Introduce Yourself

Hi. Todd from Minneapolis here. Systems Administrator in I.T. for the day gig, sometime musician, sometime road cyclist but always interested in aircraft since I was a child.

Why this was interesting starts back in 1976/1977 in sixth grade my school friend told me that the government was working on a new kind of "Stealth" plane invisible to radar. I thought that was very weird because it was an interesting concept but as time went by, I wondered how my sixth grade friend knew about this and how he was so sure it was being worked on. It's not like it was publicized in the newspaper or television. Or was it? How did he know? He said he heard it in the newspaper but I never did really find out for sure.

That lead me to doing some crazy things - I used to lie on my back in my parents backyard with binoculars looking straight up hoping I would see something interesting. Well, once I did: a weird blue F-15-ish type aircraft but more streamlined that I caught a glimpse of that made me wonder if there were "other kinds of planes that nobody knew about out there".

I would read articles on aviation, build aircraft models and marvel at planes like the SR-71 and the swing wing F-111 and thought "the people behind these designs not only have a knack for interesting looking airplanes...they have to be smart too." I was fascinated and got into aviation. During high school there was an aviation class you could take and a lot of the stoner kids would take it thinking it would be easy but it was full of navigation and flight stuff like you were preparing for your license.

One of the stoner kids stole the teachers grade book right before the end of the class quarter and he based our grades on the final test. I got an A- in that one and the very last day of class we all got trucked to flying cloud airport in Eden Prairie Minnesota to check out our teachers plane - a Piper Cub if I recall. Everyone got to go up and he'd take turns flying everyone around the airport.

I was in the last group to go up and he let me fly his plane - the only student to get that privilege - and our flight lasted longer. It
made a big impression! I soon learned that flying for a hobby was an expensive endevor and that also my vision was pretty poor.
I needed horrible thick corrective lenses and soon got into computers and started playing with flight simulators. Today I use X-Plane
to fly my virtual aircraft around.

Anyway, the biggest impetus for me being on this forum is what I saw on 2/14/89 with an ex-girlfriend in Biscay, Minnesota. Two black
unacknowledged VS/TOL aircraft hovering low over a field, passing low over our stopped car and slowing to walking speed, then turning
quietly and flying to the southeast. It was amazing to see what I believe to be classified aircraft flying right in front of me. And two of
them to boot. With the quietest jet engines I've ever heard. At first my ex-girl thought they were UFOs coming to take her away!

I later talked to my neighbor about it who was a pilot for Northwest Airlines for many years and asked if there was anything special
about Biscay in terms of aviation. He did mention it was a transit corridor for aircraft moving from one area of the country to the other.

Then I passed what I'd seen to Steve Douglass since he's seen interesting flying "somethings" and he passed it to Jim Goodall who
believed they were prototypes "flying in the midwest and Michigan".

I've never seen those craft again, before or since and I still describe them the same way: Overall "truck like" appearance with stubby downwardly canted tailplanes on the empennage and not being particularly streamlined overall. The cockpit being somewhat raised up above the nose not too recessed into the body. Two dim yellow lights at the back of the wings pointing downward (behind the landing gear which was raised under covers) . A red rotating beacon under the front of the nose and the standard red and green navigation lights on the wingtips. The nose seemed like it may have had hexagonal faceting on it but it was at dusk and it was kind of hard to see sharp details.

Amazing that happened 22 years ago and whatever they were they apparently are still classified or never went into production.
 
Hello.

I'm from Arizona, 61 years old. Most of my work has been in epidemiology, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and public health. I have a few advanced degrees. Before moving to Arizona I have lived in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Connecticut and outside the US in the Netherlands and in the UK.

I have had an interest in biochemical warfare issues for the past 40 years that waxes and wanes with the global situation and my employers interest in that topic. (I do take a psychiatrist-prescribed anti-anxiety medication as I know too much about our vulnerabilities and our potential adversaries and their capabilities. :( ) At the current time that interest resulted in my doing some searching on the web on some topics that ended up with my finding this site. I figured I would join and participate.
 
Hello there,

My names is is adrien and i'm 22 and i'm from belgium and... that's pretty much a have to say !

i have always been an aerospace enthouciast and i just love to see many thing like secret plane un-builded project, ect...



ps : i know that's is a bit late to introduce myself since i'm subscribed since december, but i haven't much times at some points...
 
i know that's is a bit late to introduce myself since i'm subscribed since december

No problem, Adrien, you're welcome onboard :)

Antonio
 
Hello all.

I'm Ray, currently living in England.

I happened upon this forum whilst I was shifting through google for information on so called "stealth blimps". I have also been looking for information on a disc shaped aircraft seen in the UK (Hertfordshire) being followed by a Cessna chase aircraft which hasn't turned up much so far ::).
 
My name is Sid. I'm English but I now live in inland rural Spain.
In the UK I worked as a gunsmith and dealt a little in military equipment, especially electro-optics.
Since moving I have switched to producing handmade knives and growing olives ( which I'm not very good at yet ;) )

I found this forum while searching for information on 'Combat Tree' equipped F-4's in SEA and just had to join :D

Probably my longest running interest, since I was a kid, has been military aviation. Particularly avionics and cold war 'heavy metal' jets, especially the US Century series.

That's about all really :)
 
Sid,
welcome from the Spanish mediterranean coast! enjoy the forum and good luck with your olives :)
 
My name is Chris and live in Oxford, England. My work is in electronic design and
embedded systems. I've had an interest in radio and electronics since schooldays
then aviation related tech since finding truckloads of USAF kit dumped at
Passey's scrapyard near Newbury in the 1960's. Restored a Vulcan Rover apu turbine
engine and ran it at airshows (Bruntingthorpe, Popham etc) for several years. This
engine is now at the Gatwick Air Museum, but no idea if it is still running.

Have a fair collection of avionics related kit and documentation and buy / sell /
swap for thing i'm interested in. In particular, instruments, ins, air data, RAF
air publications covering electrical / electronics, manufacturers catalog s etc.

Particular interest areas are air data and inertial navigation systems...
 
I-Heart-Explosive-Ordnance said:
Hello all.

I'm Ray, currently living in England.

I happened upon this forum whilst I was shifting through google for information on so called "stealth blimps". I have also been looking for information on a disc shaped aircraft seen in the UK (Hertfordshire) being followed by a Cessna chase aircraft which hasn't turned up much so far ::) .

Hello Ray, and welcome to the forum.

As you may or may not have noticed while browsing through our pages, this forum is not exactly the place to discuss elusive, unverified or mythical aircraft. There are several reasons for this:

1°) If that stuff exists, it is so secret that no-one who is in the know will come and share any valuable information about it;
2°) If it has been seen, it's always hearsay and very blurry, unconvincing photos that are produced;
3°) Experience has proved that whenever a new topic is created on such questions, they invariably turn into pugilates and name-calling, or serve as a springboard for the most wacky theories.

Our forum has a goal of being a valuable source online for accurate, verified data. Conjecture or speculation have their place insofar as they are associated with tangible elements, not out-of-the-blue witnesses.

So all in all, although I hope you do find this place interesting and wish to take part in our activity, I'm afraid you might end up being very disappointed if you expected it to provide all the answers to your questions on disc-shaped aircraft and stealth blimps!


Please let us know if you've found the forum of interest anyway...
 
Hello!

So...I'm a Canadian born 10 months after Apollo 11, and I suppose as a result interested in aerospace so long as it's aimed at getting above above the Kármán line. I'm a passably successful writer in the RPG world (for those who share that geekery, the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games), focusing primarily on historical and SF work, and a few years ago the two fused into an interest in space history.

Essentially I plotted out a SF book (now so far on the backburner that I need a telescope to see it) that made me think I needed to learn more about how the US and Russian space programs went and also might have gone. Since then I've been steeping myself in all the proposals made by the likes of Douglas Aircraft and NAA in the US, and the political knife-fighting between Korolev, Glushko, and Chelomei over on the Soviet side, trying to figure out various levels of "what might have been" while staying away as much as possible from the starry-eyed dreaming that that kind of speculation can provoke.

That ended up being more interesting than the initial book idea that provoked it, and now I'm working on a popular history book directly rather than using the material for fiction. Nothing too heavy, just trying to pass on my enthusiasm to an unsuspecting public in return for pizza money as much as anything else. I've been posting the sections to the web in a project blog for the last couple of months and noticed a few click-throughs from Secret Projects, and so here I am. Aren't you glad? *cricket cricket slight cough somewhere in the darkened audience*.
 
Hi- Richard from California. I work in the legal field but have had a life long interest in aviation. I've been coming to Secret Projects every day to get my 'fix' for awhile and decided I should introduce myself. Hopefully I'll be able to contribute some interesting material in the future.
 
Hi folks, I've had a keen interest in aviation since I was a kid (which is a wee while ago now...), and a particular obsession with cancelled and unbuilt aircraft projects. I've been dipping into this forum for a while, and decided I might as well register, since there seems to be lots of fascinating stuff to be found here!
 
Hi everyone, I just noticed this thread so I had better introduce myself. I recently took early retirement and can now indulge more of my time in aviation history research, mainly Schneider racers as my forum name indicates. I also do a small amount of voluntary work in an aviation archive.
Incidently my avatar is the cover of my first book, which has just been published by Fonthillmedia, it would make a great Christmas present ;)
 
Hi guys, I'm from Spain, working in aviation only for 15 years and fatally attracted by Soviet aviation. Thanks for accepting me in this community.
 
Greetings all, I found this forum when looking up Chris Gibson's new book 'Battle Flight', on which I've made some comments in the appropriate thread.

I've had an interest in military technology for as long as I can remember - which is to say, more than half a century - with the focus on the 20th and now the 21st centuries. This covers equipment for all three services, but in recent years I have focused on military guns (all calibres) and the ammunition they fire. I have authored or co-authored several books on the subject, as you can see on my website (the link to which ought to be appearing in my signature...).

I look forward to learning a lot from this forum and contributing when I have something useful to say.
 
Hi Tony, welcome. I have Rapid Fire - nice book - and flicked through Flying Guns - The Modern Era which looked good but I couldn't afford at the time. Now I'm in NZ the chances of a copy turning up in a second hand bookshop are slim.
 
As its coming up to five years as a member of this forum, I thought might introduce myself!

I am Chris, a middle-aged grumpy software consultant who hates computers.

I currently live close to the much maligned airport at Luton.

I have a very soft spot for anything de Havilland, Russian aircraft and civil aviation history in general.

First memory was as a small boy standing on the hill at Farnborough watching a Bristol Bulldog biplane crash into the car park. Luckily the pilot survived, no-one was killed and the plane was later resurrected and was at Hendon the last time I looked (K2227).

I used to share the same pub as that gentleman of the air, Group Captain John Cunningham who reinforced my admiration of all things DH.

Came to forum by accident looking for some missing de Havilland projects and have enjoyed the information sharing that is SP. It has something for everyone - and well done to the moderators who keep it all responsible and reasonable.
 
I'm Tuomo from Finland.

I'm a particle physicist (grad student at the moment), wargamer and I have obsessive compulsive personality disorder :D I used to be aircraft nut while younger, but I haven't had enough time for that recently.
At the moment I'm trying to make game statistics for airplanes and missiles used by Finnish Air Force for usage in Admiralty Trilogy games by Clash of Arms. The OCPD helps and hinders on it...
 
Hi there,

According to the date stamp my first introduction here was 7 years ago to-day, so I felt this was a convenient time for a re-introduction, since there have been a few changes...


I'm now Rachel Pawling. Well, Doctor Rachel Pawling - I didn't spend 7 years at evil engineering school to be called "Miss" ;)


I've still got a mass of stuff to post on the naval side... one day I'll get round to it all! :D


RP1
 
RP1 said:
According to the date stamp my first introduction here was 7 years ago to-day, so I felt this was a convenient time for a re-introduction, since there have been a few changes...


I'm now Rachel Pawling. Well, Doctor Rachel Pawling - I didn't spend 7 years at evil engineering school to be called "Miss"

Well that’s one way to increase the low representation of females in defence and aerospace communities! I hope life works out much better this way for you.

RP1 said:
I've still got a mass of stuff to post on the naval side... one day I'll get round to it all!

I look forward to it. And if you have time some more profile and artwork is always welcome.

One of the things I like about www.rp-one.net is the often inclusion of subject matter which is more obscure rather than the more popular ‘usual suspects’. You can scroll through there and see profile/art work of things you’ve never heard about before.
 
I hope the new lifestyle agrees with you. Keep up the good work.
 
Rachel,

I always enjoy your posts and I hope you will find time to be more active on the forum, it is good to have an actual marine engineer on the forum, especially a prize winning one such as yourself.
 
I'm David Douglass Merriman lll. One of the worlds finest Model-Builders. I'm 64 and produce product for the hobby trade through the Caswell company, http://www.sub-driver.com/

Interested in the initial work done by Ted Taylor in regards the Orion effort and any information dealing with the several Aniara operas produced since 1959.

Some of my work can be seen here: http://vabiz.com/d&e/articles.html and http://www.vabiz.com/d&e/alligator/
 
My name is Murray and I am a retired educator in western Canada. For most of my life I worked in the computer trade and enjoy reading about and discussing the history of computers as used in aerospace applications.
 
David Douglass Merriman lll

One of the worlds finest Model-Builders.

http://www.vabiz.com/d&e/alligator/

http://vabiz.com/d&e/articles.html

Interested in all things ANIARA. Would love to model that massive ship.
 
Hi !

I am Juke from Finland and dig Bill Sweetman books and aviation inventions.
What is the type of that twin engine USAF jet with lifting body above ?


best regards and let's keep it real,

Juke
 
Hi, everyone.
My name is Marco and I live near Pisa, Italy.
I'm 45 and interested in aviation since I was 10 (my teacher at elementary was a former Regia Pilot... that's how all begun...).
After having self-published four little books about prototypes and less-known models (I've found this site searching for strange stuff), now I'm trying to draw unbuilt aircraft in 3D using Trimble SketchUp for modeling and SU Podium as renderer.
All my works here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nuova-Guida-agli-Aeroplani-di-tutto-il-Mondo/101090849948183?ref=hl

Cheers,
Marco.
 
Ciao Marco, welcome to the forum. My first adult aviation book was Aeroplani di tutto il Mondo Vol. 6 when I was aged 11. I love that covers you published in Facebook, may be I should register to see follow your work!.

Greetings,
Antonio
 
Ok, after 2,5 years of registration... ;D
Yuri Pasholok, 34
Moscow, Russia
Researcher, digging of military archives - one of my profession :)
Primary specialization - history of WWII AFVs. Also in my focus 1914-1950 military devices, including ground vehicles, flying vehicles, weapons etc. I like dieselpunk and another alternative history, various projects also in my focus.

At current time i release more than 20 articles, dedicated to military vehicles, plus 3 books:
- PzKpfw Maus: development and production;
- T-60 light tank and T-60 based vehicles;
- SU-152 and another KV-based SP guns.
On the finish line my book "Stalin's balls of steel", dedicated to soviet wartime spherical military vehicles.
Also i already 11 years in game industry as a researcher: http://mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,275444
 
Yuri, your introduction lasted a few years but your curriculum left me speechless. Just wow!

Well, now I'm waiting to order your book about spherical vehicles. I'm curious about the contents of such a mistery (at least to me) subject.

Greetings,
Antonio
 
Well, in SU-152 and T-60 books also located lots of secret projects.
Some projects looks more epic than Panzerwaffe-46 ;D
 
Hi there, my name is Jason Nelson, I'm 15 years old, I live in Alabama (though I'm originally from Florida) and have had a fascination with aircraft my whole life, especially with the YF-23 or anything related to it. I enjoy creating aircraft profiles using MSPaint and irfanview, I also have an interest in reptiles and amphibians, my call sign is "Copperhead" in YSFlight Simulator and "Cheezer" in any MSFS game.
 
I'm Rob, from Newport News, VA. I've had a fascination with planes from my teen years, and a interest in the American SST program from the time I first read about it, several years after the fact, during my freshman year in high school. Actually, at that time, I developed an interest in anything that (in theory) would have got me away from here (can't say it was much help), airliners, ocean liners. As for the latter of the two, it was fun to read in the Mariner's Museum Research Library on a weekend afternoon. I'm also quite car crazy, but that's another story.

I found this site while looking for information sufficient to develop the Lockheed L-2000 SST for Microsoft Flight Simulator. I plan on doing this as a FSX native model, though as I have the older version of FSDS on another laptop, I could easily do it for FS2004 as well.

Of course, looking around on here has simply given me more ideas...
 
Hi everyone,

I'm from Italy and I've been interested in military aviation since I was a teenager.

After a long time of lurking, I decided to start posting.

Ciao,

Kagemusha
 
Welcome and thanks for joining the "active community" ! ;)
 

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