[DebF_EONNext]

Hey Community👋

Just as the title suggests I wondered if you have what I call an "Itch List" 😆 a list of things you are just itching to do?!

My list is pretty small and most of it involves travelling 🌍✈

Here's mine:

• Visit New Orleans during Mardi Gras 🎉
• Fly a plane
• Visit Norway/Iceland to see the Northern Lights (I always miss it when you can see them from here 🤦‍♀️)
• Visit Mayan ruins
• See the worlds biggest tree The General Sherman 🌳
• Stay in an ice hotel
• Go white water rafting

Do you have your own list or have you done anything on my list? I would love to hear about it!

[retrotecchie]

Originally Posted by DebF_EONNext

Hey Community👋

Just as the title suggests I wondered if you have what I call an "Itch List" 😆 a list of things you are just itching to do?!

My list is pretty small and most of it involves travelling 🌍✈

Here's mine:

• Visit New Orleans during Mardi Gras 🎉
• Fly a plane
• Visit Norway/Iceland to see the Northern Lights (I always miss it when you can see them from here 🤦‍♀️)
• Visit Mayan ruins
• See the worlds biggest tree The General Sherman 🌳
• Stay in an ice hotel
• Go white water rafting

Do you have your own list or have you done anything on my list? I would love to hear about it!

Not been to New Orleans but I have experienced two weeks of Carnival in Rio, which is bigger and better and doesn't involve French influence or jazz.

Flown a plane a couple of times and quite enjoyed it, but never had the hankering to go for a full PPL. Wouldn't mind a trip in an old Blackburn Buccaneer but not sure there are any airworthy ones out there now. There may still be a flying example down at the FAA museum in Yeovilton but I've not had any business with them since I built their GRVS Harrier reconnaissance playback suite a few years ago. Had a joyride in a Chinook once, but that was a gizzit when I did a job at RAF Odiham. There was a school visit going on and I scrounged a spare seat for a quick figure of eight around the airfield.

Been to Norway, but it was just a long weekend with a van helping a friend move all her goods, chattels and two cats from West Wales to Oslo. That was a road trip to end all road trips. I was given the van as 'payment' on the basis that if it got us the 2500 miles to Oslo with just over a tonne of clobber on board, and I could get it home again, I could keep it! The only mishap was the gear kn0b fell off at Magor Services, just over the bridge on the last leg home. I did the last 100 miles having to change gear with just a rather sharp stick.

Not been to any Mayan ruins but I've done the Great Pyramid in Egypt and the temple of Borobudur in Indonesia. Once you've seen one ancient monument, you've seen 'em all! I've also been inside the inner sanctum of the Kremlin and that was pretty magnificent but the less said about that the better!

Not done the big tree.

Not stayed in an ice hotel but have visited the Hotel Sidi Driss in Tunisia which was the location for Luke Skywalker's home on Tatooine in the first (Episode 4) Star Wars film. More rocky and sandy than icy.

White water rafting, bungee jumping, jet-skiing and taking a helicopter trip to the top of the Franz Joseph glacier were all stuff I ticked off my list in New Zealand when I went out to visit my parents.

Not much left on my 'bucket list' but...

• A visit to one of the panda reserves in Sichuan, China.
• A visit to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN
• Trying my hand at fly fishing in Scotland
• Obtaining my 50th LEGO 171 train set. I'm currently at around 37 or 38 depending on how you count them.
• Hearing from @JoeSoap that he's finally got a fully functional pair of smart meters, populating his Bright app up to date and displaying the correct tariffs on his IHD.

I suspect the last one will be the hardest to tick off!

[JoeSoap]

@DebF_EONNext

I first took the controls of a plane (de Havilland Chipmunk) when. I was 16. That was way back when Pontius was a Pilot 😂. It was already airborne and I was shown how to use the stick and rudder and allowed to fly it around. Also did aerobatics in the form of loop the loop, rolls and stall turns. Not me at the controls when doing that of course.

Fast forward 50 years and I walked into a flying school and said to them, coincidentally using your term, “I need to scratch an itch”. You can book a half hour trial flying lesson for around £120 if you just want to get airborne and be allowed to steer it around a bit.

I continued with it, taking several hours of lessons, hoping to at least be able to take off, fly a circuit and land unaided. After spending over £1000, I realised it looked easier than it actually is to fly a plane. I never got to take off and land but I learned enough about how it’s done to consider the itch scratched… for now 🤔. I also parachuted way back when I was alive. I did 11 descents and was very fortunate that one of them was from a bi-plane in the form of a Dragon Rapide.

Been a fair way up the coast of Norway and to the the north of Iceland but never saw the northern lights… you have to get lucky.

Top of my itch list is to enable @retrotecchie to cross off the most challenging item on his list 😂

[retrotecchie]

I went to training classes to do a charity parachute jump when I was at VI Form. but for whatever reason (illness, I seem to recall) I wasn't able to do the actual jump. It was quite fun jumping off a hundred foot tower, attached to a rope to simulate a static line, then slam into thick rubber mats.

There is only one real secret to learning to fly a plane. According to my instructor at the flying club, all you really have to do is ensure that the number of landings is equal to the number of takeoffs. I actually had far more fun manning the runway crash tender and doing the firefighter training.

[JoeSoap]

Originally Posted by retrotecchie

... According to my instructor at the flying club, all you really have to do is ensure that the number of landings is equal to the number of takeoffs.

The best one I heard was that taking off is optional... landing is compulsory. In other words, be sure everything is safe before you get airborne. Better to be down here wishing you were up there than being up there wishing you were down here 😂

You mentioned a Chinook flight. When I was on holiday in the Falklands in the early 80s 😉 we used helicopters like busses. Just stand in line at a helipad and wait for the next one. Guess what turned up next...



... unfortunately it got full before I could board. Had to get the next one...



The real scary bit was landing on this en-route to our final destination...



... pull up a sandbag 🤣

[JoeSoap]

Just thought of another flying ditty. During a flying lesson I mentioned how hot it was in the cockpit. The instructor pointed to the propellor a few feet in front of us and said,”That big fan keeps me cool”. Then he said, “You watch how quickly I start sweating if it stops spinning”. 😂

[DebF_EONNext]

@retrotecchie the Hadron Collider would be a fantastic one to see!

I love the idea of the panda reserves too, I haven't had a chance to see the panda's at Edinburgh Zoo an dthey are going back home soon, I would much rather see them in a more natural setting though.

I love the idea of carnival, I used to do Samba dancing as a kid and my instructor was from Rio she had so much energy and passion it was so much fun! I like the idea of the New Orleans Mardi Gras though purely because it's that little bit smaller and a little more laid back.

Do you display your Lego trains retrotecchie? My son collects Star Wars Lego he's not long completed the Millennium Falcon, it took him about a week to build. He wants the Death Star next but it's so expensive 👀 we don't have enough space to display them though so he only keeps the bigger sets out. My husband likes the Lego Technic sets especially the remote control ones!

I have been water skiing, zip lining, canoeing and scuba diving but you would never ever catch me jumping out of a plane that is a massive NOPE from me, same with bungee not thank you, not for me! I do however love the idea of loops and swoops @JoeSoap that must have been an amazing experience!

What fantastic pictures too, I think the fly a plane thing is top of my list if I'm honest I just love being in the air, everyone thinks I'm mad but I think there's just something really peaceful about it.

[JoeSoap]

Originally Posted by DebF_EONNext

... I think the fly a plane thing is top of my list if I'm honest I just love being in the air, everyone thinks I'm mad but I think there's just something really peaceful about it.

Flying in a two-seater Cessna, as I did for my lessons, is exciting, but I wouldn't say peaceful. You are squeezed in shoulder to shoulder with the pilot and it is so noisy that you both communicate through headsets. It was always a luxury to get into my smooth, quiet, comfortable car to drive home once we landed 😂

[retrotecchie]

Originally Posted by DebF_EONNext

Do you display your Lego trains retrotecchie?

I'd dearly love to but space is at rather a premium until I get round to building another shed or three!

My old attic looked a bit like this

[DebF_EONNext]

That's some collection @retrotecchie! That must have taken you some hours 😅