willedoo

Some images of Saab Drakens at an abandoned Swedish fighter base. http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2010/04/forgotten-swedish-fighter-fleet/

Thanks, Dave. At least in the digital age, I can make all the mistakes without paying for development costs. I can remember a lot of times paying good money for bad photographs years ago. Once I take the first step, I'll give it a go & see what happens. Cheers, Willie.

Found another old photo out of the same batch. Same place & period ( Egypt or Palistine, WW1 ). It has a caption which says ' One of our captured balloons'. So I'm guessing it's a captured Turkish balloon, the people with it look like Turkish prisoners. I suppose it must be an observation balloon, maybe a bloke hangs underneath it in a basket with a telescope. I doubt it would be a barrage balloon, back in those days, in that sort of country Cheers, Willie. [ATTACH=full]967[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]18100[/ATTACH]

Thanks, Spin. Good advice & makes a lot of sense. Nice photos, two birds of a different nature. Cheers, Willie.

It's never a good sight to see any nation's flag burnt as an act protest. But almost as disrespectful to a nation's flag is to turn it into a tea towel, beach towel, T-shirt, hat, pair of socks, handerchief, underwear, bumper stickers etc. There's not enough space here to list the ways in which we show disrespect to our flag on a daily basis. I'd rather see hoons roaring around with a heap of flags streaming from a beaten up old commodore than people sitting on our flag down at the beach. People are well intentioned, but have never been taught the accepted protocol of the usage of our flag. It's getting out of control. Cheers, Willie.

Thanks for the comments, much appreciated. I've heard talk of Canons being the way to go. The last good camera I had was in the mid 80's, the days of 35mm SLR's. It was an Olympus OM1s with a 50mm & 105 mm zoom, never learnt to use it that well. Since then I've just had point & click types. Back then Nikon was supposed to be the big thing. Seems like nowdays most people serious about it have either one of those two makes suggested. I'll keep my ears to the ground & see what I can find out. Thanks. Cheers, Willie.

Didn't realise she lost her shoe. You'd think they'd leave them inside until the situation was totally under control ( the PM & Opposition Leader, I mean, not her shoes). Cheers, Willie.

Hello, all. I'm thinking of moving up from taking happy snaps to learning to use a half decent camera. As there's a few avid photographers on the forum, I was wondering if anyone had any advice or comments on low to mid range digital SLR's available. Any comments would be most appreciated. Cheers, Willie.

It seems like there's a lot of photographers around now days with a fascination for old abandoned & wrecked aircraft. I can see the attraction, the images are a bit haunting if you start thinking about the past life & glory of these planes & the people who flew in them. It also brings out the junkyard addict in all of us, very hard to look at photos like that & not wish you had one parked in your shed or backyard. Cheers, Willie.

Yes, Spin, that would be right, I don't know anything much about the L-159, apart from similar looks externally. I think previous to it they made a prototype with a similar engine to the Honeywell, but didn't make it to production. Possibly the change in engine/avionics etc came about with the Czech Republic joining NATO. Maybe for compatibility or ongoing market potential or something like that. I wonder how the L-159 compares with the original L-39, I'd guess it would be a bit more complex. Cheers, Willie.

Good to see the clip, thanks, I started watching the live broadcast the day after it happened so missed the accident. It's one of the five Baltic Bees, a Latvian aerobatic team using L-39C trainers. Got to watch the rest of their performances as a 4 man team, they're quite good. Don't mean to be pedantic, but the L39 is Czech designed & built. Although you could say it's sort of part Russian, using imported Soviet engines made in the Ukraine. I don't know if there was any Soviet input into design & development, but it wouldn't surprise me, as the Soviet Union was their biggest single market. It was the USSR's standard basic trainer, so they would have had quite a few. I think the latest variants use Honeywell engines. Watching the video certainly says a lot about the landing gear, I wonder what the extent of the damage was. Cheers, Willie.

Small article featuring some abandoned airfields & aircraft. Kai Tak, RAF Binbrook & Burtonwood etc. http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2010/11/abandoned-aircraft-airfields-airbases-airport-terminals/ Cheers, Willie.

It's Paro in Bhutan. Here's some views from the ground. I wonder if they have the option of a go-around. Cheers, Willie.

Thanks for posting the story, Spin, very interesting reading. Just goes to show how things can get mixed up. Cheers, Willie.

A lot of chains rattling about there, a bit like loading a dozer on a lowloader. I've often wondered about the effect on the a/c handling with the variety of loads. I guess every load would be like flying a different aircraft, with weights, dimension & centre of gravity etc. Cheers, Willie.

Volga Dnepr An-124 loading & chaining down a 70 metre boom concrete pump to go to the Fukishima nuclear plant. Looks like a few spare Antonov wheels are stacked both sides of the fuselage.

Sad but true Dazza. A good example recently was F** News covering the recent protests over the Russian elections, showing footage of rioting in the streets & burning buildings etc, all stuff that didn't happen.The first of many giveaways was that it was the middle of winter in Moscow, yet rioters were wearing shorts & T shirts. Then there was the Greek lettering on all the shopfronts, etc., turns out it was footage of the earlier Greek riots over financial re-structuring. I doubt the substitution of footage had any political intent, just lazy or opportunistic journalism to get ratings. I think all we can do these days is to source news from lots of different sources & try to average it out to have any hope of getting anywhere near the truth. Cheers, Willie.

Yes, he's certainly got a simple & entertaining way of giving a description of the workings. Always amazes me how simple the principle of turbines are, they look fairly tinny inside, but I guess they rely on top quality metal, engineering & tolerances etc. It must be a Canadian thing, I've never noticed much use of industrial turbines here in Australia. Cheers, Willie.

Another couple of clips from the same people. A close look at the fan on an old GE CF6-6 engine: Cheers, Willie.

Some footage of Australian An2, VH-CCE:

Thanks for the link, Dexter, there's some good videos on that site. Also enjoyed the one on the Classic Cub, always a favourite. Cheers, Willie.

That sounds good, Geoff, I'll try & track down a copy of the book. Found the ASR records in the archives: http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/scripts/Imagine.asp?B=1359910 113 ASR starts on page 347, can't find any mention of 101 as yet. Here's the entry on A24-98 that was carrying General Morshead and RAAF Commander, Air Vice Marshal Bostock (page 401): [ATTACH=full]955[/ATTACH] Also tracked down the RSU records http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/scripts/Imagine.asp?B=1359931 9 RSU starts on page 154. Their records are generally good, but in this case they only mention a detachment sent to Balikpapan & no details of the work carried out. I suppose with a large scale invasion going on, the book work would have suffered a bit. Another thing I noticed in the records is that 42 Squadron had roughly twice the a/c as 113 ASR, but almost four times the personnel. The penny dropped though after a while, that the logistics of mining operations would have required many more storemen, mechanics, fitters, armourers etc; almost everything would multiply to be able to operate with all the ordnance. The ASR Flights would be just basically operating like a bare transport. The ASR Flights seemed to borrow a/c from other units quite regularly when they were under strength due to maintenance or repair. They also appear to have had a higher damage rate, probably due to the higher number of water landings they did & a lot of nosewheel problems. It's a bit of an eye opener reading the ASR records, they were certainly in the thick of it being down on the ground & water in enemy territory & often coming under fire. Seems like the more dangerous job of the two. Cheers, Willie. [ATTACH]18090[/ATTACH]

A nice big toy at that.