Spitfire The History

by | Mar 14, 2021 | Book Reviews

I have written a review of this book once before, the book titled Spitfire The History is probably the definative work on the Spitfire. The book itself is technically superb, suitable for anyone who wants to know everything Spitfire related. Is it perfect, alas no there are a couple of things that do anoy me about the book – and yes I do have both editions and find the second infuriating as well.

But I have to be honest, if there is information missing it’s hard to think of. The only missing facts that I can see, is the GPS location for the Spitfires buried in Myanmar (Burma to some of us). You could probably take a guess at where they are using information in the book, as it does list the SOC location for many of the spitfires and it does list every single one of them individually.

What do I think of the book, well as I said have both editions and really do consider it to be the finest work that there is as far as information content goes. What do I find anoying about the book, from a technical perspective absolutely nothing. From a readers view point, I find it extremely anoying in some places. It reminds me of some of the early technical manuals, where they had been translated poorly.

A long time friend surmised it as follows;

“Why did two English speakers write a book in Japanese and then have it translated into English by someone who had Swahili as a first language.”

There are lots of places where the text doesn’t really flow, but given the information in the book – I’ll put up with it.

If you have an interest in the Spitfire whether as a researcher, a model maker or just as aviation enthusiast. This book will likely answer your questions on some of it’s 600+ pages, where it has the service history of some 20,000 Spitfires.

Where to get the book, not so easy as it is out of print at the moment. But a search on Amazon or eBay will return results, but hold onto your hat. I’ve just done a search for the book, there’s a couple on eBay being auctioned off with a few days to go one hasn’t moved but the other is at £35.00. There are several available on Amazon, with prices starting at £100. There are a couple of other specialist book searches online, some of these have prices for the book of anywhere up to £300 – so it is still out there if you want to pay for it.

Prestwick of Old

by | Mar 13, 2021 | Airport News

 

Being a Glasgow spotter, in my early years in the hobby a trip to Prestwick was an event. Usually only at weekends and during the school holidays, but there was the very odd day where “bunking off” was in order if something special was due in. Note the use of the term “bunking off”, the often used term “dogging” now has unfortunate connotations but it was what we called skipping a day at school.

Now I live around 20 minutes from Prestwick, but due to Covid-19 I have only managed down a few times – in reality less frequently than when I was a teenager dependent on public transport.

But it was great just to take a flyer down to Prestwick on spec, there used to be some great stuff turn up unexpectedly. Still we are where we are and it’s likely to be lock down for an other couple of months.

For Prestwick spotters, 2020 was a pretty good year if you could escape lock down and get to see what was there. The couple of exercises and the deployment of the US Navy P-8’s meant that it was pretty busy, but technically we weren’t allowed out to see anything.

The new hangers that have and are still being built at Prestwick have restricted the viewing angles, but not so much that you can’t get any pictures. You can still easily access much of the Monkton side where the majority of the Airport can be seen, with the only missing view being the North Pan and some of HMS Gannet.

Totterdown Hill

by | Mar 12, 2021 | Aviation News, Spotting Locations

Viewing the Fairford Air Show from Totterdown Hill is a first class experience, you are effectively in the center of the flying display area. There are excellent photographic options, no mater the direction of the Sun.

The facilities provided by the site are very good when all things are considered, there are hot drinks and hot food available all reasonable priced. The cost of entry into Totterdown Hill is very reasonable, but is based on the car and its ocupants.

It is possible to camp on the site, there are ample toilet facilities and there are a number of shower facilities.

Gallery Post

by | Mar 12, 2021 | Website Review

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This is a test of a gallery post, where I have selected 10 older scans of Black and White prints. There will be couple of posta for testing the site out, obviously these will drop through the post history and dissapear from view in time.

It has been a steep learning experience putting the site to gether, still it will probably be worth while in the long run. The gallery function is probably going to be used with a few posts, once I get round to visiting somewhere I can take pictures of aircraft.

I’ve got a couple of other pages to put together, but think I’ll publish the site as is. So hopefully it will all go OK, the site is probably good to go functionally but there is quite a bit to add.

Site Update

by | Mar 12, 2021 | Website Review

Well the first part of the site update is done, the front page has been redone as has the blog page. I’ve added an about page and I’ll be adding more posts and galleries over the next couple of weeks, so in a couple of months the site should be in a good place.

I intend to add a review page, where I’ll review things related to spotting – well they could be related to other things as well. But I’ll review them from a spotters perspective, so the reviews might be handy – you never know.

Finally now that I’m back down in the central belt, I’ll hopefully to get to Prestwick more frequently than I have in the past. And once we are allowed out to play, I’ll hopefully make it to a few of the other airports as well.