Hauksbee

Hauksbee's revenge! (lol)

Ansel Adams was definitely 'the man'. But he got so many of his breath-taking shots because he camped out and lived in the places he was interested in. And shot frame-after-frame day-after-day 'til hell wouldn't have it. The last article I saw on Adams (about ten years ago) said that his estate still hasn't been curated. He left behind hundreds and hundreds of rolls of film never developed, masses of negatives never printed. When you shoot film on that scale you're sure to get some winners. And then, of course, you go into the darkroom and work your magic.

Isn't that the truth! I've always admired Lady Butler...that which I've been able to find, and that's precious few examples. (maybe six) 'Seems she's gotten lost in the horrid rush of 'modernism', which pretty much sets my teeth on edge. Dismissed these days as a 'Cheerleader for the Raj', I find her unsurpassed for draftsmanship, color, light, brushwork and emotional power. (I'd burn Cezanne' to the ground at a moments notice, and Picasso should have been strangled in the cradle) I've read that spectators would collect in front of her paintings and cheer. (OK, so maybe she was a cheerleader for the Raj, but I can live with that) I've scoured the 'net on several occasions looking for a site that had a good overview of her work. Found nothing. So Widowmaker, can you point me toward some good books, or websites, on Lady Butler?

Nice skin, indeed. However; if you're going to re-visit it, might you consider making the Latin crosses on the wings a bit bolder? They seem to get a little lost in those strong diagonals.

Amen! to that. Years back, I did a long summer of glider training and the instructors at the time were tireless in drumming into us newbies: "Low and slow kills pilots."

Well, wot th' hell...someone's got to do it. My point being, that after a career of being a graphic designer & illustrator, I'm well accustomed to having to defend my work. It's part of the game. ("You got that part wrong!" "Th' hell I did...") Everybody and his cat has an opinion. I'm sure Anderson's a big boy now and if he found out that we feel only pilots with a death-wish would fly that close, it would not be the end of his world. But...for flying close, it's the movie people who should be poked with a sharp stick. Particularly scenes of squadrons taking off, and/or diving to the attack. It seems mandatory to crowd every plane into the shot. There's been many an occasion when I've nearly choked on my popcorn (in chagrin) and thought "Would someone just buy a copy of OFF and FRAPS for these fools, so they can get it right.?"

It does sound like he lost power (though not necessarily full engine stoppage) and unless there was a stand of trees dead ahead, or a parked gasoline truck, I'd say he was insane to try to turn back to the field from that altitude.

I especially enjoyed the way the cooling jackets on the Spandau's rotated in opposite directions.

After the Udet clip, check the second in line. It shows movie special effects for flying films when they had to suspend models from wires...and see how far we've come. I can recall seeing this stuff when I was a kid, and it looked completely fake even then, circa 1948.

Jazz loving French cows? Ah! for a glass of French milk, and a dinner featuring French steak...

For me, the high point of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was when Indiana Jones came within a whisker of highjacking that gorgeous flying wing bomber, only to have it go up in smoke. I really wanted to see that fly. After that, it all went downhill. Still a good film, but, DAMN!, what an elegant escape that would have been. A few years later, a buddy stopped by the house and handed me a book called "Northrop Flying Wings" (by Edward Maloney). Said that he'd been poking around in a used book store and thought I'd like it. When I got into it, I was shocked to find the exact same plane sitting on the ground at Muroc AFB (1940) It wasn't a German flying wing after all. They had jazzed it up for the movie with a heavier, more modern undercarriage, and added a MG turret. Other than that, it was the same plane, right down to the bent wingtips. It was designated the N1M "Jeep". (the 'Jeep' was a koala-looking character from the old 'Popeye' comic strips in the newspapers, and later gave his name again to the WWII vehicle) The plane was powered by two 90hp Lycoming engines, later replaced with 120hp Franklins...and painted bright yellow.

Here's an outstanding book on the development of lifting bodies. It's "The Deltoid Pumpkinseed" by John McPhee. I just looked it up on Amazon.com and bought a copy for $0.25 (well...$4.75, with postage. Still a deal) Here's the blurb for it from Amazon. Since the explosion of the Hindenburg in Lakehurst, New Jersey, energy-efficient, lighter-than-air ships have given way to gas-guzzling jet aircraft. But in the 1960s, an unusual band of inventors, engineers and investors, again in New Jersey, created the Aereon, a strange, wingless hybrid airplane/dirigible. The Aereon--the Deltoid Pumpkin Seed-- promised to be a safe workhorse of the skies, capable of carrying the payload of entire freight trains with minimal cost. In this exquisitely crafted tale of back-to-the-drawing-board perseverance, McPhee tells the story not only of the Aereon, but of any product development team. He astutely delineates the team members' personalities and interactions, delves back in time to the origins of lighter-than-air craft and the history of propellers, and in the end, makes us wonder why this promising technology hasn't been perfected.

Nor did I.

Nice one, Olham. I'd not seen this one...and with contra-rotating props.(?) Payens was certainly pushing the envelope for his time. It's a shame that we'll never know if any of them would have panned out.

I know how you feel. I'd never the pick the DH-2 as being the one that put a end to the "Fokker Scourge" On the other hand, the E.III has such a 'modern' layout that I'd never pick it to be such a turkey to fly.

They're 3D models I built in a program called Carrara. I download a dozen or more 3-view drawings from a website called 'dannysoar'. The site had several pages devoted to Roland Payens. I just looked for it and it seems to be gone. Pity. I took a few liberties with the designs. For example, the engine nacelles on the bomber are a bit more extended than the original. And while the fighter existed in two versions (on paper. Only the in-line version was built) the cylinder heads did not extend out through the cowl. The color schemes are my own design.

Art Deco? Yeah...well, maybe. But still uglier than sin. The French had a weakness toward incredibly ugly, angular airplanes with lots of multi-pane windows and gun turrets that looked like warts grown wild. The real exception to this trend was a virtually unknown designer named Roland Payens. I discovered him by accident, following a curious trail of internet links. Payens was convinced that a delta-winged airplane was the way to go...and he almost got there. Just before WWII he got a commission from the Japanese government for a trial 2-engined bomber, but it's not known if it was ever delivered. After the invasion, the Germans confiscated the Payens fighter plane (with in-line engine) and conducted trials with it. They were insufficiently impressed to take it any further. When the war was over, Payens realized aircraft design had passed him by and spent the rest of his career restoring older vintage airplanes and rigging planes for movie work. The pics.are of 3D models I built a few years back.

...and they're so damned ugly, I'd risk going up in an E.III just to take a whack at them.

Right you are. However, it looks even more wobbly with that dogleg in it...and we still have the photo you posted with the straight pole. Might this have been a field modification?

When I posted my query about falling out of a FE2b, I was looking at the picture that Pol had posted. The gun certainly seems to be mounted on the top wing, which made it a long and precarious reach. The photo Olham posted has it on a post right behind the gunner (and not a very stout looking pole at that) Were there two different models?

A beautifully done video. I was happily surprised to see the cloth bag on the Lewis gun to collect the cartridges and keep them from hitting the pilot in the face.

I guess it bloody well would be a 'field modification'! If it were me, I'd have a waist belt with tethers to all four sides of the cockpit, and my flying boots screwed to the floor. I wonder how much flex there was in the post that held the top MG? It must have been hellish trying to get off an accurate shot with the wind buffeting, the pilot maneuvering to save his life (and yours) and an MG gimbal-mounted on the top of a pole. 'Glad I missed that opportunity.

Truer words were never spoken!

Great film footage!