Hello from Issaquah, Washington State, USA!

[vdorta]

Hi everybody, nice to be a new member. I am an old retired fighter pilot born in Venezuela. I got my pilot wings in the US, went to the UK and flew Jet Provosts at RAF Little Rissington in the beautiful Cotswolds. Later also flew Mirage IIIs in France at Dijon and Colmar FAF bases. In Venezuela I flew many types, from T-34s and T-6s to B-25 Mitchells, deHavilland Vampire and Venom, F-86F and F-86K Sabres, Northrop F-5s and a few more. I emigrated to the USA in 1979 and became a US citizen in 1985.

My favorite WW2 fighter plane is the Lockheed P-38J Lightning. I would be even more of a fan if American logistics and priorities in WW2 would have allowed to equip it with 2 Rolls-Royce Merlins. What a plane that would be! For those interested I wrote a review in Amazon on Warren Bodie's book about the P-38.

I also enjoy reading about the naval war in WW1 between the British and German fleets. My favorite book on this is Robert K. Massie's Castles of Steel.

I am very opinionated about American politics and you can see a glimpse of that in my blog on the left.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Welcome to our forum.

Please read the rules. We have a "No Politics" rule on these boards.

 

[vdorta]

Thanks. I have read the rules and I don't intend to talk about politics here. I am also very opinionated in philosophy because I studied both in college and pursuit both as hobbies, but I certainly don't want to bother anybody here with that either. I was just telling everybody who I am.

 

[Wurger]

Welcome to the site.

BTW ... the link to your blog issued the warning about not safe connection because of incorrect configuration there. The Firefox blocked the loading of the site. Please set your blog soft properly or remove the link from your profile until it is done.

 

[vdorta]

Thanks and apologies. For some reason it showed https. I have corrected it to http:

I'm also having problems with my avatar, but I'll insist.

 

[Capt. Vick]

Welcome aboard amigo!

 

[vdorta]

Thanks, Captain!

 

[Wildcat]

Welcome from Down Under!

 

[vdorta]

For some reason my Mirage family avatar appears vertically compressed, and for some other reason I can't upload the other Mirage picture I want to have as my avatar.

But maybe this is interesting to our members. My new avatar is a deHavilland Venom. It was a much improved successor to the first British single-jet fighter, the Vampire. It had a tremendous rate of climb and a very high service ceiling. When in mock combat against F-86 Sabres, we could dive on them from high altitude and then climb back to safety, like Hellcats or Lightnings attacking Zeros, and we could also turn inside them in a dogfight. At the end they had to dive away, but then they couldn't climb up higher than us. It was funny to be following your faster prey when you know that even if you're behind you're gaining on altitude all the time. A similar thing happened on long distance ferrying, we could cruise higher and faster than the Sabres, although our straight wings held us back in maximum speed, something the fighter jocks know isn't as important as it seems. And this was with the tip tanks you see on the picture. In real combat we would eject our empty tip tanks and then the Sabres would be in even bigger trouble.

 

[Lucky13]

Welcome to the family mate!
Got to love the P-38 Lightning, one of only two aircraft that should be allowed to carry that name (had to work that one in there! ), the other being the E/E Lighting....

 

[Thorlifter]

From Donald Sutherland in The Dirty Dozen:

Donald Sutherland: Where ya from soldier?
Vdorta: Issaquah Washington sir!
Donald Sutherland: Never heard of it....

hahaha. Welcome to the nut house.

 

[Wurger]

Thanks and apologies. For some reason it showed https. I have corrected it to http:

I'm also having problems with my avatar, but I'll insist.

OK. No problemo. Your trouble with the avatar pic might have been caused by the incorrect pic size I would say. Many of us set them when the old forum soft was running there. In that time the size of the avatar picture was required to be a square of the 100x100 pixels maximally. The new soft allowas to use images a little bit bigger but it is still preffering to be a square type but not a rectangle one rather. The forum system adjusts it automatically to the maximal dimensions allowed by the soft that is 192 pixels in the width and the height. The effect may be noticed while looking at Wildcat's one ( post #8).
So... if you want to have your avatar of the correct shape you have to resize the image to the 192x192 pixels for instance. You can do that by either resizing or clipping of the basic image firstly. Then you can set it as the avatar here. Of course your shot can be of the rectangle shape but it has to fit the area of the 192x192 pixels or be of the similar proportion because of the compression and extending. For example, 384x384, 576x576, 768x768 pixels. I hope it can help.

 

[Gnomey]

Welcome.