An Author from Australia.

Nostalgair · Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 4:48 pm Post subject: An Author from Australia.

Hi All,

I thought a contributor from the land 'down under' might not go astray.

I am an avid reader and will give just about anything a try. Having said that, I do have a weakness for biographies and 'insightful' history. By this I mean that I yearn for more than mere dates and seek a window into the particular era.

From a writing perspective, I have been gathering the stories of aircrew from WWII and have been honoured to interview a number of them over the years. Whilst my original goal was to record their stories for their families, a number have found their way to print. Most notably I came to know an RAF fighter pilot SQNLDR K.B. McGlashan AFC who quite literally flew from Dunkirk to D-Day. The story of this remarkable Scot ultimately became my first book, "Down to Earth".

I look forward finding my way around your forum.

Cheers

Owen
http://www.owenzupp.com

Ophelia · Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 5:33 pm Post subject:

Hello Nostalgair, and welcome to Booktalk (from a French girl to an Aussie!).

We are not discussing history in our main forums at the moment, but I for one would like to discuss historical themes (from my point of view something to do with Europe would be a good idea) in future non-fiction selections.

Make yourself at home... are you interested in discussing fiction at all?

If you have any questions just ask. Smile

Chris OConnor · Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 3:28 pm Post subject:

Welcome to BookTalk, Owen!

I'm an absolute aviation nut too. But I don't have any hours logged. So your 13,000 has me beat...slightly. Laughing

But I seriously love flying. Not everyone knows this about me because flying is simply not a universal passion and most people I know are afraid to even fly commercial. So I only talk about it with fellow aviation enthusiasts.

If you become active on our forums I'm sure we can have some great discussions. And I might enjoy reading "Down to Earth" at some point. Have you ever read Richard Bach's "Biplane"? Here is a link on Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Biplane-Richard-Bach/dp/044020657X

This is a wonderful general aviation book that I find to be a great escape from reality, much the same as flying can be. Richard Bach has a way with words and you can almost field the wind in your hair and smell the exhaust fumes as you read about this cross-country flight. I've read the book a few times and now am tempted to give it another go.

The most incredible aircraft I have ever flown in was a WACO YMF-5 red biplane. Here is a photo one http://www.trade-a-plane.com/classified/images/large/0000715272-02-1.j pg but it almost looks like a model. I've flown quite a bit in one of these babies and actually landed and took off from MacDill Air Force Base in one. I made some phone calls and got my friend into the MacDill Air Show about 10 years ago as a static display. So naturally I went with him and spent the whole day under a tent getting heat stroke and extremely sick. Florida is hot. But it was worth it.

One funny thing...

The plane is obviously a tail dragger. My friend had about 3,000 total hours, but not sure how many in a tail dragger. He landed the WACO on the Air Force runway waaaaayyyy early. I'm not sure how long this runway is, but it is designed for entire squadrons of fighters to take off and land together. B52's too. So it is super long. My friend, Leo, landed almost at the beginning of the runway not taking into consideration that a WACO doesn't need several miles of runway. So we had to zigzag the rest of the way down the runway, seeing as tail draggers don't give you adequate visibility, and we delayed lots of other planes landing for like 10 minutes. We probably could have landed this airplane perpendicular to the runway. Military runways are even wider than commercial I learned.

On the way home from the air show I was so sick from the sun I almost passed out while flying. It was horrible. But again it was worth it. I felt pretty important as I stood there under the canopy and answered questions about the airplane. MacDill Air Show gets about 300,000 people each year so I did a lot of talking. It was awesome.

Do you fly biplanes? Open cockpit biplanes are the closest you can get to being a bird I suppose. I'm going to have to find someone else local with a cool plane as seeing your web site gave me the itch to fly again. Next week I'll be going to the Sun-N-Fun Fly-In, but I'm just a jealous wanna be pilot. Crying or Very sad

I’m glad you’ve joined BookTalk and I’d love to hear some of your flying stories. You would do yourself a service by creating a Blog on BookTalk as opposed to using this Introduce Yourself! Forum. We just added Blogs to the community.

Nostalgair · Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 6:27 pm Post subject:

Hi Chris and all.

Sorry for the delay in replying, but I've been on a course for about two months and just returned home. As such, I was 'out of the loop' during the trip home.

Yes, I have read 'Biplane' by Richard Bach and absolutely loved it! I even wrote a brief review of it on Amazon. So often the romance of aviation is lost and he recaptured it superbly. It is amongst my favourite aviation books.

As for biplanes, up until a few years ago I owned a DH82 Tiger Moth which I loved. These days I have a little Piper Tomahawk that I bounce around in, but I am a big fan of 'tail draggers'. Here's a snap of the Tiger.

There's a few more aviation photos stories, etc on my website as well if you're interested. http://www.owenzupp.com

I only recently stopped flying the US route and have returned to family-friendly domestic operations. However, I went to every museum and air show I could find at Chino, March Field, etc

Anyway, study calls, so I'd best open the books again. Thanks for the reply and I'll check in again soon.

Cheers

Owen


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