So this is my next project. I’m building another aircraft my father might have flown—a Hawker Hurricane IIB that was on the complement of No.71 Operational Training Unit, Ismailia, in the first few months of 1944. It’s actually quite difficult to track down details of aircraft at Operational Training Units. A few pilot’s logbooks have … Continue reading Hasegawa 1/48 Hawker Hurricane IIB: Part 1
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Anti-agathic
ˌæntɪəˈɡæθɪk anti-agathic: serving to prevent death; a drug that has this function This is a science fiction word. It was coined during the 1950s by James Blish as a key concept for his Cities in Flight series of novels, to designate the drugs that his characters took to give them potential immortality, allowing them to … Continue reading Anti-agathic
A Sidlaws Gazetteer
Today, the home page has acquired a new menu item: Sidlaws. This links to a set of pages that I’ve rather grandly entitled a “photographic gazetteer” of the Sidlaw Hills. There’s an introductory page (packed with useful background information, though I say it myself), and then a set of pages dealing with all the Sidlaws … Continue reading A Sidlaws Gazetteer
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Sidlaws: Three Unnamed Summits
Unnamed Point 328 (NO 360408, 328m) Unnamed Point 377 (NO 349408, 377m) Unnamed Point 315 (NO 329419, c315m) 14 kilometres 550 metres of ascent Many of the Sidlaw Hills get their names from the farms that work their slopes—with the result that some hills, surrounded by farmland, have several names attached to their various aspects, … Continue reading Sidlaws: Three Unnamed Summits
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Radiation Fog
Radiation fog sounds like something that might occur during a nuclear winter, but it’s not that kind of radiation. The radiation here is heat radiation—infrared wavelengths radiated by the ground during the night, particularly when the skies are clear. Usually, the air temperature gets lower as you get higher—a rising packet of air expands and … Continue reading Radiation Fog
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James Blish: Cities In Flight
From the embankment of the long-abandoned Erie-Lackawanna-Pennsylvania Railroad, Chris sat silently watching the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, preparing to take off, and sucked meditatively upon the red and white clover around him. It was a first time for each of them. Chris had known since he had been a boy—he was sixteen now—that the cities … Continue reading James Blish: Cities In Flight
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CCCP 2017: Corrour
I introduced the Crow Craigies Climbing Party last year, when I described our trip to Bonar Bridge. This year took us to a cottage at Corrour, at the east end of Loch Ossian—a ten-mile drive down a rough track from the bridge over the Spean at Luiblea, through Strath Ossian. (There’s a locked gate halfway … Continue reading CCCP 2017: Corrour
Quotation Marks
The quotation mark has its origin in Europe in the centuries before printing, when documents were copied by hand. It started out as something called a diple. That word comes from Greek diplous, “double”, and a diple was, at its simplest, a line bent in half to form an arrowhead, like this: >. Diples were … Continue reading Quotation Marks
Sidlaws: Tealing Hill to Hayston Hill
Laidloon Hill (NO 393420, 312m) Broom Hill (NO 383421, c290m) Gallow Hill (NO 391413, 378m) Tealing Hill (NO 407402, c260m) Ironside Hill (NO 399411, 354m) Finlarg Hill (NO 406419, 336m) Unnamed Point 315 (NO 411431, c350m) Kincaldrum Hill (NO 414436, 309m) Hayston Hill (NO 408449, c235m) 17.7 kilometres 580m of ascent It’s distinctly possible that … Continue reading Sidlaws: Tealing Hill to Hayston Hill
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Harris … and Lewis
Back to South Harris again this year, still enchanted by its rugged landscape and hallucinatory beaches. We caught the ferry from Uig in Skye again—always nice to travel through Skye’s mad scenery, even on a hazy day. This time we were staying in a rather swish self-catering place, perched on a hillside above the beach … Continue reading Harris … and Lewis