Vintage go-carts and minibikes

I saw this pic ^^^ in a YouTube vid about the Messerschmitt ME262 jet fighter. Man, that poor thing was straining its milk to get the aircraft moving, but handled it easily once they got moving.

 

Those were some brave experimental pilots, flying something never yet flown. Imagine testing an aircraft of which you have no idea if you'll land in one piece. Problems obtaining proper material for turbine building, due to embargos, made this a Russian Roulette of sorts

 

I do not know why someone chose to photoshop the Arado 234 in that shot you posted, here is a somewhat cropped original version

 

Yeah, for some reason, they wanted to change the cockpit configuration.

Ivy, here in Everett, at the old Paine AFB scramble hangars, is an interesting project, the ME262 Project (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_262_Project), and my brother and I took a tour of the operation. The basic idea was that they restored a two-seat variant from a Naval base on the East Coast, which had been rotting away, and in so doing, they used their work to duplicate five more aircraft to sell. The reproductions were done so well (all the volunteers were Boeing workers from the Everett plant), Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm decided to assign the five aircraft new ME262 consecutive production numbers, basically legitimizing their construction. Anyway, as I said in another post, I'm long-winded tonight; the point I wanted to make was that the aircraft they duplicated had the Jumo engines still in it, but were so badly corroded, they could not be made to work again, so they made non-working exterior duplicate parts, so that the aircraft would look whole. The rest, as you see in the article, have modern GE engines, as well as modernized features, such as aluminum fuel tanks (the originals were rubber-coated leather bladders), newer-style avionics, etc.

 

The original stealth bomber was also re-produced by aviation engineers from, I think, Boeing. They had a captured original made out of plywood, to copy from. Then, they ran a test, using modern equipment not yet invented at the time the Germans were building these. This equipment proved that the first stealth made the entire aircraft show up like some crow or seagull on a modern radar screen. There's the video out there somewhere

 

The Smithsonian Air & Space in DC had an Arado 234 on display some years ago and my older son and I made the trek to see it. I know we took photos, will try to find. If I remember correctly it was not a large plane for a bomber, more like a British Mosquito than a B-25.

 

Yeah, it was pretty small, I'll look up its specs to see what the bomb load was.

 

A max load of 3300 pounds of external bombs. Not bad for a tactical bomber that was quite difficult to shoot down. Much better than a bomb-laden ME262, which was hampered by a bomb load.

 

The Me-262 wasn't designed to be a bomber. Hitler knew nothing about aviation science. He was just a relic of 19th Century military battlefield culture. It was he who ordered this jet to bomb. No wonder, surrounding generals tried to dispose of him

 

Yeah, he didn't understand the Reichsmarine, he didn't understand the Luftwaffe, he didn't understand armor. But he made all decisions about the military. It's such a wonder there wasn't a general who pulled out his sidearm and put a few rounds into Hitler's head before the bodyguards shot him dead.

 

He was the reason why the Germans lost the war.
My last boss always had to interfere with department decisions taken at all levels, in all departments. Nobody in the place had anything good to say about him. The only reason why the company didn't make a loss enough to go bust was that there was no competition. He used to show up at our department one or two times a day, just for shuffling things around. He made it nearly impossible to finish any project anyone started. He was part owner of a family-run hotel and spent most of his time getting paid to just conduct family business. This is what happens, when certain individuals stay at the top, because of absence of oversight from their superiors. His boss was just some big fat stuffed shirt sitting all day in a chair. I once met him and wondered why he was even needed. If ever there was a phoney job, this would have been one of the prime examples. Here he is, 3rd from the left side:

 

This isn't vintage in that it was taken a long time ago, but it certainly looks vintage.

Seen while taking a walk through the neighborhood on the evening of Easter Sunday.