Paging: The airplane anoraks

They're back and this time they brought a friend, a B-25.

http://homepage.mac.com/mike.bothe/PhotoAlbum33.html

 

A Rapide went over me gaff at about a thousand feet yesterday.

Ali

 

I'll see your Rapide and raise you a Spitfire doing aerobatics overhead on,
I think, Thursday. Good it was.

 

Farnborough air show again this year.

Shall I reseve you a deckchair in the garden ?

P.

 

I jumped out of a Rapide once at the airbase at Neatheravon on Wilts.

 

And all the seats too.

 

Had somebody nicked the ladder?

 

You should cement broken glass along the top of the wings.
That would stop the buggers climbing in.

 

Too kind old thing.
<Dutch accent mode>
I vill bring a shotgun, just in case some of zose Fokkers turn out to be
Messerschmits
<dam>

Toodle-pip

 

We get one trundling across the sky quite regularly here. I think they
do joy rides from Duxford.

 

I believe that is correct. I have seen one over South London
from time to time. I thinl that it does tours over London
from Duxford for paying passengers.

Amazing, 75 year old aeroplane (roughly anyway) over London.

 

More worrying are the 30 and 40 year old aeroplanes over London on a
daily basis. I'd bet the DH Rapide is more conscientiously maintained
than most of those old POS.

 

Perhaps. Then again, aircraft have pretty strict maintenance regimes.

 

<hollow laf>

You don't know the half of it.

 

<settles comfortably>

Pray tell.

 

Oh... rivets that are not approved, wire ditto, repair sections of
dubious origin, engine parts of extremely uncertain manufacture.

Now, some of the smaller stuff, like the wire and the rivets are exactly
the same stuff, just not approved; I don't really have a problem with
that, as such - it's when you can't be certain they're the same the
problem starts.

Most of the shit above applies to some African airlines, where
maintenance standards are pretty crap. I have serious doubts about some
former Soviet republic aircraft too.

 

Ah. I was thinking more of domestic light aircraft; never thought of
foreign airliners.