Old 744 Forum

I hope mostly one thing: that the game will be fair, pretty, and worthy of the high standards that a World Championship should bring. In such a case, there is no loser. Else, there are two losers.

Oh, give or take a billion.


Jeroen

The vuvuzelas are really annoying, even with a moderate sound level on my TV...

I may have to turn the sound off and turn the text captions on instead, but that takes away much of the feeling of participating in a sports event as a spectator. It must be unbearable to be in the stadium. One wonders if the TV people could filter out most of this sound...or maybe they are!

Moderately interesting article on the vuvuzela at wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuvuzela

I am an admirer of the Netherlands as a country and a culture, and hope they come away with a good, strong victory.

Spain super, psychic cephalopod supreme

Not pretty, chances for both sides, but Spain finally nailed theirs. I feel for the Dutch, but one has to admit that a couple of the yellows in the first half should have had a more up-spectrum hue. Congratulations to a new World Cup winner.

Time to start planning the qualifying campaign for Brazil

Cheers,
Torrence

I was more impressed by Paul the Octopus than by Spain or the referees. Paul is 8-0 this year!

Only one team turned up to play football today...The Dutch were an absolute disgrace - particularly in the first half when they should have had two reds.

So glad it didn't go to penalties.

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers wrote

I hope mostly one thing: that the game will be fair, pretty, and worthy of the high standards that a World Championship should bring....

Both teams had a tremendous pressure to win the cup. When I remember the match in 1974 (Dutch-German - I was a 13 year old boy) there also was a lot of foul play. But this was really sad to see. Especially the Kung Fu artist. http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-56994-10.html

At the end of the match I was glad that the German team was not in the final.

Peter

Simply heart breaking.

Just four years to go!

At least "we" did something nice to get them home.






PS. The F16 did not have real Sidewinders, I was told.

haha....that's patriotic...

just take a look at the flexing of the wings tilting upwards...beautiful B777....but still can't beat the lovely 744....!!

That's the best paint job I've ever seen on an F16. From this angle though, the lion just looks like a crazy orange camouflage scheme.

one team ... one mission ... one F16

Misschien they were not honour-escorting so much, but rather keeping an eye on the guys and/or sending them a message?
One notes that the colour of the F-16 is composed from Orange (=yellow+red) and Red...

I can't think of a less camouflage-effective paint scheme than this brilliant Netherlands-orange art work.

Am I correct in assuming that it was painted orange to celebrate the successes of the Netherlands team? In other words, am I correct in assuming that the whole air defense system doesn't use orange?!?!

That might actually be the whole air defense system.

LOL, Will !!

J-015 has been painted orange in 2009 as the (solo) F16 demo fighter for airshows and other special occasions. It is present at nearly all occasions where the Royal Netherlands Air Force wants to project their presence for marketing reasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Netherlands_Air_Force

We have about 90 F16s currently. Our military/politicians decided to go "air mobile" two decades ago and we nearly integrated air and land forces to be rapid-deployable. This leads to an overweight number of aircraft for such a small country: next to the fighters we have a large helicopter fleet (Europe's largest heli base is 5km from where I live, viva el Chinook) including plenty of Apaches, and even two KDC10 tanker aircraft (plus a DC10 nontanker). However it is not directly clear how many flight hours they are allowed to burn over the next years...


Jeroen

Paul the Octopus may be traded to Spain!

"In what may prove to be the biggest transfer story this summer, negotiations have begun to bring Paul the psychic octopus to Madrid after he correctly predicted Spain's World Cup final victory. Madrid's Zoo Aquarium says it is prepared to trump any other offer Germany's Oberhausen Sea Life Centre receives for Paul, certain that the world's most famous cephalopod will attract thousands of visitors. At present no cash is on the table, and the zoo says it is trying to negotiate an exchange of animals..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/15/paul-the-octopus-madrid-transfer

Typical Guardian!

Back in the sixties during college, I shared a Birmingham dormitory with a British friend whose father was a Sabena B707 captain. They resided at No. XX Limburg Stirum, Wemmel, Brabant, not far from the Atomium.

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers wrote

...and yes there is a South-Brabant and yes there is another Limburg and yes they are in the neighbouring country and yes there are sentiments to recombine... but with the hopeless results of last elections in both countries, this may take a while...

About the world cup event, The Dutch team somehow didn't manage to retain their excellent footbal exhibited in all earlier matches, Germany had a similar situation. What bothered me most are:

a. The empoverished South Africans who continue to live meters from the beautiful stadiums
b. The intentional fouls prevalent in soccer. American football, where the whole team is punished for individual fouls, should act as model here.
c. The amount of referee bad calls, American football, where video is utilized to confirm referee calls, should act as model here too.

Brilliant air-to-air footage. And I fear "we" have two orange F-16s now...

http://www.zie.nl/video/opmerkelijk/F16s-begeleiden-vliegtuig-Oranje/m1fzjn6fdkuw

Dutch media published a pretty cynical cartoon about this...

Hey Jeroen...

Better if we may have the translation?...

anyway....just read another piece of news....

http://au.sports.yahoo.com/football/news/article/-/7674538/north-korea-footballers-publicly-humiliated