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| 2010-01-22 14:56 |
| Rounding It Out |
| Public |
| airplanes, aviation, dvd, film, money, movies, ships, shopping, stuff i want, submarine, video, war, ww2 |
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I had a bit of money left in my Amazon.com account after my Christmas/Birthday purchase, so this week I tried to find something that I could buy to round it out. This is a challenge because you don't really know what shipping is going to cost till you actually place the order.
So what I got: another DVD...three WW2-vintage war movies from Britain.
* One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing--a damaged and crewless RAF bomber careens aimlessly over England before it crashes. What happened to the men who had been aboard? This movie follows them as they make their escape from German-held Holland with the aid of the Dutch resistance. Peter Ustinov has a cameo role as a Dutch clergyman who helps hide the fugitive airmen during Sunday services.
* Spitfire (a.k.a. First Of The Few)--Leslie (The Scarlet Pimpernel) Howard plays Reginald Mitchell, the chief designer at Supermarine whose vision of sleeker and more powerful planes brings British aircraft technology from the stick-and-fabric biplanes of the Twenties through the Schneider Trophy-winning racers and the ultimate machine...the Spitfire fighter. David Niven plays Mitchell's good friend, a test pilot who sees and experiences the whole story.
* We Dive At Dawn--A Royal Navy submarine is sent against a German battleship and this is the story of the boat's officers and crew. I'm not sure that I'd seen this one before...I happened to have the other two on VHS and that was my main reason for buying the set.
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Getting into comics as an attempted profession. Talked about this here on my LJ a few times. And of course, aviation. I wanted wings.
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| 2010-01-11 16:56 |
| Crayon Brainstorming Fodder |
| Public |
| airplanes, aviation, coloring book, colors, creative muse, creative process, creative skills, deviantart, ideas, models, work |
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Thanks to Paul Francis, a Spitfire VC scale model is on my build list for the year. This diagram is posted in the interest of generating ideas from the readership here. Feel free to download it, color it, and send it back my way if you think you have a good idea. The finished model will have a wingspan of about six inches, so a color scheme shouldn't necessarily be intricate or involved.
( The BIGGER Version I Have Hosted At DeviantArt )
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| 2009-12-18 00:05 |
| The Downside Of A Remote-Controlled War |
| Public |
| airplanes, aviation, glitches, iran, iraq, military, technology transfer, terrorism, terrorist, troubleshooting, video, violence, war, war on terror, yahoo |
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Sometimes You Don't Have TOTAL Control.
And this story also underscores the fact that the insurgencies being fought in Iraq and Afganistan are often proxies for Iran.
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| 2009-12-14 11:26 |
Resistors Are Fissile: Meme C/O ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) thejim |
| Public |
| aviation, battletech, comments, fandom, friends, livejournal, meme, quizzes, robotech, robots, school, science-fiction, who am i |
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Leave me a comment saying "Cripes A'Mighty."
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions
[thejim's Questions:] 1) Favourite Mecha and why?
Probably the Aestivalis from Nadesico. Granted, it's not that big and it's not that powerful, but it's quick, it's tough, it looks cool, and can be adapted dozens of ways depending on the mission.
2) Favourite Mecha-centric series and why?
Right now it's a bizarre even split between Zeta Gundam and The Big O. Zeta Gundam because I identify a lot with Camille Vidan and how, as a misfit, he'd get himself in trouble every so often. The Big O because of its psychology and how it works in spite of its juxtaposition of police/private eye procedural and giant superhero robot elements.
3) Aviation Management...what is it? What got you interested in it?
The economic science and practices behind the running of an aviation-related business: airlines, airports, aircraft factories, flight schools, crop dusting, air taxi and so on. This was a compromise because my folks didn't have the funds for me to concentrate strictly on a Professional Pilot program (which is aimed at making the student Airline Captain material).
4) What got you interested in Mecha in the first place?
I'd been a fan of Japanese science-fiction cartoons since childhood, specifically Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets and Star Blazers...so when Robotech came along at the time I left High School, I was pretty receptive to it.
5) What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen GRF-5K Griffin? Alternately, what is the level-ground maximum speed of a Scopedog? Why did you know either of those?
The -5K variant is new to me. I only have handy information on the earlier models...although, if the Griffin were fitted with the disposable wing system its anime Soltic Roundfacer inspiration could use, then it could easily exceed the 15 meters per second "book figures". As for the Scopedog, the Roller Dash system redlines at 108 kilometers per hour. This isn't spelled out in the VOTOMS RPG rulebook, but can be easily calculated. PS: Just saw on SARNA.net that the -5K Griffin can do 24 meters per second airborne.
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On Facebook, Jorgelina has a question:
i´d like 2 know why space shuttles re-enter the earth at such a fast speed when it is so risky and dangerous. Why don´t they do it in a slower way as the touristic space vehicle will do?
A: Because the "tourist" vehicle uses a different system that hadn't been invented when the shuttle was designed in the late Sixties/early Seventies. The Rutan/Virgin ships have a hinged wing that when in the "up" position, uses aerodynamic drag to set the craft automatically to the safest angle for reentry. Then the wing can reset to "down" for normal flight afterwards. There was nothing like it before and it is a real innovation for machines of its class. Future space shuttles will likely use Rutan's system if it can be scaled up to work with larger airframes.
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| 2009-12-11 01:05 |
| The TSA Is USELESS! |
| Public |
| airport, aviation, bureaucracy, crime, dysfunction, ethics, law, politics, stupidity, terrorism, the police, travel, war on terror |
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USELESS, USELESS, USELESS!
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| 2009-11-07 15:19 |
| I'm Too Old. |
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| airplanes, aviation, boredom, effects, fandom, fantasy, film, godzilla, horror, movies, tv, weapons |
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The Americanized Godzilla was just on whatever that network is, the one that also carries the WWE Wrestling and that. Anyway, I was so underengaged that when the Navy was bombing Madison Square Garden, I was thinking can they even DO that with Harpoon missiles? Are those FAE warheads?
And in the finale when Godzi was trapped in the cables and the F-18s were shooting it was those must be Slammer rockets because if he's cold-blooded then there wouldn't be anything for Sidewinders to lock onto. How much heat would you need to target a Sidewinder, anyway?
I'm too old and too much into reality to just enjoy the scene, you know what I mean?
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Was flipping stations while awaiting a download when I came across a show on RTV I hadn't seen before. It was from the Sixties and it was about an Air Force jet bomber lost at sea and trying to re-connect with home base. Turned out to be Suspense Theater: "Streetcar, Do You Read Me?" with Martin Milner in the lead role.
This show was made the year before I was born. Easy to see how much things were different between then and now. Technology. Attitudes toward work and self-esteem and interpersonal relationships. How we saw the world. We can't tell stories that way today, too much has changed.
When I watch TV, I watch too much.
FP
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| 2009-09-17 00:11 |
| Nearly Thirty-Five Years And It's Still NOT On DVD Yet! |
| Public |
| airplanes, aviation, dvd, film, history, movies, remakes, stuff i want, super star, the 1970s, video, war, youtube |
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( Will It Have To Take Redford Dying For Real For That To Happen? )
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Due to the contraversy on the rec.aviation.military forum on USENET (yes, I still check USENET every day, even if the server is regurgitating messages from years past) I have been informed about the Air Force's "rediscovery" of the trainer-as-counter-insurgency-strike aircraft and the use of ex-Raptor funding in this program. Yes, the Air Force has done this on a regular basis. In Korea, they pulled T-6 Texans out of mothballs, put bomb racks on them and sent them after Mao's Mob. In Vietnam, they had to scrounge T-28 Trojans from junkyards and mount flare pods on them to mark targets on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. For Desert Storm, they decided "well, better wait to retire the OV-10 Bronco--gonna need those for Iraq and Kuwait". Between the wars, the pundits always conclude that small, low-altitude aircraft have no place over a "modern" battlefield, and then war comes along and there's a need to be filled. Something cheap, easy to use, that can be fielded close to the front lines without heavy support demands. (Of course, for all its high-technology and specialization, the F-22 is none of these things.)
Anyway, my look into that story led me to this story, and from there to this story. Yes, a "random encounter", just like what role-playing gamers have seen over the last three or four decades. A weapon is only as good as the person who uses it...and even the best can be beaten if he makes an error of judgment.
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| 2009-08-27 01:51 |
| If Anybody Ever Were To Hand Me A $1,000 Gift Card... |
| Public |
| airplanes, aviation, clothes, flight, military, money, movies, shopping, stuff i want, super star, tv |
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This Place would be near the top of my list for places to go.
I found an old catalog of theirs while looking for something else and had to see if they're still in business. So they are.
I may not be able to look like Tom Cruise or Jason Gedrick or Jan-Michael Vincent, but I could DRESS like they did when they were in the Pilot's Seat!
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| 2009-08-05 20:45 |
| Firefox. (No, Not The Web Browser) |
| Public |
| airplanes, alternative history, aviation, clint eastwood, cold war, dvd, effects, film, hackett continuum, history, movies, russia, shopping, technology transfer, the 1980s |
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Got the 1982-vintage Clint Eastwood movie on DVD from the Big Lots bargain bin this evening. Just saw the end of the third act. The effects...have not aged well. The photographic grain is overmuch, the perspectives on the miniatures are unconvincing and they could have been smarter with the interfacing of the elements. But then again, it WAS 1982. A revolution has happened in the years since.
For the record, the Firefox story (if not all of Craig Thomas' pre-1984 technothriller novels!) is CANON for the Hackett Continuum.
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| 2009-08-01 15:26 |
| I Bombed In Dandridge |
| Public |
| airplanes, aviation, design, graphics, hackett continuum, history, learning, models, reading, research addict, war, weapons |
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Yes, bombs. The kind they drop from warplanes. Nothing actually exploded, but I did get some exercize defusing a dilemma.
In my research addiction Google-roaming, I came upon an article about the IML Group (a team of aircraft designers in New Zealand at the end of the Seventies) who had created a set of warplane proposals under the name ADDAX. None of these were able to get funding for construction (one [happy or unhappy, depending on where you are in the world] fact about New Zealand is that it's too far away from the population pressure of conflict rampant elsewhere on Planet Earth and is surrounded by good-buddy nations that will never threaten it). But I did find scaled drawings for some of them. The Addax-S strike fighter is a wild blended-body design, almost like the Captain Power or Buck Rogers fighters from their respective TVB series. I wanted to figure statistics from the drawing...but the article where I found it had no further information.
And then I noticed that the drawing had the plane armed with BOMBS.
The U.S. standardized its bomb design in the 1950s after years of chaotic development programs and the ultimate obsolescence of the WW2 "box-tail" bomb...which was okay for B-17 and B-29 internal bays but getting to be a problem with delivery from high-performance jets. The central figure was Ed Heinemann, the chief designer for Douglas Aircraft. The shape was the same basic slim teardrop he was using for auxillary tanks on the A-4 Skyhawk and F-6 Skyray. It was easily scalable, and easily adaptible. And, in the case of those into scale models, a workable yardstick.
I go into my spare parts boxes and find a box of add-on armament parts and their instruction sheets. I compare what I have to my printout and decide that the plane in the picture has 1000 lb bombs strapped to the underside. I measure my 1/72nd scale 1000 lb bomb: 37mm. Bombs on drawing: 26mm. Scale of drawing printout: about 1/100. Made sense because of the size of the engines and the cockpit relative to it all.
While it's impossible to learn everything about something from just one feature, there are ways to learn quite a lot.
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