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2020-06-18 The Memoir of a Luftwaffe Night Pilot in World War II by Wilhelm Johnen Another one of my favorite World War 2 books, because it is written relatively shortly after the war, in 1956, by someone who was one of the actively involved participants. In this case, a young…
Rare Photographs from Wartime Archivesby Martin Bowman Usually I am very happy with this series of ‘Rare Images’ books from Pen & Sword, and the good old Phantom being one of my long-time favorite aircraft I was interested in this book.But truth be told, it was somewhat of a let-down.…
A Photographic Reconnaissance Spitfire Pilot in WWII Very interesting book. I love all stories about WW2 written by the people who actually were there, and this one is no exception. It not only tells the story of a young man who joins the RAF (more or less by mistake, to…
Founds this nice little video on the internet today, about the Aeroclub de Méribel. I was member for a few years and flew the BOPK with an instructor, learning taildragging, mountain flying and ski-flying! We had a small apartment across the valley and saw the Jodels fly overhead every day…
Many many years ago I bought a plastic model kit of the Westland Lysander, back when I was working on getting one designed for our Flight Simulator range of aircraft models. I planned on making a diorama with it, based on one of the incidents that took place during the…
This, my dear friends, has been on my bucket list for, oh, at least 30 years. Flight Simulation has been the ONE steady thing in my life ever since 1976 when I saw the very first non-mainframe computer….. and a crude flight simulator program on it. I have since owned…
Airfields of the D-Day Invasion Air Force (Paperback) 2nd Tactical Air Force in South-East England in WWII By Peter Jacobs A book for researchers, tourists and history buffs alike ! For most people when we say ‘D-Day’, the pictures of the French beaches, smoke, men running through waves, landing craft…
Russian Gunship Helicopters by Yefim Gordon Recently I was introduced to the FlightCraft series of Pen and Sword Books. This is an interesting series aimed at not only aviation enthusiasts, but more in specific to aviation scale modelers and researchers as well. I ordered the Russian Gunship Helicopters title, by…
Last week I got a copy of the English Electric Canberra by Bruce Barrymore Halpenny (must have lost the ‘f’ somewhere along the way of history) and today I downloaded and installed the Just Flight Canberra to go with it. So now I can read the (extensive) history of this…
Schiphol Airport today during the first of our Winter Storms…… I know who’d have liked to see this. Post by Luchtverkeersleider.
Now before we start discussing our World War 2 publishing plans, here’s something more important that I want to share with you all. I am certain that you will agree with me that letting a national aviation museum go down the drain is nothing less but a ‘crime’. Here…
Reason why things are a bit ‘slow’ usually in summer is that we move our office to a ‘better’ place, i.e. a tiny room in a chalet in the French Alps. I spend as little time in that room as possible, and instead head out into the mountains as…
Now, if you are looking for something less complicated than FSX or XP-10, but much more fun than MS Flight… search no longer, I’ve found you the solution. Have a go at RealFlight !!! This stuff really looks like fun… AND you get something tangible with it…… a true-to-life…
On my Flightsim Soapbox. I know, I must be the Last of the Mohicans with SO many people over the past decades pissing on Microsoft for their monopolies, cranky OS’es, disdain for their customers and many other reasons. So call me naive, I don’t care. Fact is, I have been…
Yes, this is a bit of a melancholic moment. I witnessed the very first space flight EVER, and just now witnessed the very LAST Space Shuttle take-off. Sniff. I picked up two nice videos for ya….. the first is part of the live broadcast from NASA tv, the second a…
Charlie. That’s what we called the old Antonov AN-2 sparaying the beach in Mamaia, Black Sea Coast, Romania, waaaaay back in 1974 when on holiday there with my fiancee and parents. Well, guess what? There’s an old AN-2 flying out of Deva Aifrield that is doing exactly the…
Trained as a typographer and having worked at Holland’s largest newspaper in my very first job, writing, news and newspapers still hold my interest. So then OF COURSE the Paper.li initiative from Switzerland caught my eye. What with the onslaught of Twitter messages these days, these people have figured a…
I finally managed to finish the first of a row of articles dealing with my/our flying in the States last October/November. The first in the range is the story about our flight through the Misty Fjords, near Ketchikan, Alaska. This was something I had been wishing for since many years…
We’ve made it through ‘immigration’ again, even though we are not planning to immigrate – well, not HERE anyway – and we’re back in the land of the countless SUV’s and gun-toting people. Heck, even the ticket guy on the train carried a .38 !! (Good thing too, because some…
Don’t get me wrong, I am not opposing speed sports in any way. Have been racing carts and cars myself and would have loved racing motorbikes. But racing dogs, horses, turtles or aircraft is a bit outside of my circle of interest. Then again, if that’s what others like doing,…
If you’re ‘into’ aviation then you don’t want to miss THIS SERIES of wonderful photos of an Edwards Air Force Base Open Day, shot by Bernard Zee. Bernard even added sound bits to some of his photos and you can order prints of them too! Enjoy !!
That’s what I had on simFlight on last count. Or 5,5 posts PER DAY since 2002. I guess that makes me a writer? AVSIM shows only 2800+, but that’s after a restart in 2002 I think. had some 5000 there too. Gosh, I could have written a BOOK filled with…
The last Duxford show had no less than 16 Spitfires fly together, something that doesn’t happen all too often these days. There are MANY videos on YouTube showing this. I picked just one of the better shots for my post. (It seems that just about anyone has a video cam…
Don’t you wish you started doing what you really wanted to do 30 years ago? I do…. often. Alas, no turning back. It only dawned to me recently that I was probably made to work with old aircraft, but at the time nobody knew……. *grin*. I was building kits of…
