Nice pictures. What depresses me is that in this collection, only the pictures of U.S. aeronautics (bar the WhiteKnight2 and the Flying Fortress) show actual practical use and serious depiction of responsible use. Most (90%) pictures taken of other countries' air industry is of gaudy demonstrations or entertainment. Opens my eyes at how much the rest of the world, their militaries, little involve their capabilities or utilities to support the better good. In my mind, any debate on this are from hypocrites that won't see the decadence and apathy of other nations ( and even of the U.S. at times). Go on and use your high tech gadgets for fun fellas, while the real work gets done. by us.

Anyone else notice that the chick on the left in #18 is topless?
Sorry, I had to mention it.. lol

that's very kind of you to please us with these art pics

comment 118 - your the man, i missed that, but i thing your right.

and even after Jennifers comment, i still cant see those dang planes in #31

You mean there's an aircraft in #31 ?? :)

Awesome pics, as usual.

For all greeks!!! You said Macedonia is greek, tell me why then before 1913 year eagean part wasn't part of greece, "your" bigger part of ancient Macedonia is ocupated in 1913y, you separeted our country with serbia and bulgaria, that part never was yours and never would be. Read much more history who isn't writen by historians payd by your goverment or simply read history wroten before 1945. Greetings for all Macedonian suporters all over the world

#31 - no planes, only curves

pic 38. I flew in that B-17G (Painted Lady) in 2000 from Teterboro, NJ down to Statue of Liberty and Twin Towers, up the Hudson to West Point and back to Teterboro for only $400. I recommend highly. Price is now $425 and they do every year.

#31 is a display of bernoulli's *other* principle...

To be pedantic
#9 is either a Chinese "Weird News" type article or some sort of propaganda. Ain't no way a Helicopter will fly on that motor - even if the airframe was carbon composite. The FAA will have grounded it on maintenance grounds as already pointed out ...

117. wrote
" Go on and use your high tech gadgets for fun fellas, while the real work gets done. by us."
You're a troll ?
The real work of siphoning your governments money into private pockets while letting a lot of your citizens live in cardboard boxes ?
That's the way a lot of people see it.

#125 planes don't fly because bernoulli's principle...

Cooooooooooooool~~

Amazing, nice collection :)

Where are the famous British Red Arrows!!!???
http://www.raf.mod.uk/reds/

Kei mooie foto's hoor!

I miss my chopper

These are absolutely amazing photos

awesome!!!

Amazing photos Boston yet once more

@ #122

The Slavic language was introduced about a millennium after the death of Alexander the Great. How can you claim him to be your national hero? He was Greek because his father was Greek and ... and his ancestors competed in the Olympic Games where participation was limited to Greek people only!

Macedonia and Macedonian Greeks have been located for at least 2,500 years just where the modern Greek province of Macedonia is. Exactly this same relationship is true for Attica and Athenian Greeks, Argos and Argive Greeks, Corinth and Corinthian Greeks,

Aristotle, the Great Greek Philosopher, became the tutor of Alexander the Great. They used Greek in their classroom which can still be seen near Naoussa in Macedonia.

Lay off the historical nonsense and cater only for stability and prosperity in the region of Balkan ... enough said already

yeah yeah very nice pics....

very nice pics....basolutely amazing...

One other thing there is no Macedonian country, the name of the country is for now FYROM. They use to call themselves Mecadonian in order to obtain an id ....since the population of their country is half Boulgarians half Albanians and half natives......to get rid of they problem with the neighbours....
Please all of you read some history it make us all more responsible

The last is breathtakingly beautiful, looks like a dream, heaven on earth. Big picture is the best!

Answer to Letter From Macedonia: Owning Alexander
Prof. Stephen Miller, the pre-eminent archaeologist at the University of California, Berkeley, sent a letter to the magazine ARCHAEOLOGY commenting on a inflammatory article written by Bulgarian journalist Matthew Brunwasser entiltled Letter From Macedonia: Owning Alexander, which had been published in the previous issue, January-February, of the respected magazine. Prof. Miller, using solid references, debunks the claims of the Skopians about Macedonia and states that what the land of
todays Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia was in ancient times Paionia.
Therefore, its citizens have as much right to call it Macedonia and themselves Macedonians, as, for example, the Egyptians.
The entire letter by Prof. Miller and relevant illustrations are in the attachment.
Prof. Miller’s Letter:
January 22, 2009
Editor, Archaeology Magazine
36-36 33rd Street
Long Island City, NY 11106
U.S.A.
Dear Sir,
I opened the January/February issue of Archaeology today and eagerly turned to "A Letter from Macedonia" only to discover that it was actually a...letter from ancient Paionia - the land north of Mt.
Barmous and Mt. Orbelos. Livy's account of the creation of the Roman province of Macedonia (45.29.7 and 12) makes clear that the Paionians lived north of those mountains (which form today the geographically natural northern limits of Greece) and south of the Dardanians who were in today's Kosovo. Strabo (7. frag 4) is even more succinct in saying that Paionia was north of Macedonia and the only connection from one to the other was (and is today) through the narrow gorge of the Axios (or
Vardar) River. In other words, the land which is described by Matthew Brunwasser in his "Owning Alexander" was Paionia in antiquity.
While it is true that those people were subdued by Philip II,
father of Alexander, in 359 B.C. (Diodorus Siculus 16.4.2), they
were never Macedonians and never lived in Macedonia. Indeed,
Demosthenes (Olynthian 1.23) tells us that they were "enslaved"
by the Macedonian Philip and clearly, therefore, not Macedonians. Isokrates (5.23) makes the same point. Likewise, for example, the Egyptians who were subdued by Alexander may have been ruled by Macedonians, including the famous Cleopatra, but they were never Macedonians themselves, and Egypt was never called Macedonia (and so far as I can tell does not seek that name today).).
Certainly, as Thucydides (2.99) tells us, the Macedonians
had taken over "a narrow strip of Paionia extending along the Axios river from the interior to Pella and the sea". One might therefore understand if the people in the modern republic centered at Skopje called
themselves Paionians and claimed as theirs the land described by Thucydides.
But why, instead, would the modern people of ancient Paionia try to call themselves Macedonians and their land Macedonia? Mr. Brunwasser (p. 55) touches on the Greek claims "that it implies ambitions over Greek territory" and he notes that "the northern province of Greece is also called
Macedonia." Leaving aside the fact that the area of that northern province of modern Greece has been called Macedonia for more than 2,500 years (see, inter alios, Herodotus 5.17; 7.128, et alibi), more recent history shows that the Greek concerns are legitimate. For example, a map produced in Skopje in 1992 (Figure 1) shows clearly the claim that Macedonia extends from there to Mt. Olympus in the south; that is, combining the ancient regions of Paionia and Macedonia into a single entity. The same claim is explicit on a pseudo-bank note of the Republic of Macedonia which shows, as one of its monuments, the White Tower of Thessalonike, in Greece (Figure 2). There are many more examples of calendars, Christmas cards, bumper-stickers, etc., that all make the same claim.
Shown above is a map printed in 1992 in Skopje (Fig. 1) claiming that Macedonia extends down to Mount Olympus in the south, and includes the lands of Paionia and Macedonia.
Further, Mr. Brunwasser has reported with approval (International Herald Tribune 10/1/08) the work of the "Macedonian Institute for Strategic Research 16:9", the name of which refers "to Acts 16:9, a verse in the New Testament in which a Macedonian man appears to the Apostle Paul begging him: 'Come over into Macedonia, and help us.'" But where did Paul go in Macedonia? Neapolis (Kavala), Philippi, Amphipolis, Apollonia, Thessaloniki, and Veroia (Acts 16:11-17:10) all of which are in the
historic Macedonia, none in Paionia. What claim is being made by an Institute based in Skopje that names itself for a trip through what was Macedonia in antiquity and what is the northern province of Greece today?
I wonder what we would conclude if a certain large island off the southeast coast of the United States started to call itself Florida, and emblazoned its currency with images of Disney World and distributed maps showing the Greater Florida.
Certainly there was no doubt of the underlying point of "Macedonia" in
the mind of U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius on December 26,
1944, when he wrote:
The Department [of State] has noted with considerable apprehension
increasing propaganda rumors and semi-official statements in favor of an
autonomous Macedonia, emanating principally from Bulgaria, but also
from Yugoslav Partisan and other sources, with the implication that Greek
territory would be included in the projected state. This government
considers talk of Macedonian "nation", Macedonian "Fatherland", or
Macedonian "national consciousness" to be unjustified demagoguery
representing no ethnic nor political reality, and sees in its present revival a possible cloak for aggressive intentions against Greece." [Source: U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations vol viii, Washington,
D.C., Circular Airgram (868.014/26Dec1944)].
Mr. Brunwasser (a resident of Bulgaria), however, goes on to state, with apparent distain, that Greece claims "Alexander III of Macedon (Alexander the Great) . . . as Greek."
This attitude mystifies me. What is there to "claim"? Alexander's great-great-great grandfather, Alexander I, was certified as Greek at Olympia and, in the words of the father of history "I happen to know that [the forefathers of Alexander] are Greek" (Herodotus 5.22). Alexander's father, Philip, won several equestrian victories at Olympia and Delphi (Plutarch, Alexander 4.9; Moralia 105A), the two most Hellenic of all the sanctuaries in ancient Greece where non-Greeks were not allowed to compete. If
Philip was Greek, wasn't his son also Greek? Inscribed with Greek letters, 2,300 years ago, these coins are testimony about the Greekness of the
Macedonians, whose leader Alexander I, participated in the Battle Plataia, Phillip planned to exact revenge from the Persians, and his son Alexander III succeeded in destroying the Persian Empire in the
name of Hellas.
When Euripides - who died and was buried in Macedonia (Thucydides apud Pal. Anth. 7.45; Pausanias 1.2.2; Diodorus Siculus 13.103) - wrote his play Archelaos in honor of the great-uncle of Alexander, did he write it in Slavic? When he wrote the Bacchai while at the court of Archelaos did he not write it in Greek even as it has survived to us? Or should we imagine that Euripides was a "Macedonian" who wrote in Slavic (at a date when that language is not attested) which was translated
into Greek?
What was the language of instruction when Aristotle taught Alexander? What language was carried by Alexander with him on his expedition to the East? Why do we have ancient inscriptions in Greek in settlements established by Alexander as far away as Afghanistan, and none in Slavic? Why did Greek become the lingua franca in Alexander's empire if he was actually a "Macedonian"? Why was the New Testament written in Greek rather than Slavic?
On page 57 of the so-called "Letter from Macedonia" there is a photograph of the author standing "before a bronze statue of Alexander the Great in the city of Prilep." The statue is patently modern, but the question is whether the real historic Alexander could have read the Slavic inscription beneath his feet. Given the known historic posterity of Slavic to Greek, the answer is obvious.
While Mr. Brunwasser's reporting of the archaeological work in Paionia is welcome, his adoption and promotion of the modern political stance of its people about the use of the name Macedonia is not only unwelcome, it is a disservice to the readers of Archaeology who are, I imagine, interested in
historic fact. But then, the decision to propagate this historical nonsense by Archaeology - a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America - is a disservice to its own reputation.
Let it be said once more: the region of ancient Paionia was a part of the Macedonian empire. So were Ephesos and Tyre and Palestine and Memphis and Babylon and Taxila and dozens more. They may thus
have become "Macedonian" temporarily, but none was ever "Macedonia".
Allow me to end this exegesis by making a suggestion to resolve the question of the modern use of the name "Macedonia." Greece should annex Paionia - that is what Philip II did in 359 B.C. And that
would appear to be acceptable to the modern residents of that area since they claim to be Greek by appropriating the name Macedonia and its most famous man. Then the modern people of this new Greek province could work on learning to speak and read and write Greek, hopefully even as well as Alexander did.
Sincerely,
Stephen G. Miller
Professor Emeritus, University of California,
Berkeley
P.S. For a more extensive discussion regarding the evidence about Paionia, see I. L. Merker, “The Ancient
Kingdom of Paionia,” Balkan Studies 6 (1965) 35-54

SuperFotos!I could lookatPhotoslike these for hours! :-DDDD

The home built Chinese Helicopter with a 150cc engine and a wooden stick for a tail rotor, was built from an IRON scaffold, I don't think the Government had anything to do with 'grounding it. the Law of Gravity grounded it.

What is the top level domain extension for FYROM? Which country is
the godfather of FYROM? Which country is being represented by Nimitz?
Is FYROM the real problem? US seeks for a powerful army base in the Balkans. US is a powerful country, it sells various products like Nike, Apple,
Starbucks, GE, CISCO, Berkeley etc... I am a Greek that uses all these products. Am I part of the solution or part of the problem? Think deeper... and get prepared for the "Enemy of the North".

MACEDONIA IS GREEK AND IN GREECE !!! what you refer to in pic 11 is Skopje !!! Not MACEDONIA !!! Get your facts, and history right.

Someone above tried to be a smart ass...When before 1913 "Macedonia" was Greek? How about the Byzantine Empire? Heard of that? If not what school did you go to? Let me guess...you prob American. Oh no there is no such thing cause all native Americans (Red Indians) got murdered and only very few left today.....

Also thanks for the pics =)
shame you don't have any from the Red Arrows....

117 - you are a poor poor person... keep on believing fairy tales.

GREAT PICTURES, AND REALLY NICE LADIES THERE TOO.
funny how the girls are relaxing while those fire fighters are hard at work... very representative of us humans :)

Take a look at the Swiss Patrol Exhibition over Montreux Switzerland on August 1 >> http://ziolele.net/2009/08/01/swiss-patrol-exhibition-over-montreux/

#34 is very beautiful

"WOW"

Was well worth taking a moment to look through these although I'm convinced there's a little photo-shop on some of these like the drone over the beach in pic# 33.

I thought the whole point of these pictures was to display aircraft and the work of the photographers. Why did it degenerate into an argument about the history of Greece and surrounding regions? As a pilot and photographer myself, I would like to thank all of the pilots and photographers who had a part in making these pictures available for all to see.

#20 -- That is my friend Jake Pickett from Minden. My home town. His best friend died in this explosion.

Awesome, awesome and current! We never see anything come through the mail that's not yesteryear!

#150
No, it is not photo-chopped, it is perspective. The image is fore-shortened because of use of a zoom lens. The drone is smaller than it looks and closer than it looks. The people on the beach are actually looking at the drone. If a regular lens was used, then the beach would look a lot further away and the people very much smaller.

These pictures are really pornographic ones for a retired ATC-officer. The most amazing aviationpcyures I have ever seen. And I have seen a lot. Thanks a tousand times

WOW! MAGANDA AT MALIWANAG ANG MGA LITRATO!!

Owesome

Hands Down #31 is the best photo :-)

#11
about the skopians who named themself macedonian
i think it could be the same as if u.s.a. one day will separate and
some state, for examble california, will like to be named america!!
the name macedonia is larger piece of land than the country FYROM
and when the entire macedonia was owned by one nation, that was the greek, with king phillip and his sun alexander the great (both greek names
and not slavian) .

Just about every piece of modern equipment we use in our daily lives had its origin in aviation. In a mere 100 years we have come to this level of mechanics of flight because man was created to fly, and not to drive on one-dimensional roads. In flight you USE the forces in nature that had been created in nature. By driving you fight AGAINST those forces all the way.

Good Stuff! We human's NEVER could stay on earth for any length of time.During the Cold War, I worked on the largest operational bomber in the world.....The Convair B-36....in San Diego. I took a 355mm slide of one of the huge things landing in San Diego, on George Washingtons birthday. The resulting poster has been shipped all over the world.

If you think #33 looks weird, check out some of the stuff the DIY-Drones people are building! Aircraft without pilots are the new frontier.

Ref Pic15
as a tribute to their recently lost Commander, Igor Tkachenko, who died in an accident 2 days before the event began, the Russian Knights closed the show with a formation fly past late on Sunday evening. As the four aircraft pulled away from the crowd into the distance with a gentle climb, they released a plethoria of flares that stretched for almost a mile long and beautifully lit up the dull evening sky.

these r sooooo cool!!! mi favorite is number 34. :)

This is a correction for comment #124,
The aircraft is the "Yankee Lady" B-17 G
flown by the Yankee Air Museum.

superbes photos d aviation

Brilliant photography!

Fantastic!!!!, very nice pictures, congratulations.
Thanks.

I thought this site was about appreciation of aviation, not for history buffs to educate us about Macedonia and show us how superior they are. I am not interested in Mcedonia or Fyrom and the majority of people here feel the same way. Go elsewhere to spout off while the rest of us enjoy looking at the pics and reading constructive comments about the photographic fare.

What awesome shots! I especially love #23.
Thank you.

GILEEEE..... BENER DEH....
foto nya bagus bagus lho, hasil jepretan orang iseng....

WoW! What amazing pictures! Number 34 is my favorite.

#91, that exhibition (pics #1 and #18) took place just in front of my window. The helicopters were not as close as it seems in the picture, but they were very close indeed...

Its an event performed every year, and I never get tired of it.

#9 There goes the bravest man in the world messing around with a home built death trap.

Nice pics....like 31 alot!!!

just awesome....

To give an answer to post #91: it is an optical illusion done by the Telephoto or zoom lens with which the picture was taken. These types of lenses compress distances and make objects seem a lot closer to each other than they really are. The most obvious example in this series is the shot #23 as no airliner flies so close to the moon.

Photo # 30 is very special.
Perhaps "Condensation Clouds" could explain what happened on February 22, 1953 when all of a sudden the Cessna 140 CF FCZ that I was flying from Kingston to Newark NJ was in a white out condition. On that morning Betty Draycott and I had left Kingston in CAVU conditions (skirting Lake Ontario) with a North west tailwind. Turning more easterly after Syracuse the rising terrain likely was a factor. No meteorologist I have talked to has provided an explaination.
With basic instruments, compass, airspeed, turn and bank and altimeter (no heading indicator back then) I commenced a rate one turn and counted ...1001, 1002...1003 as a rate one turn should reverse your heading (180 degrees) in 60 seconds /one minute, Also it was somewhat turbulent, so it was with great relief when we flew back into CAVU conditions and could see Oswego NY .
We returned to Kingston, still CAVU...much to the curiousity of those who had earlier bade us farewell.
I think I owe my life to that rate one counting turn.

Excellent....never seen such a compilation of reality........Congratulation.

For us this IS Macedonija, or Makedonija...

Stunning and very Professional.

Big Fan of Big Picture, but this serie was one of the best, for those of us who love planes.
Muchas Gracias. Medu

...hi there,
fantastic pics.

Wow.... wonderful pictures!
Very good work!

Greetings from Germany
Bejamin

This was really a great bunch of photos and I will look at them over and over.

Thanks,

Fred Jones
Louisa, KY

Interesting that you didn't choose to include more drones. I suspect that another 100 years on, most of our flying machines will have nobody on board at all.

lisa; thanks for the pics, appreciate them.

Amazing pictures. Especially the photos 10,21 and 23 are really good.
Really wonderful collections.

The only problem you Greeks have is about the genocide you have done to the Macedonians in the Balkan Wars,and the civil war after the second world war.Why dont you allow the minorities which live in Solun(Thessaloniki),Lerin(Florina),Voden (Edesa) to daclare themselves however they want on your elections.You will be suprised how many Macedonians (not Slavic speaking minorities,not Bulgarians,not Greeks) live there.Thats your fear.Your country didn't allowed the term Macedonia to be mentioned in the northern part of Greece before the 80's.Why?Ask yourselves????Ask what are the origins of the population living in that areas.

The pic 9 is the winner

For #117 - The fact that other countries still treat military bases as state secrets is a more likely explanation for the preponderence of non-operational pictures from nations other than the US.

Even tourists taking snapshots have been arrested for simply taking a picture of the "wrong" side of the airport in some countries in Europe.- (where the airport was shared between civilian on one side of the runway, and military on the other).

excelente fotos, felicitaciones!

All these pictures and no AF Thunderbirds or Navy Blue Angels? Disappointing.

Prosto receno - predivno ,
predivno , extraaaaa!

Great pictures

109. wrote
God bless France!

Tut tut tut... France bless God !

Why are the only injured that are shown are Americans?

This really seems disrespectful to me...

These photo essays are simply amazing! Thank you for posting them!

STOP CALLING FYROM AS MAKEDONIA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You are supposed to be journalists and not political parrots...

I have a British journal web site call " Picture of to day ", but no compare to " The Big Picture-Boston ", I love it , very entertaining photos, and the message of each pictures can delivered right to the reader.
Thank You Boston Globe - The Big Picture.

104 - Your Great Great general should have conquered a little bit less, so there would not be confusion about names. How many Alexandrias are there?
Besides - get your facts straight not about the opinions of Greek general population, but about the official name of the country in UN and on the maps "The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". And nobody in their right mind would start calling that country in the full name, as nobody calls Lybia in their full name (Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya ). You can fume all you want, but the name is the name and that is it. And no reason to react every time, everywhere you see that name. And yes - I am sure that Turkey sucks, Cyprus is Greek forever and all words come from the Greek language that was invented by Gods.

Great pics!!!! Please keep posting more of them. I enjoyed every one of them, Thanks so much.....

mekadonya belogs to Ottoman Empire...

Think of the massive wast of the billions and billions of dollars that could have been used to end the the multitude of problems and human suffering
that has instead gone into the manufacture of machines of war.

that are very nice photo's i mean....
wauw!
XD =Ţ :{}

nice and brilliant photography!

What is Fyrom? never heard...

Excellent bench of Photos......... G S Rautela...09899430430 INDIA

Excellent, marvellous work !!!!

i saw the pic it was amazing.thiyaha india

The work you have well done is great.
But, I wish that work could not have been taken to irritate some political issues by some people of neighboring nations.

To Agway #117
I am so agree with you...
September 12th: While us, the silly-rest-of-the-world were playing with our toys, you fellow americans gave a free ticket on a Boeing 747 to the whole Ben-Laden Family. After many years, many bombs, many corpses, you are still flying around, looking for the suitcases on Middle East.

this are nice pics was wondering if u had more american jet pics tho

was wondering if u had any pics of stealth bomber b1 or the new best aircraft every made the rapture americas /worlds best all in one Fighter/Bomber aircraft they are so cool it has stealth capbiltys and can care a nuke if needed or run simple escort or bombong missions as well plus it has the most advasied radar and eletronics of any plane in the world and it also looks really nice to boot

Hello from Russia)

@ #23 excellent shot! ...rare!
I will try your amazing shot with my 300mm lens someday!
cheers to you! Arnd Wiegmann

Excellent Photo's!

and oh, Macedonia to the Macedonian's not some brainwashed Turk who thinks he is an ancient 'greek' and owns civilisation. Bumbling fools - do you know how pathetic you people are? wake up and smell the coffee (turkish coffee)