[WWI] SE5a and DH9 in Johannesburg (was: Douglas in gaol in eq. guinea)

[Douglas Anderson]

The next time I get to spend some time in Johannesburg I will make a stop and teh museum and take some photographs. There are two other museums that group members may be interested in, the SAAF museum, which I believe is in Pretoria, and then at Ysterplaat AFB. The latter includes teh wings from a DH6 (the one I am modeling) that was imported to South Africa post the Great War. I am not sure if any OT material is available in teh SAAF museum, but I will find out. A number of the towns and cities have smaller museums, and odd collections. For example, the natural history museum in Bloemfontein includes a Gnome rotary in its collection.

  Hei,

I work as an offshore senior geophysicist, we are the ones trying to figure
out where Douglas & Co should drill.

Working on a large vessel means that we spend most of the time in open
waters far away from shore.
We are only allowed to use "non-lethal" means of defence like high pressure
water / air / sound".

And there are no more mercenaries around, they have been replaced by
"independent security consultants".
Sometimes those guard us appears to be adding to the danger, the way they
handle their weapons would have landed me in serious trouble if doing the
same while serving in the Norwegian armed forces.

Staying out of jails (and especially third world ones) is a priority to me,
some of my rougher experiences have been when transfering to/from our main
vessel with local fishing boats - sleeping on top of the luggage / supplies
/ datashipment to make sure it ends up in the right place.

And its not only Africa, my first trip outside Europe involved a couple of
days in transit on a "coonass" tugboat sharing the cabin with five
roughnecks. While discussing women and firearms I could take part in the
conversation, but when it came to comparing doing time in Angola to other
prisons in Louisiana and Arkansas did I feel a bit left out. 


Currently I consider a country where we can get cold beer and nobody shoots
or throw rocks at us as a nice place to stay.


I have sometimes been thinking of the guys who kept their very basic
aircraft flying in Africa during WW1, short of workshops / spare parts and
trained personell over hostile terrain of which there were no proper maps 

Regardless of the current colours on the SE 5a and DH 9 in Johannesburg am I
sure that other list members too would like to see some images of the
aircraft as they look today.



Eders
Knut Erik
(Going to Ghana on Tuesday, they serve some good Wolof rice there)
Then possibly a stop-over in Paris or Holland on the way back and a short
holiday in Berlin mid April.




>Douglas Anderson wrote:
>> Knut, I have been somewhere you haven't, gaol in Equatorial Guinea/ The
joys of being South African just fater a few South Africans were arrested
for an attempted coup. Hahahahaha, now when the going gets tough I can at
least say I have been in a worse place!

>i frequently tell myself the same thing, after spending some time in a 
>hellhole gaol in northern ethiopia, during one of those recurring 
>hostilities with eritrea. 
>
>i violated the 6 p.m. curfew to drive a hemorrhaging member of staff to 
>hospital. when said staff finally recovered, it turned out they were a 
>relative of the provincial governor, so suddenly there were apologies 
>all round and everyone was trying to make nice.
>
>still and all, not an experience i'd recommend to anyone. the service 
>wasn't quite up to my five star hotel standards. and the maids didn't 
>dust quite as often as they should have. the six inches of mud and shit 
>on the concrete floor (no furniture of any kind, of course, and the only 
>facility was an overflowing hole in the corner) was just a bit off my 
>idea of a warm, welcoming, luxurious ambience, and the company of course 
>left something to be desired. 
>
>but you're absolutely right. it does set a bottom line benchmark for 
>the rest of your life, where anything else is an improvement. useful, that.




 
---------------------------------
Need a quick answer? Get one in minutes from people who know. Ask your question on Yahoo! Answers.