Flyby PC

If he is playing politics with Scottish opinion, he is playing with fire ... http://caledonianmercury.com/2012/04/16/opinion-why-ypres-matters-more-than-bannockburn-for-the-independence-vote/0032258 This is my last word in the thread Admin - I really don't mean to be political or express an opinion, but just expose potential hypocrisy and cynical electioneering. Please all, treat the political issue itself as irrelevant, but I invite people to draw their own conclusions about the political intent behind celebrating the 2014 date. For balance, however, 2014 will be 100th centenary for the start of WW1, and will be the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn. Is that electioneering too? It may be. Draw your own conclusions, (but keep them to yourself or we might end up in the pub).

There's now a government e-petition been started to postpone the 'celebration' until 2018, to mark the end of hostilities rather than their beginning. http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/40143

This is being perceived in some quarters of Scotland as a tasteless act of flag waving hoping to influence the opinion of the Scottish electorate holding their referendum on Independence in Autumn 2014. (The media has already recently sought to politicise the British success in the Olympics and Andy Murray's win for similar effect). Who else celebrates/commemorates the centenary of the beginning of a war? It's vulgur, artless, and if those motivations are part of the picture, then it's also beneath contempt. I have the deepest respect for our fallen servicemen, indeed the whole of Scotland is renknowned for such respect, but I have a razor sharp cynicism concerning UK poiticians. Personally, I'd rather commemorate the end of hostilities, not their beginning. Sorry mods, I don't mean to present political arguments or opinion, but just report how this innitiative by Cameron is being read by some...

What strikes me is the lottery of it all. Take Hood and Bismark. Hood with many years of service to her credit blown to pieces. Bismark destroyed on her maiden voyage, in no small part by King George V who believe it or not was an even younger ship than Bismark, but survived the war, and became a training ship and scrapped in 1957. I don't think it was a waste of time to build such ships, but war had made them vulnerable and thus obsolete. I'm not a naval chap at all, but when you see pictures of the Royal Navy fleet with their big ships steaming line astern , it's a mightily impressive sight. I suppose WW1 was their hayday, because battleships in WW2 didn't really have the answers for aircraft and submarines.

That's good news Tony.

News gets better HumanDrone, the fella who forked out all the cash for the restored the Mosquito did the job thoroughly, studying film footage of the moulds used to make the plywood formwork. Now that this has been done, it should now be much easier to restore more Mosquitos and get them back into the air. This very workshop already has a second Mossie in production. The Mossie is my all time favourite aircraft. Simply the best.

It's a corny saying, but very true - Life is fragile, handle with care. I hope she has a full and speedy recovery,- and gets back on a horse too. Life can change in an instant, so we should live that life to the full and enjoy the experience.

It's curious the weather in WW1, because WW2 had it's own bad weather too. I'm thinking about the Battle of the Bulge in particular. I know the UK has been wet this year, but not being a smart Alec, it's actually felt reasonably normal. Wet boots in the morning and mud all round the yard. Same old, same old... How do you quantify extra mud? It might well have been wetter, but speaking locally, it's not been noticeably wetter. Best part of summer this was March. Not kidding. The rest of 'Summer' just came in all too brief installments. What I have noticed, was seeing neither a wasp nor a butterfly until the beginning of September. That's a bit grim. I think they've been missing the heat of a decent summer, - as indeed have I. Time will tell whether there will be enough berries for the birds this winter. Usually, few berries is a good sign it won't be a bad winter, but the old ways and sayings don't seem to apply these days. Perhaps they never really did, or maybe the world really is changing.

I agree, but to repeat myself, people forget the tensions which exist between Greece and Turkey. Just recently I heard there was speculation that a Turkish plot existed to provoke renewed tensions with Greece to justify a coup attempt in Turkey. Tensions here make it a dodgy place to be taking pictures, but i suspect a contributing factor might be we just don't think of Greece as being a potential flashpoint. Stupidity is no defence if sensitive or restricted information is publicised, not least because it provides such plausible cover for genuine espionage. I remember when I was college, myself and some friends drove up to Skye for a couple of days, and drove further North too. We didn't notice anything at the time, but later, when we looked at the pictures we'd had developed, we found two submarines we'd happened to catch in the picture in the background. Just because it meant nothing to us, doesn't mean it wouldn't be very important knowledge for someone else.

Depends when they get out....

This isn't new. In 2001, there were twelve British plane spotters arrested in Greece for taking pictures of the wrong things. The Greeks take this seriously, and it's something people should be aware of. Defence facilities and the military aren't just there to benefit computer games. If these people can satisfy the Greeks they're not spies, then I don't suppose the Greeks will want any more to do with them, but if I recall correctly, I think the dozen Brits were found guilty and could have gone to jail but were deported back to Britain and banned from going back to Greece. I think another factor why this keeps happening might be that people tend to forget the political situation between Greece and Turkey.

If you like XCom Enemy Unknown, you might like Fallout Tactics. It's 'kind of' in the Fallout series, but it plays a lot more like XCom than the other Fallout titles. Not brilliant by todays standards perhaps, but it passes the time... It's a bit less correction MORE predictable than Xcom however, and you can't plot the path of your excellent pan drop missiles, nor Psionic control a baddie and have him turn collaborator.....

I wonder how the body was preserved below ground however. I'm a bit confused when the video says he was laid in a shallow grave but then they can interpret his last moments from the posture. These are mere details of course, but what a stunning find to come across. It rather suggests if they can find one, there may be more, although I hope the battlefield is not now plundered for artifacts. I have a suspicion the presence of that ball was the reason the body was found. I'm guessing it was a metal detector.

So was I NS13Jarhead. It obviously did work, but I was mulling over how well it worked. Then it occured to me, that he might actually have been way ahead of his time. Forget the engines are prop driven, and we take it for granted that most jet fighters have inline engines for better aerodynamics, but that concept was 40 to 50 years later. I don't think there's any connection, and almost certainly it didn't evolve from this particular 'streamlined' configuration, but I'm guessing the aerodynamics perhaps wasn't as mad as it looks - primative, but sound(ish).

That might explain all the struts and scaffolding. Perhaps the picture we're seeing is 'float design Mk 35', and they were having all sorts of problems breaking free from the surface. I dare say this was inspired cutting edge technology at the time...

That hydrovane is pure coincidence Olham, but fishing nets have otter boards to keep the net open as it's towed through a current. The Japanese connection still eludes me, whether it is just the shape of a Japanese Kaiten or the Okha Kamikaze Jet. A back to front Okha bomber isn't fare away in terms of shape .... I feel inclined to say a 'hydro vane' is just a blade which works like an aircraft wing. By forcing the air (or water) to one one side, the difference in pressure creates lift or steering in an aircrafts wing or flap, but the same phenomenon creates either lift or steering in water. I suppose another example of a hydrovane might be the dive planes on a submarine. And therefore, a hydrofoil might be described as a hydrovane designed to create lift in water.

It's strange, I can't put my finger on it, but it reminds me of something.... and I'm thinking Japanese... I need more coffee...

Well, we're still talking about it 100 years later.....

A WW2 American bomb found in Munich was made safe by detonating it. Quite a big bang for a 500lb bomb! (Not that I know, but it's a big blast). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19408929 It had to be detonated because the firing mechanism was chemical????

I suppose it could be a glider, but it appears to be landing, and I cannot imagine how it might have been launched. Where did you find the picture Hauksbee?

I wonder if the idea might be to break the surface tension of the water before the sponson landed, with the intention being to stop the aircraft tipping over. I don't think that would work however, but then I've never seen this anywhere else. As BH said, I'm also struggling to see where the engine is to work out the centre of gravity... I don't see any power source at all, which is more of a curiosity than the bits below the sponsons. My last thought, which is doubtful but just possible, is that the aircraft might be sitting on a trailer which is below the water. Unlikely, but just possible...

Ah! I really wondered. I saw the cloud of glowing sparks and scratched my head for what it was. I presumed it must have been some kind of incentiary components in the bomb. Thing is, that explosion was 1 bomb. Not so long ago these fell like rain. We don't know how lucky we are.

Maybe not that ironic. If the Camel was on his tail, perhaps you wouldn't see the German markings but recognise the shape of an allied plane until too late. There are distances involved before you can discern symbols and markings. The Boulton Paul Defiant got hammered in the early war, (but did much better as a night fighter), but it also had a brief period of initial success because the German fighters thought they recognised the shape of a hurricane, approached for an attack on the rear only to find the defiants turret firing at them. They quickly learned to spot the difference, and it's then the Defiant was in trouble and quickly withdrawn from front line daylight service.

If I remember correctly, when the Spitfire first flew into combat, the first aircraft shot down by Spitfires were two British Hurricanes in a blue on blue attack known as the Battle of Barking Creek.

There was a TV ad several years ago now, I forget if it was Audi or BMW, but they boasted having more computer power in their car than NASA had to put men on the moon. These days we just take computers for granted. My Ipod has more memory on it than my first five computers all put together. The backup and assistance these fellas had for getting to the moon in terms of computers was primitive to say the least. Brave men, all of them.