Mosquito at Paine Field Sunday, 6/18!

[Paughco]

Fellow Birdmen: I rode my S1000XR up to FHCAM at Paine Field to see a test flight of the de Havilland Mosquito. Unfortunately, that was not to be. The field was (and still is) under MVFR conditions, which pretty much meant they weren't going to take to the air until conditions were full-on VFR. They did, however, roll the Mossie out and fire her up. I managed to catch this on my Canon G16 in video mode. Here it is:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9NWvTHPZY4[/youtube]

Pretty cool!

Happy Father's Day!

Seeya
ATB

[Paul K]

With all due respect to other types and their designers, I honestly think the Mosquito, in all it's forms, was the best combat aircraft that Britain ever produced.

[Paughco]

Yeah - we were walking around FHCAM looking at all the airplanes and photos of airplanes, and we decided that the British must have had a "Board of Aircraft Ugliness" during the 1930s and 40s. They had to review all proposed aircraft designs, and could only allow continuation of the design if it was ugly enough. They somehow missed the Spitfire and the Mosquito.

Seeya
ATB

[Paul K]

Well, I was referring to the Mosquito's capabilities rather than it's looks, beautiful though it undeniably is. I prefer the bomber variant, by the way.

I agree that we did come up with some rather ugly aircraft between the wars, but some of them went on to give sterling service in the early part of WW2. For example, the Armstrong-Whitworth Whitley was a very peculiar looking machine but quite capable as a bomber and very easy to fly. I've read that due to the wing area and angle of incidence, the resulting ground effect made it near impossible to do a bad landing.



Ugly but functional.