AN ENGLISH ECCENTRIC PART 1
MY INTEREST IN Noel Pemberton-Billing arose from my GMax/Microsoft Flight Simulator hobby: It was Pemberton-Billing who designed the 1913 P.B.7 flying boat which I modeled. Here, in Parts 1, 2, … Continue reading
AIRLINE MAPS: A CENTURY OF ART AND DESIGN
DAUGHTER SUZ Christmas-gifted me with Airline Maps: A Century of Art and Design. What a find! As its title suggests, it describes how airline maps changed cartography. Here are tidbits … Continue reading
IDZ! POLSKIE WILGA! IDZ!
IN POLISH, THE WORD wilga describes a golden oriole; also, the Wilga PZL-104 is a Polish aircraft of notable STOL (short-takeoff-and-landing) characteristics. Its first variant having flown in 1962, the … Continue reading
1911 VALKYRIE MONOPLANE PART 2
YESTERDAY, WE HAD Horatio Barber’s Valkyrie demonstrating its short take-off capability by charging directly at admiring crowds. Today in Part 2, the Valkyrie continues to entertain, becomes the world’s first … Continue reading
1911 VALKYRIE MONOPLANE PART 1
WELL, HERE’S a pleasant surprise: the combination of an old aeroplane and Wagner’s Ring Cycle. What’s more surprising is finding a detailed article on that aeroplane from 1910. The tale … Continue reading
DEPERDUSSIN MONOCOQUE AEROPLANE PART 2
THIS CONTINUES yesterday’s look at the Deperdussin Monocoque racer, an aircraft that displayed technology far in advance of 1913, yet also a feature dating back to the 1903 Wright Flyer. … Continue reading
DEPERDUSSIN MONOCOQUE AEROPLANE PART 1
AN HISTORIC IMAGE encouraged my most recent GMax/Microsoft Flight Simulator aircraft project: I had seen other photographs of the French Deperdussin Monocoque, but a particularly stunning image shows crewmen trying … Continue reading
TRANSPORTATION ART, UTILITY, AND PLAY
EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY transport offered enhanced mobility in a multiplicity of ways. Balloons had been around for more than a century. Internal combustion gave them directionality despite whims of the wind. … Continue reading
GMAX TUPOLEV ANT-25 PART 2
YESTERDAY IN PART 1, my GMax mania returned, this time in building a Microsoft Flight Simulator model of the Tupolev ANT-25 long-distance record setter. Or were its Moscow/U.S. West Coast … Continue reading
GMAX TUPOLEV ANT-25 PART 1
MY GMAX MANIA continues. After having incorporated just about every documentable detail into my GMax Westland Lysander, I looked around for another project using this entertaining computer software. Years ago, … Continue reading
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