Note to Self: Include Cat Check in Preflight

It’s been a few years since I last had a chance to do any private flying. But I’m pretty sure I never missed this when I performed a preflight on a rented Cessna. Look for a third passenger somewhere around the 35 second mark.

More on the story here.
 
 

Blue Angels Over My Town

And I missed it!

I’ve always wanted to see the Blue Angels, the U.S. Navy’s precision flying squadron. Yesterday I had my chance—except I didn’t know about it! I was in the shower when I heard a thunderous roar of aircraft flying nearby. It sounded right overhead, which is occasionally the case with traffic out of Boston’s Logan Airport. But this didn’t sound like commercial airliners; it had the distinctive crackle of jet fighters. I tried to look out the bathroom window, but saw nothing in the sky but clouds. The last time I’d heard that sound in real life, it was a pair of F-15s flying over Fenway Park.

An hour later, I read in the online edition of the Boston Globe that the Blue Angels (flying their gorgeous blue and yellow FA-18 Hornets) had been in town for a photo shoot, and had just made several passes above the city, including over Fenway Park. It’s entirely possible that they did fly over my house, while I was in the shower.

I was fit to be tied. But I thought, at least I should be able to see some good video footage of it, from the local TV stations. Forget it. As it turns out, about the only videos I’ve found online have been clips from private citizens, probably shot on their cell phones. Here’s a still, though, from the Boston Globe. It’s pretty cool: the six-plane squadron plus a photo plane, passing behind Boston's Prudential Center.

Another Flying Car on the Horizon!

This story made me immediately think of my Slovenian-made moped, a Tomos. Well, the wily Slovakians are giving my neighbors the Terrafugia people a run for their money on the race to develop a practical flying car. (A race that’s been on for, what, sixty or seventy years? About as long as the race to develop practical fusion power.)

Take a look at this beauty, the Aeromobil 3.0.

(Best viewed at full-screen size.)
View on Washington Post

Estimated to cost only a few hundred thousand dollars! (But I’ve already got the pilot’s license, so I’m partway there.) Woo-hoo!

Best Airline Safety Video Ever!

From Air New Zealand and WETA Workshop (makers of effects for The Hobbit movies).

Watch on youtube

Freefall!

The pictures speak:

Safe on the ground, after shattering a host of records.The streaming has been cutting in and out, so I don't know yet whether or not Baumgartner broke the sound barrier. Press conference about to start.

Edit: He did break the sound barrier, at 833.9 miles per hour in freefall!

Ballooning to the Edge of Space

I'm watching the live coverage of Felix Baumgartner's balloon flight to the edge of outer space. He's presently at 127,000 feet and still ascending, well past the previous record for manned balloon flight. The plan is for him to jump in his specialized pressure suit and freefall through the sound barrier before parachuting to the ground. 

Live shot of capsule at nearly 128,000 feet

He's having problem with the heat not working in his faceplate, but they've just announced that he will jump regardless. They're beginning now to depressurize the capsule, preparatory to his stepping out of the capsule and jumping...

Stay tuned!

The Majestic Soaring of Spaceship Two

Here's a lovely video of some flight tests of Virgin Galactic's and Scaled Composite's Spaceship Two. I meant to post this a while back, but I don't think I ever did. Anyway, it's worth watching twice!

Watch on Youtube

Spaceship Two Does the Wobble Dance

Here's a video of a recent test flight of Spaceship Two, which by this time next year could be offering rides into space to the public. (Got $200,00 I could borrow? I'm good for it. I promise.) The amazing thing about this video isn't the test flight per se; it's the mode of reentry. Watch it, and you'll see the spaceship raising its tail feathers and bobbing like a badminton shuttlecock—intentionally!



I'm going to try to tweak this so that it'll fit on my page here. But if you want to read it with some explanation, view it here, again courtesy of the Bad Astronomy blog.

Book Takes Wing, and So Do We

I'm typing this at 32,000 feet out of Charlotte, North Carolina over a beautiful cloud deck en route to Miami. (Oops, we just flew back into the clouds! Later: a stunning sunset above the cloud deck, just as we started our descent toward Miami. Layered clouds against a crimson horizon band.)

The last few days have been insane, but I'm about to rest. Aside from the usual trip prep, I was busy getting one last book up at Kindle, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. This is a new one, in a way—an omnibus collection of the first three Chaos books. Called simply The Chaos Chronicles: Books 1-3, it's got a gorgeous new cover by Pat Ryan. I enjoy omnibus collections myself—I've just finished reading through a series of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan omnibuses that I bought from Baen Webscription. So I thought, why not make an omnibus of the Chaos  books myself, and maybe give the publishers a hint by example? Here it is:

Chaos Omnibus at Kindle | Nook | Smashword

I got that up just in time to see it go live before dropping everything for the trip. No time to make formal announcements—so this will be my first, whenever I have time to get online and post it.  (That would be at my brother's house in Florida.)

Starting this evening, we're with family, and kicking back a little. I hope Chuck's hot tub is still working! 

Human-Powered Ornithopter

Flap those wings! On some airline flights, I've felt that it might be necessary to help by doing that. So does Pearls Before Swine:



But here's something real.  A team of University of Toronto students kept a human-powered ornithopter (wing-flapping aircraft) aloft for a short flight after being towed up to takeoff speed by a car.  Just a first step, but a beautiful first step!



http://www.youtube.com/user/OrnithopterProject

More Flying Subs

I can't decide whether I'd rather have a flying car or a flying submarine. Both seem right up my alley. Last week's New Scientist has another article about progress toward a flying sub. (I know I've written about this before, but I can't find my own post on the subject!) Some of the possibilities being considered: use of jet turbines both for air and underwater propulsion (the underwater use being powered by electric motors, rather than jet combustion), the use of air/hydrofoils for both flight and forced submersion. Of course, the work at this point is being pursued on behalf of the military, but I'm rooting for a civilian version, too. I'd link to the article, but most of it is behind a paywall for subscribers, unfortunately. 

All this puts me in mind of Tom Swift, Jr.'s diving seacopter, from the juvenile novel of 1956. That handy invention used an atomic-powered central rotor in the middle of a flying saucer. To fly, it spun to force air downward. To submerge, it reversed to force water upward. I wonder if the folks at DARPA have given any thought to hiring Tom. Here's what the Ocean Arrow looked like...

Flying Car-a-chute

What better way to start the holiday weekend (or end it, since I forgot to post this after I wrote it) than to see a flying car fly! This I-TEC Maverick Sport Model is different from the Transition and the Switchblade that I've written about before. It's more like a car/ultralight. Drive it like an open jeep, then pop a chute, start up the propeller, and take off in just 250 feet. Awesome. 

Read about it and see the video here.  (Warning--the video starts with a lot of superfluous racing around like a dune buggy, so you might want to fast-forward to the flying part.)

Those Crazy Guys and Their Flying Machines

While we're waiting for the "roadable" airplane, the Transition, to come down to our price range—not to mention fly (but they did get it off the ground, in the first short flight test!)—check out this baby: a flying motorcycle called the Switchblade:

Switchblade flying motorcycle

That's for me! You betcha! According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, "Samson Motorworks has been working on a flying motorcycle, the Switchblade, for two and a half years. The three-wheel motorcycle’s design features three lifting surfaces, like the Piaggio Avanti, and side-by-side seating for two people... The wings will fold beneath the motorcycle’s body... Cameras will provide visibility to the rear, and an optional ballistic parachute will be offered."

Oh man, I can't wait. (It hasn't flown yet, either, but it will. It will.) Buy a lot of those books from me, people—okay? A lot of books!

While we're waiting, here's a picture of the Transition in its first leap into the air.

Transition flight test

"Up in the sky, rocketing past
Higher than high, faster than fast,
Out into space, into the sun
Look at her go when we give her the gun."
—Space Academy Cadet Corps song,
from Tom Corbett, Space Cadet

President Obama!

What more can I say? It was a wonderful and moving inauguration—all those people, as far as the eye could see!—and I came away from watching it with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat, buoyed and encouraged and hopeful as I have not been for many years. I did not know until I heard it on the radio later that survivors of the Tuskegee Airmen were present to share the moment. That seemed perfect.

The president has his work cut out for him, and we have ours cut out for us as well. May God bless us all, but especially our new leaders, all of them.

I wish I were there for the party!

Baby, Let Me Fly My Car!

Some of us still haven't given up on a combination airplane/car, and some of us (fortunately) are aeronautical engineers from MIT. Carl and Anna Dietrich, cofounders of Terrafugia, Inc. ("Flee from Earth") in eastern Massachusetts, are building such a craft now, and they hope to fly it by the end of the year and be selling them in another year. You can read the Boston Globe article here and see more video and read more about it on the company website.

Terrafugia Transition, a "roadable airplane"

Personally, I think they need a snappier name for the airplane than the "Transition," and probably a cooler name for the company, too. But if I had a couple hundred thousand dollars burning a hole in my pocket, you can betcha' I'd have my deposit down by this time tomorrow!

"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings..." —John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

More Flying Stories

I love flying stories, don't you? Not a day goes by that I don't think about how much I'd like to get back to flying, if only I had the time and the money. Well, someday. Meanwhile, though, here are a couple of items that crossed my path recently.

Remember those personal flyers that populated science fiction for decades, and seemed inevitable that we would all own? George Jetson had one, why not us, right? Well, NASA is sponsoring research on it. Here's a glimpse of our future Personal Air Vehicles.


Those personal aircraft, of course, will be very sedate and safe. (Heh-heh, we hope.) Here are a few videos and image collections of flying experiences that are anything but:

• Video of an amazing landing of an F-15 in what any sane person would call an unflyable condition. Note: you need to get past the first couple of minutes before it really gets interesting at the end. Do watch it to the end. (Are we sure it wasn't Starbuck flying this thing?)
• Photos of planes landing at the old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong
• A very brief video of a 747 landing in a crosswind at Kai Tak
• You want crosswind landings? Here are some Boeing test pilots landing 777s and 747s in high crosswind tests. I've lost track of the original email that had supporting details, but apparently they do these tests at an out of the way place in South America, where they not only get nasty crosswinds, but it won't be so embarrassing if they bend some airplanes!
  

Now that's flying.

"Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." —David Lloyd George

Electric Airplane (How Long Is Your Extension Cord?)

Although I have a private pilot's license, it's been some years since I've had enough coinola in the bank to do anything with it. (The most I ever managed to do was rent a plane once in a while to go for a local pleasure flight. Or, more frequently, rent a plane to go up and do some practice touch-and-go landings. Still, I always loved it.)

I think all the time about taking it up again sometime. But one thing that's always bothered me is the additional air pollution you create when you go up in a small plane. It's not like they're awful—but they don't have catalytic converters to clean up the exhaust, and for that matter, most of them burn leaded fuel. (Necessary to keep the cylinders cool.)

So I was cheered today when I got my email newsletter from AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association), which had a news item titled: "Environmentally Friendly Aircraft To Take Flight This Year." It seems Boeing is working on a fuel-cell powered airplane! Here's an excerpt:

An emission-free experimental aircraft, powered only by a fuel cell and lightweight lithium-ion batteries, could take flight this year. Boeing researchers and industry partners in Europe announced the Fuel Cell Demonstrator Airplane project on March 27. The aircraft is currently undergoing systems integration testing to prepare for ground and flight testing. The aircraft uses a proton exchange membrane fuel cell, which converts hydrogen directly into electricity and heat without combustion, and lithium-ion batters to power an electric motor with a conventional propeller. The fuel cell will provide all of the cruise-flight power, while the batteries will power takeoff and climb phases of flight. Francisco Escarti, managing director of Boeing Research and Technology–Europe, said that the fuel cell and batteries likely won't power a commercial passenger airliner, but that "demonstrations like this help pave the way for potentially using this technology in small manned and unmanned air vehicles."

Now, that's the airplane I want to win in a sweepstakes!

A Low Flyover of Mars

This link to a pair of NASA videos comes courtesy of my friend Victoria (not to be confused with the Victoria Crater on Mars dramatically displayed in the first video). Want to make a low flying pass over some of the terrain that the Opportunity and Spirit rovers have explored? Thanks to some incredible photography from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, you can! This appears on the New Scientist web site, but if it's not on a lot of others, I'm sure it will be soon.

Jet-Man, and Daisy the Goose

Two interesting videos crossed my radar today, both involving flying. One is about a man who has found a way to become a jet bird, and the other is a goose who thinks she's human.

Jet-Man is Yves Rossy, from Switzerland. When I first saw the email from my friend Keith, I thought it was going to be someone wearing the latest version of the Buck Rogers jet pack that's good for hovering around a parking lot but not too much else. But no—this is a guy who straps himself into a set of jet-powered wings and pushes himself out of an airplane like a skydiver...and then spends five minutes zooming and soaring like Rodan, or maybe the Jetsons. Watch the video—it's pretty amazing. He has a web site, but it's all in French, so I wasn't able to read any of the background info. (You can watch the video there, too, if you have trouble at the other link.)

And then...there's Daisy, the Canada goose. Daisy imprinted on a guy named Dan Steffan, and she likes to go flying with him—he in his speedboat, and she flying alongside. When she gets tired of flying, she perches next to his beagle Sam and enjoys the ride. (That dog sure reminds me of our dear departed beagle Sam!)

Edit Oct 2013: Something made me revisit this story, and I learned to my sadness that both Daisy and Dan Steffan are gone from this world. You can view the whole story here.

Errant Astronauts, Friendly Fire, and Other Civics Lessons

Today's news was awash in stories that made me reflect on the vagaries of human nature, especially in the crazy world we live in. I'm going to assume you're familiar with the stories, but if you're not, just click the links for more information. The tales run from bizarre to tragic to uplifting, with a side trip to controversy.

The first one that hit me today was the story of the NASA astronaut, Lisa Nowak, accused of driving from Texas to Florida with the intention of murdering a romantic rival. I don't follow astronaut personalities the way I did when there were just seven of them, but I remembered Lisa Nowak from the coverage of the shuttle mission last summer: she was bright, competent, strikingly pretty, and by all accounts a great role model for girls and young women. What in the world happened, that she could do such a bizarre thing? Does she suffer from a psychological disorder that was hidden until now? Did she simply crack from the stress of being simultaneously an astronaut and a mother? I feel a mixture of sympathy, pity, puzzlement, and a bit of fear. Could any one of us crack this way? Does this dark side lurk in all of us? It makes me shiver a little, and vow to get more sleep.

Next came the furor over released cockpit video from two U.S. A-10 pilots who, in the early days of the Iraq war, mistakenly strafed friendly trucks, killing a British soldier. The incident was declared an innocent mistake and the pilots cleared of wrongdoing, back in 2003, but only recently was the cockpit video (containing the radio conversations) provided to the British government and subsequently leaked to the public. I watched the video—it's about 15 minutes long—and the first thing I noticed was how businesslike and calm it all seemed until the mistake was discovered, not at all the image of combat one gets from the movies. The guys saw orange panels on the roofs of the trucks—the sign of friendly forces—but because they were assured by their ground controller that no friendly forces were in the area, they concluded that they were looking at orange rocket launchers. And they opened fire. In hindsight, it's pretty easy to conclude that they made a dumb call—especially given how hard it is to see things on the ground from a cockpit. But it would also be a cheap shot, since I wasn't there.

What I really noticed was how different I felt about it after watching the video, versus reading the stories. The news reports said the pilots cursed, wept, and were distraught after learning that they'd just shot a friendly. But the selected quotes also made it sound as if they were mainly concerned about how much trouble they were in. Watch the video, and you get a different picture. They were beside themselves. Yes, they obviously knew they were in trouble, but they were also kicking themselves around the block for the error. The news reports one pilot saying to the other, Is your tape still running?—after which the recording stopped. What the pilot actually said was, My tape ran out; is yours still running?—and this when they were well on their way back to base. What comes across in the news story is, Can we cover our asses? Watch it, and you get something quite different. So...I guess this story made me think less about the possible culpability of the pilots than it did about just how easily the truth gets distorted. And how we have to form opinions and make decisions all the time, based on this kind of incomplete—or misleading—information.

On the flip side of the war, you have the court martial of Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused to go with his unit to Iraq, because he believed the war was illegal and immoral. From the San Jose Mercury News:

"...He took to heart a superior's advice to make exhaustive preparations for missions. What he found -- in reading international law, the history of war and the history of Iraq, and articles by governmental and independent agencies, journalists and scholars about the situation in Iraq -- changed his mind.

As he told the Army Times, he was in turmoil. "I found out this administration had gone to great lengths to deceive Congress and the people of this country to go to this war.''

With complete respect for those who are in Iraq right now, including one of our wrestling coaches, my hat's off to Lt. Watada for being willing to take a stand on principle, knowing he could be court-martialed, but believing that these things had to be said.

Of course, I'm basing that opinion on news reports. See earlier paragraph.

Finally, I read of actor Richard Dreyfuss's current passion—not acting in films, but teaching civic responsibility in schools. Among other things, he's working with a school system in Massachusetts to help create a civics curriculum for elementary schools, hoping to find ways to make this exciting for kids. You go.

Funny, I was not always a huge fan of Dreyfuss in the movies, especially his earlier ones—but I thought he was great in the quietly forgotten TV series, The Education of Max Bickford.

Which, coincidentally, is where I first encountered the actress Katee Sackhoff. Starbuck.