A B2 bomber came to lunch

interesting story Ed. But back to your digression. At school they tought me cricket was an animal. Confusion all around.

meltingpot

bluemink wrote:

At school they tought me cricket was an animal. Confusion all around.

meltingpot

Only in America, Grasshopper. In England, the game of cricket is played with great passion, and involving the consumption of many alcoholic beverages. Games of cricket staged in the North of England are generally played using Newcastle's Brown Ale. Further south, in the vicinity of the small village of London, Watney's Red Barrel Ale or Bass Ale may be substituted, provided that Scotch Whisky is consumed after the game.

On the rare occasion that cricket matches ARE held in America, Beefeater or Bombay Gin is usually consumed.

In most of North America, a "cricket" is, as you say, a small animal, an arthropod which chirps all night long and drives my right out of my freaking mind.

Thank you for this opportunity to explain the difference between crickets and cricket. 😂

Go now in peace,

Ed

PS My apologies to all my Limey friends. 😂

Baseball is actually derived from the english game rounders, which in england is only really played by schoolgirls 😂

but if you guys want to make a national sport out of an english schoolgirls game fair enough 😉

spuddi wrote:

Baseball is actually derived from the english game rounders, which in england is only really played by schoolgirls 😂

I was going to say that 🙂
And what other country in the world would have a "World Series" that only has erm... one country in it.

spuddi wrote:

Baseball is actually derived from the english game rounders, which in england is only really played by schoolgirls 😂

but if you guys want to make a national sport out of an english schoolgirls game fair enough 😉

Well, if those schoolgirls would get an agent and take steroids, they could be multimillionaires! 😂

Okay, so I blew it with the cricket information. Did I get the drinking part about right? ❓

Ed

horrgakx wrote:

spuddi wrote:

Baseball is actually derived from the english game rounders, which in england is only really played by schoolgirls 😂

I was going to say that 🙂
And what other country in the world would have a "World Series" that only has erm... one country in it.

Hey, now, that's not true. Unless, as some people, you consider Canada to be the 51st state! 😉

I knew you Brits had a sense of humor-- I know this because I watch BBC reruns on our Public Broadcasting System all the time. Oh, that Penelope Keith cracks me up. . . 😂

Ed

PS Actually, I have a great fondness for the English people. I even married one (she claims she's a cousin to Queen Victoria, but I suppose you've heard that before 🙄 ). And I lived in Scotland for a year and a half, and traveled extensively in England. Of course, I'm of Irish descent. And you know how much the Scots and the Irish love the English. ❗

Okay, back to Flight Simulator-related topics now. 😂 B2 bomber overhead, etc., etc..

not so fast Ed. A guy down the road says that cricket is the game they play in heaven. There goes my theory that haeven is full of airplanes.

meltingpot

bluemink wrote:

not so fast Ed. A guy down the road says that cricket is the game they play in heaven. There goes my theory that haeven is full of airplanes.

meltingpot

And if you go to the other place, you have to watch synchronized swimming competitions for all eternity. 😳

Ed

watching synchronized swimming is one of my favourite pastimes Ed. So is ballet, iceskating and gymnastics. Graceful. The sight of certain aircraft strikes me as graceful. To mention but a few, the 747,the a320, the B-52. Footage of a B-52 during the Vietnam era will forever be in my memory. FL 200 approx. the camera a million miles away it seems and the 52 as if in slomo gliding gracefully, majestically, far below in the distance the endless stretch of impenetrable foliage, the 52 mute due to the distance, the sun's reflections on the fuselage, seemingly suspended in time... almost unnoticably the baydoors open and the horror begins.What made the spine really tingle was Jimi Hendrix' screaming rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Memories.
My intention was never to distract from your original story about the B-2. You mentioning cricket however proofed just too tempting.
What does the B-2 look like? What are the specs?

meltingpot

bluemink wrote:

watching synchronized swimming is one of my favourite pastimes Ed.

. . .stuff snipped. . .

What does the B-2 look like? What are the specs?

meltingpot

Well, I might like synchronized swimming without the noseclips and the vaseline in the hair.

Here's a link to some information about the B2:

http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/b2/

Obviously, it's not an aircraft that would be mistaken for anything else.

Ed

thank you Ed.Impressive craft. Your tales about following the equator,worrying about fuel economy in the Lear and your step up to the 744 with all it's mishaps and successes where a delight to read. As of late, you have not revealed what you are flying at present. You wanted a a fast aircraft hence the 747. If speed is not your priority at this time, the Project Fokker might be worth consideration. Available for FS2002 as well as fs9 as different models.

https://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/15255/project-fokker-70-100-v2/

meltingpot

And thank you, bluemink/meltingpot,

I don't know how many people enjoy my meandering stories about the tours, but I enjoy writing them. They usually at least stimulate some discussion about various aspects of sim flight, aircraft, geography, etc., so I hope they bring something to the community.

Well, I left the 747 in a smoking crater not too far from Los Angeles International (KLAX), and said "To heck with this." Except I didn't say "to heck with." I could take off, cruise, and descend, but landing was my downfall, so to speak.

So, I "borrowed" an unattended Lear Jet, and took off up the coast. Now, there's a plane I can FLY. It won't do acrobatics, but you can throw it around a little without it dropping out of the sky. Mach .81 is a respectable speed-- since it will fly higher than the 747, the ground speed is not that much less, maybe 40 knots.

I decided to drop in to Monterey, California (KMRY). I had been chatting with a friend at work about flight simming, and he told me that he had held a glider pilot's license in real life. He told me some funny stories about trying to learn how to fly while under tow-- there being no "slew" function in real life. Too bad FS09 doesn't have that feature.

In the description of the Schweizer sailplane in FS09, they mentioned Monterey as a place good for gliding, so I spent an afternoon trying that. Well, it was kind of cool, and awfully quiet, but it certainly requires a lot of concentration. You have to focus on preserving altitude all the time, or you won't make it back to the airport. I never did find anything like an updraft or a thermal, so it was pretty much downhill all the way after the initial slew to altitude.

So, I fired up the Lear and set a GPS course for Seattle. That turns out to be a very scenic course, direct from KMRY to KSEA. You fly up the central valley of California, with San Francisco Bay off to the left and the High Sierra mountains on the right. Then you fly right over Mount Shasta, then directly over Crater Lake in Oregon, then between Portland and Mount Hood (still in Oregon), cross the Columbia River, and then directly over the blasted-out crater of Mount St. Helens in Washington, with Mount Baker and Rainier off in the distance, before landing at Seattle.

I thought that route was so cool that I rented a Cessna C208A Amphibian at Seattle, I am retracing the course heading south. I intend to land in Crater Lake, to see what it looks like from the water level. I'm thinking about following the Columbia from its mouth at the sea to its source (Idaho or Montana? Not sure). I haven't decided yet.

So basically, I'm just wandering around having fun flying, waiting for the inspiration for another tour to kick in.

Thanks for asking, 😂

Ed

thank you Ed for another entertaining story. How many of the younger generation do you think have heard that the pen is mightier than the sword? A paradox to ponder on - the Sage's teaching of impermanence - and the afore mentioned saying, which profundity and aptness has not changed in my lifetime. No, no confusion in this regard.
Ed,please continue contributing to these forums with your stories, anecdotes and opinions and last but certainly not least with your adventures up in the virtual sky (Heaven?)
Sailplanes. At the tender age of 6 my dear father explained thermals to me. He and his buddies built sailplanes by hand on weekends... and as the world keeps on turning - fall arrived. Fall was the only time of year that the enthusiasts were able to fly their craft. The crops had been harvested and the farmers didn't mind having their now barren fields used as "airstrips". The "club" had only a winch to pull up the sailplane. No field telephone; placard-sized signs were used for signalling. Two men, one at each end of a wing was required to hold the craft level and at the appropriate command the rope tightened (pulled by the winch at the other end of the harvested field), the two wingholders started to run attempting to hold the wings as level as possiple and in most cases collapsed, not being able to keep up with the speed of the winch-pull, by which time thankfully - in modern terminology - the sailplane had established a positive rate of climb.
The rest is... no let's stay away from cliches, not history, but a darn good story that has much more to it than meets the eye (to use a cliche). The whole experience, be assured would fill a book.

A final note on these early postwar sailplane pioneers: Before they could afford to pay for a winch to pull up their planes, they used manpower - positioning the sailplane on top of a hill; several men pulling the craft with rubberlike strips, another crew at the back of the plane digging in their heels to counteract the forwardpull and at commando... well, guess what? They managed to glide for how many yards - but does it matter? They succeeded and that's all that mattered and that's all that matters now. That's what my good father told me and he was no lier.

What has all of this to do with Flightsimming??

Ed knows.

meltingpot

Hey, now, that's not true. Unless, as some people, you consider Canada to be the 51st state!

Hehe, well you guys pay interstate tax on your telephone calls to Canada from US states so you guys seem to class Canada as a state when it suits you