Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

Bertie
Vampire? The side by side version I presume?
Remember that great scene in "Breaking The Sound Barrier" when the
"hero" takes his wife on a trip from England to Egypt in a two seat
Vamp? Beautiful black and white photography in that picture.


I do actually. I love the way they make it look like they did it
first...

Yeah, Yeager was good at that too. I've yet to hear him give George
Welch the credit he has always been due for being the first through mach
1.......but I have to admit, the Brits made some great movies about
early aviation. The old B&W's were the best I think. The films they did
on Bader and Guy Gibson were superb movies. Leslie Howard doing Mitchell
might have been a bit melodramatic I think :-))




Hope you get to fly it. Nearest thing I can relate to that I've flown
would be the Canadair Tutor. I flew the Snowbirds #10 as a guest of
the
team at one time. Great little airplane and very easy to fly.
I'm sure you won't have the slightest problem with the Vampire if they
ever get it running.
D


Oh it's often running, then its broken, then it's running, then it's
broken! The lost the canopy on it once and it cost more to replace than
it hadcost to buy the airplane!

I'd say the trick here is to make damn sure it's on the "running" side
of that sin curve the day you get to fly it :-))


I have a pic of the snowbirds in Sept Isle Quebec I took in 1979, I
think. They had just flown through Mt St Helen's plume and damaged their
airplanes! I didn;t get up close to them, but I was up in the tower and
the controllers told me their windscreens had been badly frosted by the
incident. I'll have a rumage around for it.

I never knew that, but it would make sense. The grit in the air would
have been quite dense. I once dove a Mustang through a rain shower and
damn near stripped the paint right off it. My crew wanted to kill me
:-)


Bertie



--
Dudley Henriques