F.A.Q Section

Q: Do you take aircraft requests?
A: I have a list of aircraft I plan to cover, but feel free to add to it with suggestions:)

Q: Why do you use imperial measurements for some videos, and metric for others?
A: I do this based on country of manufacture. Imperial measurements for Britain and the U.S, metric for the rest of the world, but I include text in my videos that convert it for both.

Q: Will you include video footage in your videos, or just photos?  
A: Video footage is very expensive to licence, if I can find footage in the public domain I will try to use it, but a lot of it is hoarded by licencing studies (British Pathe, Periscope films etc). In the future I may be able to afford clips :)

Q: Why do you sometimes feature images/screenshots from flight simulators?
A: Sometimes there are not a lot of photos available for certain aircraft, so I substitute this with digital images that are as accurate as possible.

Feel free to leave you questions below - I may not be able to answer all of them, but I will keep my eyes open :)

I volunteer at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo as a docent, and it is a lot of fun to talk to guests about the XP-55. Some find it fascinating, some find it the weirdest looking airplane they’ve ever seen. For me, I don’t like it’s flight characteristics, but I love how it looks.

Looks like something from Crimson Skies.
Imagine an alternate history WWII where these and Flying Flapjacks would fill the skies.

I grew up about a mile from Wright field, now Wright Patterson. My mother worked out there repairing holes on damaged planes during the war.  Our house was built on probably the last flat plane before making it to Wright field and it's well known that several planes landed there as well as crashed there too.. That flat plane became our baseball and football field growing up and during the Vietnam era many bombers flew directly over us while we stopped playing to wave hello to the crews. Some of them were so huge and low flying they would blot out the sun for a second or two..

If Burt Rutan designed a WW2 fighter, this is what it would look like.

I was such a dumb kid. Sitting at the back of the classroom, I espied this little gem in an encyclopedia and instantly thought it was the "best" fighter of WWII. No questions, nary a thought, it was the best. That age where if anything looked cool and different from any contemporaneous peers, it was superior in all aspects. Reality's a bummer.

Never knew the Ascender moniker was an intentional injoke, figured the assender part came later

The sole Kyushu J7W still exists. During the US occupation, it was taken to the US for further testing, though I don’t think any was done. It had now armament installed, and no provision for it in the nose. Now it is part of the Smithsonian collection awaiting restoration.
Unlike the XP-55, the J7W  had an air cooled engine. That was mostly what Japan used for aero engines, but in this case there was a second reason. With the larger intakes needed for air cooling and the pusher propeller, Kyushu made provisions for easily replacing the piston engine and propeller with one of the jet engines Japan was just beginning to build. It wouldn’t have looked the least bit awkward — unlike the way the unfortunate Ascender might have looked.

The fact he named it that makes me so happy love that he had humour about his design

Adds a whole new meaning to reverse-engineered...

Was this the first plane to have a "Shaker" stall warning? That's a feature that is standard in all planes today even Jumbo Jets. That makes this plane extraordinarily important historically!

10:20 - I love how someone had to draw an arrow for direction of travel just to avoid confusion 😅

I like the little arrow in the picture at 10:20. "The plane is flying that way. Yes."

When you make it to the USA, set aside some time for McMinnville, Oregon, and the Hughes HK-1. It's amazing to see it firsthand.

Dad saw that thing fly. He worked for Curtiss on a Secret Navy Project to put Floats on R-4-Ds ( C-47s) and J.A.T.O Tanks ( Jet Assisted Take Off). At the time he was an Essential War Production Worker and Naval Reservist.

This plane reminds me very much of a computer game I played as a kid, Crimson Skies, specifically the Hughes P21-J Devastator. There were quite a few interesting planes in that game if I remember correctly, not to mention Zeppelin Aircraft Carriers...

Seeing pusher aircraft like this always reminds me of the Arwing from Star Fox

One of my top x-planes that I wish had succeeded, but stability issues are a tough fix, especially when the worlds at war and more conventional designs are already proving themselves in combat.

Actually, if you look at the Wright Flyer, you find the same configuration. Pusher engine with stubby forward wings and main wings aft.

If you’re coming to the states, make sure to drop by near Springfield, Ohio for the Air Force Museum! Plan on making it for two days. That’s my favorite place!