JohnB (Sc)

I'm quite sure they are live rounds Thetoe. QRA over here has always been taken seriously. There is little point having a fighter ready to launch on alert without live armament. While the old days of the Cold War are over, readiness still means that. The RAF has recently had to intercept foreign military aircraft approaching our boundaries - just like the 'bad old days'. Testing? Probing? or just slightly lost. Who knows ? - not me. You are right, that looks like a dent on one of the missiles. Presumably it still self tested OK, so OK to use ! Or maybe we haven't so many 'ready t

Great stuff. Is that a Stampe in an all silver scheme beside the Spanish AF ?CN-235 ??

Excellent pictures, thanks for sharing them. Looks like you've had betteer weather down there . A fascinating cloudscape - it looks like soem wave conditions, possibly collapsing. I like the vortices on the Herc take-off. Incidentally your 'four Spitfires' include one Hurricane, leading the three Spits.

I'd forgotten about NASA's B-57s - a few more years there maybe? Are any of those the very long wing variants? I guess Peru might still have some operational machines. It seems as though the last Indian Canberras were the bomber variants, or possibly a mix of bomber and PR. The last true operational work was probably PR ops - not long back one was attacked and damaged by missile fire IIRC. They had been doing second line and maritime work recently. Superb effort. Found some stuff which reminded me that India deplyed Canberras as bombers to Africa years back, in support of UN operat

After exactly fifty years, the Indian Air Force has retired its last Canberras - there's a nice model by Polly Singh on ARC's front page today. The RAF has also just retired its last PR Canberras (I think) - so is anyone else still flying them? Very impressive service life, very impressive aeroplane. (I still think describing MRCA as meaning 'Must Respar Canberras Again' was funny but sadly true ! ) AARgh - I meant to say India in the comment line, not Inida. (Help, moderators, can you edit - I can't find a way to do that - clot)

Quite a life Mr Gann had - arguably the great adventure days of aviation. -- and yes, I think we have. Cheers.

Absolutely ! Give the man a cocunut. Ernest K Gann's excellent novel. My recollection is that John Wayne didn't actually like or enjoy doing that movie. Don't know why.

Nice one Mark. Given that other furore, Oops. .......walking away quietly, whistling......

It's a long time since I last looked in detail at this stuff. My recollection is that the runway edge was hit - which was a minor inconvenience only. The Argentinians then mocked up a crater and repair to suggest the runway was more badly damaged than actually was the case. As you say, transports carried on using the strip. That was the whole point - unfortunately neither the Black Buck ops or the SHARS managed to stop that - though a Hercules was shot down on its way home. (Horrible) The attack pattern was fairly self evident Mike - give the RAF credit for learning something over the last

At the risk of starting up needless argument - yawn. Come on RAF, you don't need to keep playing silly b****rs. You did enough publicity hound nonsense 25 years ago to have lots of folk thinking you won the darn war - give it a rest. The Navy has stopped listening. The Black Buck exercise was a magnificent bit of organisation- tremendous logistical effort and very brave, but to no effect. Thousands of miles to do what - miss the runway ! Typical, I'm sorry to say. The Navy meantime were giving the airfield a lot of headaches - but certain parts of the RAF hierarchy have always tried

Fascinating that the pilot hadn't realised things were that bad until his Boss called 'Eject'. I guess that tells me how hard a jet carrier landing & stop really is ! (And how hard a guy is concentrating just then. Not much spare capacity for 'peripheral' thinking just then.) Lucky guy to get out at all from Spongbob's comment. And to go back to it afterwards.. that takes guts. I imagine he'll be even more psyched up on late night landings - if that's possible. Serious adrenalin stuff - oh you lucky (and crazy!) people. Interesting the comment about their 'sink holes' of turbulen

Handy for resin work (use a face mask !) and for rough forming and section cuts. A speed controller is a must for me. I also use mine for R/C modeling and fine work on car corrosion for fill & 'touch up'. Worth it occasionally, but pricey. The once in six months task that si a pain without one.....

Hmm. Glad the folk all got out. Sounds like a clear signal we aren't gaining ground or winning friends out there, despite all the UK & US Govt rhetoric. In the South too, where we had a fairly good start Would be nice if we can get our people out without further loss.

Thanks Pete. The basic process sounds the same as we'd use in the smaller (taildragger) low wing stuff - though where possible I prefer sideslipping for obvious reasons. I like the sound of automatic application of into wind roll ! Very swish. Given the amount of angle-off in that video, that was going to need accurate and lucky judgement anyhow. I agree with your running out of rudder analaysis - always a tricky timing job. Definitely a 'straps tight and whistle dixie' effort. Lots of wrestling going on there before the sensible overshoot call finally made - I can sympathise &

Curiosity chaps - why is that? What is odd about the technique used, and how does the fly-by-wire system make it harder? My guess would be that crabbing would be easier than a sideslip technique with a beast like that -but that's pure guess. (My sort of fly by wire is rather older and has extra wings, so A3xxs are rather outside my sphere !)