Silver Spitfire - The Longest Flight

This past Monday I had the exceedingly rare opportunity (for me) to sit in a restored 1943 Spitfire Mark IX with over 50 combat missions under her belt including D-Day support missions. She started life registered as MJ271 but now bears the G-IRTY civilian registration number.

The crew plans to circle the globe and has allotted four months for the task. Las Vegas is one of the stops along her attempted circumnavigation of the globe and I found out about it totally by accident - I read the Nellis AFB weekly newsletter first thing Monday morning instead of waiting a couple of days and caught the small print in the preview saying it would appear at the Thunderbird hangar from 1530-1730hrs.

Soooo you ask, why is she not painted in her original wartime camo scheme? Well for that, it's best you look it up on their website: https://www.silverspitfire.com/ Nearly everything on her is original, including the wing spars. The prop is a replacement and if I heard the narrator correctly, the original prop is in Germany! LOL

Atlantis Models UFO Encounters

Sooo, Bettina took this picture of a beautiful sunset back on 18 Aug and posted it on fb, then one of my fb buddies added a little touch of his own - three UFO's! hahahahaha, I love it!  That got me to thinkin' - hey, somewhere on the computer are pics of a UFO toy I bought some time ago. Let me look, hmmm, dum-de-dum-de-doo, AH! There they are! Yup, some years back I picked up a couple of these simple Atlantis UFO kits. I like them just the way they are, but of course you could always paint the hull and make 'em more fancy. There's only a few snap-together parts: hull, bottom plate, three legs, the electronics, and a three-legged stand. The legs come off real easy and the hull can be displayed as if in mid-flight on the stand. When turned on, the light blinks in alternating colors. Unfortunately I didn't record the dimensions any where and the toys are put away now, so what it's worth here it is anyway. Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

The original sunset photo by Bettina

Here's the edited photo with 'visitor's'

Here's a short video showing the lights in action

 

Processed Plastic No. 920 USAF Surface to Air Missile v2 (blue-white-red-blue)

Here's the same missile featured yesterday but in flip-flop colors of blue-white-red-blue. The plastic wears out on the plungers such that the two locking levers on either side of the third stage will sometimes not hold the plunger in place when the top 'missile' is inserted. Sometimes you have to find a 'sweet' spot which will allow the plunger to stay down without premature firing - which can be a little scary if the darned thing launches right at your forehead!! The spring is fairly powerful and the missiles take off with some force. Still and all a fun toy! Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

Processed Plastic No. 920 USAF Surface to Air Missile v2 (red-white-blue-white)

Okay, sorry, can't get this Processed Plastic stuff outta my blood. So here's what's been happening. When gathering my PP rockets for a group mug shots I noticed how the No. 920 USAF Missile had two different heights as well as coming in flip-flop colors. The ones I've posted so far have been what I call Version 1 (v1) which are the slightly taller missile's while I've labeled the shorter ones Version 2 (v2) which measures 10 1/2" (26.67cm) H. This is simply as a way to keep things straight in my head, certainly not an official designation. The second version missiles are made of a slightly more softer, more pliable type plastic the their taller brothers. So anywho, that being said, here's the photo rundown of (starting from the bottom stage) the red-white-blue-white missile. Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

The four missiles on the right are the No. 920's. The 3rd and 4th from the right are the taller version 1 types while the 1st and 2nd are the shorter version 2.