Recent content by KiwiBiggles

  1. K

    On The Deck

    It's downtown Auckland. Looks like the A-4K Skyhawks being delivered. Presumably they had been unloaded from the wharves (below the bottom of the picture) and are being transported up Albert Street on their way to the RNZAF base at Whenuapai. 1969 I think.
  2. K

    English isnt English!

    Plus almost no conjugation, and very little declension. Try rewriting some English as if it were a completely uninflected language - that is, remove all plurals, tenses and verb conjugation. It's still easily understood by any English speaker, even if some of the nuance is lost. Plus almost...
  3. K

    English isnt English!

    My favourite American usage divergence: momentarily. As in, "This is your Captain speaking. We will be leaving the ground momentarily". The actual meaning of the word is "for a short moment". I do hope he's wrong.
  4. K

    Steam turbine powered turboprops and turbojets 1931-1972

    A little earlier, in 1919, Bristol had a steam-powered aircraft in development. The Tramp was a development of their existing Pullman, with two 1500 hp steam turbines in the fuselage driving the propellors through extension shafts. It never flew, unfortunately.
  5. K

    WW2 non-combat aircraft that saw combat?

    One of the aircraft mentioned by Dimlee in post #21 is the Tupolev ANT-35. I'd never heard of it before, but it looks quite impressive for 1936. Although it's not quite up to the DC-3, it's at least in the same ballpark as the DC-2, Boeing 247 etc. Certainly I wouldn't say it's a world away...
  6. K

    Worst ww2 fighter

    Nothing wrong with wooden jets per se. Witness the de Havilland Vampire, which carried on (in parts) the Mosquito pattern of moulded wood construction.
  7. K

    The Flat Earth society

    Only if the subtended angle (either to the centre of the Earth, or to the Sun for a flat Earth) is large. For 'small' angles, where a = sin(a) = tan(a) more or less, and for a shadow size much smaller than the result, the result would be the same. From memory, the subtended angle in the...
  8. K

    The Flat Earth society

    No, again, a flat earth and a nearby Sun would give the same effect. It's only if you assume a very distant light source (i.e. the Sun) that a curved surface becomes necessary. If you were to start instead from the assumption that the earth is flat, then the same experimental result, instead...
  9. K

    The Flat Earth society

    Not quite. Eratosthenes assumed the earth was round, and so calculated its diameter. The shadow difference showed that the sun appeared at a different angle at the two cities. A flat earth and a nearby sun would give the same effect.
  10. K

    G3M "Nell" vs the world: 1937

    I think the Blenheim is pretty comparable, apart from range. It's a bit smaller, but its bombload is much the same and it's quite a bit faster.
  11. K

    De Havilland and Brooklands Museums.

    Possibly the Ferrari 355 S of 1957
  12. K

    Groundhog Thread Part Deux - P-39 Fantasy and Fetish - The Never Ending Story (Mods take no responsibility for head against wall injuries sustained)

    That's a bit harsh on the P-39. I'd never call it a grown-up fighter, but it wasn't altogether useless.
  13. K

    Groundhog Thread Part Deux - P-39 Fantasy and Fetish - The Never Ending Story (Mods take no responsibility for head against wall injuries sustained)

    Imperial measurements are definitely more interesting than the weight of a P-39's fuel tanks.
  14. K

    Books

    "Sagittarius Rising", by Cecil Lewis, is one of the very best WWI pilot autobiographies.
  15. K

    FW-290?

    I want suggesting that 290 was the actual designation; just that it might have been British Intelligence's first guess at a name for the new type. I don't suppose they were on the Luftwaffe's internal mailing list when designations were finalized.
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