Flyby PC

I have the same opinion Olham, perhaps the little bit of humour I meant is lost a little in translation.

It's addiction fellas, let's face it. I forget what comedy program it came from, but I remember chuckling at a quote saying something like "There's something very 'more-ish' about heroin". Not that funny perhaps, but it made me chuckle...

I wasn't really thinking about the product foremost, but the pressure it puts on the Devs if false expectations arise over imminent release. I already have a mental picture of Pol and WM with nicotine stained fingers from chain smoking 60 a day, emerging from the basement, wincing in the sunlight, in dire need of a bath, a shave and a haircut, and a bit of nervous twitch when anything goes 'bang'; but nevertheless, grinning from ear to ear holding a master DVD because "it's ready".

I'm with the Devs. Just cast you're mind back to the first time you installed vanilla CFS3 if you need any reminders about half finished software released too soon. Take your time Devs.

I know it looks bad, but it doesn't say whether it's a write off or can be repaired.

My Grandpa on my mother's side served with the Dover patrol in WW1, then post WW1, he was in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders reaching the rank of colour sergeant during 7 years service inter war. He was too old for military service in WW2, but his contribution was building barracks and accommodation for US servicemen, and also, working with trees, trimming them and painting them to make them look like anti-aircraft artillery. More than that I can't tell you, because he died a long time ago. Actually, there is more, after WW2, he came back to Scotland to set up his own sawmill which was just on the point of opening up for business when he had an accident and cut off three of his fingers. His insurance was still in the envelope above the mantlepiece, and it happened in the weeks before the Health Service was set up. Bit of a disaster with a wife and two kids to support. When I was a nipper of 2 or 3 years old, I used to have a comfort blanket and suck on my index finger. My grandpa used to yank my finger out my mouth and tell me to stop sucking my finger before it shrunk and disappeared, thereupon waving the stumps of his own fingers. I would then check, and find my index finger was already shorter than my middle finger so it MUST be true and a self inflicted mutation already in progress. It sounds a bit gruesome, but it wasn't really like that. It was just a grandpa with 'special effects', and some training in the art of illusion.

It's a little off topic, (more WW2) but a curiosity struck me. The conversation started out about whether the French with all their colonies built any aircraft carriers in WW1, and it was mentioned in passing that prior to WW2, the Royal Navy had two aircraft carriers in the Med, and the French had one. I suddenly wondered what on earth happened to the French Carrier? When Churchill controversially ordered the RN to sink the Vichy French Fleet, I didn't recall any mention of a carrier being included. Surely that would warrant a mention? Why have I never heard of her fate? Was she sunk, interned, or renamed? So a little Google later - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_aircraft_carrier_B%C3%A9arn The French had one, from 1927. The Béarn began the War hunting down the Graf Spey (but took no part in the Battle of the River Plate), transferred French bullion to Canada, then when France signed its armistace with the Nazis, spent the war in Martinique, 'kind of' impounded in a French port in the Caribbean, interned and demilitarised at US insistance. A long career from 1927 to 1967, and never launched her aircraft in combat. Sorry, World War 1 relevance by ommission, but it was something new to me, and it struck me as a pub quiz type of fact that everybody else should know too.

That's incredible. "Can I borrow the car Dad?" "Nope".

BBC Imperial War Museum is also running a WW1 podcast ahead of 2014 which predominantly features recordings of veterans. Very good, but updates are a bit irregular. http://www.1914.org/podcasts/ Hmm, it doesn't say BBC, but Imperial War Museum. I like it even better. (Not a BBC fan).

I nearly burned the house down doing that. I was theatrically burning a Tiger tank in the fireplace one time, nothing outrageous, just 1:72 scale, but the flames from the plastic still set the chimney on fire. Thinking quickly, I filled a basin of water, and using my bicycle pump, I sucked up jets of water and scooshed it up the chimney. I managed to get it put out, (or more likely it just went out), but the race was on to clean up before my parents got back. I got the fireplace spotless and even got the rug hoovered up, and just in the nick of time, as Ma's car pulled up outside. Phew! In walked my mother and asked "Have you had a chimney fire?" I wondered how on earth she'd worked it out. The place was spotless! Until I went outside and black saw soot all over the garden. Lucky boy all the same. Last time I burned my airfix kits in the fireplace.

For some reason, whenever I'm reading my own father's logbook as a wireless operator (1938-39), I always seem to remember the line in MGM's Battle of Britain when the Poles are getting a dressing down "Strict Wireless protocol must be observed at all times, and it is never, repeat never, to be used for idle Polish chit chat". (Sorry that's not word perfect, but close). There is very little chit chat in my Dad's log books. My point is, familiarity in a log book is less prevalent in the early pages, where all the information is very perfunctory, brief and to the point. I see the same in my own diving log books. You don't really 'open up' to include more personal observations until you are much more familiar with the practice of keeping a logbook, and presumeably seeing what other people are writing in their logbooks too. In the early log books, especially in the forces, I would expect them to be very formal 'classroom' type documents, but later logbooks might be much more informal and enlightening. It's a chore in the beginning, but the interest grows. Just to add however, when you get right into a logbook, and I mean anorak keen, there are all sorts of cross references you can make to other logbooks, other squadrons, locations and aircraft, and even the occassional 'celebrity' in air crews. It was also a lot of fun linking log book flight numbers with photographs. Maybe I was lucky with WW2 records, and there might be much less to learn about WW1, but I wouldn't say a logbook wasn't educational. I was amazed at the 'critical path' of information that fed through the logbook. For example, from a picture, to an aircraft number, to a flight, to a date, to a location, to the logbook, to a note naming a ship which could then be identified in the picture, where it was presumed to be one of two or three sister type. The logbook could string everything together and reveal ten times as much info. Just an observation...

Curiously retrogressive? Well, I do see how that's meant in context, but look at the De Havilland Vampire: a pusher type, (as all jets are) in the same configuration with twin boom and heavy nose armament. Look at the De Havilland Vampire, and instead of regression, you see the Vickers Vampire was actually way ahead of it's time.

I do watch thew majority of Mythbusers, but realise it's an entertainment show rather than scientific. The one show which irritated me was them trying to explode hammers by hitting them together. I don't think anybody ever claimed hammers exploded like dynamite, but hammers do chip, and when the chunks of chipped metal fly off they can do damage. There's a rumour that Leo McKern, the actor in Rumpole of the Bailey, lost his eye with a chip of metal flying from a hammer striking another hammer. It's a freak event, but it does happen, and I have chipped my own hammer once too. Hammers don't explode, but the chips off them certainly do. Fair point about the Hydrogen, but disasters make people cautious. The British Comet, the first commercial jet liner had it's reputation detroyed when there crashes. From the debris there were big lessons learned about metal fatigue, (and air crash investigation), which made the skies a much safer place, buy the pioneering Comet never recovered it's reputation nor get the accolade it properly deserved on balance.

I reckon three days crossing the Atlantic in an airship, and climbing down onto the Empire State Building when you got there would be quite a stylish way to travel, however impractical it might have been. There's 'something' about 1920's/30's art decco that's iconic of it's time which other 'periods' tend to lack. The big swastikas are a bit bizarre considering what the sybolism would become synonymous with later, but I reckon seeing a big zeppelin floating overhead and picked out with spotlights must have been quite something to see. A real time of change and mechanisation, from ships, cars, aircraft, and trains. Have any of you seen SkyCaptain and the World of Tomorrow? I'm not recommending the film, (it was ok), but it has a similar style about it that I liked. Not terribly impressed with all that hydrogen above your head, but filled with Helium, and I'd give it a go tomorrow. (If I had the cash for a ticket that is). My take on the 'mystery' wasn't so much what caused the disaster, but whether it was deliberate sabotage to discredit a high profile Nazi icon. EDIT: And didn't the Mythbusters burn some airships too? Wasn't the paint a kind of fuel or an accelerant or something? (I wasn't paying attention).

I liked that. Harmless fun you don't take too seriously, but worth a chuckle. I liked the car plane. It's one of these cartoons you need to watch a few times to catch the details too...

I wouldn't like to judge unless I'd been there and done it myself. A jammed gun wouldn't stop you running for home if your aircraft was fully airworthy. My guess would be some mechanical failure putting an end to your fight and beginning your battle for survival. Get the contraption down on the ground while you can. It's even possible Middlebrook thought he was behind the allied lines when he put it down. There are lots of variables to consider before a lack of fighting spirit. And even if it was, after the Fokker scourge of 1916, who could blame him if his top lip did wobble? A feature of the Fokker scourge was the shabby level of training of RFC pilots. In October 1916, I believe the tide was turning, but hadn't yet turned. Both pilots survived, and the incident seems well enough documented, so there must be more to learn in records somewhere, at least two log books worth anyway.

Just to add, (and you may already know UKW), but just for interest, the name 'hemp' does not I think refer to the plant. I also recognise the old scots word 'hemp' as a word to describe a mischievious young female, but in a kind of endearing way, as in she's a bit of a hemp, or a hempet, but meaning cheeky rather than bad. And I think the roots of that use of the word comes from hemp halters, or bridles required to make an animal behave or easier to control. If the roots are correct, that all makes 'Hemp' a great name for lively sheepdog. Edit: Done a quick check, and some say the hemp is the hemp of the hangmans noose, and a hemp is that kind of rogue, someone who wants to be hung, but that's definitley not my own understanding of what a hemp is. It's more like calling someone a bit of a minx, except a minx is a flirt, whereas a hemp is a little bit more niaive and childish.

You should be able to find more history. The aircraft is marked as serial number A2540 from 24 Squadron. If they know that much about it, they might be able to learn a lot more about why it apprears to be beside German servicemen. This particular aircraft was forced down at 11.00am, 10th October 1916 by Max Ritter von Müller flying with Jasta 2. It was his first 'kill', although it looks in pretty good shape to be shot down. http://www.theaerodr...any/muller3.php Edit:- Seems the RFC Pilot was an N. Middlebrook, from A-flight, 24 Squadron, and there seems to be a model kit containing a DH2 and and EIII, which I interpret to contain the decals and details necessary to model the encounter. http://www.hyperscal...02preview_1.htm Here is the roll of honour where 2nd Lieut Norman Middlebrook of the Rifle Brigade and RFC posted as missing. (He was captured). http://www.flightglo...916 - 0942.html Even more info: Missing. Lieutenant NORMAN MIDDLEBROOK, son of Mr. E. H. Middlebrook, a well-known Leeds solicitor, and nephew of Sir William Midilebrook, M.P., who has been missing for some weeks, has sent a postcard in which he says he is a prisoner. A student at Repton when war broke out, he was given a commission in the Rifle Brigade. Later he was transferred to t he R.F.C. • He is 19 years of age.

Varies according to density, but 10 tons of rock is around 4m3. (In other words, a lump of stone 1m cube typically weighs around 2.5 tons). So, using a rough estimate, a 10 ton block is 4 cubic m, so the cube root of 4 would make it a lump of rock just over 1.6m edge if it was a cube, or more likely just under 2m diameter if it was a sphere. Considering it was burning up, I'm curious at what stage someone decided it weighed 10 tons, but I suppose it's as good a figure as any. Being undedected, it does make you wonder how big a meteor would have to be to be detected en route, and how little time we'd have to get Bruce Willis suited and booted, and into a space ship with some nuclear devices to make it all go away.

It's strange, but what do you say? Nobody to blame, no precautions to be taken, just raw fate, and extraordinary bad luck for those people affected. It could have been any of us. Makes you reaslise just how dangerous it is to have nuclear weapons on standby. Seeing that, you'd think you were under attack rather than watching a meteor.

http://tma-aircraft....loh-purice.html Seems it wasn't completely without it's merits... The stubby shape was to reduce the drag from struts and wires, and even the deep fuselage got rid of struts below the upper wing and also meant the guns were inside the fuselage. In 1915, the EIII was making all the running, so the Flea did have some innovations which you could say were ahead of it's time perhaps... 112mph in 1915, when the EIII was around 90mph and a Be2 around 70mph. (Incidentally, the text in the link is Hungarian if you're text translation struggles.) Seems the big problem was the poor visibility on the ground, and a high landing speed.

I can't look at it without thinking of Dick Dastardly and Muttley stopping the pigeon.

Scratching my head, but I'm sure I've seen a Flea in a simulator somewhere ... Light blue in colour, and the cowling looks like a smiley face from head on. Now where did I see it??? Hmmm....... It'll come to me. Edit - Microsoft FS9 I think....

I'm probably wrong. How many kids do you see riding bikes these days? When I was a kid we all wanted racing bikes for going fast and getting places to do the things that were fun. It was all about independence, not exercise. Then along came mountain bikes to go strange and weird places pedaling like billy-oh but still going slowly, just for the 'fun' of pure exercise. Then along comes the tinternet, and you can travel around the world from your bedroom without opening your front door. I really don't know how a 5 year old sees the world these days. Can't see much of it from a bike, although the picture quality is better.

Bike top choice, then the bunny, then the Ipad. Numbers = 10 bikes, 6 rabbits, 4 Ipads. I'm guessing at 5, lots of kids are still pre school and many are borderline with reading, so I'm guessing the Ipad is less popular than you'd expect. By 6 however, I'd bet the ipad was a lot more popular.