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This past week, somebody put out a graphic combining the new Steve Trevor from the Wonder Woman movie with the current Captain America (who as we know, has the real name of Steve Rogers) with the title Steves on a Plane.

Being the airplane/comics nerd that I am, I could not let that go past.  So to Super-Team Family: The Lost Issues, I proposed the All-Steve Squadron, which includes the above and...

* from DC's War Heroes, Steve Savage the Elder, better known as Balloon Buster

* from Avon Comics of the Fifties, Steve Savage the Younger (Captain Steve Savage)

* from TV and Charlton Comics, Steve Austin (The Six Million Dollar Man)

* and from Archie Comics, Steve Stacey: Sky Detective.

I guess I need to get into Steve Stacey.  He had a very very brief career.  He only appeared in 16 PAGES in the anthology Blue Ribbon in 1941.  His series was an okay idea for a comic, but the writing and visuals didn't work so it's no surprise to me that it ended.

In the story, Steve was a flight instructor who broke up a sabotage scheme against his flight school, and as a result, he got recruited into the Civil Aviation Authority as an investigator.  In the course of his adventure, he also saved the life of a female student pilot named Joyce Barton--who appointed herself his assistant.  Together, they fought mob hitmen, air pirates, Nazi sleeper agents and the like.

There wasn't much backstory for either character.  It was alluded that Steve was previously a competitor in air races, and before that, flew for the U.S. Mail.

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A very long time ago, I received a bunch of built-up 1/72 airplane models--including FIVE F4U Corsairs.  (One Airfix, two Heller [now SMER] and two old-production Revell, to be specific.)  They were all in bad shape and poorly built to begin with, so I stripped the paint off, carefully disassembled them and started looking for alternative parts.

My search is a little more serious now.

If High Planes did a detailling set for F4U-1(A), F4U-1D, F4U-1C and/or FG-1D, I'd be all over them.  As it is, I may just get some F4U-5N sets from them, "impossible variant" be darned.

FP

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Sagittarius Horoscope for week of May 5, 2016

"Anybody can become angry," said Greek philosopher Aristotle. "That is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power and is not easy." I'm pleased to inform you, Sagittarius, that now is a time when you have an exceptional capacity for meeting Aristotle's high standards. In fact, I encourage you to honor and learn all you can from your finely-honed and well-expressed anger. Make it work wonders for you. Use it so constructively that no one can complain.


Anger used to be my worst internal enemy, and I guess I still have problems with it.  But lately I'm the coolest I've ever been and miss getting in somebody's face (especially if it's DESERVED).

When I was in examination years back, I told the therapist about something called "carburetor icing".  In aircraft engines, the fuel intakes can get much colder than the rest of the engine because of the speed of the airflow around the components and the altitude.  If the air is very humid, you might have the hazard of water vapor being induced into the carburetor and then flash-freezing, blocking the air and fuel getting into the engine, and then the engine seizing as a result.  I said, there is something like that with human emotions: run too hot and you break the relations that sustain you.  Run too cold and nobody wants to relate with you because they think you can't empathize.  Where is the healthy temperature?

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Saw in my newsbox that the Hobby Lobby in Sevierville had their Grand Opening today so I went there and got this diecast Corsair, which I'd been hoping to find for quite a while. (They'd sold out at other area locations and I was seriously thinking about going to the one in the Tri-Cities.)

FP
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(I found out a fact this week I should have known decades ago.)  The Feggans Brown company, which built aircraft mockups for movies and TV series, also built scores of Daleks for various Doctor Who productions.

Wedding Ideas
Image courtesy of: SnapKnot - Wedding Ideas

Don't mind the above thingy.  I'm just doing that to enter a sweepstakes.

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Superman 2 was on one of the TV networks we get this afternoon, and I have to say it hasn't aged as well as I expected.  It got me thinking about things like speed and how we perceive motion.

I'm about average size for a human being.  If I went like the Man of Steel and flew at a rate of my own body's "flight length" per second, that's only about 5 mph--or jogging speed.  Just to put this in perspective:

* A WW1 biplane fighter at combat speed travels at five times its length per second.

* A WW2 heavy bomber or transport plane at cruise speed will also be moving at about five times its length per second.  (Because of the difference in size compared to the smaller planes of WW1, this would mean double the actual speed!)

* A WW2 fighter at its combat speed would go 15 times its length per second.

* A modern fighter jet at Mach 1 would be moving 25 times its length per second.

* A NASCAR or LeMans race car at 200 miles per hour goes nearly 20 times its length per second.

We don't think of these things when we watch fantasy movies (or sci-fi space opera) because we don't want to suspend our disbelief.  When Harry Potter is on his broomstick we don't clock his progress because he's moving at the speed of plot, not 45 miles per hour.

FP

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Almost six whole years after I first posted about it here I finally got a copy of Sky Crawlers on DVD.

Yes, it's very much a Mamoru Oshii movie.  It's got characters walking around in existential hazes, realism that makes you wonder why it isn't live-action, and even a basset hound.  While there is action--in deadly earnest--it isn't an action movie.  The setting is both real and unreal, and the themes of his previous movies are taken in a different direction.

Basically, this is ONE scene from CATCH-22 transformed into an entire feature movie.  Where in the Heller work (and the movie that came from it) the scene was played for satirical effect, in this case the concept's tragic meaning is thrown to full relief.

FP (who is wrestling with the existential ramifications himself)

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Roughly 1/72nd scale, the fuselage is just a little over 6"/15 cm long.
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With my last of my cash in pocket I bought two starter packs for the old Wizkids "clicky" Crimson Skies game yesterday.  If you've been following my blog, you'd know that I'd been converting the clicky airplane miniatures for use in other games in recent months.  I bought the starters in the mistaken idea that a couple miniatures were included, but they aren't at all.

No wonder this never actually caught on.  It was expensive at launch, and for a collectable game, needlessly complex and lacking in avenues for creativity.
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It took me about fifty days to complete a 1/48th P-40 for the Revell/Gearz National Scale Model Contest.





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Sagittarius Horoscope for week of May 2, 2013

Search your memory, Sagittarius, and recall a time when you pushed yourself to your limits as you labored over a task you cared about very much. At that time, you worked with extreme focus and intensity. You were rarely bored and never resentful about the enormous effort you had to expend. You loved throwing yourself into this test of willpower, which stretched your resourcefulness and compelled you to grow new capacities. What was that epic breakthrough in your past? Once you know, move on to your next exercise: Imagine a new assignment that fits this description, and make plans to bring it into your life in the near future.


Probably when I was in training to be a pilot. Which ended in 1992. I hardly remember those times and I've been too far away from that place both physically and emotionally for too long.
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In my travels yesterday I saw that the second set of AXIS & ALLIES: AIR FORCE MINIATURES game, BANDITS HIGH, is already out. (The official street date is a few days from now, but some stores have them on the shelves and pegs.)

Nominally, I'd be all over it. Nowadays, with nobody to play against, it's hard to care all that much.
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Over the weekend was the local IPMS club's Swap Meet, and I got several kits for very very cheap. Including a few more Spitfires.

Anybody feel like coming up with a paint scheme or two?

FP
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http://www.aviationwarehouse.net/

I'd had a suspicion that the mockup fighter jet in DEAL OF THE CENTURY was based on a Learjet, and I'm still looking for harder evidence.

But I found this place that builds fake Learjets and other fake planes for the movies.
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In one-to-six scale, an Avro Lincoln bomber/transport has a wingspan of twenty feet.

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Stephen R Bierce

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