Odd Shaped Air Plane MS

South African Post issued an Odd shaped miniature sheet, shaped like an air craft for the World Post Day. The stamp depicts the first South African airmail flight - Belriot monoplane. An apt way to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the First Air Mail Flight of Africa (1911 - 2011).

Evelyn Frederick, on 27th December 1911 carried first airmail in his monoplane, Bleriot (named after the French Aviator, Louis Bleriot) from Kenilworth Race Cource to Oldham's field near Muizenberg.  It took seven and a half minutes for him to cover the 13Km distance and Muizenburg Post Office became  the first Post Office to receive the Air Mail in Africa.  Postmaster P J Hutchings received the first Airmail bag with 729 Post Cards.

You can see the picture of the monoplane down below.  

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The stamp is shown below:

                               

Belgium Airplane stamps and minisheet

Few days back I received a surprise from my friend Joel. It was a cover with airplane stamp on it and inside the cover were a miniature sheet and few stamps  on my topic aviation.

The miniature sheet was issued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Pierre Jacobs. The miniature sheet depicts Captain Francis Blake and partner, Professor Philip Mortimer - both are characters from Jacob's comic book. The miniature sheet was issued simultaneously by France (unperforated one) and Belgium (perforated one), on May 17, 2004. The below Miniature sheet is a Belgium issue. 

Below were few stamps on aviation sent by him...

The last stamp on the last row depicts the Belgian pioneer aircraft - the bi-plane dating from 1908.  This stamp was issued in the year 1973 by bpost (Belgium post).

The left most stamp on the last row was issued to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Sabena ( Sabena is an airlines in Belgium) The stamp was issued on 19th of May 1973.

The speciality of the last row is that he sent both perforated and non-perforated stamps :). Only 1000s of non-perforated were printed.

The top row shows the airmail set issued by Belgium in 1951 and commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the Royal Aeroclub of Belgium.

Nauru stamps - National Phosphate Corporation, Air Nauru

I recently received 2 sets of Nauru stamps, Thanks to Stewie from Netherlands.

The above stamps were released in the year 1985. The first set of 4 stamps were issued to commemorate the 15th Anniversary of Nauru Phosphate corporation and  the second set of 4 stamps were issued to commemorate the 15th Anniversary of Air Nauru.