10 Short Videos #6154

10 Short Videos #6154

This Curtain Protects Your Privacy Automatically - Passive aggressive curtain

This Dog Has Life Figured Out.😂🐶

Is the owl always this dramatic？🦉🦉

Bunny Terrifies Horses - Ozzy Man Quickies

We probably can.- Chris Kohler News - Uber Eets

I know she did! - Railway ballast song - Very weird

Sugar Glider：A Tiny Gliding Cutie

Evolutionary Arms Race: The Game! (BAT vs. MOTH) 

This project has been 14 years in the making!! I’m excited that it’s finally complete! - Glass plate photograph

lol I failed my inspection - home building inspection with no whining

Five animal videos today. 

10 Short Videos #6140

10 Short Videos #6140

One Decision Can Change Your Life - fish out of water

The OLDEST Safe We Have | 120 Year Old Cannon Ball Safe

REVOLUTIONARY Spin-Out Wheels Change Tractor Track Width INSTANTLY

Historic sites: Before and after excavations

Realistic Cockpit for your RC Helicopter/Airplanes

Wait for end - Clever bird

How to survive and fix parachute Line twist. Parachute deployment. - I don't understand how he was able to hold onto the camera

Oldest video of Inuit building an igloo.

Just cut the motor on the powered hang glider and traded the buzz for the wind in the wires.

Doctor Fish ❌ Doctor Crab ⭕

10 Short Videos #6108

10 Short Videos #6108

Burning Offerings in Seconds

Epic GTR fake drone 1 Shot

Tilting laptop bed table

The answer is right but the steps are wrong - little kids waiting in line

Tool for reaming out plastic drain pipe connectors for reuse

Umbrella team

Sugar Glider showing off

A drone intercepts another mid-air using expanding foam.

Goose landing

The North Oaks Streetview images on Google are finally gone... but they are still accessible

10 Short Videos #6094

10 Short Videos #6094

The en garde reflex

Did it really take me 10 years to land this combo ? Sarah Lezitow

The Pole Isn’t Moving The Entire Lake Is

Soft Like Clay, Deadlier Than Steel: Inside the MON-90 Mine

Eastern Kingsnake

Rope climb

P2 Pentalobe Screwdriver and Screw

pouring some bronze with Ira Houseweart

Hang glider landing

Battle with Nature | Storm Landing |B737NG | Cockpit views

10 Short Videos #6039

10 Short Videos #6039

How to Load the Rope on the ActSafe ICX Power Ascender
Winch launched glider
He’ll never find anything
Chinese dance Thousand-Hand Guanyin
X-stock class going semi-finals run leg 3 road to Taiwan 2025 Tamiya mini4wd
Horse in winter
Up close dancing without hands
Food safe bleach?
Lifting heavy stuff just got way easier
No bottles, only buzuki

Flying Squirrel

Sugar Glider
NA Daily

Cool. Seems like I'm always hearing about flying squirrels, but I don't think I've ever seen one other than the infamous Rocket J. Squirrel from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show and that doesn't really count, does it?

According to one of the comments, it's actually a sugar glider, not a flying squirrel. Wikipedia tells us that they are from southeast Australia. They are very similar to flying squirrels.

Econo-satellite

Zephyr S taking off - Airbus

Airbus has developed an unmanned drone for surveillance and communications. As you can see from the picture the thing is big, the wingspan is 92 feet. Thanks to modern materials it only weighs 150 pounds, and 50 of those are the battery pact. Yes, it's electric powered. 

Okay, that's all very cute, but what rates a mention here on this super exclusive blog is it's capabilities. It just completed two flights of 18 days each flying over Arizona at an altitude of 76,000 feet. That's U-2 territory.

The Perlan glider also reached an altitude of 76,000 feet, but they had to go to Argentina where they could catch a lift from the winds over the Andes mountains.

This drone looks to fill the same role as the balloons in Project Loon.

Via FlightAware

Hypersonic Missiles

Why the Hype Around Hypersonics?
Sabbine Hossenfelder

Sabbine is my new favorite YouTuber. I watched one about the 5th Element, er, the 5th Force earlier, and it was fine. She has a blog (BackReAction) where she posts her videos along with transcripts. Most of the videos are her talking, but she does include some graphics that help illustrate the topic. This video includes a clip of a double sonic boom from a Concorde. I had to play it a couple of times in order to hear it. It's really quick, the two booms are like a tenth of second apart. Bang bang.

This is the first explanation of hypersonic missiles that actually explains anything. All of the rest have been nothing burgers. 

The bit about how long it takes a ballistic missile to reach its target versus a hypersonic missile is not complete. If the two devices are traveling the same distance across the Earth, then what she says is true, hypersonic missiles would take just as long as a ballistic missile. However, ballistic missiles are big and difficult to transport, so mostly they don't leave their home country unless they are on a submarine. Hypersonic missiles are smaller (they don't have to carry an oxidizer, which is roughly half of their fuel load, which is what makes up the bulk of the missile), so they could be carried by an aircraft and launched from a relatively short distance away.

Assuming, or course, that they actually make these things work. And then there's the whole hypersonic glider thing. Traveling at Mach 5 you are covering one mile per second. Turn off the engine / run out of fuel and you will glide for a bit, but I would be surprised if you could glide ten miles before you fell to the ground. I haven't heard anything about this.

Previous mentions of hypersonic (3).

Previous mentions of supersonic (many).

Rescue From Shangri-La

"RESCUE FROM SHANGRI-LA" 1945 C-47 PLANE CRASH SURVIVOR DOCUMENTARY 70564
I finished Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff. In 1945, the survivors of the C-47 crash in the middle New Guinea were big news. Alexander Cann parachuted into this lost valley with a 35mm camera and made this film, though it doesn't appear in IMDB.

Being who I am, I wanted to know more about snatching a glider out of the jungle.


Training Film Glider Pickup by C 47
This training film shows us all the switches, widgets and do-dads involved in setting up the winch in the tow plane. It also includes some slow motion footage of the of the pickup (just after the 11 minute mark).

The winch's main job is not reeling in the tow rope, but rather paying it out in a controlled manner so the glider is subjected to a tolerable amount of acceleration over a few seconds of time. The nylon rope stretches, but not enough to absorb the entire shock. Without the braking action of the winch, the tow rope would snap or rip it's attachment points out of the tug or the glider.


Glider Snatching (1949)
This clip shows the winch brake in action (50 second mark), smoking to beat the band, which explains why they need the ventilators shown in the previous clip.

Here's another video that has a brief shot of what happens to a glider should the tow rope snap on pickup (1:50 mark).

This story and the cloud cover that impedes air operations reminds me of the film The Valley (Obscured by Clouds) that I saw about a zillion years ago. This valley could be the same one as the one in the book or it could be a completely different one. New Guinea is a big place, full of mountains and valleys.

Stemme S12 Powered Glider

Stemme S12 Powered Glider

Two seats, side-by-side, with retractable propeller. Its maximum glide ratio is 53:1, which is pretty darn good.

Propeller folded

Rotax 914 F2/S1 Turbocharged Engine

Propeller extended

More glider posts.

Perlan 2

The Airbus Perlan glider soars above the peaks of the Andes in Argentina. - Airbus

Riding the wind above the Andes Mountains, an experimental glider has set a world record for high-altitude flight.

On Sept. 2, the sleek Perlan 2 glider carried two pilots to 76,100 feet, or more than 14 miles, over the El Calafate region in southern Argentina. That’s the highest altitude ever reached by humans aboard an unpowered fixed-wing aircraft, and one of the highest altitudes reached by an aircraft of any description. Only spy planes and specialized balloons have flown higher. - Tom Metcalfe

The Perlan glider was built in Portland. It has appeared in this blog before.
Via FlightAware

Glider

Taylorcraft TG-6

The Taylorcraft TG-6 is a training glider built during WW2 to train glider pilots, some of whom flew during the Normandy invasion. The TG-6 was developed from the L-2, a single engine airplane. A disposable aircraft to teach disposable pilots to fly big disposable gliders. Logistics can be a cruel taskmaster.



Intense D-Day Glider Landing
Piloting a glider required a certain amount of bravado, I mean, these guys are flying into farmer's fields littered with who knows what kind of obstacles, at night, in enemy territory. Sounds like a good candidate for a "here, hold my beer" award. Since everything was done in a rush, there was no time to train glider pilots to do anything else. So if you managed to survive the landing in Normandy, your job was done. Just keep your head down and stay out of the way.

Bug

In software development there are sometimes debates about whether the way a program works is incorrect, and is therefor a symptom of a bug, or whether that is the way it is supposed to work and is therefor a feature. Via Byron the Glider Man.

Perlan Project

 

Pressurized (!) Perlan Glider. 65 foot wingspan.

Some crazy people are going to try and fly a glider to an altitude of 100,000 feet over the North Pole.

Mother of Pearl Cloud by Luke Harrison

Evidently in the Polar regions there are some exceptional atmospheric conditions, especially where there are mountains nearby, which might make this stunt feasible.

On Aug. 29, 2006, Einar Enevoldson (left) and Steve Fossett set a new world glider altitude record. They wore NASA spacesuits to ward off the cold inside their glider's unpressurized tandem cockpit. The record was set in El Calafate, Argentina, in Perlan, a high performance research glider based on a German-built DG-505. Fossett and Enevoldson made the first glider flight into the earth’s stratosphere, reaching a height of 50,671 feet (15,447 m). They broke the previous record, set in 1986 in California, by 1,662 feet (507 m).

If the name Steve Fossett rings a bell, it's because he has been involved in a number of aerial adventures. He died in a small plane crash in California back in 2007. Einar Enevoldson is a former NASA research pilot.

Other altitude records:

• Amateur rocket reaches 121,000 ft 
• Helicopter Altitude Record
• Focke Wulf Fw 61 - luftwaffe test pilot Hanna Reitsch
• B-58 Hustler
• Pic of the Day
• Felix Baumgartner - Space Man
• Caproni Ca. 161bis

P.S. From Wikipedia's article: "A sailplane at 90,000 feet altitude flies in approximately the same aerodynamic regime--Mach and Reynolds numbers--to be experienced by a moderate size aircraft flying near the surface of Mars." 

První brněnská strojírna Velká Bíteš, a.s.

PBS Velká Bíteš TJ-100 Turbojet Engine installed on a Let Blanik L-13 TJ Glider.

Are jet engines finally becoming affordable? I guess that depends on who you are talking to. Comrade Misfit put up a video of the Subsonex jet. It's a kit plane powered by a real, live jet engine. The kit runs around $130,000. The engine is about half of that.
    The engine is made in the Czech Republic (that's the name of the company in the title, PBS for short). They made their bones making turbochargers for MAN German diesel engines. Turbochargers and jet engines have a lot of technology in common. They both have to operate at high RPM's and withstand extreme heat, neither of which is particularly easy, but combining them into one machine that will operate reliably is a bit of a trick, which is why there are so few companies in the world that build jet engines.
    This one produces around 250 pounds of thrust, which doesn't sound like much. When we are talking about commercial or military jets we are talking about thousands of pounds of force. But big jets weigh thousands of pounds so they need that much power. Small, single seat aircraft don't weigh that much, so 250 pounds of thrust is plenty.

WW2 British Aircraft

Walrus Flying Boat
Click me to go to the album

I'm still mucking about with pictures, trying to find some way to organize them, trying to figure which is the best tool for the job, which web site I like the best. Picasa is a little trying, but it does seem to do most of what I want. Like I said earlier, Stu sent me a link to a page full of pictures. I really don't like these kind of things, you constantly have to fiddle with the controls to get the next picture on the screen. I like slide shows. Press the go button, and then click once every time you want to see the next picture. No fuss, no muss. Well, mostly. Still haven't it gotten it completely sorted out, but it's still better having to scroll through one long page of pictures.

I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how to organize this bunch, and I finally came up with a sequential order that makes a sort of sense.

Biplanes on the water
Walrus Flying Boat
  Swordfish on floats
Biplanes on aircraft carriers
  Swordfish over the Ark Royal
Swordfish on carrier deck
  Swordfish on grass
Fairey Albacore landing on carrier
Mono-planes on aircraft carriers
  Fairey Fulmar
Royal Navy Corsairs on hanger deck
  Royal Navy Corsairs on flight deck
Seafire & Pilot
Land based monoplanes. We start with a couple of American planes.
  Mustang, or so the label says, hard to tell just what it is, but the angle of the shot is cool.
  P-40 Warhawk in North Africa with a crewman directing the pilot from the wing tip.
    Oh, the Glorius Spitfire!
    Crew tinkering with a Spitfire on the tarmac
  Pilots talking while crew tinkers
  Crew tinkering with a Spitfire on the grass
  Crew tinkering with a Spitfire up on stands
  Spitfire being painted in D-Day stripes
  Spitfires on the flight line ready to go. I don't think they ever looked this good during the war.
  Loading a camera into a Spit for photographic reconnaisance
  Ready to go
  Really ready to go
  Photo reconn taking off
  Airborne
  Battle of Britain
  Squadron formation
  Landing craft on the beach in Italy, dead Spitfire in the water
Typhoon
  Arming
  Small formation in flight
Gliders
  100 Gliders on the ground in Operation Market Garden
  Hamilcar Glider
Twin Engine Bombers
  Baltimore nose
  Baltimore dropping a bomb
  Beaufort front end
  Group of Blenheims and Hurricanes over North Africa
  Blenheim on the ground
  Pair of Hampdens in flight
  Crew going aboard a Douglas A-20 Havoc
  Hudson on the tarmac
  B-25 Mitchell being serviced
    My favorite, the Mosquito
  5 Mosquitos on the grass
  Mosquito gun test
  Crew going aboard a Mosquito
  Mosquito in flight
Four Engine Bombers
  Halifax in flight
  A whole bunch of Sterlings on the tarmac, pre-D-day
  3 Sterlings in flight
  At least 5 Wellingtons on the ground
  Servicing a Whitley
    Oh, the Glorious Lancaster
  Nose turret
  Tail turret
  Big wigs walking under the nose
  Big crowd standing around
    Lancaster / Armament
  Bombs en train to loading
  All loaded
Armament
  Bomb menu
  Mucking with fuses in North Africa
  Preparing rockets
  Ammo belt assembly
Pilots
    Bomber crews
  Bomber crew
  Two stories
  Looking forward
    Fighter
  Pilot
  Brit pilot and mascot, North Africa
  Hurricane cockpit check in snow
  Earl Stanley Lock & Friend, Ace
  RAF Pilot
  Hurricane pilot Ginger Lacey, scored 18 kills in Battle of Britain
Hurricane pilots
  Hurricane pilots hanging out by their caravan
  RAF Trainees in Mesa Arizona
Home front
  Plotting room
  Making terrain models for RAF, UK 1943
  Assembling landing gear in the factory
  Short Sunderland flying boat factory
  RAF Brass
  Moral Boosting Poster
  Lancaster on display at War Rally, Trafalgar Square, London
  Wellington recovered from Loch Ness

Update March 2019. Picasa has died, but it appears that all of the my pictures have been moved to Google Drive, so the link under the picture at top should take you to the album.
Update May 2019. Fixed.

Out in the Woods

Almost shot myself in the foot today. Went up in the Coast Range today with Jack. He wanted to see if he could hit anything with his new rifle. I went along for the show and to do some plinking with an automatic. I'd shot up a box of shells and I got to wondering if I could hit anything with my left hand. Never tried it before, had never occurred to me to try it when I actually had a gun on hand. So I did. It's a little difficult. I was able to hit a three inch rock at about 20 paces with my second shot. Then I lowered the gun to bask in my glory, and bang! The durn thing went off. Forgot one of the four rules of safe gun handling: don't put your finger on the trigger until you are ready to shoot. Never had this problem before because my usual modus operandi is to blast away until I'm empty, and being as this was an automatic and not a revolver, it was all cocked and ready to fire when I lowered it. Lucky I didn't perforate myself.

So now I'm thinking about this business of safe gun handling, and not putting your finger on the trigger, and it's not that easy. Pick up the gun and my index finger goes right to the trigger. Not putting my finger on the trigger requires some deliberate hand contortions. For my right hand, I found there is a nub from the pivot for the slide lock that sticks out just above the trigger guard. Putting my finger on it lets me know that it's not on the trigger. For my left hand there is the end of the slide lock itself, not as prominent as the nub, but it's something. We'll see how well this lesson sticks.

Hitting that rock was the high point of my left handed shooting. I emptied the rest of the clip at a foot square target about 30 feet away and only managed to hit it twice. I am much better with my right hand.

Jack's scope mount wasn't quite straight. He inserted a copper shim under the left side of the front scope mounting clamp and that brought it around. Next time we will try for a longer distance.

Jack's target was marked off in one inch squares. A note on the bottom of the target claimed that these squares corresponded to one minute of arc at 100 yards. I just checked, and it does. 1.0047 inches, to be precise. Using the metric system, one minute of arc at a distance of 100 meters comes out to 29 millimeters, a nice round number if there ever wasn't. Another Victory for English measurements!

On our way to out of town we saw a tow plane towing a glider.

Somebody's chewing up old railroad cars near Timber. Can't imagine why they are doing this way out in the middle of nowhere. Why not just roll the old cars directly to the scrapyard? Hiring a locomotive to move them costs too much? No locos available?