Friday, March 19, 2010

The Old man and the Mosquito

Mosquito MkVI - painting by Darryl Legg
(Featured artist)

Yesterday I met an old man on the train - during the conversation it turned out that he's birthday was coming up on Friday (today); I joked with him by asking if he was turning fifty... "No," he said, "I'm turning 90!"
He laughed showing a mouth that was devoid of teeth bar one or two.
He had remnants of a British accent so I asked if he was from the UK; turns out that he came to South Africa in 1947 after the war.
"Did you serve active duty?" I asked.
"I was in the Mosquito squadron," says he.

The Mosquito was a wooden frame fighter / bomber / reconnaissance plane and the man I met was a navigator.

In most dual seat planes the navigator sits behind the pilot, but in the Mosquito and the Vampire (both built by de Havilland) the Navigator and the Pilot sit (or used to sit) next to each other.

He told me a story of his friend that had received a DFC for successfully crashing his Mosquito...
In case of a water landing the pilots were trained to lift the nose of the plane, the theory was that as the tail touched the water the plane would belly-flop onto the water and float - not so for the Mosquito - being a wooden frame plane the tail simply broke off and then the Roles Royce engines pulled the wreckage under.
This young pilot's plan, if he got shot down over the water, was to dive straight into the water. He got his chance while flying in the Mediterranean and the experiment proved correct. The plane dived about 12 foot (3m) then then bobbed up to the surface intact and floated there. That daring move changed how Mosquito pilots executed emergancy landings in the water and earned him the DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross).

There's an entire site dedicated to the plane: http://www.dhmosquito.com/


The painting above was done by Darryl Legg - you can see his art here: http://www.aviationartsa.com/

Darryl's paintings are beautifully executed - here's one of my favorite planes painted in the glorious colours of the South African Air force. Pop over to his site for more on SAAF war planes.

North American Harvard Mk 111 (SAAF)- painting by Darryl Legg

North American Harvard Mk 111 (SAAF)

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Chaeli Champaign

Well the Chaeli campaign is over for this year - we've raised tens of thousands of rands (still counting) and we had a lot of fun!

We started in Hermanus (see the sun rising behind us!) and cycled through to Stellenbosch on Friday - the ride took nearly 8 hours; which is a very long time, but we were a social group riding with people who had never ridden long distance before. They did very well! (122km in total)

The ride was beautiful (as you can see in the pictures)

The Frenchman smiling at you in the center photo is Jeremie Dupont; he's setting out for Paris in October with girlfriend Charlene Dickson.

You can see all the details of where they are going here.

The chap behind him is Deon, my friend and colleague.

Deon and I will probably ride with Jeremie and Charlene for the first few hundred Km. I'm looking forward to it!

Saturday we rode from Stellenbosch to Cape Town in the rain! (70km)

Sunday was the big day - the Cape Argus - 109km in the wind! It was hell!

In total just on 300Km and nearly 16 hours on the saddle!

Remembering that 25% of all paintings sold this moth will go to the charity... so to buy a painting: How to buy a painting

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Chaeli 2010 - Starting tomorrow

This is the 2009 team, tomorrow morning I'll be standing where they were last year and I'll be as nervous as they were... 300Km is a long, long way to ride.

The weather prediction is that it's going to be very warm to hot, and with the warm weather comes the wind - not pleasant riding conditions!


My daughter gave me a teddy bear this morning, evidently it wants to ride with me - so I've got to find some way of attaching it to the bike so that it can participate in the ride.


Hopefully I can get back to painting next week.

 
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