The Fouga CM.170 Magister was a 2-seat jet trainer used by the French Air Force (Armée de l’Air) in the 1950s and 60s. Designed & built by the French aircraft manufacturer Fouga, it was instantly recognisable by its slender form and V-shaped tailplanes. It was the French...
The HMS Victory conservation project has reached a major milestone with the completion of her new support system. As I wrote 18 months ago (Review: HMS Victory. Take a look, there’s a good explanatory video), the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN) and BAE Systems have...
This replica of the U.S. Civil War submarine HL Hunley sits outside the Charleston Museum. The HL Hunley (named after her inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley) was a Confederate State submarine, built in Mobile, Alabama in 1863 and launched in July 1863. She had a crew of 8...
Guédelon is a 13th century castle under construction from scratch using only medieval tools, materials and techniques. It is a fascinating project in experimental archaeology that began in 1995 – a quarter century ago! Construction began two years later* in a former quarry in the middle of...
Long overdue, the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN) and Mary Rose are collaborating on ticketing. It was always ludicrous that a visit to the Historic Dockyard in Portsmouth meant dealing with two separate ticketing systems. Ludicrous but understandable. The two organisations that share the Historic...
RMS Titanic, Inc (RMST), the company that has been recovering artifacts from the wreck of the Titanic since 1987, says it plans to make a ninth dive to the wreck in 2021, in a bid to recover the Marconi Wireless Telegraph from the Titanic’s radio room. The...
The Musée de l’Armée (Army Museum) is located in the Hôtel National des Invalides (The National Residence of the Invalids), a collection of 17th century buildings in the centre of Paris that started life as a military hospital. Part of the complex is still used as a...
The Museum of the Atlantic Wall, aka ‘Batterie Todt’, is all about the big guns! Not only was the giant concrete casement built specifically to accommodate a massive gun, it now has one of the two remaining German K5 railway guns parked alongside as a major exhibit....
Hunter’s Yard runs a rental fleet of traditional wooden sailboats on the Norfolk Broads in Eastern England with a loyal base of customers who share a common appreciation for the historic vessels and their way of life. Sailors on the Broads have traditionally used long poles called...
Zeleros Hyperloop, based in Valencia, has completed a financing round worth more than €7 million to support the development of its hyperloop design. The company is working on its own version of Elon Musk’s hyperloop concept – trains travelling at supersonic, even hypersonic, speed in near-vacuum tubes,...
I didn’t realise restoration videos were a ‘thing’, but our new surreal circumstances act as a catalyst for new discoveries and experiences. Where many have used self-isolation as an enforced opportunity to binge-watch movies and TV series, I have found myself wading through a backlog of Youtube...
When the US 101st Airborne* were besieged in Bastogne during the ‘Battle of the Bulge’ in Dec 1944, they were re-supplied from the air, not just by parachute but by gliders too. Until Dr Peter Caddick-Adams mentioned it in his excellent online lecture** on ‘The Battle of...
Montormel*, or ‘Hill 262’ as it was known to the Allies, was the location where the ‘Falaise pocket’ was finally sealed by Polish and Canadian forces on 21 August 1944, trapping up to 50,000 German soldiers and marking the end of the Battle of Normandy. On this...
SWAROVSKI OPTIK are today launching a revolutionary optical device that pairs with a phone app to identify and catalogue wildlife. Swarovski is well known around the world as a costume jewelry manufacturer, but they also put their glass grinding skills to other uses and the Optik division,...
This is a niche blog about technically-minded travel. It reflects my own interests in the mechanical, technical, historical, engineering, transport and military world.
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