Sailing remains a popular sport and Activity!

 Classic sail ships are the pride of many navies?

Many uses for sail ships have been found over the years in young peoples self-improvement programms and other leisure activities, apart from training naval crews in discipline and other!

Maintaining is one aspect of them, but rebuilding has also lead to many construction mistakes in the deign and at other times success in discovering new things that were lost?

Modern sail yachts are the state of the art today with the demands of better vessels for racing and others being sold on for avid sailors and for pleasure, if not also featuring in many movies and other!

Aerobatic/Racing Aircraft. One.

New Concepts?

Older ideas from the bi-plane era and smaller lighter material has moved us away from agricultural spraying to aerobatic displays and racing. Now some of these bi-planes did put on shows back in the 1920' to 40's in the various showmen and stunt shows, but they seemed to have died out with the introduction of the jet age in the 1950's, when speed was all the new thing-craze?

But in recent years there has been a demand for air racing and many successful light training aircraft have been super-charged to meet this demand. Thus so has stunt flying returned and aerobatic displays, we will not cover the types of aircraft in this blog because there are so many!

That will be something for you to check out for yourself, meanwhile there are also many other machines, home or kit builds that meet the requirement of Micro-lights that too are meeting this new demand, Gyro-copters are coming back into the airshows around the world.

Auxiliary Ships.

Backing up and supporting the Navy.

Warships, aircraft carriers and submarines may be the front line of many of the worlds great navies, but it is the auxiliary fleet that is the key to keep them going. Even with nuclear powered vessels, we still need some support at sea!

The Internet and skype may have replaced the post, but in hostile conditions even carriers need to change equipment, aircraft and helicopters. Re-armament is another role and the evacuation of the injured, many vessels need to be refuelled at sea and the change over of crew.

Over the years with N.A.T.O. deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq and possible soon Syria, much needed armour, artillery, tanks and missile systems were brought in by transport ships. 

Another role for the auxiliary fleet is training from sail ships to tenders to combat simulations and actual war games action.

Railways.

Pricing and new stock.

Every country has set up a different way to run their railways networks or systems. Some remain National, while others are made up of different companies and their own liveries. But what they all share is the cost of keeping their respective systems functioning safely.

There is much more to a railway than tracks and trains, maintenance and personnel have to be paid for. People retire and new recruits need to be both trained and replaced, engines and buildings also need to be repaired and cared for and this all costs a lot of money.

Some nations operate on shoe string of basics, while the richer ones with their privatisation would seem to be progressing. Yet one has to stand back and take notice that many withdrawn and older types are being brought back into service with new fresh coats of paint.

The reasons for this is nothing to do with preservation, but rather thy are cheaper to run in the long term than building new ones.

So next time you face a 'hike in the fare, try to remember all the work that has to be done to get you from A to B or A to Z?

Mikoyan MiG-21.

From 'Fishbed to Bis.

This is perhaps the most built fighter jet aircraft in the world and it is still flying today, with an updated Israel ELBIT cockpit package. The Mig-21 served with 28 Air forces, apart from the Soviet Union and China. There were initially nine versions of the type and one two-seat training version of the aicraft code-named Mongol.

The Mig-21 jet carried a plethora of combinations of weapons, bombs, rockets, missiles and guns. It fought in many Arab and middle-eastern wars, but it was no match for the French Mirage family or the McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom-II. Otherwise it was a very versitle and effective weapons platform.

Today there are still three upgrades on this type, as it continues to operate. 

China produced its own copy the Xian J-7/F-7. Airguard.