This is the fuselage, or ‘gondola’, of the rather extraordinary French WW1 Voisin X bomber and gunship. The Voisin X was a two-seat pusher biplane produced either as a night bomber or a gunship armed with a 37 mm (1½”) Hotchkiss cannon and a defensive 7.7mm machine...
The first ever electric flight to land at London Gatwick airport, did so yesterday (9 July) as part of the VINCI Airports Network Elektro Tour. The Elektro Tour is taking place over 17 days with a Pipistrel Velis Electro* light aircraft flying between nine VINCI airports in...
The Sir John Soane’s Museum has opened a new temporary exhibition of the life and revolutionary work of British-Italian architect Richard Rogers. Richard Rogers: Talking Buildings was opened yesterday by the Soane’s Director, Will Gompertz and the curator of the exhibition, Richard’s son, Ab Rogers. The small...
Skyports Infrastructure held a preview last week of its now complete vertiport at Bicester Motion in Oxfordshire. This is one of the UK’s first testing grounds and hubs for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) flights. Vertiports are a key component of the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM)...
A Texas-based start-up, Venus Aerospace, is developing a next-generation rocket engine that could power hypersonic* aircraft. This includes passenger aircraft flying from conventional runways. They aim to reach speeds between four to six times the speed of sound. At Mach 4, passengers could leave London and arrive...
Vertical Aerospace, last week, reached a landmark in the development of their VX4 eVTOL, by making the first-ever piloted wingborne flight of a winged eVTOL in European open airspace. Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft developers around the world are edging nearer and nearer to fully...
The London Canal Museum (LCM) is housed in an historic canal warehouse, just north of King’s Cross. It has displays and artefacts on two floors, telling the story of canals, and London’s canals in particular, from their construction, the goods and industries that relied on them for...
Tomorrow (27 May) in Liverpool, the shipping and cruise line Cunard opens its new ‘Sea of Glamour’ photography exhibition, celebrating the line’s 185 year history. Curated by British photographer and filmmaker Mary McCartney, the exhibition features 185 incredible images – sourced from the Cunard archives, and a...
The London Tunnels project has announced a partnership with the Museum of Military Intelligence (MMI) which will put part of the museum’s collection on permanent display in the tunnels, showcasing the history of military intelligence and the military use of the tunnels. London Tunnels are developing the...
Archer Aviation has been selected as the Official Air Taxi Provider for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, Paralympic Games, and Team USA . This mirrors the plans of Volocopter at last year’s Olympics in Paris, which in the end failed to come about. Similarly, Archer’s Midnight eVTOL...
Fort des Dunes is a 19th century fort built among the sand dunes at Leffrinckoucke in Northern France just behind the famous beach of Dunkirk. In fact it lies about eight kilometres from the border with Belgium and six kilometres from the centre of Dunkirk, so roughly...
An interesting article appeared in the Southern Daily Echo regional newspaper yesterday, about a Britten-Norman Trislander joining the collection at the Solent Sky museum in Southampton Iconic Trislander at Solent Sky Museum in Southampton What struck me was some of the slightly mean-minded comments about the Trislander,...
We are supposedly on the brink of an aviation revolution and the general public have little idea what’s about to happen. The moment is soon coming when the aviation technologies that many people are vaguely aware off, actually transition into the real thing. When people see an...
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has just published its latest annual statistics for vehicles registered in the UK, aka the UK 2024 motorparc* data. There are some interesting, if not entirely surprising, trends. In 2024 there were a record 42 million vehicles on UK...
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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