Jet Engined Catalina

[cthulhu77]

Well, I did manage to get the engines on finally:

[Tophe]

Great
Will you lower down the tailplanes, not to be burnt by the jet flames?

[cthulhu77]

Nope.

[Captain Canada]

Very cool Greggy !

[B777LR]

Now thats something you don't see every day!

T-tail?

[cthulhu77]

Now thats something you don't see every day!

T-tail?

Dangit, how many of you have cameras in my studio???

[John Howling Mouse]

Now thats something you don't see every day!

T-tail?

Dangit, how many of you have cameras in my studio???

Not to mention sending you the mind-controlling instructions about using a T-Tail from my H.A.A.R.P. transmitter.  You weren't wearing your tinfoil hat yesterday!   

[cthulhu77]

Shoot, I thought the lead plate in my skull would have worked !!!

[cthulhu77]

Run For the Border

   The PBY's frame howled as the massive craft left the bosom of  Alamo lake, it's belly now full of precious water needed to put out the brushfire near the rim mountains that kept the hordes of Texas from invading the Zone.
   In the engineer's loft, Duncan "The Pirate" Dixon glared out of the port window at the barren landscape below, he could remember when there had been nothing but green turf and sculpted golf courses for mile upon mile, not the sandy waste the desert had become. "Bloody Texans", he growled, "Always after something."
   "What was that Pirate?" the pilot asked on his throat mike, straining to hear anything above the roar of the twin jets a few meters above his head. The JP-80's might give the PBY-7 a hell of a lot of range, but the crews suffered from hearing loss frequently.  "What?" was the most common word heard around the crews.
   "He was just bitching about Texas again,  Tom." The  co-pilot was chuckling about the whole thing. Hell, his wife was from Texas, and he could never understand the massive divide between those from the Zone, and those from the East. O.K., sure, the Easters' were a little dim-witted, but he loved Zelda with all of his pea-picking heart. If she would just stop complaining about the heat all the time, he'd be happy.
   The fire had been set intentionally, of course, by some radicals to try to force those in the Zone to join the Republic, and had burned more than 50,000 hectares of prime mobile home lots. The State Guard had been called in to try to calm everyone down, and at least there were only 17 civilians killed so far by the Sherriff's Department and the Special Weapons and Tactics officers. "Boy, those guys really like to shoot 'em up!" was the governor's favorite line.
   Some of the Zonie's couldn't understand the big issue, public hangings were down by 20% from last year, and not a single Texan had been drawn or quartered at all this year!  It just seems as if some people just won't be happy with the status quo at all.

   The jet lumbered along through the brilliantly blue sky, not a cloud in sight to anyone, gaining altitude slowly as the water sloshed in the belly of the beast. It took both of the pilots to manhandle the controls, both were sweating hard, and their muscles were aching when they came up over the crest of the rim, and saw the smoke.
   "Sweet Mother of Pearl!" Tom exclaimed. "Look at that sucker!"  The fire line was indeed impressive, at least twenty kilometers running it's way down the mountainside in length, and soaring higher than the tallest pine.  Trees don't just burn gently like they do in your cozy fireplace on a cold December night, they actually explode, throwing shards of flaming wood every which way.  Tom knew this, and worried about the fuel bladders in the wings. One errant bit of cinder, and they would be greeting their ancestors in a minute. "Damn!"

[Brian da Basher]

Definitely liking the look of this beauty, Wise Old One! It has a very Antonov feeling about it...

Brian da Basher