Thursday - May 12, 2011
Best Brake Commercial Evah
Once upon a time I read a cartoon about test pilots. It may have been one of Bill Mauldin’s Willy and Joe strips from WWII, I don’t really remember, but the drawing was of some overly confident young aviator saying “Yeah, we test ‘em before the test pilots test ‘em”. Ok, that’s a bit funny, and it plays on the bravado pilots are known for, but that job actually has to exist.
Here’s a beautiful old experimental airplane from the late 30s. It’s a Zlin Z-XIII, a Czechoslovakian speedster that could go 200mph from an inline 4 cylinder engine that only made 130hp. Only two were ever made, a single seater and a double seater ... then WWII got in the way. But they flew. And Zlin is still in business too.This one is on display in the Museum of Technology in Prague. What a great example of the 1930s Streamline Moderne design style ... and a great little airplane if you really had no interest in seeing where you were going.
So experimental airplanes and test pilots and pre-test test pilots have been with us from the beginning. In today’s world, a large part of a new aircraft’s design features are worked out on computers long before any actual building takes place. That gives the successful designs a big leg up, because the design and simulator software is really quite good. But when you start building them, you still have to test them, even before they ever get off the ground.
Here’s one of those tests. Boeing is building the latest incarnation of the venerable 747, called the 747-8. Fully loaded up, the airplane weighs nearly one million pounds. Crivens! Try stopping one of those with the brakes. It’s got to be a challenge. But not enough challenge; let’s do it the hard way, what the aviation world loves to call a worst case scenario.
Here’s Boeing trying to stop their million pound jetliner from 200mph, using Goodrich brakes that were worn right down to the pucks. And no reverse thrust either ...
Rats, i couldn’t snag the video, so follow the link and watch it there.
Did it work? You betcha. The plane stopped hundreds of feet sooner than expected, and the wheels did not catch on fire. I want brakes like that on my car, thank you. Although the guy in the pilot’s seat may have had something to do with it ... his name is Captain Kirk.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/12/2011 at 10:22 AM
Filed Under: • planes, trains, tanks, ships, machines, automobiles •
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Permalink • Air Crash Data: Wait Another Week
LE BOURGET, France – France’s chief air accident investigator said Thursday he’s hopeful that data contained on the two flight recorders of an Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic almost two years ago can be recovered.
Jean-Paul Troadec, head of France’s BEA, told reporters that the so-called black boxes “appear to be in good shape.”
“I’m fairly confident” they can be used, he said in response to a question.
The man in charge of the BEA’s engineering department, Christophe Menez, said it would take at least three days to learn with certainty whether information contained on the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder can be recovered to help unlock the cause of the crash.
Other parts of the plane discovered in the ocean’s depths — some not yet brought to France — can also contribute to learning why Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris plunged into the Atlantic on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people aboard.
Deciphering all the information can take weeks or months, said Alain Bouillard, director of the investigation.
“This process isn’t counted in days. It is counted in weeks or months,” he said.
The data recorders arrived under high security at BEA headquarters outside Paris on Thursday.
I thought this was going to be a bigger post than it turned out to be. Using deep sea robot submersibles from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI, “hoo wee!") searchers found the location of the downed airliner a couple weeks ago. At this point they have located most of the wreckage on the sea floor, 2 miles down. Even though the crash happened 2 years ago, bodies have been found still in their seats. Two bodies have been recovered for DNA testing, but the rest will probably stay there. Some family members want them to stay, some want them to leave. Both the black boxes were located and retrieved a few days ago, and have now been returned to France for examination. Conservators are optimist about their chances of getting the data, but it will take time to get the salt off and to dry out the circuit boards. So it’s still a matter of wait and see.
From what I can glean from the articles I have read, it appears that the plane belly flopped into the ocean. To me that means either a tremendous downdraft swatted the plane out of the sky, or that they suffered a complete loss of engines and power and stalled, and then fell straight down out of the sky. Whatever caused the crash happened so quickly that the oxygen masks did not have time to deploy. The force of the impact was enough to knock the flight recorder instruments out of their black box container ( which is actually orange ) but those instruments were found and retrieved a day later.
Air France and Airbus are spending another $12.5 million on this recovery effort, after spending $28 million on 3 previous searches. A French judge has filed preliminary manslaughter charges against the airline and the aircraft company, which seems proactively douchey to me. Only about 50 bodies were recovered from the surface at the time of the crash.
http://www.turnto23.com/travelgetaways/27864330/detail.html
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?col=§ion=international&xfile=data/international/2011/May/international_May132.xml
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42414150/ns/world_news-europe/t/bodies-air-france-crash-found-sea/
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/04/04/undersea-robots-locate-bodies-motors-200-air-france-crash/
http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/05/02/49723219.html
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-04-21/air-france-black-box-search-harnesses-hollywood-for-crash-clues.html
Posted by Drew458
on 05/12/2011 at 09:49 AM
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Permalink • union holds london to ransom … guess who wins?
Typical, innit?
Just another reason to hate unions. I have heard this Crow fellow on the radio, and he’s more left then Marx and all that crowd.
For me, even though he doesn’t always look like this, this is the face of ALL unions as far as I’m concerned.
Militant rail staff’s 10% pay rise as ‘ransom payment’ to prevent strikes during Olympics
By JASON GROVES and BECKY BARROWMilitant transport workers were last night handed a 10 per cent pay rise as part of a ‘ransom payment’ to prevent strikes during next year’s Olympics.
Network Rail agreed the astonishing rise amid fears that industrial action could wreck the London Games.
But MPs accused the firm of caving in to hardliner Bob Crow, the head of the Rail Maritime Transport union, who has led a series of crippling strikes in recent years.
The deal, which has the private backing of ministers, will see 10,000 signallers, engineers, customer service staff and other employees across the country receive a 5.2 per cent pay rise this year, backdated to January, and a further rise of inflation plus 0.5 per cent from next January.
On top of that, staff involved in the Olympics will enjoy a £3.50 an hour bonus for each shift they work during the Games. Overall that will be worth about £500 a head, said Mr Crow.
Network Rail has also signed away any right to dismiss a worker during the Olympics – whatever they do wrong.
The extraordinary arrangement was condemned by Tory MPs, who accused Network Rail and ministers of giving in to blackmail.
Dominic Raab, who is pressing for new strike laws, said: ‘The British public is being blackmailed. There’s no justification for giving rail staff a 10 per cent pay increase plus bonus, whilst pay is frozen across the public sector.
‘Yet again, the RMT has held the public to ransom – this time under the threat of disrupting the Olympics.’
Too bad the powers that be wouldn’t stand up to the union and let em do their worst. So let em wreck the Olympics. It might just wreck the union too, and that would be more then worth the trouble and monies spent.
Oh wait ... we might then miss that awe inspiring sport of endurance and strategy ... Curling. Gak.
Posted by peiper
on 05/12/2011 at 07:18 AM
Filed Under: • Unions-Labor •
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Permalink • Wednesday - May 11, 2011
Accidental Spiedies
I had some chicken breast meat left over from a recipe I made earlier in the week, and I didn’t know what to do with it. Hey, how about I marinade it in some Italian salad dressing, then grill it? Fine. So I take 10 chicken “tenderloins” and a quart Ziploc bag, and add a cup of spicy garlic zesty Italian bottled salad dressing. That didn’t look zesty enough, so I threw in a tablespoon of pizza pepper flakes, 2 rounded tablespoons of Italian Seasoning spice mix, 4 or 5 more cloves of minced garlic, and some extra olive oil and red wine vinegar. And put it back into the fridge for a day. I came back the next day and gave the sauce a little taste, and added the juice of a really big lemon, a teaspoon of black pepper, a few whole bay leaves and some salt. That seemed better. I wasn’t really thinking of what I was doing, or looking for any specific flavor. I just wanted a marinade that wouldn’t wimp out. A day and a half later, and the chicken is essentially pickled. Ceviched; cooked by acid. Bone white and ready to fall apart. So I took out one chunk of chicken and grilled it up. Tastes great. The rest will be dinner.
And that’s when I realized I had accidentally made spiedies. How about that?
Spiedies are a Southern Tier thing, a way of marinading meat that is pretty much endemic to lower central New York. Some say the Italian immigrants brought the recipe back at the start of the 20th century, others say those Italian immigrants stole it from the Hungarian immigrants who came there two generations earlier to work the coal mines. Whatever. Take your meat - pork, beef, lamb, chicken - cut it into small slices or 3/4” cubes, mix up a marinade that tastes like a salad dressing phaser set on Stun, plop in the meat, cover, refrigerate, and come back in several days. Seriously, several days. Two days minimum, but if you have a cold fridge and you get all the air out of the container, you can safely run the marinade for a week.
The proper way to cook them is on skewers over a charcoal grill, but you can do them in a pan on your stove top just as well, or under the broiler. They cook fast. The classic serving method is to grab a slice of “Italian bread” - not real Italian bread, but the sliced loaf bread that calls itself Italian - and use the the slice like an oven mitt to pull the meat off the skewer. This gives you a half rolled up sandwich, a bit like a hot dog in a bun, which you then dip in a fresh bowl of the marinade and then eat while standing. Sophisticated types could just serve the meat over a fancy salad with an herb vinegarette dressing. Less sophisticated but hungrier folks put the grilled meat on a roll, add lettuce, tomato, onion, a bit of mayo and a slice of American cheese and make a nice sandwich.
Yeah yeah, you can actually go and buy spiedie sauce. Why bother, when it’s so close to bottled Italian dressing, which is just olive oil and red wine vinegar? Just add more garlic, plenty of lemon juice, some red wine vinegar, and lots more herbs and spices. Some folks add mint leaves. Sauce recipes are easy to find, as is a formal definition of the dish.
Guess I was missing living in Binghamton. Or maybe just some of the food. Funny how I don’t miss the winter weather they have at all!
I wonder if I have time to make halupki to go with it? And my famous tater pancakes with sour cream and butter?
Posted by Drew458
on 05/11/2011 at 02:58 PM
Filed Under: • Fine-Dining •
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Permalink • Built To Last
Designed in the 50s and made out of this revolutionary stuff called Zytel, Remington’s Nylon 66 was a plastic rifle decades before plastic guns were cool. This one was a compact, super light little semi-automatic .22 that had a 14 shot magazine in the stock. What made it really cool was that most of the gun was made from plastic. The stocks, the receiver, the trigger, the trigger guard, most of the internal parts - all made from this rock hard stuff called Zytel, which was a Bakelite kind of plastic first cousin to nylon. The parts never wore, never gummed up, never froze together, and almost never even needed oiling. Only the barrel, the bolt, the receiver cover and a few springs were made from steel, while the magazine tube was made from brass. And the one pictured here, an Apache Black model, had chromed steel instead of blued carbon steel, for even more weatherproofing. It really was a last-forever little rifle. The design intended to save money made Remington a small fortune.
In the early 1950s, Remington Arms Co. did not have a mid-priced .22-cal. semi-automatic rifle. Management knew that there were three high-cost components of any sporting arm – the barrel, receiver and stock. Engineers analyzed each to see if any significant cost savings could be obtained. They soon concluded that barrels did not offer much opportunity for savings, so they focused on the receivers and stocks.
[ early 60s Remington ad copy ] “Nylon makes the action virtually jamproof (Key parts glide on ‘greaseless bearings’ of long-wearing nylon.) There’s actually no need for lubrication.
“The remarkable DuPont ‘Zytel’ nylon stock is not affected by freezing cold, soaking rain or rotting humidity. In fact, if the stock ever warps, cracks, chips, fades or peels, we’ll replace it for free.
“This is the 22 rifle trappers depend on from Hudson Bay to the Everglades. The only 22 that Alaskan fishermen find able to withstand the attacks of corrosive sea spray to protect their nets from marauding sea lions.”
Advertising hyperbole? Not really. It’s largely a statement of fact. Introduced in 1959 at a price of $49.95, the Model 66 was management’s solution to controlling the cost of the receiver and stock components of a mid-priced .22.
Remington at the time was owned by DuPont. Working with the DuPont Petrochemicals Department, Remington engineers under the supervision of Wayne Leek seized upon structural Zytel Nylon 101, part of the Nylon 66 family of plastics, as the solution to manufacturing a synthetic stock and receiver. Among its many qualities, Zytel Nylon was capable of being formed into any shape, was impervious to solvents, oils, mild acids, alkalis, fungus, rodents and insects, and was self-lubricating and dimensionally stable.
Remington made more than a million of them, from the 1959 until the mid 80s, and in all probability most of those are still shooting today. Well, I’d bet most are lost in the back of dad’s closet, got left behind at the summer cottage, or are sleeping away the decades up in the attic under some old clothes from the 60s. But they’d only need a little cleaning, and they’d be go to go again. They came in several colors, all of which had pre-PC names, like Mohawk Brown, Apache Black, and Seneca Green. Once Remington stopped making them they sold production rights to a Brazilian gun company, who made them until the late 80s, who then sold the rights to Magtech, who made their version until the mid 90s. So the rifle had what amounts to a 40 year production run.
The Nylon 66’s unusual construction material makes the rifle both sturdier and more resistant to weather than the typical .22 caliber rifle. Moreover, given the natural lubricity of nylon 66, there’s very little need to use oil on the gun’s working parts.
The great enemy of most semiautomatic .22 rimfire rifles is the gummy residue that accumulates after a few hundred rounds and eventually prevents the mechanism from moving. This gunk consists of messy and dirty-burning ammunition combining with gun oil. Because the Nylon 66 requires next to no oil (just a little on the receiver cover to forestall rust), the rifle stays clean longer.
Variation being the source of fresh sales, Remington also produced several similar rifles that used many of the same basic parts. There were two bolt action versions; a single shot and a repeater. There was a Nylon 77 version that took a detachable box magazine. And for a very short while there was even a lever action version, which owns the distinction of being the only lever action repeater that Remington ever built.
To allay market concerns that a plastic gun just wouldn’t hold up, or just wasn’t accurate, Remington hired exhibition shooter Tom Frye to make their case:
No greater tribute could be bestowed on any rifle than what it accomplished in the hands of Tom Frye, trick shooter and field representative for Remington. In 1959, to break Ad Topperwein’s world record of hitting 72,500, 2-1/2” wooden blocks thrown into the air, Frye used three Model 66’s to hit 100,004 wooden blocks out of 100,010 thrown. To do it, Frye shot 1,000 shots an hour, eight hours a day, for 13 consecutive days without one malfunction or misfire. That’s rimfire reliability!
What made this feat even more impressive was that the 3 rifles were only cleaned 5 times during the entire marathon. That’s about once every 135 boxes of ammo, which is probably nearly as many rounds as a normal .22 will ever be fired in it’s lifetime.
Nearly a decade later, I remember Remington still had ads in Boy’s Life (the Boy Scout magazine. Yes, gun ads in a magazine for children!!!) where you could write in and they’d send you one of the blocks, with a genuine bullet hole - and bullet!! - still in it. Oh, I wanted one so bad. But my mother realized it would become just another bit of clutter and result in even more junk mail, and she refused to waste a 5¢ stamp on it. I wonder how many of those blocks are still around today? I wonder how many of those rifles are still around today? I saw one in a picture posted at Vilmar’s, and I know my wife’s cousin has one in his gun safe, and I quickly found out today that there is a group that collects them, and they have at least one online forum.
The Nylon 66 was a great little rifle, decades ahead of its time. Wish I had one.
sources
http://www.americanrifleman.org/ArticlePage.aspx?cid=1&id=1795
http://www.chuckhawks.com/rem_nylon_rifles.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BQY/is_8_45/ai_55605722/?tag=mantle_skin;content
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BQY/is_2_54/ai_n21175828/
http://www.nylonrifles.com/wp/
Posted by Drew458
on 05/11/2011 at 11:29 AM
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •
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Permalink • a day out last week
I’ve been working on a bunch of photos reducing and cropping etc. so I can share em here. Takes more time then I think when I start.
And my damn brand new chair is not comfortable, but I doubt they’ll allow me to bring it back and exchange it. Felt great in the store and does have back support. Anyway ....
I became a year older (and feel it) last week. The wife was due to see her aged auntie who we adore, and suggested we all go to lunch and also take in a tea room and museum she’s been after me to see for a long time. So, I caved and gave up the computer for a day and I’m glad I did. But I need to go back there again to finish off other photos I didn’t get right or missed. This place has so much history ...
Over the river and thru the woods to Auntie Joan’s we go. And some damn narrow cart tracks which is what this road actually was. There are these tiny cuts in the side called laybys every so often. If a car is coming your way and there’s a place to pull over, you do and let em by. Unless they get to one after you’ve already passed one before they came on the scene. One of you will have to back up to the last layby, unless as happened to us, there was a sudden grouping of cars behind. Really tight squeezes and this is nothing compared to other carts tracks we’ve been on.
And over the river .................
I would love to live in a setting like this. Couldn’t afford the upkeep let alone the house. And not much for camping out.
We picked up our Aunt Joan, who turns 88 in June. She’s still bawdy and spry and drives quite a bit. She was one heck of an artist until a few years ago. Hasn’t painted anything in a couple years.
KING JOHN’S HOUSE AND GARDEN (except it wasn’t his)
The house and property were part of an early medieval and major complex. It was called King John’s House because the original historian thought they had found the king’s hunting lodge (c1206 - known from royal records). They now know it dates from the mid 13th century.
There are markings and ancient heraldic graffiti on some walls in the museum upstairs, but I wasn’t able to catch the images on camera.
Something I’d never heard of before is on display in the downstairs. A tiny portion of the remains of a floor made from animal bones. They date before the 18th century.
There’s a small but comfortable outdoor tea garden, nothing fancy and the weather this May 4th could not have been better. However, we went inside to the tea room which is plain but nice. Unfortunately, the coffee was more ink then coffee and the tea that was brought to us in a large pot was more water then tea. Undrinkable even with an extra bag, and expensive too. Snacks and cakes and such didn’t look very appetizing, which is not to say they’re bad as other people seemed happy with them.
The House known as King John’s House
In 1927, the bldg. now called King John’s House was owned by Miss Mabel Moody.
Located at 13 Church Street in Romsey, she asked a local antiquarian, a Mr. Walter Andrew, to study the property deeds and to investigate the roof space. It was only then that evidence was discovered of the great age of the house. People had over the many years, just lost sight of the fact that the building was noteworthy.
An architect to Winchester Cathedral was brought in to carry out further investigations which then revealed other medieval features behind partitions, plaster and centuries of alterations and concealments.
In the excitment of the discoveries, the property was identified (mistakenly) as
King John’s hunting lodge. It wasn’t until years later that through carbon dating and other measures, the error was found. But by then the king became identified with the building and the surrounding property, and became part of Romsey folklore. The building does however date to the mid 1200s.
Today, there is no clear idea of it’s original ownership or purpose. There are now a small grouping of buildings, all ancient, that are attached.
Mr. Charles Moody (1846 - 1927) introduced the gun-smithing element into his family, who till then had been cutlers. He was apprenticed at a young age to Henry Drew, a gun maker and ironmonger as well as a cutler.
The family lived on this street throughout the 19th century, and occupied these premises for generations. First as renters and finally as owners. The family is known to have lived in the (then village) since the 1700s.
Most of the display here comes from original shop stock, counters and cases as well. This looks as it did then, in the late 1800s. The only difference is that the shop which was immediately downstairs, has been recreated on the second floor of number 13 Church Street.
Went to dinner afterwards, really nice place and good food. After which Aunt Joan wanted to see an art exhibition at Broadlands. That’s the old estate of the late Lord Mountbatten. The exhibit was somewhat interesting if frustrating. There were things there I’d have actually bought in different circumstances.
But the treat for me was this old house still in use. An Elizabethan house. Wow.
And so back home late in the day and back over that old narrow road, over which some idiots drive way too fast.
Posted by peiper
on 05/11/2011 at 10:39 AM
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Permalink • Is the real test this easy?
Ooh, fun. A sample Citizenship Test. Set it for 50 questions and your home state and it generates a random exam. I hope you all can score at least 90%. If you take the test several times you’ll see that there are about 80 questions in the whole queue; quite a number of the same ones keep popping up from iteration to iteration.
Some of the questions are rather sneaky; Pennsylvania is a border state with Canada. For about 40 miles along the shore of Lake Erie. And while we generally split the Great Lakes with Canada, Lake Michigan is all ours, so Illinois is not a border state. So you might learn a little trivia.
h/t to comments at Stoaty’s
A little update: Newsweek recently gave such a test to 1000 natural born American citizens. 38% of them failed. You can take their sample test here - read the question, provide your answer, then click to get their answer (it’s not multiple choice) and see how it goes. I got all 40 correct, and it took about 3 minutes to click through all 80 screens. The Daily Beast wrote a couple pages about what it all means, and it looks to me like they blame it on a lack of income redistribution, a lack of Federal control over all the States’ education systems, and a dearth of unions running our political institutions. SAY WHAT??? Horry Clap, this guy Romano is a friggin commie.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/11/2011 at 10:18 AM
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff •
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Permalink • Zero Man On A Zero Mission
Oh yeah, This Will Surely Help™
Senator John Kerry will travel to Pakistan in coming days to put relations “on the right track” after the killing of Osama bin Laden in a surprise Navy SEALs raid, but he is likely to face fury from the army over what it sees as a breach of trust.
Kerry, a Democrat who is close to the Obama administration, said he expected to see “all the main players” in Pakistan to discuss strains in bilateral ties following the May 2 operation that killed the al Qaeda leader in his Pakistani hideout.
“A number of people suggested it would be good to get a dialogue going about the aftermath and how we get on the right track,” Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters in Washington.
Co-author of a 2009 bill that tripled non-military aid to Islamabad, Kerry is seen as a friend of the country, but he is likely to face the wrath of the powerful security establishment which has been embarrassed by the unilateral U.S. action on Pakistani soil.
This figures. Given that yesterday’s post was correct, that all of this is much ado about nothing, then sending this loser horse face over there is perfect; there’s nothing to do, so even he can’t screw it up. It looks like a perfect case of “John Kerry, reporting for doody”.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/11/2011 at 08:48 AM
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • International •
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Permalink • No Wonder They Never Visit BMEWS
Axis of Evil much? The “legitimate” government of North Korea is involved in narcotics trafficking. Class act.
Pinched by tightening economic sanctions and faced with what might become a contentious transition of power, North Korea is ramping up production of one of its key foreign currency generators—heroin.
When satellite photos were released last week by Amnesty International showing the rogue nation’s prison camp system, some analysts were surprised by the expansion of agricultural lands around the camps.
“What was really surprising,” one satellite analyst, who studied the images but asked not to be identified, said, “was how farming acreage on the land around the Yodok camp had expanded. These are poppy fields and have been since we first looked at the camp in 2001.”
That assessment was underscored by Chuck Downs, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, who said that the regime’s military, which runs the camps and the nation’s illicit heroin production, “do not allow food production by prisoners because they would steal it. They would rather grow drugs.”
Most analysts agree that the expansion of the drug-producing fields is a sign of a regime in deep economic trouble.
Because of the secrecy of the regime there are no firm figures on drug profits, but estimates put the earnings on exports of heroin from $500 million to $1 billion annually.
“To put that in context,” Bruce Klingner, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, pointed out that “the total for legitimate exports is estimated at around $1 billion annually.”
North Korea first turned to large scale heroin production in the mid 1990s when the nation’s manufacturing sector collapsed. Kim Jong Il, the nation’s dictator, decided that the heroin was the quicker way to make up for the export losses and ordered all collective farms to dedicate 12 acres to poppy production.
...
Over the past dozen years more than 50 Korean diplomats or other state workers have been caught carrying drugs into more than 20 countries, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
...
According to Klingner, one of the reasons that happens is that foreign embassies for the regime get no state funding for their legations.“Diplomats are expected to fund themselves,” he said. “And this is one way they do it.”
Posted by Drew458
on 05/11/2011 at 08:36 AM
Filed Under: • Crime • Economics • North-Korea •
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Permalink • The Birdman of Switzerland
Ha, I hardly even need to write a post after those headlines. But yup, Swiss airline pilot Yves Rossy has done it again, taking his strap on 6.5 foot wide delta wing and it’s 4 micro sized jet engines for a jaunt above, into, and across the Grand Canyon. This one was a bit of an illegal flight, since he didn’t file for FAA permits in time, but after recent flights crossing the English Channel and going over the Alps in his high speed bird suit, the Canyon was a walk in the park. Well, a flight in a national park.
With a pair of rockets strapped to his back, Swiss adventurer “JetMan" Yves Rossy soared over the Grand Canyon over the weekend, marking the flying man’s first U.S. flight.
Steering only with movements of his body, JetMan launched from a helicopter at 8,000 feet over the canyon and skimmed the walls of one of the America’s grandest natural formations on a sunny weekend morning, before deploying his parachute and descending to the Canyon floor.
Just don’t ask when it happened.
While a spokeswoman for the adventurer said that the flight was a success, and issued a picture of Rossy over the Grand Canyon, she could not specify what time Rossy flew, or even whether the flight was on Saturday or Sunday.
The Hualapai Tribe calls the rugged area home, and gave assent for Rossy to fly near Eagle Point on the tribe’s reservation, an event that occured days after JetMan abruptly cancelled a planned press event with little explanation.
The adventurer claimed complications with the Federal Aviation Administration led him to scrap his first flight, though a representative for the FAA told FoxNews.com that Rossy simply didn’t request a permit early enough. Indeed, the spokesman explained that the agency reached out to Rossy to warn him of the need for a permit, and struggled with how to define his jet suit—airplane or a power glider?
Rossy, who calls himself the JetMan, has rocketed above the English Channel and the Swiss Alps in his custom-built wing suit. Rossy’s jet suit averages 124 mph and has a 6.5-foot wing span; he wears it on his back, sending fuel to the four engines with a slight roll of his hand. The FAA ultimately grouped it with airplanes.
Video at the link above. More video on YouTube of other flights, here and here and here.
Pretty cool. But before you go making your own as a way to beat the morning traffic, realize that Rossy’s mini jet wing can not take off from the ground, nor can it land. He gets dropped from an airplane, does his flights, and then lands via parachute. And I kind of get the idea that his legs must get rather toasty, what with 4 paint can sized jet engines running just inches away and all. So it isn’t terribly practical, but that isn’t the point. The point is he is flying, all by himself, with just a wing strapped to his back. No seat, no cabin, no hand controls (other than a throttle, I hope!), no nothing. Until we all sprout feathers, this is as close to being eagles as people can get. And the darn thing can push him to 200kph, 300kph in a dive. Because flying is no fun if you’re just blobbing along; you want to go fast too.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/11/2011 at 07:59 AM
Filed Under: • planes, trains, tanks, ships, machines, automobiles •
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Permalink • Tuesday - May 10, 2011
Cities Online
The little widget over on the right sidebar tells me we have a visitor from Barrigada. Dude. That’s in Guam! Wiki tells me it’s an upscale neighborhood. Well of course; they’re online and visiting BMEWS, so it only goes to show, right?
Hello Guam!
Send me an email so we can register you so you can comment, and tell us all what’s going on waaaay over there. We never get any news from Guam, hardly ever. A few Aussies, one or two from Indonesia, but almost never from Guam. I think. I’ll have to check that country counter thingy and see.
Updated a few minutes later: Ok, we’ve actually had 669 visits from Guam since I put that flag counter in, down at the bottom of the page. If you click it, it takes you to a page which gives you some BMEWS stats. Which I never pay attention to. Ha, it turns out we have more traffic than I realized. And from almost everywhere, almost every day! Last month I got my first visitor from Gabon, and over time we’ve been visited from just about everywhere. 280 countries. Except North Korea. And Tasmania. Come on, what’s up with that? Let’s get it together Tassies, m’kay?
♫ We are the world
Of anti-moonbats ♬
We are the ones who make the lefties squirm ♪
♬ So let’s get to posting
♫ We are the wor-
Shut up Drew.
Oh, Ok. Fine. 
Posted by Drew458
on 05/10/2011 at 02:30 PM
Filed Under: • International •
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Permalink • Well Duh
( USA Today ) In a secret deal sealed 10 years ago, Pakistan agreed to allow the United States to conduct a unilateral operation against Osama bin Laden if he was ever found on Pakistani soil, with the understanding that Pakistan would protest vociferously afterward, The Guardian reports.
and to point out a) some people shoot their mouths off without ever reading the article, and b) just how stupid people can be, here’s one of the early comments, proving once again that reading comprehension sometimes doesn’t even extend to the first line past the headlines:
Update at 10:57 a.m. ET: Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf denies that his administration struck an agreement with the United States years ago to let U.S. special forces kill or capture Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan, The Associated Press reports.
Let’s drop in on the Guardian and see what the story actually says ...
The US and Pakistan struck a secret deal almost a decade ago permitting a US operation against Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil similar to last week’s raid that killed the al-Qaida leader, the Guardian has learned.
The deal was struck between the military leader General Pervez Musharraf and President George Bush after Bin Laden escaped US forces in the mountains of Tora Bora in late 2001, according to serving and retired Pakistani and US officials.
Under its terms, Pakistan would allow US forces to conduct a unilateral raid inside Pakistan in search of Bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the al-Qaida No3. Afterwards, both sides agreed, Pakistan would vociferously protest the incursion.
...
The deal was struck between Pervez Musharraf and George Bush in 2001 and renewed during the ‘transition to democracy’ – a six-month period from February 2008 when Musharraf was still president but a civilian government had been elected.
The deal puts a new complexion on the political storm triggered by Bin Laden’s death in Abbottabad, 35 miles north of Islamabad, where a team of US navy Seals assaulted his safe house in the early hours of 2 May.
Pakistani officials have insisted they knew nothing of the raid, with military and civilian leaders issuing a strong rebuke to the US. If the US conducts another such assault, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani warned parliament on Monday, “Pakistan reserves the right to retaliate with full force.”
Days earlier, Musharraf, now running an opposition party from exile in London, emerged as one of the most vocal critics of the raid, terming it a “violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan”.
Yeah, this kind of makes sense. You have to put yourself in a Spy vs Spy mindset to see it, but it’s there. Pakistan is caught between Iraq and a hard place (hur hur, tho it’s really Iran). They have no choice other than to be a wobbly ally and a fair weather friend. So a smart President and a spy agency with a cunning plan ("as cunning as a fox who’s just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University”, to keep the Blackadder meme going) would make that work to their advantage. And they probably did. Just like this. It almost makes me wonder if that helicopter wasn’t trashed on purpose, to leave a calling card. With false cloaking technology that the Pakis could “capture” and then sell to China for millions, to screw with their heads. While we “demand” it’s return. Nyuk nyuk nyuk nyuk. And of course the Pakis are out there denying it all up and down. While collecting another billion in aide while looking the other way, playing both sides against the middle, as usual. And no one will believe this story, neither our side or the terrorist’s. Which is exactly the plan. Mwahahahahaa!
Yet no matter how many layers of “We know that they know that we know that they know” might be involved here, the 72 Versions business coming out of the White House every day is just too much. Unless it’s actually Joe Biden, not Dick Cheney or Darth Rove, who is the Machiavellian super genius. Um, no. Some things just can not be believed.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/10/2011 at 01:36 PM
Filed Under: • War On Terror •
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Permalink • Armchair Warriors
Human Events sends me an email telling me all about the new Guns & Patriots column.
Hey great. Cool. Fine. I’m always up for a quick read on 2A stuff and stories about various gunny goodness.
This one is a bit of a daydream though. What’s the best gun for killing Somali Pirates?”
The scourge of pirates off the coast of Africa is a problem as old as the United States. For historical context, ‚”…to the shores of Tripoli…” in the Marines’ Hymn specifically refers to the Barbary Wars in which the USA went to war against the Barbary pirates off the coast of North Africa.
It is my assertion that the way to end the piracy is to end the pirates themselves. When the cost of doing business becomes too high, the smarter of the pirates will find some new trade in which to engage. The less intellectually gifted will feed the fish.
Understand that I do not believe there is a need to send in the Marines to handle this problem, though they could certainly address the issue with their usual panache. Rather, if the shipping companies merely employed small teams of properly armed security contractors, the issue would sort itself out.
So, if you were putting together a security team to guard a ship moving through the area, with what weapons would to equip them?
So the author feels that his pick of a selection of small arms will do the job. And in truth they would be a whole lot better than nothing. But I think he didn’t quite make the historical connection, even though he tried to put things into a historical context.
This is what we used to defeat the Barbary Pirates:
Ok, this is actually a British 32 pounder, but ours looked quite similar
Against a slow and large wooden ship at fairly short distances, a 32 pound iron ball flying at the speed of sound is quite effective. However it rather pales against fiberglass speedboats jumping about in the waves. And it doesn’t really have the range; by 400 meters the round iron ball is pretty much spent in terms of velocity.
So, while the above article does select a .50 BMG sniper rifle, even that is only going to be minimally effective against a small boat at distances over a mile. And that’s the crux of my counter-post: when dealing with pirates, your target is not the pirates themselves, but their ships and boats. And the only idea that makes sense is to be able to sink them before they can get close enough to shoot their RPGs at you. That means you have to take them out at a range of at least 2 miles. And to do that on the cheap - because pirates simply aren’t worth any multi-million dollar weapon system investment, there’s only really one answer:
You betcha. A good old 40mm Bofors dual mount. It’s the classic Anti Aircraft gun from WWII, but they can shoot across the waves just as well as they can shoot up in the air. The 40mm is about as tiny as a naval cannon can get: it’s a 2 pounder. But a dual mount like the one pictured can put 8 or more of those 2lb shells down range in just a couple seconds, and with proximity fuses close enough will get the job done. 1 or 2 near hits will shred a speedboat full of pirates, and a dozen direct hits will sink any dhow sized mothership they may be using.
You’d want to modernize the mounting a bit to allow for a downward shooting angle for close in fighting. And you’d want to modularize the whole thing, so that merchant ships would only have to weld on one or two mounts per side, and they’d stop in at South Africa, the Suez Canal, and the southern tip of India to pick up guns and Navy crews while they transit those dangerous waters, then drop them off at those points as they leave them. 8 or 12 inch and a half bolts would hold them on just fine. Probably only take 20 minutes, 3 guys, an air wrench and a light crane to mount or dismount. That way only the gun mounts are “military”, and the rest of the ship is “civilian”, so they can get around those old laws against armed merchantmen. The “rent” for the sailors doing gun crew duty would be 3 hots and a cot. Plus ammo used I guess. This would cost tens of billions less than steaming dozens of capital ships back and forth in the Indian Ocean. Everybody knows how to use a Bofors. There are tens of thousands of them rattling around the world; the gun has been popular for more than 70 years and is or has been used by just about every nation with ships. It’s got a 5 mile horizontal range, which means it ought to be able to chew any pirate speedboat or mothership to splinters long before the pirates could get within RPG range. I suppose you could also issue the Navy guys some small arms, just in case.
It would work. It would be very cost effective. Pretty soon you’d see these AA mounts on the sides of all merchant ships and ocean liners, and somebody would quickly figure out how to build dummy guns for the look of it. The locations used to mount and dismount could change regularly or as needed as the pirate threat moves around. And you could cut down the in-theater capital ships by 80%, though you’d want to move some of them to the border areas to handle wiseguy pirates who’d think the new safe places to attack would be just past the dismount areas.
Pretty quickly there wouldn’t be any more pirates. Any little boat that closes with 2 miles of a big merchant ship had better identify itself, otherwise it’s open season with no paperwork or Command approval necessary.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/10/2011 at 12:18 PM
Filed Under: • Pirates, aarrgh! •
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Permalink • Life Under My Rock
Top Gear is a television show? Doh!! I never knew. I’ve only seen the columns online.
We don’t subscribe to BBC America, but the cable company has recently expanded their On Demand feature, so I can get the top 3 dozen shows from that network that way, without paying for another channel. Ha!
Jeremy Clarkson is the man. Love how he treats the fwench; talking about a racy version of a Citroen that will be built in a limited edition of 1000, he says that’s because they’re all a bunch of idle communists. Marvelous.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/10/2011 at 11:53 AM
Filed Under: • Television •
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
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