal, the Ombudsmans standards department, nor the "Independent" (Ha!) Assessor would provide me with a copy of my original account application form. I finally threatened to sue the Independent Assessor personally for Conspiracy to Decieve if he didn't produce my form, whereupon he finally did. The form revealed my established account number was written on top of an earlier account number which was scribbled out. In other words , proof positive of my complaint. He awarded me £600, and I told him where he could shove it. When I set up a business seeking to buy my own land, Scottish Enterprise had 'land banked' all available commercial land, and refused to sell me land. I was obliged to buy land blighted by flooding, with the optimum value of my development forever blighted by it's location. Most of the land they refused to sell me is still vacant 7 years later. Despite seeking no subsidy, employing 4 local youngters as apprentices in a traditional industry, they stated my business was not the type of business they wanted to encourage. 7 years later, the same Scottish Enterprise which promotes sustainability in the building industry, growth for business through innovation, training for school leavers, etc - Determined our own innovations and developments were arbitrarily excluded from support, even before we formally applied for any. We wrote to 3 Scottish Ministers to protest about this prejudice, and not a single one of them has replied to us. Take it to an Ombudsman they say.... Yeah, whatever.... Last year, we were taken to an Employment tribunal by 4 employees we paid off a year past October. Our one and only failing, which I admitted and acknowledged immediately, was a shortage of funds to pay the £5,800 redundancy they were due. I asked them for time to raise the funds, but they lodged a claim with an employment tribunal regardless. It took me 3 months to raise the money, which I paid, and wrote to the Employment Tribunal to confirm the action represented the final discharge of our obligations to these individuals, and that as far as we were concerned the matter was concluded. A month later, the tribunal went ahead regardless, but when we didn't appear, the Employment judge upheld the complaint against us, interpreting our absence from the hearing as no answer being made to the complaint which he upheld, costing me a further £2k. To put this into context, a complaint which was never made, ever specified in detail, which we were never actually accused of, of an event which never actually happened, and a complaint we had the written evidence to rebutt threefold was upheld against us, and our appeal thrown out. I'm not going to waste my time going into detail, but there are comments already online from another party which describes the UK Employment Tribunal system as a "Bonanza for Parasites". Let mt be brief and say I fully and completely subscribe to that opinion. I could go on, trust me, I really could, the Council writes to my clients telling them I am unqualified to provide certain services, (I am supremely qualified). The same Council arbitrarily excludes my company from their 'approved' list of tenderers. I have a different Council which awarded Planning Permission for a development at a site meeting of the Planning Committee, definitely approved by a show of hands and witnessed by myself and the client, only for the Committee to collude with the Planning Officer to re-write the approval as a deferral. I could go on. My landlord couldn't tell the difference between the rent for a lockup garage and my flat, and for two years threatened me with eviction and all the usual reminders. They took me to court, and had to acknowledge I was actually over £1,000 in credit. Did I get an apology? I could go on, trust me, I really could.... but I wont. My country is diseased with sleaze and collusion, nepotism, prejudice and those who could and should, (and once upon a time did), take a moral stand to see injustice corrected are now in my opinion, endemically corrupt. I have no faith in the Legal system, or the Financial System, nor even the Government. I simply sit here working harder and harder, trying to pay my tax while I'm charged more and more and more for everything. In recent years, my country had riots in protest at the price of fuel. The price at that time was 89p a litre. Fuel is now between £1.35 and £1.40 a litre. When I was young, I was as ardent a patriot as you were ever likely to meet. They only reason I am still living here is fear that the disease which has already consumed the dignity of my own country is already a global pandemic. We should root out scum, starve it and leave it impoverished. In the UK we get rid of the rubbish by promoting it upwards. Still believe in customer service? F____d if I do.

Nope. Once upon a time I was a 40 - 60 a day man, spending more on ciggies than I paid in rent. I liked smoking, big time, and didn't want to stop, but I just couldn't afford it. No point trying to cut down smoking rolling tobacco, I'd try it, but just add it onto the 40 -60 a day. I reckoned not wanting to stop was a big torpedo amidships for the will power to actually stop. So I went to a hypnotist. It was quite expensive, (Ha! " just 2 weeks cigarette money, but when you smoke, you don't 'see' that money as wasted), but all the same it felt like a lot of money to spend on 'crank' hocus pocus which wasn't going to work anyway. I won't go in to details, I very nearly didn't go, but I did, and I stopped smoking there and then, and not only that, I went straight from the hypnotist back to work and into a site hut where the air was blue with other smokers. I never had a hint of craving or withdrawal, and nor did I turn into some hypocritical holy anti-smoking evangelist. I've never been tortured with craving nor anxiety, not once. This was, err,... 21 years ago, and I've never smoked a single draw since, so I reckon you could say it definitely worked. Drives me nuts seeing all these people tormenting themselves to distraction, and even getting niccotine patches on the NHS!!! What a waste of money!!!! (Your physical addiction to niccotine only lasts for 48 hours, but it's the habit that draws you back. To my mind a niccotine patch just feeds the addiction, and isn't really helpful at all. It's like telling a heroin junkie to stop injecting his heroin and start smoking it instead isn't it? Go to a reputable hypnotist. Job done. Mine quoted a 96% success rate on the first session or you got a second session free, and if that failed, you got your money back 100%. I don't want to advertise on principle, but the man I used was part of the Allen Carr franchise. Check it out. Best money I ever spent.

Roll out the barrels...

You're quids in Capt Sopwith. They sold you a laptop with a dysfunctional keyboard, you have their acknowledgement the keyboard was dysfunctional. As far as I know, you have grounds to return the product as unfit for sale and demand your full money back. Edit - The USB and system (?) damage is irrelevant. They were not defects you reported, ergo they were not present when you used the laptop. Even if the damage susequently happened in transit, the transit would not have been necessasry if the keyboard did not have a fault. Keep it brief, keep it simple, but use a lawyer to write. Don't threaten them, just do it.

.... but every time you swear a kitten still dies.

Good call Capitaine Vengeur. Very tense film if I remember correctly, and definitely not run of the mill.

I've lost three stone in the past 18 months. No special diet, just the Credit crunch royally screwing up my business and stress of being taking to an employment tribunal by four thieving, money grasping, evil, lying, parasytic maggoty toss pots. I feel much better for the weight loss, but I won't be thanking anybody for their input, nor recommending this particular weight loss process to anyone else. Eat sensible Lou, but be more active. Your metabolism is your best friend, so keep it purring along with lots of activity and the bonus is you can eat what you like. You can eat one horse a day provided you burn it off in exercise, but only if you have the metabolism capable of doing it. Be as active as you can be, and you will 'supercharge' any diet you do adopt.

Well, if we're stretching the 'war' film a little, another one I like is Ice Cold in Alex, with the lovely Sylvia Simms. Katy the ambulance isn't bad looking either... And of course there's that beer in it too. Probably the best piece of product placement in the world.

Has to be said - MGM's Battle of Britain. Repeat please. By the way, did you know that Battle of Britain came out in 1969 and Tora Tora Tora was 1970? When I was a kid, I remember the hype of Tora Tora Tora as being a great new film, but recall no similar hype for the Battle of Britain, which 'feels' like it started all the way back in 1941. I was 3 in 69, and 4 in 1970, and perhaps therein lies the difference. Love both films, and both stand the test of time too. Good question for you, if you had two films on at the same time, which would you watch, The Longest Day or Saving Private Ryan?

The film I should like but don't, is a Bridge Too Far. I don't like it portrayed as a heroic disaster. I know it was, and many airborne troops paid the ultimate price, but it's more complicated than that, and I don't like the way Montgomery is blamed for the 'failure' on a strategic level. Monty's concept of dynamic thrust punching deep into the heart of the enemy is actually very similar in concept to the Ardennes offensive subsequently launched by the Germans. Strategically the battle of the Bulge could have worked for the germans, but it didn't have the necessary fuel to succeed, nor any effective countermeasure for enemy air superiority. Operation "Watch on the Rhine" was doomed from the beginning. Montgomery's thrust, (not the lesser thrust of Market Garden) with the fuel and military might denied him and shared with Patton, was equally sound in it's conception, had massive air superiority, and I'm not convinced the Germans could have contained it as the Allies contained them in the Bulge. Montgomery's strategy would have worked, and got the Aliies to Berlin in 1944. With resources, and comparable air superiority to that the allies enjoyed, the Germans could have delivered a dangerous reverse to the allied armies. History sees the Germans get credit for being bold and imaginative, coming dangerously close to victory though ultimately unsuccessful, but Monty had a similar visionary plan which was watered down from his conceptual idea and didn't quite come off, but he was condemned for being reckless and having his judgement impaired by antagonism with the Americans. I don't believe Arnhem was anything like the error of judgement it is portrayed to be. I'm also not comfortable with the way he is portrayed as being profligate with mens lives. Read up about Monty's past and you know that's not at all what he was like. If being strategically reckless in the face of the enemy is so damnable, then why is it don't we remember the name General Mark W. Clark? Personally, I suspect more was made of Arnhem, and the Falaise gap than Monty properly deserved, but the Americans wanted him discredited to a degree, and weren't about to let him off the hook. What history remembers is the political dislike and dispute, but what it is forgetting is that Mongomery was the real deal military planner, and that he knew exactly what he was doing.

Thanks fellas. Did some mucking around and think I've nailed it. When I was looking around in trackIR on default settings, occassionally one or two of my three green signals would turn red, and my 'panning' would become jerky. I found out the TrackIR5 software under 'Camera' lets you adjust the light filter threshold. Reduce the number, and your sensor reacts to less light, and thus your green signals strengthen. With this better continuity your tracking motion is much smoother. I presume this lower light threshold will make your setup more vulnerable to interference from undesired light sources, but it's currently working well for me. I do get the full pan, but when I don't , it's my reflectors which need attention...

Can I ask what you're using for TrackIR Pol? I'm very impressed with how smooth the image pans, and when I see this, I don't remember being able to look around quite this far. (My TrackIR is off line currently to check). From memory, you seem to have an extra 5 or 10 degrees of pan. What are you using Pol? Something top of the range or do I just have my own trackIR badly zeroed in?

Reputation and credit rating? Gulp. I gave up looking at those a long time ago. They just made me cry. I've now dedicated my life to being very opposite thing to a Bank.

Here's my Odin and Pippin ready for take off! Badly off topic I know, but I thought the doggy people here might like the picture. Pure fluke. My phone camera snaps about 2 seconds after I press the button, so when taking pics of my dogs, what you get is a complete lottery. I thought it was a great picture, (& might even have called it the dogs b*"&"!ks). Odin is an 8 stone Rhodesian Ridgeback, and Pippin is a Border Terrier.

Hey, I didn't start it....

That's why there was such outrage when the UK Ministry of Defence bean counters did away with the Pegasus badge, the traditional symbol for all Airborne Forces, not just Paratroopers.

Absolutely Hood! And tell us all a lot more about it too!

No problem... And if you want to know what a star he is, this is him playing with Pippin just weeks after I got him. It's hard to describe him, but he's a very 'kind' dog. Ridgebacks are pretty smart really.

I addition to the planes I have sat in, an ambition of mine is to fly the seat of a Fairey Swordfish where my father sat as wireless operator. Working on it ....

Yes, 50.6kg last worming weigh-in at the vet. The KC breed standard says 35 to 38 kg for a dog, but Odin wasn't listening. He's not fat or overweight either, just heavier built. (Woops, best make that 6.97 stone, call it 7?. ). Wait, wait, wait, Google convert 8 stone into Kilos, and it says 50.8 kgs. BUT! Google convert 50 kg to lbs and you get 110 lbs, divide by 16lbs per stone, is 7 stone. I may have to work this out the old traditional way - using a child who knows math. Edit: It is 8 stone. There are 14 lbs in a stone, and I'm a retard apparently. Edit more. Seems I'm not retarded, but made a simple mistake. It's a week to Christmas, and I can work a calendar.