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Theresa (my daughter) flew from Eindhoven to Manchester today of all days. Storm Doris made it interesting..... "Take off was bumpy. Above the clouds was pretty. Manchester closed their airport while we were in-flight. Then they opened it for landing. Circled for landing for 20 minutes. Tried to land twice...couldn't. Got diverted to Liverpool. 10 minutes before landing at Liverpool a fight broke out. Three minutes to landing and a very drunk idiot decided to walk up and down the plane....laughing and cheering at himself while 100 people are screaming at him to sit his butt down. 1minute later he does it again and a woman passes out (bear in mind it feels like we're on a rollercoaster). The plane landed sideways.10 people threw up around me and we've been sitting on the plane for 25 minutes while police taserd said idoit. Police escorted the fighters off and the paramedics are here treating the woman who passed out. And due to the shortage of baggage handlers (we're not next to the terminal, out in an open parking spot) we're going to wait a while before we can get our luggage. I need ground beneath my feet...pronto. And someone please give this cabin crew a massive bonus #bumpyflight #groundnowplease#imtoooldforthis " Looking forward to a Dad Hug later when I pick her up from her uncle's in Droitwich, he was good enough to offer to pick her up so had to contend with the diversion.

I'm trying to help out some folks when I see they could use some. This is an in cockpit view of how to use lead and lag pursuit. https://youtu.be/oN0BV_p-tJI

I know we have a video of this display already a few posts back but I found another with slightly steadier camera work and a bit less wind noise and thought you chaps might like to see it...

Some from the show That's the lot - hope you like 'em

And a little video here:

Home after a very good weekend, great to meet up with some of the gang, have checked and the photos came out fine despite the camera acting up, will sort them out and post them soon. Highlights were 5 hurricanes together then hurricanes, early spitfires and blenhem flight

Done!

Hey gang. Hope you're all well. Still thinking of you all. Especially Painless. Sweet, sweet tender Painless. Anyway, just thought I'd pop in and let you know I met up with Cold_Gambler a couple weeks back in Ottawa. Angus is doing well and says to say hi. Like me, he wants to get back to flying one day...but like me, talks mores than does. Creepily, he hasn't aged a day since I last saw him - years back when I stopped through Toronto to see BG in his forest mansion hideway. I suspect he is part of some cult that drinks the blood of virgins to stay young our something. He wasn't happy when I stabbed with with a sharpened crucifix. I might have been over reacting. Planning on being out there for Duxford. Bringing Jensen (of Jensnpark fame) out to celebrate his high school grad. He was just 4 when I first stumbled upon BG and Angus way way back. time flies I tell you. Will make sure I drop in more often.

I really enjoy flying Operation Jericho, cheers Tom for putting it together. One of the best parts is the feeling of realism in the mission, it works really well for me. Browsing through the 'net today I found a short Pathe News film about the raid that shows what we are out to achieve and how accurate we are in what we do! Brilliant stuff.

Glad some of my ramblings have been of assistance, chaps. Now for the hard part... LANDING Hands down the trickiest module to land cleanly in DCS, with the 109 coming in a VERY close 2nd. However it can be done, and done so consistently. Practise, practise, practise. However, you need to have the correct procedure to practise with and at the moment whilst you'll probably being doing the right things you'll be doing them at the wrong time (mostly too soon). I shall elaborate. Part 1: The Prep First off is the approach - the adage goes that a good landing always starts with a good approach. This is doubly true of the DCS Spitty. Coming straight in from a long way out is just making life difficult for yourself; the curved approach give you much better visibility of your runway positioning down to the point at which you flare and cut. Long straight approaches - if done correctly - will hide the runway under that honking great nose and could mean lots of last minute corrections if you find yourself off centreline, with all sorts of potential for over correction and spurious energy in the aeroplane as you try and pull her back to centreline which will only make the flare and cut a more hurried affair, increasing your workload and making an awkward landing all too likely. If on straight in approach you can see the runway all the way in you're coming in damn steep and will make judging the flare all the more difficult. There's a reason that real Spit pilots adopt the curved approach - I would suggest you adopt the same procedure as a matter of course. As shown here from 19:15: Part 2: Touchdown! Many of you will be getting down in one piece (mostly) but having a very alarming experience doing so. Wingtips slapping the tarmac, no particular bias, left or right, but either way you're off in the grass, generally facing the wrong way perhaps with a prop strike and maybe some clipped wings. Sound familiar? Me too. I was having exactly the same as you chaps, until I tried cutting later and flaring at a lower alt; I suspected the wing drop was coming from having too much sink on contact with terra firma and the energy from this, whilst not enough to cause a bounce, was still more than could be absorbed by the u/c. With no airspeed/lift to get back up it threw the load into momentum about the u/c contact points thus one of the wings is thrown down. All this behaviour will be exacerbated if you have any side-slip or side load on the a/c as you touch down. Bootfuls of rudder should not be required at this stage in low cross-wind conditions (check your crosswinds by the way; if you're in a mission where you're trying to land in heavy crosswinds then have a rethink. Trying to run before learning to walk is only going to frustrate you). If you're making large corrections in any plane to get on centreline then GO AROUND. Call it quits and try again. It's that simple. So what's the lesson? Cut later and flare lower. Keep rudder input to a minimum. By deliberately flaring at a lower altitude we reduce the height at which we drop from = less energy. By cutting power later the aircraft settles rather than stalls, thus again reducing sink rate = less energy. The flare itself I make very gently - hence the later power cut - as the low longitudinal stability of the spit and the stick sensitivity makes it easy for the nose to end up higher than desired. Get all this right and you should be rewarded with a gentle settle onto the ground and a satisfying squeal of rubber on asphalt. As you see in the video, my mains touched first followed by the tail wheel a fraction of a second later, so it does not have to be perfect three-point. It's just that the margins are narrow for getting it wrong. Currently your major issues will be flaring too high and cutting too early; just hold off a bit longer on both and it should make life easier. Part 3: The Straight and Narrow You've touched down with no wing drop! Hooray! However, the Spitfire is not yet done trying to find ways to embarrass you and inattentiveness at this stage will end up with you in the grass with some major airframe components likely scattered around you. FLY THE PLANE! You are not done till you're sitting back at the pan with the engine off! All those issues you had at takeoff with directional instability are just waiting to throw you off the runway. Stick back in your lap once you're sure she's down and staying so. Get on the rudder like Michael Flatley (Lord of the Dance/Riverdance for those who need a point of reference) - just avoid brakes! You'll have plenty of airspeed for the rudder to be effective during the early part of the ground roll. Just like takeoff, keep the inputs short and sharp! Adding brakes too soon will throw you into the grass. As you slow you'll start to feel that rudder alone isn't quite cutting the mustard; your inputs to keep her straight will become larger and longer; it's at this point you start bringing in a dab of brakes to help keep her in line. But keep dancing! Finally you'll come to a stop, engine still running, pointing the same way and with all major and minor structures still attached. And it's now that you are allowed to breathe! Congratulations! Flaps away and get out the god-damn way cos someone's likely to be making their final approach and could do without worrying about bumping into you! Getting this right takes practise - it took me a good number of attempts to hit the right formula and get it right more than I got it wrong. However, I'm able to do this consistently now - as long as I concentrate! - so I assure you it's not impossible.

That is a major pain in the harris m8. The writing has been on the wall since Shoreham I suppose : (. Perhaps a solution would be to create a venue especially for air shows far enough away from population centres and main roads to be deemed safe. I vote for that instead of a high speed rail link @£82bn. If only.......... Maybe re route the M11 a bit ? Any slightly more practical ideas ? If they keep on legislating the risks out of life like this, in another 50 years 25 million people will suddenly drop dead of boredom on a wet Tuesday afternoon.

I recall, maybe incorrectly, one of our members (Friar?) lamenting the fact that he was unable to find the rather exquisite score written for the Horsemen warbird formation display team by the late James Horner. Hitherto fleeting snatches of it were available on some you tube videos but invariably cut about and overdubbed with hairyplane noises and much talking - anything but the full, unadulterated piece. Well, I recently discovered this; please enjoy. I know I do very, very much:

Whilst out for a cycle ride this afternoon on one of my regular routes, something caught my eye on the corner of a T-junction about 2 miles from my house. It looked like a granite memorial headed with the recognisable RAF crested motto, something I can't remember seeing before; I carried on but made a point of stopping off to take a look on my return an hour later. It turned out to be a (relatively new) memorial to a 603 Squadron Spitfire pilot lost on Battle of Britain day: F/O Arthur Peter Pease Here's the excerpt from the BBM website: F/O A P Pease Arthur Peter Pease, the son of Sir Richard and Lady Pease of Richmond, Yorkshire was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read History. He was a member of the University Air Squadron and was commissioned in the RAFVR in September 1938. Called to full-time service in October 1939, Pease completed his flying training and was posted to No.1 School of Army Co-operation at Old Sarum in late May 1940. He met Richard Hillary there and they became friends. They went to 5 OTU, Aston Down on 23rd June and after converting to Spitfires they joined 603 Squadron at Dyce on 6th July. Pease shared in destroying a He111 on the 30th. He was hit by return fire but returned to Montrose, unhurt. On 3rd September he claimed a Me109 destroyed and on the 7th he made a belly-landing back at Hornchurch in Spitfire L1057, after being damaged in combat over London. On 15th September 1940 Pease was shot down and killed in combat. His Spitfire, X4324, crashed at Kingswood, near Chartway Street, Kent. He was 22 and is buried in the churchyard of St.Michael and All Saints at Middleton Tyas, Yorkshire. It's the closest Battle of Britain loss to where I live that I'm aware of and it kind of struck a chord with me today, especially as I hadn't previously been aware of it; I've lived in this area now for almost 12 years. So, I've decided to honour F/O Pease, virtually. For the foreseeable future, I will be flying in the Spitfire he was lost in, X4324 on Thursday's CloD nights. Further reading here, it seems a retired American academic paved the way for the above memorial: http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/features/13610056.An_American_academic_seeks_to_honour_a_Battle_of_Britain_hero_from_a_famous_family/

Well chaps, thank you, had a blast. I had a great time. Crash, FT and Arthur hosted and it was fun! Thanks gents! It is the way to go...and jeez, these planes look good.

Not a stick but I'm seriously looking at treating myself to something like this;

To be fair I was on that side of the road a lot ?

Airfix 1/48 Hawker Fury Scratch built pit , rescribed panel lines and reworked radiator Paints were Vallejo acryllic aluminium and humbrol silver from a spray can Kit decals EZ line and E string fron guitar rigging

It flies! P-47 'Nellie' (G-THUN) about to touchdown after a test sortie from her Duxford home (At least I think it's Duxford - don't remember all those trees though). This is going to freakin' AWESOME (as long as they open the taps a bit and not just have her stooging around with Sally B!) (Not my photo - it's in focus - Credit to Duxman over at the Historic Aviation forum)

Thanks to Fenrir mentioning Artie having bumped/bounced on take off during our session last Thursday, finally found and fixed the rather annoying bug where one would be flying along nicely, and suddenly one's aircraft is being removed from midair ... POOF! That would always occur three minutes after one had landed. Makes sense, we do not want you to have tea and biscuits in cockpit. The mess! (Yes, that's the proper place to have those, apart from ground crew having to clean your pit). Artie bouncing meant the server probably thought he'd landed at take off. Somehow I've managed to add a test to the removal script, so it will only happen to AI aircraft... and within one minute now, not after three. Now you may think your a/c will stay on the field for like ever after you've landed, but no, unless you stay in the cockpit, once you press escape, your aircraft will be set to AI status, and then poofed after one minute. Disclaimer: only limited testing has been done, there's a good chance that during the mission running lots of blue ai aircraft occupy their home bases after having landed ... oh well, will deal with that once that happens...

It's Spring! This morning my lawn is indeed lime green!! Lets see, Stonehenge is about seventy miles up the road from me, the Caucasus must be around three and a half thousand miles from me - and possibly in another continent - about the same distance as St. Johns, Newfoundland - so yes; it could be something in the water lol!! I had to drive past Stonehenge twice last week. It stands on a chalky meadow on the southern part of Salisbury Plain overlooking the A303, the main road to the west. Grass was...well, greeny as usual Thirty-two years ago I was at University in London. I did a spot of part time motorcycle courier work to keep the cash coming in too. In my second year I had a couple of lectures on a Thursday morning and then zilch until a tutorial on Monday afternoon. My mum lived in Devon - about one hundred and fifty miles away - and had recently been widowed. She was struggling with this; we all were and I was the nearest and most available of her sons. I discovered the courier firm I worked for had a job no one wanted to do - which made it a very lucrative job; pick up a wages tape from the offices of Barclays bank in west London before five o'clock on a Thursday afternoon and deliver it to a block house type building on an industrial estate just outside Exeter - in Devon - by midnight. By the most direct route this was one hundred and fifty-seven miles and you'd end up on the other side of the country late on a Thursday night with the prospect of a long and unpaid trip back to London. Thats why no one wanted to do it. However, for me it was perfect; a nice little earner and a long weekend at home with mum and seeing friends. I had a Suzuki GS850 with shaft drive, fixed panniers, a howling Yoshimura four into one and a nice big five gallon gas tank. The worst part of the business was the trip down to west London for the pick up and out onto the M3 motorway during afternoon rush hour traffic. After a couple of weeks I discovered the bank office was manned twenty four seven by their security staff. I could ignore the afternoon deadline for pick up and scoop it up around seven p.m. and avoid the evening traffic. As you leave the M3 motorway and join the A303 you pass a large green traffic sign that says 'The South West'. I love this sign. To me it says beaches, sunshine, rolling green hills, friends and family. It was also the point where I really opened the taps on my big GS and settled in for my own personal TT race across southern England. These days the A303 is largely a straight piece of anonymous dual carriageway but back then it was mostly a hundred and twenty miles of sinuous two-lane black top snaking westwards across the counties of Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somerset and Devon. Through the Spring I'd do the trip non-stop. As long as I dawdled down and out of London I had enough gas in the tank for the whole trip. If you wound the big GS up through the gears and then held it at around one hundred mph you'd get 'er down to around twenty - twenty five to the gallon!. After the summer break I took this job up again and as autumn set in I fitted a bikini fairing from a GS1000S which surprisingly helped with fuel consumption, the small screen helped to deflect wind blast too. I also fitted an (illegal) 85w halogen bulb into the big headlight for the onset of winter. I took to taking a thermos flask of coffee and some sandwiches with me and breaking the journey. A GS850 is not the lightest nor most nimble of motorcycles at around 550lbs but that sheer mass gives a certain planted feel to front and rear tyres. If you know the road you can get into the groove of things...if you know what I mean. No speed cameras and no radar back then either. Stonehenge marked the midway point on my journey. At night, and at speed you would come off that short section of dual carraigeway called the Amesbury bypass and follow that white line into a fast right-hand bend before the road briefly straightened out over the crest of a hill. Then at the moment you started to lean it into the following down hill left-hander you'd get a brief glimpse of the stones on the rising meadow a couple of hundred yards away. A minor road branching off to the right went up a gentle hill to make the northern field boundary. I ignored Stonehenge. I'd usually stop for coffee and a cigarette in a protected layby a couple of miles further up the road. One bollock-freezing, crystal clear night in late October I came hammering westwards past Amesbury at around a hundred and twenty. There on the left was a reflection of tail lights which rapidly grew into a blue and white Rover SDI of the Wiltshire Constabulary parked up at the side of the road. Oh shit. Sure enough, as I howled passed his lights came on and I knew he'd want to pull me. There is simply no point in trying to outrun the rozzers on a motorcycle. It can only end in pain of one sort or another. Much better to hide! As I crested the hill I knew they'd only just got their Rover going so I went straight on up the minor road to the stones on the right, switched my lights and engine off and coasted into the Stonehenge visitor centre car park. There was no other traffic around but I got to see the headlights of a fast moving car heading west along the A303 away from me. Phew. I broke out the coffee, sarnies and had two cigarettes. From then on I always stopped at the stones for a break. The visitor centre was surprisingly grotty and closed. If the car park was empty I'd climb over the chest high fence and have my little picnic in the dark, sitting amongst the stones and watching the occasional passing traffic below and listen to the slumbering sheep that also occupied the field. Christmas came and with it a three week break at home. The second Thursday evening in January saw me pull up as usual in the car park. I noticed the fence now had a length of barbed wire running along the top but since it was still chest high it hardly presented an obstacle. The sheep were gone. I'd just sat down amongst the stones when I saw a pair of headlights come on directly to the south by a stand of trees. Around a half a mile away. It was just after nine at night and I watched these lights trundle leisurely towards me along a track in the fields. They crossed the A303 and headed up the minor road and did a sweep of the car park. I thought about the new barbed wire on the fence, the absence of sheep and realised I was about to get nicked. Sure enough, the headlights belonged to a little white van marked 'Department of the Enviroment Security' from which emerged what turned out to be a nice man in uniform who escorted me off the premises. Luckily thats all he could do as he had no powers of arrest! He also explained that when I jumped the fence I'd set off an alarm and by walking over to the stones I'd triggered two pressure pads. Ah well, all good things must come to an end. Infact, not long afterwards the job itself came to an end when they started sending the contents of the tape down a telephone line. Apologies for this rambling nonsense having bugger all to do with DCS.

Happy Birthday Royal Air Force! Some of you may remember that I said my Grandfather was a founder member of the Royal Air Force, this local newspaper article gives a good account of his involvement. My brother, who has done a lot of family research, put it together. Stephen Bullock...? Who's he?

Read it here chaps, featuring some stunning photography of the graceful old bird: http://vintageaviationecho.com/arco-blenheim/

I am growing old but I have no intention of growing up

I can appreciate what you guys are going through with this topic. IL2 still does have the most content of any WWII sim out there. It is going to go away at some point. Just like Janes WWII fighters and the like did because of the lack of Windows support in one way or the other. I was not a fan of BOS when it first came out; indeed I fully regretted buying it. That has all changed because they have not only improved the flight models, but the graphics are much better, especially with the addition of the Kuban map. I very much enjoy flying BOX and a number of us fly almost every evening. With the future addition of the Battle of Bodenplatte which includes 8 Aircraft (P-51D, P-47D, Spitfire Mk.IX, Tempest Mk.V, Bf 109 G-14, Bf 109 K-4, Fw 190 A-8 and Me 262) and 2 Collector Planes (P-38L and Fw 190 D-9) that can be bought separately, I think, currently, that is where the future of WWII simming lies. Someday maybe DCS will get its act together and fix the horrible damage modes on the AI aircraft, (using simple fight models for them) until then it BOX for me. And but the way about DCS and complexity, you always have the option to use “auto start”. I never thought I could fly the A10C but I learned with the help of some in the community (that would be Capt. Jack) I found the experience to be very enjoyable. Any one of you that have or thinking about getting BOX, as Jack said, I, Perfesser, Spaulding, Gustang, wingflyer, are flying almost every evening, we’d love to see you there. I never thought I would be saying all this about a sim I fully rejected from the outset. All I know is that whatever you all decide; I will be all in with my financial support for the Dogz as always.

The water and the ramp will need a bit more attention

Spent the day at a family's hobby of a miniature railway IMG_1467.MOV IMG_1480.MOV

A bit of paraffin burning light relief (look away FT )

Just a few from me and my Samsung Galaxy S7... Me and Jabo enjoying the sun and ale on the Friday: Berlin Express before she became a cabriolet: The beautiful dh 88 Comet: Count the Hurricanes! Fruitbat getting down and dirty for 'that' shot: Jabo and Delta7: Fruitbat and taking a break from flying duties, our very own bongodriver:

So it appears that I managed to catch BE's canopy failing - sorry the photo's a bit blurred but it's interesting all the same - you can see the damage to the leading edges of the tail and tailplane clearly.

Thanks to Dave, Kev, Chris, Tom, Sid and Bongo for a great weekend. Minor hiccups aside, the show was probably one of the better ones of recent years with a welcome return of the Horsemen, five Hurrricanes (!), 12 Spitfires, 5 Mustangs and plenty more. And (especially for Michael) some piccies - starting with Friday. Mustangs in the sunshine; Richard Grace and the Fury; Not Steve Hinton as we originally thought but one of the other pilots renewing their display licence in Sharky. Pigeon rolling Dragon Rapide flown by the recipient of the 'Handsomest Pilot' award. More Pigeon Arrivals Mmmm Messers Shipley, Hinton and Freidkin (and some random old dude) The Horsemen departeth... More Pony action - this might go on a bit... That was Friday then....

here are some pics, I only have a compact camera which of course decided to act up , but this should give a flavour; Reprobates that kindly took care of me 5 hurricanes (not four candles) First time Id seen hurricane fly One of the mustangs The one I would have taken home if I could Flying highlight Nothing compaires to the gracefullness of a spitfire in flight or the sound of the merlins and griphons

Working on the old rail bridge currently. On facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BuildingAModelBridge/

Painless wins! Here's a little prize for you... Yes, for the first time ever I'm at the Shuttleworth Collection season opening air show. There's a Bristol Fighter in the overhead right now and I'm watching a Hawker Demon starting up. Lovely! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

So as some of you know, I have a weakness for twins (stop sniggering.at the back there). Not that sort of twins, I mean of the aeroplane variety. So while the Beaufighter project still languishes in a half completed state (much like TFC's) I've been a little sidetracked by this; This is the Trumpeter 1:48 DH Hornet F.1 kit and very nice it is too.With the addition of a few PE and resin aftermarket doodads it's all gone together rather well. Just the top coat, decals, props and undercarriage to go.

Dutch school kids remember and pay their respects to the Canadian soldiers that liberated their country... By lighting up their graves with candles... Here's a video ... Now I knew this was happening each and every year 'round Christmas, but just now I learned how this tradition started: A woman discovered a Finnish name on one of the stones, and she was familiar with a Finnish tradition... so, that's how it started 25 years ago, not just for that one Finnish name, but for all of the others resting there, all 1394 of them...

Wonderful stuff, what a beauty! It's funny, the G-12 looks better in the flesh than any photograph or colour-plate would suggest. I also think this version of the swastika is a better alternative to either nothing or the modern German flag. The test pilot Charlie Brown, is one of the highest timed 109 pilots around and a serving RAF officer; how ironic! [emoji38] Tom and I have also flown with him in a Stearman… I'm sure we've mentioned that story one or two (hundred) times.

Artie will like this

Have you tried telling the phone company there's a war on?

Some fantastic colour footage here chaps. Really like the Hurricane colour schemes in the open minutes, I feel a co-op mission set being built around it... I've not yet sat through the whole 40+ minutes, but it was enough to make want to post it here for sure.

Definitely blippage FT, i'll seek some other videos soon! In the meantime, my jaw dropped at 2:44 on this one:

Now this what I call an approach! Also, that sound...