Well I guess that depends on who you talk to. Talk to an aviation industry expert and they will tell you that there is a belief that the Eurofighter Typhoon (another BAE Systems project) contains an element of stealth within its design (although no official confirmation has ever been given). Talk to some residents of Lytham St. Annes or Blackpool and they will tell you that stealth aircraft have been flying from BAE Systems production facility at Warton for many years. There are countless stories of the “Warton Triangle” being seen over the North-West coast of England in aviation circles, and there has always been the suspicion that BAE Systems is testing this technology ready to enter the stealth industry. Also if you speak to any of the privileged people who have been on a guided tour of the Warton facility, they will tell you of the mysterious hangar near the radar testing facility.

There is one hangar that is always off-limits on these guided tours. It resides on the flying side of the airfield and is always dismissed as a “spray-shop” or a “component fabrication building” and so visitors aren’t allowed to enter. However, there is a paint facility on the flying side that visitors are allowed to enter and so this reason doesn’t really hold. Also, if it was a fabrication building why is it situated on the flying side of the airfield when all other similar buildings are on the other side of the runway?
The building also stands out due to the entrance. What looks quite low key to begin with is actually a two stage “airlock” type entrance. With revolving doors at either end of this entrance, you can never see in to the hangar as one of the 2 doors is always closed.

So what could be taking place in this hangar? Well your guess is as good as mine. I’m not about to start hypothesising and starting conspiracy theories. All I’ll say is it does seem strange that reports of the Warton Triangle have been around for years, and the first major stealth project in the UK goes to the owners of Warton airfield…

News then broke yesterday on Joystiq (here) that the number of consoles available in Japan on launch day has been cut by 20%. There is no word as to whether North America will face a similar 20% cut in consoles available. This follows on the back of the news not so long ago that the Playstation 3 will not be available in Europe until 2007. And given that Sony no longer views importing a console as a viable option (you only have to look at Lik Sang’s fate to see that) and you really have to wonder what Sony are playing at.

Surely they knew that there would be shortages in supply and that they would never meet the demand. But at what point should Sony cut their losses and just move the launch of the console back globally? Microsoft have shown that a launch in the 3 major gaming territories in 2 weeks is possible (and yes I remember how short in supply the 360′s were at launch, but at least they were there). I also have no doubt that Nintendo will manage a global launch with the Wii, and that Wii’s will be available “on the shelf” before Christmas. I guess this will be a big test of Sony’s bullish attitude of “we can do what we want” and that Nintendo and Microsoft are going to share the majority of the Christmas sales…

I really can’t fathom the mentality of someone who would carry out one of these attacks. As someone who, over the past 2 years, has had a couple of very close encounters with various birds of prey I have nothing but total respect for these birds and always feel incredibly privileged to handle or photograph them at very close quarters (check out the Silverband set in my flickr site over on my blogroll -> to see just how close). When I was younger there seemed to be a “craze” for stealing and trading the eggs of protected bird species, but given that you don’t hear so much about this any more, I’d thought that attacks of this sort were becoming a thing of the past. However with the release of these figures you have to guess that this isn’t the case. It really does sadden me that there are people that would purposely try and harm these magnificent birds and hopefully with the current trend of encouraging children to appreciate the nature around them, maybe the next generation will be less destructive towards our endangered species….

It’s a sad thing that yet another of the spitfire heroes has now passed on, and with their decreasing numbers I’m happy to say that I’ve met a few and listened eagerly to their stories of wartime flying. Unfortunately Raymond was one that I never had the good fortune to meet, but I know from other sources that he was a true gentleman, and epitomised everything that the RAF stood for during World War II.

Baxter died on September 15th, aged 84, and is survived by his son and daughter.

“He was just walking down the corridor. He had a long trench coat, a retard haircut, and a machine gun. And he’s just walking along there and no-one was trying to stop him.”

First things first, I’m not trying to belittle what has happened, it is undoubtedly a tragedy. But what is this woman thinking? Who in their right mind would try and stop someone wandering round with a machine gun? You can count me out I know that much! I like to think I’m fairly civil-minded, but suicidal is one thing I’m not.

In the end the police did stop him with a few bullets, and I guess it’s lucky he only managed to kill one person (especially if the standard Canuck mentality is try and stop gun wielding idiots!!)…