Old boy with a sense of humour

The BoB Flight Lancaster has just been flying back and forth over my
house doing a display for the show at the old RAF Twinwoods airfield a
mile or so from my house... wonderful to see it twice in a week.

It reminded me of an incident that happened at about 11am yesterday
while I was waiting for the boss to appear at work. A lone single
engined wartime fighter plane was flying slowly above just too far away
for me to determine exactly what it was. Despite squinting I couldn't
make out of it was a Spitfire or Hurricane, it was one of either
because I recognised the engine note. An old boy of about 80 walked
past and looked upwards when he saw me gazing, so I turned as said "Is
that what I think it is?, he turned and with a smile on his face said
"Don't panic lad, it's one of ours" then walked away.

--
Lozzo
Versys 650 Tourer, CBR600F-W racebike in the making, TS250C, RD400F
(somewhere)
BMW E46 318iSE (it's a car, not one of those 2-wheeled pieces of shite
they churn out)

 

Heh. I swear some of these old boys polish their one-liners and wait,
for years if necessary, to trot them out at exactly the right moment.

Craftsmanship, that's what it is.

I've mentioned this before, but when the kids were young, they went
sailing their boats on Clapham Pond, and it being a Sunday, the old boys
were out there with their yachts.

And this geezer turned up with a massive model of some old four-stacker
liner: Mauretania, Titanic, whatever.

And he set it going and as it was a windy day, the pond was quite
choppy, and sure enough, it started shipping water and went down, screws
still turning and lights still on, exactly like a model in a Pinewood
Studios tank. Marvellous, it was.

And the old boy donned waders and sloshed out into the pond (it's only
about three feet deep) and recovered his pride and joy, and as he made
it back to the bank with the ship in his arms, one of the other old
boys, without lifitng his eyes from his own yacht, said deadpan:

"You've got to watch out for the U-Boats in this pond, mate..."

I nearly pissed myself laughing.

 

For some reason, a memory of model boating lakes popped into my head a
week or so ago, so out of idle curiosity, I had a quick search for
local ones. There are really not that many about.

 

Oh, arse. replied to the wrong post.

 

The Roud Pond in Kensington Gardens is still one of them, I hope.

 

Southsea has a very active pond on Sunday Mornings

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jainbow/1408893564/

 

Blimey. It does, doesn't it?

 

Noice one.

When I was in my teens I built a balsa model of the aircraft carrier,
USS Kittyhawk by scaling up from an Airfix plastic one I had. Big
enough to load a motorcycle battery inside it and power two electric
motors that I had bought. But because I was on a restricted budget, I
was using the radio control servos from my model aircraft and was
trying to figure out how to control the engine power without having to
fork out more money for dedicated controllers.

So I got a coil out of an old hot water kettle and wound it around a
piece of balsa and then attached a wire across the servo so that as it
rotated it would go from high to low resistance and control the speed
of the engines.

I had not realised how much power a 6V motorcycle battery could
generate, so on the maiden voyage, it gets to the middle of the pond
and the coil had heated up so much that the balsa I wrapped it around
caught fire and smoke starts pissing out of the flight decks. I had
made a default setting where the wire slid right off the coil and my
mate who had another boat there manage to push the thing back to
shore.

Oops

 

Here's 3 you might notta heard that gave me a chuckle:

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Those German controllers at Frankfurt Airport tend to be
a short-tempered lot. They not only expect pilots to know their parking
location but how to get there without any assistance. So it was with
some amusement that we (PanAm 747) listened to the following exchange
between Frankfurt ground and a British Airways 747 (radio call Speedbird
206) after landing.

Speedbird 206: "Good morning Frankfurt. Speedbird 206 clear of active."
Ground: "Good Morning. Taxi to your gate."
[British Airways 747 pulls onto the main taxiway and stops.]
Ground: "Speedbird, do you know where you are going?"
Speedbird 206: "Stand by, ground. I'm looking up the gate location now."
Ground (impatiently): "Speedbird 206, have you never flown to Frankfurt
before?"
Speedbird 206 (coolly), "Yes, in 1944. But I didn't stop."

-----------------------------------------------------------------

A Pan Am 727 flight waiting for start clearance in Munich overheard
the following:

Lufthansa (in German): "Ground, what is our start clearance time?"

Ground (in English): "If you want an answer you must speak in English."

Lufthansa (in English): "I am a German, flying a German airplane,
in Germany. Why must I speak English?"

Unknown voice from another plane (in a beautiful British accent):
"Because you lost the bloody war!!"

-----------------------------------------------------------------

While taxiing at London Gatwick, the crew of a US Air flight departing
for Ft. Lauderdale made a wrong turn and came nose to nose with
a United 727. An irate female ground controller lashed out at
the US Air crew, Screaming:

"US Air 2771, where the hell are you going?! I told you to turn right
onto Charlie taxiway! You turned right on Delta! Stop right there.
I know it's difficult for you to tell the difference between C' and D',
but get it right!" Continuing her rage to the embarrassed crew, she was
now shouting hysterically: "God! Now you've screwed everything up!
It'll take forever to sort this out! You stay right there and don't move
till I tell you to! You can expect progressive taxi instructions in
about half an hour and I want you to go exactly where I tell you, when I
tell you, and how I tell you! You got that, US Air 2771?"


"Yes ma'am," the humbled crew responded.

Naturally, the ground control communications frequency fell terribly
silent after the verbal bashing of US Air 2771. Nobody wanted to chance
engaging the irate ground controller in her current state of mind.
Tension in every cockpit out in Gatwick was definitely running high.

Just then an unknown pilot broke the silence and keyed his microphone,
asking: "Wasn't I married to you once?"

 

30 minutes later another voice comes over:

"God I'm bored"
Irate Femail: "Identify yourself immediately!"
Un-identified voice: "I said I was bored, not stupid..."

etc etc etc


--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 GTV TS GT 3.2 V6
Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see.
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

There's a similar one about a British aircraft waiting for a slot and
seeing German aircraft apparently getting priority; the British pilot
complained about this to the controller. A short while later a German
pilot transmitted, "Ve got here earlier and put our towels on the
runway...."

 

Yeah I know they're oldies but they musta been funny as allgetout
to hear them at the time.

SQ

 

Oh aye.

Read this?

http://www.jumbojoke.com/the_king_of_speed.html




--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 GTV TS GT 3.2 V6
Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see.
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

The flip side of this shit is when I was in Frankfurt on a stag do
earlier in the year, a lovely local chap I got chatting to asked me if
it was safe for him to visit London. He really wanted to, but was scared
(and I mean genuinely so) that he'd get the shit beaten out of him for
being German.

Meanwhile, his rather odd Catweazle-esque mate was bellowing "Ten
English Bombers" (sic) in my ear.

The war ended 65 years ago. Really, let it go.

 

Some Brit could have said the same thing in 1880 (ie, 65 years
after Waterloo)... around the time the Anglo-German naval race
was starting.

SQ

 

It looks like someone there has a model of an ore carrier
built for the Great Lakes of North America. I wonder if
it's the _Edmund Fitzgerald_, sunk with all hands in a gale
on Lake Superior, November, 1975:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Edmund_Fitzgerald_NOAA.jpg

SQ

 

Or in 1820, five years after Napoleon got his. But we know who the true
enemy is....

 

There are some people who still need to face up to their national
behaviour. Like the Japanese. And the French (wo were fighting the
British and Americans in 1943, for heaven's sake).

 

I clicked on that and it just spoiled my memories of Gordon
Lightfoot's song of the same name. I'd always imagined he wrote it
about a sailing ship from the 1800s or something. Well, there ya go.

We didn't have interwebs when Lightfoot's song came out so it was
harder to research, but for 30+ years I have had an image in my mind
of a 3 or 4 mast sailing ship.

Still a good song though.

Just downloaded it and listened again. Haven't heard it for 2 years.
Puts some lines in the song into more perspective though.