Electric Flight 11/2012

Made of tough Z-Foam, the new ParkZone Habu 2 BNF Basic sports a brighter trim scheme than its popular predecessor and can accommodate optional retracts and flaps. Getting this Bind-N-Fly plane airborne couldn't be easier. All you have to do is attach the wing and tail assemblies, plug the servos into the proper receiver ports, bind the receiver to your DSM2/DSMX 4- to 6-channel transmitter, charge your battery, and you're ready to fly! If you want to add the optional retracts and flaps (and you know you will!), it will take a little more effort, but not much. All necessary hardware for installing retracts and flaps is included in the kit. You can also install the included fixed gear or leave it off all together and hand-launch the jet. Either way, in just a few hours you can have a high-speed jet that intermediate or experienced jet jocks will have a blast flying!

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Greatest Aviation Photos

There is something hypnotic and, to a certain extent, addictive about photos of airplanes. And when the photos are of the highest quality and of history-making airplanes, we can look at them again and again, never tiring of them. Why is that?  Part of the answer may be in the form most airplanes take: who can deny that the wind-cheating shape of a Mustang or a Spitfire is art, no matter how art is defined. The sensuous curves of a Staggerwing's cowling and windshield, the purposeful lines of an FW-190 rival anything Michelangelo ever sculpted. For that reason, when an airplane's curves are captured in the right light, at the right angle by the right photographer, the resulting portraits are timeless and will be as aesthetically pleasing to generations in the future as they are today. Another part of the addictive nature of viewing high-quality photographs is that the viewer recognizes that each airplane has its own character, both visually and physically and no two airplanes fly alike: the image quite often says that in line and symmetry. And so the image draws the viewer into the cockpit, letting a portion of his imagination become that pilot for a few moments.

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Pacific Fighters

It has been over 65 years since V-J Day, yet to many of us, it still seems as if WW II happened only yesterday because its images, tragedies and eternal triumphs refuse to leave our collective consciousness. WW II shaped what every nation involved would be from that point forward. It will always be with us. Compared with some nations, such as England and France, America's war was relatively short: three years and nine months. For other countries and combatants, it lasted five, long, agonizing years, and a few had to endure it even longer. But the changes it wrought were huge. In 1930, 65 years after the Civil War (which killed more Americans than all the wars in the 20th century combined), Civil War vets still walked amongst us; yet the incredible horror of that war had already been eclipsed by the even greater horrors of the Great War of 1915-1918. Little did our nation realize then that a decade later, WW II would plunge the entire world into a chaotic nightmare from which it has yet to totally awaken.

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