willedoo

Hopefully they got to eject ok, latest news quotes both navies as carrying out a joint search for the crew. It's bad luck, probably wouldn't happen normally if Syria wasn't as edgy as they are at the moment. Good to see so many Phantoms still in service after all these years, in Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Iran & others. Sadly it won't last too much longer with all the retirement plans kicking in over the next two or three years. I'm guessing that Iran will end up being the last operator of the F-4, based on the assumption that they would keep what they can flying as long as they can. One consolation might be that the sheer numbers of them around the world might produce quite a lot of static museum displays in the future. Fingers crossed, we might get to see the RAAF survivor brought back to Amberley one day soon. Cheers, Willie.

An Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik has been recovered from a lake in the Murmansk region of northern Russia. http://en.rian.ru/mlitary_news/20120621/174159039.html [ATTACH=full]1264[/ATTACH] Cheers, Willie.

Isle of Man based company Excalibur Almaz is ready to sell tickets for 150 million dollars for a trip to the moon. A bit out of my price range, unfortunately. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2161646/Excalibur-Almaz-prepares-tourist-trips-moon-500k-mile-round-trip-cost-100m.html?ito=feeds-newsxml Cheers, Willie.

Simon, the link to your blog wouldn't work so I added com at the end & it worked ok. Cheers, Willie.

Thanks for posting, Peter. Certainly a rare sight, all five test aircraft in Toulouse at the same time. It might be the only time we see those formation numbers. Cheers, Willie. [ATTACH=full]1257[/ATTACH]

The Luftwaffe Jagdgeschwader 71 Fighter Wing is Germany's last Wing operating the F-4F Phantom, due for retirement next year. The military aviation magazine, 'Combat Aircraft Monthly', of the Key Aero network, has flown a photoshoot with JG 71 Wing & will publish a feature & photos in the August issue. It might be good reading for any Phantom fans out there. Here's a link to their website. http://www.combataircraft.net/ [ATTACH=full]1256[/ATTACH] Cheers, Willie. [ATTACH]18219[/ATTACH]

Boeing's 'Phantom Eye' liquid hydrogen powered drone has completed it's first autonomous flight, sustaining a bit of damage on landing when the gear dug into the lake bed. They say it should be able to fly for up to four days without re-fueling. http://www.key.aero/view_news.asp?ID=5170&thisSection=military

Interesting reading, Dexter. The only bit I couldn't figure out is why the carbon content of the excise rises slightly in 2013 & again in 2014, when the carbon price is fixed until 2015. Shouldn't the carbon content of excise remain the same during the period in which the carbon price doesn't change. Maybe when they say it's fixed, they mean that the price is set initially with an annual increase thrown in. On the bright side, if some forcasts come true, fuel should start getting progressively cheaper after 2015, starting off with a drop of 4 cents/litre by my calculations. Cheers, Willie.

If you're quick, here's the live stream of the SpaceX Dragon docking at the ISS. http://rt.com/on-air/spacex-capsule-iss-dock/

Amazing how some downed aircraft in rough country remain concealed & unable to be spotted for so many years. I've tried googling the US C-47 that went missing in NQ during the war, but no luck. Had some high ranking personell on board & was found in the 90's I think, on a station near Charters Towers, my memory might not be that accurate. There were all sorts of rumours of gold cargoes, military secrets etc. There wasn't much press; it was found, the US officials flew out here, took over & nothing more was heard of it. Makes you wonder how a wreck could be on a cattle property all those years & not be spotted. Must have been down in a gorge in some back country that rarely ran cattle & never got mustered. Perhaps no water or grass, so no-one went there.

Reminds me of Bill Belcher, lost on Middleton Reef in the Trans Tasman. Everyone had given him up for dead except his wife, she said he was a tough old bloke & was probably floating around out there somewhere. Sure enough, after a month at sea in a life raft, he showed up off Fraser Island. From memory, he was in pretty good nick, too.

News article & video of stuntman Gary Connery freefalling 2,400 feet onto cardboard boxes with the aid of a wingsuit. http://www.rt.com/news/stuntman-wingsuit-free-fall-056/

Well, what would be the odds on that flight plan showing up again. You just can't trust those Ringers.

Just watched this again, but in full screen mode this time.Some great new & old footage, with some nice shots of three generations of aircraft formation flying. A good shot there of the F-16 & P-51 flying together & definately worth watching in full screen. Thanks for posting a great video, Michael. Cheers, Willie.

Short clip of an Mi-8 hovering close to the ground & coming undone when the rear wheel rides up the side of a stationary structure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ohjhXsdxok

Helmet cam view of a T-45C Goshawk trainer launch, circuit & retrieval.

Amazing shots, you wouldn't want too much cross-wind there; the second photo is a bit scary, it just fits. Cheers, Willie.

Thanks Chris, appreciate the info. I was curious about the background behind the flight & didnt know anything about it's origins. Cheers, Willie.

RAF no.1 Fighter Squadron is to reform as a Typhoon squadron in September, 2012, after being formally disbanded last year after the retirement of the Harriers. A bit of a shame they weren't reformed in time for the centenary celebrations earlier this month. http://air-attack.com/news/article/4810/05-21-2012-Typhoon-Growth-Continues-With-Reformation-Of-No1F-Squadron.html

Looks like an old clip, Dave, & quite a bounce there toward the end. I didn't know they flew planes into the Monino Air Museum like that, just assumed they were all transported there by road (apart from the helicopters). Here's a C17 landing in Afghanistan, lots of dust again. Cheers, Willie.

Nice clip, Geoff, & beautiful sound. If there's anything better than the sound of a Twin Wasp, it's four Twin Wasps. It would be nice to go to Alaska one day & see Evert's fleet before they disappear. As far as I know , they still operate a couple of Curtiss Commandos & something like eight DC-6's. Cheers, Willie.

DC-6 landing somewhere north of Pretoria.

I'm guessing you might have the AVG payware suite, Siz, with the firewall protection as well. Maybe Darren might have the freeware stand alone anti-virus. I've never had a problem with the site, but I'm running different programmes, Avira anti-virus, Outpost firewall & Firefox as a browser, also spyware blaster which prevents spyware from installing. It could be a false positive, which is common. I installed a Fuji Xerox printer last week & the firewall was trying to tell me it was suspicious. It could possibly be right, HP got into a lot of trouble with customers a couple of years ago when they found out HP printers were dialling home to a database of all their printer activities. Maybe Fuji does it too, but I'd tend to think mine is a false positive. Another possibility is that the site has tracking cookies, also very common nowdays. AVG has been around a long time, it's unlikely they would purposely have false positives like the dodgy brands do. The less scrupulous products throw up false positives so customers think they are getting their money's worth, they pretent to block stuff that doesn't exist. I'd really doubt AVG would do that, considering the amount of time they've been around. The only time they've soiled their reputation was a couple of years ago with their freeware AV. I've also got flashblock, so I might turn flash back on & see what the website does. Cheers, Willie. Just as an update, I re-enabled flash & had no problems with the site, so I guess it's not flash related.

A few good photos of contrails, condensation & shock waves etc, http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2012/03/jets-clouds-effects-ephemeral-sky-show.html and a few flares & smoke angels, http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/09/firing-countermeasures-flares.html

Looked up some photos, siz, and it sure looks like one. Although they're all taken from the other side of the engine, haven't found a photo taken from the same side as the one above as yet. Cheers, Willie.