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Funner, And Funner, And FUNNER!

TalkLeft started a poll to see who could come closest to guessing how many days Sarah Palin would last before being forced off the republican ticket.

On the other hand, Oliver Willis says republicans are now sorry she's not at the top of the ticket, rather than in the V.P. slot!

Sarahcuda has lefties rattled.
Bad.
REAL bad.

(Change is coming!)

Dear Mr. Obama,

Two minutes.
Watch it all:

It's A Grand Old Flag!

Ouch!
Are these people REALLY that stupid?
(I'm frightened of the answer to that question.)

Missing Pieces

I've known her for 21 years.
I've known him for 20.
I saw him just two days ago. We talked of meeting for dinner.

They went to a movie then came home.
They argued. Neighbors heard it.
She and her 13 year old daughter went to the car.
She forgot her cell phone and went back to the house to grab it.
The daughter heard one shot, then another.
Both... gone.

Why?

40,000,000!

Negative ads work...
In an unintended way this time.

"Can you hear me now?"

Sarah Palin?

She's got a funny name... Palin.
What kinda name is that?

And she sure as heck doesn't look like all the Presidents on those dollar bills, does she?

DID YOU SEE THAT SPEECH?!!!
And can you read that T-shirt? ;>)

The Diddy Retort!

Word!
This video is a response to one published by "P-Diddy".
I won't trouble you with that video, because frankly I don't care "Diddly" about "Diddy" or what he thinks.
He's not even from my universe.

This guy is more my speed:

Back "Home" to Ft. Knox

Why do I have this desire? Is it universal?
Ft. Knox is special to me. Conscripted in 1966, I went through ARMY Basic Training there. I returned in 1967 and completed Officer Candidate's School.
After Viet Nam and a three year stint teaching Vietnamese to fly Hueys, I returned to Ft. Knox in '72 for the Armor Officer's Advanced Course. It's a big, lovely old Post, and the fact that I spent some of the most important/turbulent moments of my life there endears it to me.

Other than stopping at Godman Army Airfield once to refuel, I've not been to Ft. Knox since 1973. I've wanted to go back for a long time... to see how it's changed, and to see what remains of my past.

We were meeting friends there. We stopped off at the Patton Museum and walked around the exhibits until our friends arrived, then left to drive by the Bullion Depository you see above and check in at the visitor's quarters.

When I was last at Ft. Knox it was an open post. There were guards at the main gate, but they would flag you through as you approached. That's all changed. Everyone entering now stops and shows ID, and is asked what business they have on Post.

This visit we were housed in Yeoman Hall, a red brick structure with white columns at the entrance, built in 1937 and since modernized. It was beautiful, outside and in.

We ate South of Ft. Knox at Elizabethtown, then returned and searched for the area where I attended Basic Training. Those old WWII Oak barracks are long gone. The whole area is grown over with scrub trees, and the only indication the barracks were ever there is the "company streets" that poke out of the scrub and intersect with the main road. Those all-wood barracks were fire hazards. While I was in Basic we were required to have one soldier on "fire guard" all night. At lights out, one soldier would walk the barracks for an hour, then wake another to walk for an hour. This would continue from 10 P.M. until Reveille at 5 A.M. for the entire two months we were in Basic Training. I'm sure the ARMY was glad to be rid of the liability when they tore them down. I have heard rumors that when the contract to tear them down was let, a company did the job for free... they were solid oak and the lumber was worth enough to make doing it free worthwhile.
But the memories flow...
There is where the bank of 20 pay phones used to stand... and there is where the mess hall used to be. All gone, leaving a sad spot at my core. I wish I had taken pictures.

We returned to Yeoman Hall and adjourned to the patio for adult beverages and conversation. It's a beautiful summer evening.
BOOM, BOOM in the distance and I'm surprised... Saturday night and someone is on the tank firing range? Maybe a Reserve unit? It's an oddly comforting sound to me, and I'm glad my guests get to hear it.

We wake the next morning and share the continental breakfast. After checking out, it's off to pursue another of my memories... Otter Creek Park.
The weekend I graduated OCS and became a 2nd Lieutenant, we stayed in the Park in a cabin on a bluff high above the Ohio river. I remembered the view there as breathtaking, and on arrival we were not disappointed. Rental cabins are located on a bluff several hundred feet above a bend in the Ohio, overlooking farmland on the Indiana side of the river. From this point you are so high the view is most like you are flying. We all decide we must return later to rent a cabin.

I'm still missing one of my "ticket punches" for this trip...
I wanted to see where I lived during OCS. I've forgotten exactly where it was on Post. I had hoped that while driving around I might get a feeling of being close and homing into the location but so far, no luck. I ask some folks about things I remember... a swimming pool on one side, a baseball diamond on another.
"No, I think they filled that swimming pool with dirt some years ago" is one answer. In that case, they've torn that building down too. That seems odd, because like Yeoman Hall, it was a solid, brick structure.

It's time to go home. We drive to the Post gas station to fill up, then say our good-byes. But on the way to refuel I notice some U-shaped buildings exactly like my OCS barracks and point them out to Sara Jean. Our guests drive off in one direction, we go in another.
Later, on the road home while SJ is dozing, I grab the Ft. Knox map and start reviewing it. I notice the U-shaped buildings on the way to the gas station are depicted on the map exactly as they would look from above... U-shaped. I search the map for more of those and find one with an adjacent swimming pool. There is a baseball diamond on the other side! I wake Sara Jean with my exclamation... "AHA!!"
At this point we're almost an hour down the road, so going there will have to wait for our next visit. But there will be a "next visit"!

So back to my initial question...
Why do I have this desire to reach out and touch these places again? Most of us seem to have it... that's the reason for reunions, old school banquets, and things like tours to old battlegrounds.
Now I'm excited about going back to Ft. Knox to walk the area where I went to OCS.
What causes this need?

Shut Up! Shut up, Shut up, SHUT UP!

Freedom.
Our freedom is dependent upon our legislators and law enforcement personnel abiding by what is written in our constitution. I think it is not a coincidence that the first of those listed rights is freedom of speech, religion, the right to assemble, and the right to petition.

What would you think of a Presidential candidate who was trying to coerce the media to withhold information from you?
One of them is doing just that.
Friend John at Marathon Pundit has a detailed accounting.
It's worth your time.

Another "Please Stop Time" Moment

Sorry for the foreground...
I had just stopped off for a few "necessities", and when I left the store my breath was taken away... nearly all the colors of the rainbow in that photo.
I know there are things that are more beautiful than a gorgeous sunset or sunrise, aren't there?
I just can't think of any right now.

Right Wing Nut Cases

We see that phrase a lot, don't we? We folks on the political right are wackos, crazos, and Nazis.
Yeah, sure.

One of my blog acquaintances, a political conservative, has, for two nights in a row received "wee hours" threatening telephone calls. For obvious reasons I cannot share his name or his Website. He hopes one day to publish his work, and for that reason has been blogging under his real name and has made no attempt to conceal where he lives. It was an easy matter to find his phone number.
He is concerned enough that he is talking with the local police.

In the last election, tires were slashed, automobiles were vandalized, and bullets were fired through campaign headquarters at republican/conservative facilities.
Right Wing nut cases?
Hardly.

Don't Tell Mom...

I'm continually searching the blogosphere for other "helicopter" blogs. Weblogs come and go, and the only other thriving helo blog I have found is Maria's Blog. Maria's helicopter related posts are wonderful, but she, like me, blogs on whatever interests her at a given time, so many posts aren't helicopter related. We don't see eye to eye politically, so with Maria I have learned to bite my tongue and ignore those posts.

So imagine my surprise when I happened upon a blog with "Autorotate" in the title! There are even Sikorsky Blackhawks in a beautiful photo in the blog header, (along with the completion of the phrase that is the title of this post)!

And politics? Well, let's say the site seems to be short of "lower the collective while simultaneously applying anti-torque to reduce yaw" information there. So far, "Lucky 13" seems to be in the conservative corner, writing stuff that is delightfully politically incorrect. If you are in the "Hopey-Changey" cult, don't bother checking this blog.

I'm hopeful we'll see rotary-wing stuff in the future. In the meantime, I've chuckled at a few of the political posts there.
Check it out.

ScienceFact-

Paralyzed?
Put on your robot suit!
(Four slides and narrative.)
Thanks JustOneMinute.

How Did We Get Here?

RattlerGator nails it in my opinion!

Osama and Obama

ThirdWaveDave asks,
In what way are Osama and Obama alike?
Answer-
They both have close acquaintances that tried to kill people in Washington, D.C.!

R, H, AT, PS, PB, PW

If you immediately understood my title, you're probably from my generation.

I've always been crazy about cars. As a 16 year old looking through the classified ads for a used automobile, those letters would indicate a pretty well-equipped luxury car in 1963:
Radio, heater, automatic transmission, power steering, power brakes, and power windows.
It's odd now to think of a heater being an option. In the Midwest until the early 70's, many would forego buying air conditioning because you really only needed it for three or so months during the year.

As I drove to work this morning I was thinking about cars and how drastically they have changed in my lifetime. Even the cheapest of automobiles now come with automatic transmissions and air conditioners. Isn't an AM/FM radio also standard equipment now?
My old "work car" has 6-way electric (and heated) seats, an AM/FM/CD player with 11 speakers, intermittent windshield wipers, remote control mirrors, cruise control, tinted windows all around, and a fuel computer that provides instant miles per gallon, average mileage, and how many more miles I can drive before running out of fuel.

We've come a long way from the days when a heater was an option, haven't we?

Fred?

Fred!
That's about the only way you'd get me to pull the lever for McCain!

Fear of Flying

"Man, you'd never get me in one of those things!"

It's another of those utterances I hear more frequently than you might imagine.
Lots of folks are afraid of small aircraft in general and helicopters in particular. (And looking at the recent EMS helicopter accident record, maybe their fear isn't too illogical.)

But it's funny, when I ask why they'd be frightened of flying with me, more than half say, "I'm afraid of heights".
So am I...
Put me on a ladder and force me to climb above the 4th step, then stand back and listen to my knees sounding like castenets! I cannot walk to the edge of a tall building and peer over the edge without feeling anxious and grabbing hold of something solid to steady me.
But is that a fear of heights?
I'd argue it's a fear of falling, and the fear of falling isn't illogical.
Strap me into any aircraft and that fear just isn't there... I'm not gonna fall out.

Still, in most cases I'm pretty sure those with whom I have this discussion are not convinced. And that's okay... they're better off not needing a ride in the back of my helicopter anyway.

What Is "Flying"?

First things first... the guy flying that JetRanger is a fool.
He has left himself with no "plan B". If the engine quits... game over.

You may remember, in November we boarded an ATA Airlines 757 and flew to Honolulu.
Obviously, the ONLY way for most of us to make that trip these days is in a big airplane. I'm sure all of us passenger/pilots South of the cockpit door were imagining what was going on up front, and I was no exception. The flying I do is a world apart from what was going on up there... those guys were dealing with flight plans, clearances, and weather planning along that long route of flight. Was someone watching us on a radar scope the entire flight? I have no idea. But I do know this... we took off from Phoenix Arizona and flew almost 7 hours to Honolulu, and landed safely.
Seven hours of flight time. One takeoff from a long, clear strip of real estate. One landing on a similar arrow-straight ribbon of pavement.
Incredible.

The guys up front are, as they should be considering their responsibility, well paid.
But can you imagine anything MORE BORING than that flight?!
Fixed wingers, I'm sorry, but that job reminds me a lot of Ralph Cramden...
A scheduled route, a scheduled time, and lots of seats filled with people.
The biggest difference between those pilots and Ralph?
Our "bus" had wings!

When man first dreamed of flying he watched birds. They takeoff from a tree, fly a while, then land on a fence post somewhere.
Neat. Convenient. Efficient.
Our first attempts to imitate them included machines that flapped their wings. Video of those machines makes us laugh today. But the failure of those machines taught us the lessons we needed to be borne by air, even though what we were doing only remotely resembled what birds could do.

I was motivated to write this post by a blog post over at "Helicopters And Jet Pilots". Darren flies what I consider to be the most beautiful flying thing in the world, a Gulfstream GV. He's also a Marine, flying F-18 fighters. I bet he's VERY good at what he does! BUT...
His machine needs a long, flat, unobstructed piece of real estate to takeoff. Once airborne, he starts looking for a similar location to land that slick beast 'cause it probably stalls at something like 200 miles per hour!
(Exaggeration, but maybe not by much. At what speed does the GV quit flying Darren?)

Read his post. Once airborne, Darren climbs to something near 47,000 feet, where he can't quite make out the face of God, but he can vaguely see God fiddling with the controls. It's almost impossible for me to imagine that height. Lose pressurization in the airplane there, and if you are not being force-fed oxygen you pass out in less than 10 seconds! But at that altitude you are above all but the most severe of thunderstorms, and those severe storms are probably readily apparent popping up through the visible clouds below, so you can just drive your hot airplane around them.

To change altitude, Darren twists a knob between his thumb and forefinger and the autopilot commands the airplane climb/descend.
Heading change? Same thing... a twist of a knob. What powerful technology!

But is it flying?
Sure it is.
But it certainly is far removed from what we dreamed of while watching birds, and it in NO WAY resembles what I do on a daily basis.

Me?
If I fly 7 hours, (and I sometimes come close during a 12 hours shift), I'll do 20 or so landings in that time. Some of those landings will be to a highway intersection, at night, surrounded by wires and road and advertising signs, blowing up a dust storm beneath me. Birds sitting on fenceposts get blown away by my rotorwash, (and maybe dream of being able to fly as fast and as far as I can.)

Two different worlds.
Both amazing in their way. Both necessary. And yes, both ARE flying.
But I gotta tell ya...
In my nearly 40 years of teaching people to fly helicopters I've noticed one thing...
To a man/woman, my fixed wing qualified students who learn to fly helicopters lose their desire to fly airplanes.
And that fact makes me smile about my chosen profession.
My machine is ugly. But it truly FLIES LIKE A BIRD!