The jury has now decided on the winners of June's photography and journalism contest. The gold medal for photography for the last month goes to Sputnik, for his humorous photo of the unlucky aspirant.

A very close runner up was FlyMagic's unusual photo of a tank battle. The jury has decided to award him the silver medal for June.

Finally the medal for inventive and well timed journalism goes to Jacob1000, for his comment to the discussion on the "black pilots"

Conditions for participating in the July contest for the best photo/article:

Photos and articles must be posted in this thread.

To be successful in the photo contest, screenshots should be photographically well composed, interesting or unusual in some other way, of technical good quality and of full screen size (if making publishable links is a problem, send the photos to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).
Screenshots can be altered or manipulated, but this must be stated for the photos to be eligible.

Articles should be interesting and/or unusual or surprising. Truthful is always better than invented. They should as far as possible be accompanied by or completed with photos, drawings or screenshots.

Why is flaming scorp banned.

INTERVIEW WITH TRYGGVE GRAN, PART ONE.



- Welcome here major Tryggve Gran! You are the first WW1 ace fo be formally interviewed in DOGFIGHT NEWS. Do you mind if I ask you about your age?

- Not at all. But let me first set a few things right! I did have some notable successes in dogfights, but I don't consider myself an ace, and I was not called an ace during my time as a pilot in WW1.
You asked me about my age? I was born in 1889, which means... let's see... that I'm 123 years by now.

- You look good for your age!

- Don't let yourself be fooled by the photo. It was taken when I was just 85. I don't look that good now.

Let's not dwell on that. Let's talk about flying!

You were the first to cross the North Sea in an aeroplane in 1914, which was the longest flight over open sea until then!

After that you fought for Britain in WW1, first as a pilot in the RFC on the West Front, and later in the RAF during the North Russia Intervention.

What was it that made you interested in flying in the first place?

- It was in 1912, on my way back from the Antarctic.

- That's right! You were part of Captain Robert Falcon Scott's expedition in 1911!

- Yes, I had always wanted to be where the action was, but this time it went wrong. You know Scott reached the South Pole with a small group of men, and on their way back they were caught in a blizzard which killed them all. I was in another group that did geology work elsewhere.

On my way home I met pilot Robert Lorain who made me understand that flying was the most exciting thing going on right then. The Wright Brothers had made their first flight only nine years ago, and flying was really at the forefront of science and technology!

bomer1 wrote: Why is flaming scorp banned.

Sending everybody creepy messages. *shivers*

bomer1 wrote: Why is flaming scorp banned.

Is he really banned, or has he just disappeared?

Maybe he's the new invisible player, nr 26 in the rank list: __________░░êå§░░ ??

Or is that just "x" under a new name?

how creepy are they?

ACTIVITY ON THE FORUM.

I had the feeling people had been less active on the forum the last week or so. Could it be summer? Perhaps people were seeking outdoor activities more than poring over a computer screen or a mobile screen washed out by the sunlight?

So I had to make a statistic based on a broad number of threads:



Now what does this show?

Surprisingly little. Nothing really. People are behaving just the same as ever. Perhaps there has even been a burst of activity this last weekend.

Sundays seem to be bad for forum writing. - Which means probably also for dogfighting.

Sundays are the only days with two zeros and two one-message counts, and looking at the weekends, Sundays consistently come out low.

Quite probably Sunday mornings would be the best time of the week for raising your score: Alone against the zep or the enemy hangars, or dogfighting against just two or three aspirants. You would win everything all of the time!.

That is great to hear veidar! For two reasons 1.Activity levels are still okay. 2.I work at a liquor store in arkansas and there are no liqour sales allowed on Sunday here so I'm always off

Hmmmm interesting chart dude

How did you count the numbers? Is it by new topics? That'd make sense, I guess. If it's by topics last used on that day, it's innaccurate. Some topics that are months old are still active.

CalvinIsAwesome wrote: How did you count the numbers? Is it by new topics? That'd make sense, I guess. If it's by topics last used on that day, it's innaccurate. Some topics that are months old are still active.

It's by no means an absolute or "accurate" count. To save work I counted only the threads that I subscribe to. I still believe it is representative, - meaning that it gives an indication of overall activity.

INTERVIEW WITH TRYGGVE GRAN, PART II


Robert Loraine

- It was Robert Loraine who made you interested in flying. What was he like?

- He was on his way back home from a trip to America. I noticed him at once on the ship. He seemed to me a larger-than-life person. Very impressive, and very humoruos. He was an actor, and he knew how to handle an audience.

He told us about the joys of flying in a way that made it impossible not to be interested. Do you know it was he who coined the word joystick?

- I thought joystick was a modern word.

- No, it was Loraine who created it, - he said it was a word he and his friends started to use when he learnt flying. Just look it up, if you doubt it!

He told us every detail of his flight across the Irish Sea in 1910. Everyone wanted to know about it. It was in the news because Denis Corbett Wilson had just done the same thing, two years after Loraine, and the British wanted to give Wilson all the honour just because Loraine had landed in the water, 60 meters from the shore. We thought it was outrageous! It's true, Loraine was not the world's best pilot, and he had missed the landing strip more than once, but still!

More news from [TOP SECRET] Spy Plane.

It seems that there are some new developments coming from both [E]nigma and 111th Falcons. Two new designs that both look to be built with the logic of small targets being harder to hit.





Both have already taken to the air for flight testing, so it looks like everyone aim is going to have to get a little tighter.

Lol

Jacob10000 wrote: More news from [TOP SECRET] Spy Plane.

It seems that there are some new developments coming from both [E]nigma and 111th Falcons. Two new designs that both look to be built with the logic of small targets being harder to hit.

Both have already taken to the air for flight testing, so it looks like everyone aim is going to have to get a little tighter.

Who leaked our top secret designs

oops.....

oh and since guns wont fit in front, a lewis gun will be on the top wing like Nieuport 11, except smaller and better (cause i came up with the design) jk

Wait, I posted something here.... Where'd it go?

A few pics from PHOTOPLANE-3 and myself.

I love this topic its so funny.

Those are excellent photos! I like the one with private Ghostly especially well. In my opinion it's a strong contender for August's best photo contest.

My opinion is important, of course, but so are yours! Please write and say what you think, either in private or in the thread: "DOGFIGHT UNION of JOURNALISTS".

Wouldn't it be July?

INTERVIEW WITH TRYGGVE GRAN, PART III



- Just to make this quite clear Tryggve Gran: You're dead, aren't you?

- Yes, I died many years ago, to be exact: on the 8th of January 1980. I see no reason to be sad about it. I mean I was an old man, and I had seen more of life than most.

Anyway, I think death is highly overrated, - or at least overestimated as the end of everything.

- What do you mean?

- I mean, - for one thing, I had a quiet death, I just went to sleep and didn't wake up, it was no big deal, - and secondly, very little was lost.

- You mean you think you weren't worth much?

- Not at all! I had accomplished more than the vast majority of my contemporaries. What I mean is this:

What is life and what is consciousness, if not a pattern of nerve impulses, of brain waves?

- I don't know. Maybe you're right? Maybe some genes too?

- If so, you're not the only one who lives your life! Your genes, and your thoughts and ideas, and the memory of you as a person are present in a large number of people, especially, of course, in those belonging to your family. And in what way? As nerve impulses and brain waves. Just the same as when you were alive!

It's like having part of you downloaded into a computer. Your identity is saved in the memory of a number of people.

Then, when you finally die, all of this remains.

Death is just a small old-fashioned, faulty hard disk that stops working, but all the rest of it, - all that you have created and worked for in your life continues to live on in the brains of your family and friends.

When you see it this way, nothing much is lost. Death is not the final word!

- Perhaps you're right. But I'm afraid our readers can take only so much philosophy at one time! Should we perhaps return to flying?

- I must remind you it was you who asked the question about death, but ok!

Jacob10000 wrote: Wouldn't it be July?

Oops! You're right! The competition for July will be decided in the first days of August, but it's still the July competition.

veidar2 wrote: Those are excellent photos! I like the one with private Ghostly especially well.

Look closer! The one in the air is leutenant Dalodus. Ghostly is on the carrier!

Ok. I don't know that I said anything about where private Ghostly was, - but thank you for the information anyhow