End to a great vacation.

"Are you sure that you don't want to come?" I asked my wife again, as she dropped me off at the Museum Of Flight in Seattle.

"Oh, no. The girls and I aren't that interested, and it's $18 a ticket, and we want to go to that Curiosity Shop before we go home," she assured me.

Good.

I know that's mean, but she's right; my daughters just never caught the bug for airplanes, and my wife never had it, either. It was afternoon on my last day of vacation, and I wanted one last cool thing to do before we left. I hopped out of the rental car and skipped up the walk past a B17 to the door of the museum, concerned about the fact that I only had two hours before it closed.

Two older gentlemen were standing on the front steps, wearing docent name tags and talking. They stopped talking and turned, along with everyone else, as a 747-8 started its take-off roll about 200 yards away. Honestly, I thought that it was only a hundred yards away, but Google Earth shows me different: Runway 31 Left is about 200 yards from the front steps of the museum. Supposedly, the new GEnx-2B67 engine is supposed to be quieter and more environmentally friendly, but one can't fault the pilot for unleashing every decibel available when pushing 900,000 lbs of one of the largest passenger jets in the world up to take-off speed.

 600 feet isn't very distant when four General Electric engines each put out 66,500 foot-pounds of thrust.

The two guys both clenched their jaws as they watched the airship gain speed down the runway.

"Come on, up! Up!" one of them said. The nose lifted, and a second later the great plane took off, a mile and a half away, with plenty of runway left.

"I always feel like they're never getting up in time, when I watch them," the elder gentleman said. I would have bet a fat paycheck that he'd pulled back on the yoke during a few take-offs, himself. Most museums, the patrons would get annoyed if you had put that kind of ruckus up right at the entryway. Not here. Every man, woman, and child in attendance was watching the takeoff. Because we all were here to look at airplanes.

I went inside, and gladly shoved my money at the cashier, and got the audio tour guide device, too. I looked at the map that they gave me of the place, and realized that there was NO WAY that I was going to see half of this place, at a dead run. Blocks and blocks of multiple levels of great displays of real airplanes. So I relaxed and decided to walk to see what I could.

I went into the TA Wilson Great Gallery, and found myself looking straight at a M-21 variant of the A-12, which was an early Blackbird. This one had a D-21 drone on its back. If you think modern drones are exotic, you should consider that we were launching these things at Mach 3 during the 1960s. Check out this video (narrated by Kelly Johnson) of a failed launch, taken from another Blackbird, an SR71:

I looked around, and found that they had an actual fuselage from a wrecked SR71, which cockpit you were permitted to sit in. Don't think for a second that ten-year-old Matt G was going to miss a chance to sit in the cockpit of an SR71. I hassled a dad who had just helped his son out of the cockpit to take my picture.

 

 

 

 

 

I think that the seat must have been lowered.  I'm sorry that I left my right leg cocked, but there was a line, and I knew that I must get out.

They had a simulator that would let you fly one of three different aircraft. .

 

 

I texted my Dad and Tam and Old NFO, asking which one they would go with.



Options are: P38F Lightning, F4U-1A Corsair, FM-2 Wildcat, F15 Eagle, EA-18 Growler, F22 Raptor.

I immediately knew which one I wanted to fly, and I got in the slow-moving line. Old NFO, predictably, immediately responded that he would fly the F4U Corsair. Well, duh; he's an old Navy pilot. Dad was still mulling it over, and Tam, rarely known for quick email responses (!) didn't get back to me. I didn't send one to my best friend Scott, because he knew exactly which one I would choose, we having had the discussion many times in junior high and high school. (Honestly, though, I don't know for sure which one he would have flown. I'm guessing that without his beloved P51, he would have flown the Corsair that his Grampa John used to fly.)

 

The line was moving slowly because one of the two simulators was down. The rules said that the machine needed a pilot and a co-pilot, because of the weight distribution issue. I was alone. The lady in front of me was waiting in line for her son. I subconsciously labeled him a brat, until she explained that he was a great kid, and she had volunteered to wait in line while he hit other exhibits, and that he was in his Vancouver civil air patrol group, and had piloted her around. The 15 year old kid showed up and thanked her for her help. I asked him suspiciously what plane he planned to fly. (Probably a jet.) He said that he wanted to fly the Wildcat. I explained that I was paying for him to be my copilot as soon as he was done with his own flight. He was tickled with it.

 

Basically, I suck at tracking around and getting my Zero. I focused on one Zeke, and just couldn't turn with him. I would overtake him (once I learned to deal with the backwards throttle. Pull back to go faster?!?), and struggle to keep my .50s on him, and then overshoot him. In the end, I should have focused on the Janes and Bettys that the Zeke was escorting.

 

I got out, and headed rapidly to the World War II aircraft wing.

 

Ah, there was my beloved P-38 Lightning. Twin tail, twin Allison engines, 4 .50s and a 20mm cannon all snugged up in a box of power in the nose in line with the gunsight. It was the second fastest prop plane in the war, after the Mustang. While it had its problems (at 20,000 and above, the engine under-performed and began to wear terribly, making it sadly not as useful as one would hope as a bomber escort), it was a great fighter and attack plane.

Oh, as for the Mustang? They had a very nice one:

Well, the PLANE was very nice, even if the picture wasn't. I had turned off my flash to save batteries, and was trotting through the darkened room, as this shows. I was shooting a bitty little Nikon Coolpix point-and-shoot, with its standard-issue tiny lens. Surely this was no way to treat the Cadillac Of The Skies. 

 

As well as a lovely Spitfire:

And a nice Corsair:

 I was running, taking pictures as fast as I could, when the announcement came: it was time to leave. I've got more pictures that I'll post later.

 

I went outside to await my wife in the parking lot. It wasn't a boring wait; I had something to look at:

Like this WB-47E Stratojet.

Or this B-17F:



Monday Morning Coming Down.

--I got home last night to find that my younger daughter had picked enough pecans off the trampoline (fallen from the neighbor's pecan tree) to shell over a cup and a half of pure pecan halves for me. Then she toasted them for me and had them waiting in a bag. That girl. She will go FAR.

--My Public Administration class is not going well. It's like they expect you to do all the readings, or something.

--I'm waiting to see the enhanced footage of Felix Baumgartner going supersonic. I'm still skeptical. There should be something interesting to see/hear, there. Consider this footage of aircraft going supersonic (the Atlas rocket launch at the end is the most impressive.).

--We got a couple of big tubs of mascarpone cheese from the grocery salvage store a month ago, and made some stuff with it. This stuff is incredible. I'll never use ricotta for lasagna again, if I can get this stuff. Spreads like soft cream cheese, but has more texture. Very rich flavored. It goes great with fruit, too. The reason I feel like I'm being held out on is because you people are holding out on me.

--I am rocking the copstache in ways I never have before. I grew it out somewhat at Blogorado, and just never really shaved my upper lip. I've trimmed it twice already. I'm strongly considering shaving my head, too. Just because. My wife isn't really happy about this, but she doesn't permit me to give any input on her hair styles. And this isn't permanent. I don't think that the moustache will cause me to go insane. This will, though.

--My daughter wants to get into skeet. I can train her on safe shotgun loading and use, but I'm a terrible wingshot, so I'm going to pay professional trainers to teach her, with a family 20 gauge Remington 1100.

--Given that I've yet to hear any justification for the DPS helicopter shooting of two unarmed Guatemalan aliens in the bed of a fleeing pickup down on the border, it doesn't look real good for the shooter. While I'm proud of our Texas Rangers as an investigative unit, I don't actually think that it's entirely appropriate for them to investigate this one. Time to invite some outside help, guys. If the shoot was good (which would involve new evidence that I've not yet heard, but is certainly possible), then you want it untainted by suspicion. If the shoot was bad, then it doesn't matter; just take out the problem and deal with it accordingly.

--I don't know what your weather looks like, but I doubt it's as good as mine:

-- Heard from prisoner whom I had just arrested, talking on the cell phone to his girlfriend: "Yeah, be sure and get my truck and trailer out from impound right away, or the wrecker company will charge extra days. And hon? Put on some makeup and dress real pretty, and try to get 'em to drop the price some on getting our stuff out. Have mom drive you there, and tell her to put her leg on."

--The lemons on my Meyers lemon tree are finally ripening:

--It's getting hard lately to find the great Buffalo Bore Heavy .38 loads. Anyone got a line on them? Especially non-+P?

Micro climate.

I've always been impressed with how, even though the Official Weather Station for our area may report temperatures of, say, 39 degrees, I could have frost on my lawn. Or how when the weather station shows dry and still just a mile away, it's raining and gusting at my house.

Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get. Micro climates personalize what you get on a regular basis. Maybe your house is near a creek, in the shadow of a hill and in the lee of the wind? You'll find that your house is dank in the cool months and muggy in the warm months, despite your local predictions of dry and fresh.  Maybe you live next to a major heat sink, like a large concrete parking lot and between large low brick and concrete structures? In such a case, your first impression out the front door will always be that a sweater or jacket is less necessary than the rest of the people in your zip code.

I also like to watch weather come through, and see the reactions by the weather stations. For example:


Click to embiggen.
 

Check out what's going on there. The two weather stations on the map on the right show vastly different temperatures despite their proximity. But also you'll note that the higher temperature station still shows a wind from the south, while the western one now shows a brisk wind from the northwest. On the bottom graph, you can see that the change in the wind brought some rain that ramped up quickly, and the top graph shows that the temperature and the dew point dropped rapidly in concert with the changing wind direction (fourth graph). All in minutes.

I have GOT to get a decent digital-compatible reporting weather station.
For I am a weather geek.

Aw, come ON, guys!

So on October 14th, to honor Chuck Yeager on the moment of the 65th anniversary of his record-setting supersonic flight, the Air Force gave the retired general a joy ride in an F-15.

"I really appreciated the Air Force giving me a brand new F-15 to fly," Yeager told CNN.

Seriously? I think a cub CNN reporter got duped and missed the irony of that statement. The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle went operational in 1976. Thus that "brand new F-15" may actually have been first flying at a time closer to Glamorous Glennis' historic flight than this commerative one.*

Stop down for a second and think about that. In 29 years we went from dropping an experimental rocket plane from a B29 to break the sonic barrier on its 50th try, to a third generation supersonic jet fighter being operational. Since then, we've made some advances in fighter technology, but nothing like that technical leap.

But if I'm Chuck Yeager, I'm saying, "It's 900 miles to Roswell. How about we check out a F35B, pop the sound barrier and super-cruise over to Roswell, and then hover while we watch Baumgartner do his falling trick?"

THAT's how you treat a living legend of aviation, folks. Oh, and give him an Aim 9 to make a final kill on a rogue balloon after Felix's jump, too.

__________________________________________
*Which is really impressive, when you consider that the Eagle is still considered a viable fighter. Imagine using Sopwitch Camels or Fokker Dr. I's as fighters in Korea. Or Mustangs and Lightnings in Grenada. Or F86 Sabres during, uh, something else in the early 1980s... (Look, Grenada was already a reach.)

And so we lose another.

In a week where people are all worked up about one Armstrong's continuing problems, we lost another Armstrong altogether. Frankly, we fared poorly in that deal.

It seems odd that the first man to walk on the moon, who was a superbly-fit specimen of humanity in the most powerful nation on the planet, and who was an international hero without notable vices, should pass away at 81. I know-- 81 isn't exactly young, but the overall life expectancy for a United States citizen is now 78 years old*.

"I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer," he said in 2000. 

Yeah, and you flubbed your line, too. But we forgive you for that, Neil. You gave us more than a soundbite.

Hot jets, rocket man.

_______________________________
*Yes, I know that's for one born now, but the average life span goes up for people who survive to a certain age. Also, I get that I used the combined male/female average. Work with me, here.

Day of pictures, stream of consciousness.

I woke up this afternoon to find that my younger daughter had made a mocha:



Somehow I just knew. Don't ask me how. A father knows these things.

Then I made a run with Dad to Ray's Hardware in Dallas for speedstrips and other stuff. Ray's is really a gunshop. Legend has it that, back in the day, Ray's took in a .22 in exchange for a washtub, and sold the rifle later that day for a handsome profit. This caused more swapping, then dealing, then an FFL, and now they're about three generations into it. Their selection of ammo is pretty wide in cartridge calibers, but not so wide within each caliber. For example, they had about 10 boxes of .41 Long Colt when I checked (I always do, for my buddy LawDog. Sorry  bud-- though it was that same Winchester white box stuff from that run that they made in the '70, I couldn't go $85 a box.), but only two brands of .357 Sig, and only ONE flavor of .22 Hornet.  I got a box of Remington Express.38 S&W 148g LRNs, the only flavor of that caliber they had in stock.

Ray's has a bumper sticker that is seen around Dallas that says "Follow Me Across The Bridge To Ray's Hardware!" It has a picture of the catenary arch central to the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in the middle, which is visible from the front porch of Ray's on Singleton. After we left, we drove across the bridge, and I took a picture of the new-ish structure, built across the Trinity River in 2007. I daresay that it's destined to be thought of as an identifying characteristic of the Dallas skyline. It's pretty striking:



When I got home, Dad gave me one of his Bianchi Speed Strips, some .357 Sig ammo that he had graciously brought for me, and the .38 S&W ammo that he had bought while I was looking at MTM boxes. I gave him all the MTM boxes I had gotten. (two 50-round .38 boxes and two 100 round boxes.)  He had gotten the .38/.357s, and also the .44/.45 type speedstrips.

This of course made me combine my acquisitions:



The result is adorable.

Reaching in my pocket just now to pull out that strip of ammo, I found something in my pocket, a momento from taking my younger daughter shooting:

When I asked my younger daughter if she wanted to go shooting last week, she wanted to grab three things: Her rifle, her hearing protection, and her last remaining Barbie. I guess she wanted to be like her big sister. I found this in the trash yesternight, and grabbed it out to look for holes. The hair is matted from bullets pulling at it, but the head had popped off from a neck shot.

Oh yeah, that reminds me. She got to shoot her grandfather's 1928 Thompson submachinegun. Here's her first burst:

 

Then she set to rolling a milk jug.

Which reminds me, I need to get milk for my wife's coffee in the morning.
Maybe she'll make a mocha.

Space. I can't help that I love it.

Today I listened to a broadcast of RadioLab, in which they did several quick audio essays about space.

Look, I know that it's pushing it a bit to say that the Constitution authorizes our government to spend my money on space exploration. But I love that we're doing some of it. The very last story in the one-hour show is about trying to get private companies to explore space.

The first one was about the meaning that, Ann Druyan, widow of Carl Sagan, puts into the golden record that she directed the production of, just before it was launched with Voyager. I have to admit, her story got to me.

It's a quick hour, divided up into short essays, if you'll give it a listen.

Not to categorize or anything,

but if this girl couldn't detect the odor of vinegar and water from this d-bag just from the way he wore his hat, it's unlikely that this incident will drive her away.

NASA misses the most basic point in science: preserving documentation.

You ever run across one of those conspiracy theorists who claims that we never went to the moon, and that NASA filmed the Lunar landings in the desert, using mock-ups? I have. They're tedious. The thing about conspiracy theory is that you can NEVER prove that there wasn't a conspiracy. We cannot prove what is not; we can only hope to prove what is.

But when you start allowing basic evidence of what Is to come into question, you open the rabbit hole for conspiracy theorists to try to pull you into their argument. Then, whether or not they've been in the least bit successful, the very fact that you HAD that argument is proof that "some skeptics are involved in discussions as to the veracity of...." whatever it is that they're trying to prove.

So when you're the frickin' National Aeronautic and Space Administration, an organization made up of self-confessed geeks and scientists, you probably would do well to act like scientists, and preserve your documentation of the most controversial project that you've ever spent the public money on: the Moon landings. It seems that NASA has discovered that it taped over the original video that Apollo 11 beamed down from the Moon, with later data.

NASA, are you guys trying to needle the detractors? Keep up this kind of sloppy science*, and I'm going to stop scribbling love notes to you.

_________________________________________
*Yes, evidence preservation is part of science. A boring, less glamorous part of science, but a very necessary one.

Pale blue dot.

For too many, Carl Sagan was just a running joke about "billions and billions." But the man was taken with the giant* scale of the universe. As a thinking man, he couldn't help but have that affect his philosophy.

Take three and a half minutes, and go listen to the simple, profound words of a great thinker whom we lost too early.

_______________
*Edit.

Take my love, take my land...

...take my space station's new tin can.

NASA's newest addition to the International Space Station will be named "Cobert," because the "Cobert Report" television comedian's fictional host asked his viewers to vote him in, in write-ins.

They wrote his name in, all right. They did it 230,539 times, which beat out the next-highest choice, which was a non-write-in choice of "Serenity."

Well, I like Serenity better, obviously, but maybe we could get something a little bigger named for her. Say, the first iteration of interplanetary cargo shuttle.

Getting a glimpse of the big picture.

I've been going to the Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calender 2008 every day this month. And let me tell you-- petty problems melt.

BTW, for those of y'all who don't think about these things a lot, a light year is the distance that light travels in a year.

The speed of light is c, which is 186,000 miles per second.

That's about 5,869,713,600,000 miles. Getting on toward six trillion miles, for just one light year of distance. Makes our little 8.5 light-minute A.U. of 93 million miles seem pretty insignificant, doesn't it?

TEASER: Blogging on a theme.

This Friday, May 30th, a few of us are going to try something a little different.

Not really a collaboration.

More of a confederation, blogging on a theme.

Atomic Nerds, LawDog, Ambo Driver, Marko, Tam, and yours truly will provide different takes on the same tired old inspired new theme.

I picked the theme this week. Next time? Someone else.

So check your star calenders for Friday, and see what posts are here. Or there.

Tres cool

Yesterday morning at about 6:11, I was at the local fire station talking to a paramedic when my cell phone alarm went off. I checked it, and said, "Holy crap!" and ran to my patrol car. The paramedic, who was underdressed for the chilly morning he was smoking a cigarette in, shrugged and went back inside.

I dug out my binoculars, and thought about driving off to a better, darker spot. 6:12 no-- 6:13. Too late. I didn't want to miss it. I leaned back against the paramedic's pickup, and leaned my head back, looking to the northwest.

It turned out that I was looking too far north, for it was a flash out of the corner of my left eye that drew my attention more westerly, in time to see the International Space Station, docked with the Endeavor (STS-123), rising overhead to 87 degrees declination before descending east toward the gloaming horizon. The sun beyond the horizon caught the 200+ mile-high orbiting docked duo, and made them brighter than I ever would have guessed. Before they made it to their maximum height, I was tracking them with my cheapo 7X35 binoculars, and could easily see the pinched spot in the middle between the craft, with one side being considerably larger than the other. I had seen the shuttles pass over, before. I had seen many a man-launched satellite pass by. But I've never seen anything like this. It took about 4 minutes to pass over, at its speed of over 17,000 mph. Docked together, the two craft were undoubtedly a significantly larger spectacle than the "mere" sight of the ISS alone.

Worth watching. Go here to check on when it will be visible from your location.

Kinda cool, I guess.

A lunar eclipse is going on right over my head this very second.

They don't come around all that often, but they're nowhere nearly as rare as total solar eclipses.

You remember some of 'em. I recall looking at the partial one on the night of May 19-20, 1994, with my Dad, through his binoculars.

I guess the reason we like to watch them is for the same reason that we like to watch dawns and sunsets. There aren't many naturally-occuring celestial incidents that we can view with the naked eye, that we can watch happen over the course of minutes. Not as fast a half-hour sit-com, perhaps, but about as quick as a season finale 2 hour episode.

What would the druids think of our current attention spans?