Fly Past

 With the recent aeronautic twist to the posts on the blog, I was reminded of a couple of small diecast planes I have. One is an SR-71 Blackbird with a drone piggyback, but when I fetched it out of the archive, I realised it was missing a tailfin, so that will have to go back to the restoration department until the weekend. Meanwhile, a shot of a Tesco diecast 'Stealth Fighter' from the cheap range of pocketmoney toys that they produced to compete with matchbox Skybusters. This reminded me of a late eighties Dan Dare strip in the apalling 'New Eagle' comic, which I suffered on a weekly basis in order to get my fix of Dan Dare. A large portion of the art in later series was illustrated by the aviation and comic artist Ian Kennedy, which made it all worthwhile for his beautifully realistic machines. (It appears that a real life version of this F-19 concept was built and flown - the F19 Spectre, if I read this correctly!)

During one of the storylines which attempted to re-establish Dan in a more sensible timeframe, there was a sequence where Dan and Digby are at a future airfield and Dan had just tried out a new hypersonic aircraft that vaguely resembled the stealth fighter above.

Digby asks Dan "how did you find your first flight in a 'mud-mover?'". Theres no explanation of what he meant and the comment seems to be a reference to pilot jargon. Does anyone know what 'mud-mover' refers to ? Is it flying NOE or 'nap of the earth' under the radar or is it something else ?

 Any excuse to post a shot of a futuristic aircraft is a good one for me, so heres a modern Majorette Air Forces model. About 7" long, retractable landing gear, folding wings, firing missiles, remotely dropping bomb and ejecting pilot - the works. Not based on any real aircraft, its a pure toy, but well made and designed and fits nicely into the future fleet.

Finally, another diecast, the Hotwheels Armageddon Shuttle and Spacestation set. The metal shuttle is around three inches long and a little too long compared to its on screen version. The station in the film is an antiquated russian one, with more than a nod to Salyut and Mir, which after an accident with the cooling system during a shuttle refuel, promptly explodes.

The Hotwheels playset tries to capture this scene as the metal shuttle can be launched from the base of the station, which can then be collapsed at the touch of a button. All the modules are joined inside by nylon thread, so by winding a small knob on the base, the station rebuilds itself for another go!