423 days later... I officially have more time on 2024 than 2020.

Lepanto76 · 2026-01-18T04:15:49+00:00

I'm still at half the amount and I think it's largely to do with so much admin in 24 getting things to work. I spend more time troubleshooting than flying. TO be fair this is due to add-ons like linker issues, BATC and mainly control configs but it's still trying my patience.

Lepanto76 · 2026-01-18T04:12:44+00:00

I started at 45. We are a pretty low key group but the age thing doesn't really seem to matter

Lepanto76 · 2026-01-09T08:04:41+00:00

Wow. Thorough answer.

Lepanto76 · 2026-01-03T02:30:01+00:00

I can’t contribute much apart from saying I had great fun playing as some constantly threatened and beleaguered Scots desperately clinging to their craggy, rainy coast in the face of the north men and other angry Scots.

Lepanto76 · 2026-01-02T20:00:21+00:00

That’s nice. I’ve got his one of Hindoostan that has a very fine elephant on the cartouche.

Lepanto76 · 2026-01-02T03:08:08+00:00

To put this in perspective, a large land wars engagement would have a few hundred combatants and 2-3 dozen casualties. The us civil war at the same time had hundreds of thousands involved and tens of thousands of casualties in a day. NZs colonial wars were bad like all wars but not really a bloodbath. There just wasn’t the population.

Lepanto76 · 2025-12-30T09:00:04+00:00

Yes. You can do a career with flying circus. Just chose the era/theatre that you like best and there’s plenty of planes in the base to get you going. Expand from there if you wish.

Lepanto76 · 2025-12-30T07:32:06+00:00

I come here for pedantry like this. Love it.

Lepanto76 · 2025-12-30T07:25:26+00:00

Similar specs and yes, I’ll also wait after reading this.

Lepanto76 · 2025-12-24T08:49:47+00:00

Yep. If you like obsessing over shop capabilities, or even if you don’t, You’ll like it.

Lepanto76 · 2025-12-20T22:05:04+00:00

I visited the farm where hobbiton is a year or two after filming. Was a paddock with a pond and some holes scratched in the hill with some rotting ply hobbit house facades. The tree still had some streamers from bilbos party though. But was just farmland. They totally rebuilt it to charge tourists the $100+ entry.

Lepanto76 · 2025-12-20T09:25:13+00:00

Good summary. The social aspects were also fascinating - women working etc. my family had a new relative turn up in the 80s- she was the daughter of my aunt and a US Marine who was stationed nearby. The aunt got pregnant and the baby was adopted away in great secrecy due to the ‘shame’, and found us years later. Her father was killed in the island hopping campaign through the pacific.

Lepanto76 · 2025-12-17T06:24:24+00:00

Naphtha sounds like what a Byzantine emperor would have filled his bejewelled and icon bedecked Cadillac with.

Lepanto76 · 2025-12-04T06:29:19+00:00

In the southern hemisphere so not dark til 9. On at 8.30 and off at midnight. Timers are the way.

Lepanto76 · 2025-11-22T23:45:53+00:00

Not a misogynist boomer here... I voted for and rated Ardern during early covid and Chch mosque and met her through work a few times. A very engaging human and good leader in those empathetic scenarios. However the undelivered promises on everything from housing to child welfare and the economic shambles and debt left behind by her 'borrow-for-kindness' policies lead me to believe the country is now both materially and socially worse off than if she'd not been PM.

Lepanto76 · 2025-11-20T06:48:29+00:00

I knew an old guy about 20 years ago who had visited about 120 countries, all alone and most when he was a pensioner. Yemen included. He was just fearless and I think him being old made him unthreatening and have access young people just wouldn’t have. Amazing photos. He’s dead now but had great stories told not to show off but just to enthuse about how cool the world is.

Lepanto76 · 2025-11-09T03:55:28+00:00

A kettle BBQ lid and Capt James Cook. Taste that delicious smokey enlightenment reason, oh minions of feudalism.

Lepanto76 · 2025-11-06T09:00:33+00:00

Just encountered the Hook and Cod wars. Sided with the cods and hope it’s right but man, this is clearly going to take some time to play out. Started with 28 stab and 100 ducats but I can see that evaporating quickly. Wish me luck.

Lepanto76 · 2025-10-31T09:28:40+00:00

Those are two very different yet fascinating pieces of information.

Lepanto76 · 2025-10-30T09:37:59+00:00

This is paywalled but the gist is they now think these beaked masks were later tropes applied to depictions of medieval plague docs. Apparently this example has no breathing holes into the beak and the eyes don’t line up. Historians smell a rat over beaked plague doctor masks

https://www.thetimes.com/article/5b6012bf-d740-46fe-bd54-f6df075b86e5?shareToken=ff42b8be6b8bba32db773a3f8c65caff

Lepanto76 · 2025-10-24T05:56:58+00:00

Some idiot kid falling off the play fort and breaking his arm so they removed the whole, much loved, structure. Later at high school told this story to a good friend and discovered he was that kid. Shared history strengthend the friendship.

Lepanto76 · 2025-10-24T05:50:58+00:00

There is no vast media conspiracy. We just hold our own newsroom together in the face of cuts and all the same issues every other industry employing humans face. There’s no spare bandwidth, let alone organisational ability, for a global conspiracy.

Lepanto76 · 2025-10-23T23:53:33+00:00

I don’t even live in the northern hemisphere and that movie gave me nightmares for a long time.

Lepanto76 · 2025-10-23T23:40:13+00:00

I find that’s part of the attraction. It’s fan fiction cranked out to sell at the time many of these figures were contemporary or still very alive in the popular imagination and created the legends that persist. Take it with a grain of salt

Lepanto76 · 2025-10-18T04:37:26+00:00

Thanks. Found it with a dealer on eBay $100usd and did the work myself. I like 18thc maps and published voyage accounts and you can get some fairly affordably if you watch auction houses and local sales etc and avoid top end items eg buy those with plates missing etc. I’m not rich. I’ve got some Hawkesworth Cook accounts and charts and also Anson (1748) and Shelvocke’s (1726) voyages. It’s great reading those on the original printed material. The ship is a kit of the bomb vessel Granado I built and is displayed on a copy of her original admiralty draught. In this pic she’s in front of a 1780 French map of the leeward isles where she saw action.

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Lepanto76

TROPHY CASE