Well done Susanna-555! Reminds of the restored Ju-52 that did the rounds a long time ago and got much attention. But the opposite is true of the African DC-3s and other old airliners that are deathtraps. I wish that a Ju G-38 could make a comeback or Do-X... plus a REAL L129-type Zeppelin of over 800 ft instead of the Zeppelin NT!!! Also, a civil He-111 or Fw-200 would be nice too :)

Reminds me of the time I rode in a Cessna with my brother and my niece. Just a short hop over the Lawrence, Kansas airport. The instructor hadn't been informed I was riding, so they had to take some fuel out of the plane to reduce the take-off weight. I'm a bit obese but not that fat. When we were aloft I realized I still had my fingernail clipper in my pocket. Could have hijacked the plane to Cuba, but with my extra weight, that might have taken a week, and a dozen stops to refuel.

Being a private pilot is often seen the same as sailing: a glamorous pastime of the well-to-do. Actually piloting is tedious, tiresome and boring activity. And dangerous - small aircraft seldom have similar electronic aids as do airliners. Like sailing, piloting is 90% boredom, 9% action and 1% sheer horror.

what can I say? good parody plane and simple 5's

I'd like to add that the image you presented of being in such a plane is very good. I can visualize it and probably so can the others. I would like to do the same for the Me-262 jet b/c people always assume that the faster jet had an advantage and yet still lost to escorts. Not entirely true. Me-262 numbers are deceptive. Out of 1433 manufactured, only around 300+ made it to a few units (Ekdo 262, JG 7, and JV 44). They had to transition from piston fighter tactics to jet tactics and orient themselves to the new plane's jet system in short time. Of the 300+ that got to the airfields, only 149 saw combat and killed 509 a/c of all types but mainly bombers (some fighters, some recon birds too). Most sat on the ground with no fuel or were "bounced" on t/o and landings by marauding Spits, Tempests, P-51Ds, and T-Bolts. Other airfrields were decimated by tonnage of bombs dropped. And IF a 262 got into the air, avoiding the marauders, it was a climb to the bomber stream and then having to face 13,000 guns from 1,500 a/c!!! Imagine a group of 262s up against 1500 aircraft. They had time for a few high-speed passes to fire their 4x 30mm nose cannon or to launch salvos of 55mm R4M unguided rockets. But they could not really dogfight the piston a/c and faced flame-outs if they did. Some tried to out-dive the heavy T-Bolts and Tempests and lost. It's amazing that they scored as well as they did. The He-162 second jet fighter is even more amazing b/c only 55 of them reached JG 1 by April 1945 and only 23 were active at any one time. They face even worse odds and still got 4 aircraft- all fighters (1 Spit, 2 P-47s, and 1 Tempest mistaken for a Typhoon). I need to find a long OS to write of that experience in detail from t/o to landing! And also another one about the Finnish pilots that hated the Bf 109 and the Germans with their 2-point landing show-offs on Finnish rough terrain (the Finns always performed 3-point landings as most AFs did). The Germans used the main gear and then dropped the tail...

Nice personal parody, Susanna. Comments !%##!%????

Ach, a secret weapon, the jet-powered filibuster, has been invented by one of us. (We invent everything!) Herr Arndt has misaimed it, thus boring me into crashing on English-held territory.

Patrick is "a bit obese but not that fat." Dot's good to know. I'm a bit dead but not that injured.

Gott im Himmel! The Bobbsey Twins have managed to ruin a quiet day in the AIR.

Great shot ! another airborne hit

Do they have a tech manual on sock puppetry ;-)

Observer -- From one sock puppet to another: we both provide a valuable corrective to exhibitionists, geeks, idiot savants, salivators for war, and maniacal obsessives -- all without lives -- who use a parody site's comment box to justify a pitiful raison d'être.

Where the furanck did all these deceased WWI pilots come from? Seriously, Mannfried, you bought the farm five months before I did And to Susannah -- not to be a vocabulary Nazi -- but it's more accurate to say that flying is 1% terror. Terror is the feeling of anticipating a horrific event, like a possible plane crash; horror is what one feels IF the horrific event actually happens