Trip Pictures and Meet My B.I.L.

And just why do those two things go together in a blog post, I hear you ask. You'll just have to read on through the post to find out why. So there.

But first, let us start with a picture of my dinner from a few nights ago.

The salmon on the salad was GREAT!

The was a very nice sculpture garden just before the National Air and Space Museum. This is of course one of the sculptures. I thought this one was cool looking.

I'm guessing the artist is trying to show you what can happen to your bearings if you don't keep the properly lubricated. Then again, maybe not.

Of course one of the things I was NOT going to miss was the Nat Air n Space museum. In fact, you've seen some of the pics already as I have purposefully not been chronologically correct during my picture posting of the trip. Hey, it's my blog and I can write what I want!

Bzzzzzzt! Off-Topic Alert Approaching!

I had not realized that the silly-ass word verification thingy-ma-dooley-bob was turned on in the comments. Apologies abound mates as I HATE the darn things! So, word verification is now OFF. If that has kept you from commenting then you now have absolutely no excuse not to comment.

BzzzzzzzzzT Off-Topic Alert Receding!

When I was showing the pics of NASM (I'm getting tired of typing National Air and Space Museum) to BIL he was naming off every single plane in the pics. He's like that. So when he saw the picture of a painting of a whole lot of jet aeroplanes,


He immediately said, "Ah, that looks like one of Bob McCall's paintings!"

I glanced askance at BIL whilst wondering who the heck Bob McCall is.

And then, with absolutely no prompting from me, Doctor Charles William Micheal Adamson (known as Dr Mike, sometimes as BIL here on this blog) proceeds to identify every single aeroplane in the entire pic including the one waaaay to the right that only part of the tail is showing!

He also started to give little bits of info of a few of them so I told him he'd better give me info on each one! Which he did immediately.

There was one he couldn't remember what it was but that it was Britain's first civilian turboprop. He offered to go look it up but  I told him no cuz that'd be cheating!

Yeah, it was still an awe-inspiring, impressive display of knowledge I tells ya!

I then numbered each plane in the photo and had him do the same thing again whilst I typed in his identification of each aeroplane. And that was without him ever walking away from my screen to go and cheat!

I even numbered the planes out of order. Didn't phase him a bit.

And here is what he id'd each plane as and the reason why it's famous.

1 McDonnell FH Phantom (1st jet fighter for the US Navy)
2 Lockheed F-80C (1st US service jet fighter)
3 Gloster E39 (1st British jet aeroplane)
4 Curtis P-59 Airacomet (1st American jet aeroplane)
5 Hienkel He 176 or 172 (1st Deustchland jet aeroplane)
6 Messerschmidt Me 262 (1st ever service jet airfighter --German)
7 DC-4 (Douglas's 1st 4 engine aircraft)
8 De Havilland Comet (1st British commercial jet airliner)
9 Nakajima Kikka (Japan's 1st jet aircraft)
10 Sud Aviacion Caravelle (France's 1st commercial jet airliner)
11 BAC 111 (competitor to Boening 727 and DC 9 in the 1960's)
12 B-47 (1st US swept-wing bomber)
13 F-86A Sabre (1st US swept-wing fighter, this painting has Korean War markings)
14 Britain's 1st civil turboprop after WWII but he can't name it
15 Boeing 707 (only heavy four engine jet ever to perfrom a 360 degree wingover; on an early test flight. Test pilot in left seat, company shill in right; pilot started to perform a barrelroll, shill asks What The Hell Are You doing? Answer, Selling This Airplane.)
16 MiG-15 (1st Soviet swept-wing jet figther)
17 Convair XF-90 or XF-92 (delta-wing demonstrator, ancester to F-102, F-106, B-58)

Please note that all the spellings are directly from what BIL told me without looking anything up.

Can anyone else top that ID'ing? Nah, didn't think so!

One of the reasons why he know so much about this is that he is an avid modeler. In fact he's a professional modeler as he is a regular contributor to model magazines and even gets paid for it! He does kit modifications and scratch builds. A scratch build is where you start with sheets of plastic, wire and assorted fiddly bits and come up with an exact replica a some ship or vehicle used in a show.

His workstation can sometimes look like this,

but that's only after he's cleaned it up. A lot.

This is a small selection of some of the models he's done for magazines,

and yes each model is hand-painted and air-brushed.

How good is he at painting very small things?

That is a hand-painted cockpit instrument panel that he did.

If you want to learn more about some of the incredible miniature work that professional modelers do (complete with awesomely great pics from Dr Mike himself) then visit BIL's blog World In Miniature.

Enough of BIL, let us get back to some trip pictures!

Anna and I flew to Florida to visit my granma. My uncle had given us specific directions to her house as we got close and we had the instructions from google maps printed out so that we could find out way from the Orlando airport and granma's house in Jensen Beach.

I, of course, forgot to put the directions in my carry-on. Oops. Fortunately the car rental place asked us if we wanted a dash-mounted GPS for the car. Woo-Hoo!

Just further proof that everything always works out for me. Don't ask why cuz I don't know!

Didn't take this exit.

As we were going over the river and thru the woods to granma's house we didn't think we had the time to spare on only an overnight trip. The fact that neither of us were even remotely interested may have had some influence on our not visiting Disney World.

Meanwhile back at the National Mall, this is about as close to his home state as Yours Truly got.

Yes, that IS a water bottle in my pocket but I'm still happy to see you!

All caves should have reflecting pools!

This display is courtesy of Mother Nature at her Skyline Caverns workshop.

I'm now going to post a picture of Dr Mike as he looks when he is airbrushing. In order not to frighten any young children in the audience I'm inserting a jump break.

Just click the link to see the pic!





Would you trust this man?