David John Davis

Tee shirt weather in central France. I flew my Big Guff and my Baron, practising for La Coupe Des Barons on 10th June. Here, Frans, who will be my ground crew on the day, places the Big Guff onto my Best Mate stand. In flight the Big Guff was described as "chouette" by one of our younger members who flies mostly aerobatic stuff. My dog was not impressed.

FlyerInOKC

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Hot, humid, and sunny here this weekend, and I actually worked on my current project!

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...2#post50951529

mgnostic

It was hot in North Texas but we had a Bloody Baron combat meet on Saturday. Nobody taking things too serious. Lots of mid-airs. There were thirteen planes in the air on the initial round.

David John Davis

Took my Baron flying yesterday afternoon. I had added some nitro to a gallon of straight last week. The engine, a Thunder Tiger 54, started up straight away and ran well. I practised low level passes until one of my clubmates joined me in the air. When he called a landing I parked my model fairly high and downwind until he'd retrieved his model. Suddenly my motor stopped. Being that sudden I assumed that it had either thrown a prop or siezed! There are fields each side of our flying field which are both sown to wheat this year. I thought I'd overshoot the runway so I put the model into a 360 turn but over-estimated a Baron's gliding ability and I landed in the crop downwind of the runway. The model had disappeared in the wheat which was over a metre tall. It took us three quarters of an hour to find the model and by the time my mate Frans had found it my trousers were soaking wet because it had rained earlier in the day and the wheat was still wet. My faithful doggie joined us,charging and barging through the wheat. Actually she was more of a hindrance than a help because she made such a noise barrelling her way through the wheat that I was unable to hear the servos moving when I operated the transmitter! I had indeed lost the propeller, nut, spinner and washer but there was no damage to the model.

Frans had brought his own Baron to the field. He had repaired a Baron which had been damaged in a previous coupe. He is very enthusiastic but not very experienced or competent and his repaired wing was badly warped. We will have to strip off all of the covering, soak the wood and pin it down flat to remove the warps.

David John Davis

I came across this critique of the B17 on YouTube. It appears to be well-informed and I liked the iconoclastic, tongue in cheek presentation. Please do not watch it if you are sensitive to bad language. We are warned of this in the introduction.

FlyerInOKC

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Love the video!

GallopingGhostler

A bit of "Monday morning quarterbacking".

Boeing was basically building to US War Department (that's what it was called then) contractual requirements. As far as coming home, I gather through various opinions that the B-17 had an edge over the B-24 Liberator in that if shot up, one was more likely to come home in the B-17 than the B-24. However, the B-24 was mass produced in greater quantities and as such was more extensively used.

However, if it wasn't for the bankers and their loans, chances are, the parties would have had to settle for peace instead.

And, regarding the lack of simplicity in the B-17, well, as far as I know, those complex electrical and hydraulic systems became standard on airliners. The A-10 proves the point of the videographer, simplicity, staffing of one (the pilot), rugged, was less expensive to produce than current hotdog aircraft, was basically the aircraft the US Air Force did not want, but ended up retaining because it did its job well with nothing else that can surpass it.

At the time, the US had the manufacturing capacity to build warplanes in such large quantities that the other countries could not. So, inferior or not, it met the need for the time. In future, US will not be able to respond in a similar manner, because nowadays it manufactures very little. If WW2 was now, it would have been the Chinese B-17's that would have won the war, because they are the only ones with such manufacturing capacity now, just saying.

But still, I enjoyed the humour in the videographer's despite the somewhat crude language, calling things for what they were. It is just too bad that England at the time didn't have the population base nor land mass to support such manufacturing capacity that the US had at that time.

mgnostic

I didn't get to watch most of the video until about twelve hours after seeing the post this morning. The presentation style is a bit of a chuckle but presenter does bring up some interesting points. The video relates to my current theory of history which is that you cant get anything approaching an unbiased analysis of events until the major players have passed on or are too old to raise much of a fuss. In the last few years I've seen various authors/researchers taking a more critical look at various scared cows and also taking a more generous approach to some aircraft that have been pooped on for years. There is still a lot of misinformation being directly quoted from old propaganda even as others are seeking out data from original source documents. The guy who made the video above would probably like the idea that the greatest value of the strategic bombing campaign was that it tied up resources that the Germans would have otherwise directed at the eastern front. The post above puts me in mind of a couple of my fellow club members. We a near a large Air Force Base and usually have several military personnel and civilian employees as club members. We have one fellow who is an instructor pilot who after flying around in a T-38 all day comes out to fly with us after work. He was previously an A-10 pilot. His point of view is that the A-10 is a great plane...as long as you have air superiority. We also have a fellow who is a fuel systems specialist. He doesn't spare the curse words when it comes to the maintenance headaches of a variety of aircraft though his favorite recipient of invective seems to be the B-1b. I guess there is nothing new under the sun in that regard.

David John Davis

I remember reading something about WW2 aircraft production in Paul Kennedy's book "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers." If I remember correctly, during 1943 the USA produced 98.000 aircraft while Great Britain produced about 32,000, which is not bad for a little island off the coast of the European Continent. At the same time the Germans produced fewer than 10,000. I appear to have lost the book so cannot verify these numbers but they are roughly accurate.

Whether strategic bombing of German cities was the best policy or not will be debated till the cows come home. An alternative could have been for the Allies to pour their resources into producing high performance twin engine bombers like the B25 or the Mosquito and attacking the German Army directly in the field. This was the approach adopted by the Red Army and the Red Army killed more German soldiers than the Western Allies combined.

However, one cannot but admire the courage of the men who flew those four enginned Allied bombers. You were more likely to be killed if you flew in one of those than in any other branch of military service, even the infantry and yet they carried on flying them day after day, night after night. The only more dangerous occupation was to be a member of a German U Boat crew. In the last two years of the war over 75% of U Boats that left the harbour failed to return.

And it was not just the B17 crews who went to war in outdated equipment. The Sherman tank was no match for a German Tiger, though to be fair it could hold its own against the more numerous Panzer IVs, but if the history of two world wars tells us anything, it's that quantity will always beat quality. In the Great War the Fokker DVII was a superior fighter compared with the Allies' SPADs, SE5as and Sopwith Camels but the Allied fighters were far more numerous. The same could be said of the of the ME262 and the later German tanks but you get my drift.

Finally, a few years ago I was given a two-metre wingspan ARTF foamy B17 Flying Fortress by one of my French clubmates because the instruction booklet was in English. I've recently got round to reading the booklet. There are no instructions as such, just notes about safety and the difference between Mode 1 and Mode 2 transmitters! The wiring is an electrician's nightmare but it's all there. I'm not looking forward to programming the flaps, retracting undercarriage, and bomb doors but I'd like to get it going later in the summer.

I'll keep you posted.

FlyerInOKC

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I would point out the Tiger tanks were [/QUOTE]rone to break down and another maintenance nightmare, with the heavier Tiger II being even worse!
So you are saying the foamy's electrical system was very scale like!

I will point out the B-29 was superior to the B-17 if you could keep it from going up in flames or crashing do to engine fires.

David John Davis

rone to break down and another maintenance nightmare, with the heavier Tiger II being even worse!

Quite so. At least the Sherman was reliable as was the T34 of course.

So you are saying the foamy's electrical system was very scale like!

I will point out the B-29 was superior to the B-17 if you could keep it from going up in flames or crashing do to engine fires. [/QUOTE]

FlyerInOKC

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It comes down to old adage in war the winning side is usually the side that makes the fewest mistakes!

GallopingGhostler

When I joined the U.S. Army in 1972, it was said the life expectancy of a helicopter pilot was 9 months. Since I was not a draftee but of my own decision, I decided not to be an aviator. Move forward 13 years whilst a reservist, I met Scotty, now a sergeant major at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, who was back then one of our sergeant first class enlisted leaders at Fort Shafter, Honolulu, Hawaii. He was to retire soon.

I asked him about the aviator crew member wings on his uniform, that I remembered from back then. He told, no problems, he was a helicopter crew chief in the latter 1960's in Vietnam. After being shot down for the 3rd time, he went to the bandleader there and was transferred from aviation to the band as a clarinetist, stayed in band since. (He was quite an accomplished musician.) I'd say that was a good decision, because he probably would have become a posthumous purple heart statistic in a future shoot down.

And come to think, that is the current war department strategy, quality over quantity. Yet, the U.S. no longer has the manufacturing capability it had during WW2.

Some folk love complexity, but I certainly don't. I gather that you have a similar vein of thought in your builds. The Baron is about as basic as one could get, along with the Telemaster and your other old timer builds. I'm sure you'll get it all sorted out, or somehow simplify here and there to make it still a workable flying project.

David John Davis

Quite right GG, my building skills are pretty limited so I restrict myself to simple models. If i were to try to build a Spitfire for example, it would take me ages and I would soon get disheartened with the lack of progress. That's why I quite fancy this ARTF foamy Spitfire! https://www.motionrc.eu/products/fli...an-pnp-flw303p

On another tack entirely, I have recently been described as morbid. As I lost four friends and relatives to the Grim Reaper, including my sister, between August and October last year perhaps that's understandable. I lost another friend in March. On a well-known social media website I get regular reminders of the birthdays of people who I know to be dead but I do not have the skills to be able to contact the website to have them removed.

Given that the title of this thread is "Old Timers look here," and given that we are probably attending more funerals than weddings these days and given that no-one lives forever, I think that it would be a good idea if we all arranged to have someone inform us that we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

That would stop us thinking, "I wonder how old so and so is getting on!"

FlyerInOKC

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I think after a certain age getting a little morbid is normal. I have a flying buddy who has out lived his brother, wife, son, and his daughter has been fighting cancer for over a year. He is in his 80s and is in and out of the hospital a lot. He has traded two cars off in the last 5 years because it got to where he couldn't shift them. I think he is starting the think Heaven doesn't want him and the other place thinks he'll take over so he is stuck here.

mgnostic

[QUOTE=On another tack entirely, I have recently been described as morbid. As I lost four friends and relatives to the Grim Reaper, including my sister, between August and October last year perhaps that's understandable. I lost another friend in March. On a well-known social media website I get regular reminders of the birthdays of people who I know to be dead but I do not have the skills to be able to contact the website to have them removed.

Given that the title of this thread is "Old Timers look here," and given that we are probably attending more funerals than weddings these days and given that no-one lives forever, I think that it would be a good idea if we all arranged to have someone inform us that we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

That would stop us thinking, "I wonder how old so and so is getting on!"[/QUOTE]
My father was the next to the youngest of 10 children so lots of aunts and uncles. As the years progressed on, three cousins, my brothers and I were more or less the Pall Bearers Club as we walked various relatives to their final destination. Now the eldest cousin will be celebrating his 90th birthday this month and our grandchildren have taken over those duties. I don't know that it is so much morbid as acknowledging the passage of time.
Relating to that certain social website, I recently had a friend request from a dead guy.
On a more positive note, acknowledging the fact that I wont live forever allows me to set some priorities. Unless it is an airplane that really interests me I don't drag home stray kits anymore. As one of the few active builders in my club I occasionally have people who offer me kits "Just so it will go to someone who will build it." I've even started passing on most of those. If I just stick to bucket list/interesting airplanes I can probably build until I fall off my perch.

David John Davis

In Jamaica, the young men in the family not only carry the coffin to its final resting place, they take off their coats and shovel the earth onto the coffin afterward. It's a practice I've always admired.

As far as model aircraft kits are concerned, I am in exactly the same position Matt. I sold two kits last week and another expatriate Englishman will pick up another later in the month.I am limiting my building to one model I want to build and another which I feel I ought to build.I have only four kits left unstarted: two pattern ships, a Hawker Hurricane and a Stampe Monitor.

Meanwhile life goes on. I got in a few practice flights for La Coupe Des Barons yesterday. Here is a picture of the "Équipe Étrangere:" British pilot, Ukrainian Baron, and Swiss Shepherd dog. Only my Belgian mechanic is missing, he had tickets to a Roger Waters concert in Belgium. I'm running a Hispano Suiza engine this year!

FlyerInOKC

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I reached the point a little earlier. I have chosen the projects for my upcoming retirement and purchased them with one exception. At some point if my health changes I may see 1 or 2 off but for now I'm at a stopping point.

David John Davis

Come off it Mike! "Tha's nowt but a lad" as they say in Yorkshire!

FlyerInOKC

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Unfortunately I didn't do a very good job picking my ancestors when it comes to longevity. Then again if I do manage to get everything built I'm sure my flying skills will be making room in the hanger for additional projects.

FlyerInOKC

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We have been having a lot of rain lately, I was cooking steak on the grill for Mother's Day yesterday, so it has afforded me a little build time. Here is the wing progress of my latest project. The left wing ribs are not aligning properly so I need to adjust them before gluing them in.

FlyerInOKC

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This just fits this thread!

flyboy2610

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Jimmy Stewart once said "You know you're getting older when you bend over to tie your shoes, and..... well, you decide to stay down there a while!"

David John Davis

Eventually something's gonna get ya!

The tradition at a French model aircraft club is to go up to each member who is already at the field, shake hands with him and wish him "Bonjour." Later arrivals will accord the same courtesy to you. When you leave again you shake hands with everybody and wish them a pleasant evening.

We had a new member, Bruno Luigi, a Frenchman of Corsican extraction, join the club in October. Bruno is seventy years old and had never flown an r/c model before he joined the club but he soon picked it up, even this French Mode 1 way of flying. Mind you, he had an advantage over most beginners in that he was a retired commercial airline pilot so he knew a fair bit about aerodynamics. Now he flies his Calmato with great elan. Incidentally, he drives a beautiful Jaguar, his third, finished in metallic bronze with a cream leather interior.

I was about to go home and had shaken hands with everyone else when I went up to Bruno who was talking to Roger Aubard, our club's president who used to be a nurse-manager. Perhaps they did not think that I could understand French so well or perhaps Bruno was not bothered, but I heard him say that he had been diagnosed with cancer. Roger was advising him as to what to do.

Such a shame. Comes to us all though.

P.S. MY down-sizing continues. I have sold another kit and a model which only requires a radio and engine.

David John Davis

They don't teach grammar and punctuation anymore do they?