Shallow Thoughts

Convair B-36 Peacemaker

Dave was browsing old airplane pages and stumbled across a neat find.

The Convair B-36 Peacemaker has a wingspan of 230 feet (for comparison, a Boeing 767's wingspan is 156 feet), and it's powered by four pusher-prop radial engines plus four turbojets, ten engines total. Wow!

But that's not even the cool part. The cool part is the list of B-36es still in existence. There are apparently only five of them left: one at Castle Air Force Base (hey, that's not that far from here -- a two or three hour drive, and we used to autocross there now and then); one at the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio; one at the Pima Air Museum in Tuscon, Arizona; one at the Strategic Air & Space Museum in Nebraska; and one in pieces in a field in Newbury, Ohio owned by a Mr. Walter Soplata, who bought the plane when the Air Force was about to scrap it.

Wouldn't that be a cool accessory to liven up your back yard?

Tags: planes
[ 13:50 Mar 22, 2008    More misc | permalink to this entry ]

The Talking Dog at the Men's Club

Dave and I went flying (radio controlled model airplanes) at Baylands last Saturday.

Dave got to the tables first, with the toolbox and one plane. I followed, carrying two of my planes. As I walked up to the table, some guy I hadn't seen there before chuckled, indicated Dave and said "Heh, I see he's got someone to carry his stuff for him."

I gave him a strange look and a "Huh?" and then "No, he can carry his own stuff."

It eventually dawned on the guy that those planes I was carrying were my own, and I was going to fly them (perhaps the transmitter hanging from its strap around my neck was a clue?), and he apologized.

It's amazing how often this happens; about every other time I fly there, there's some guy reacting like "Unbelievable! She has breasts, yet she flies airplanes! How can this be?"

It's not that they're unfriendly -- usually they're much more complimentary than this particular fellow. But it can get old being the phenomenal talking dog week after week. I'm reminded of the recommendation in Val's "How To Encourage Women in Linux" document: "Don't stare and point when women arrive". Fortunately, the Bayland regulars aren't like that, so it's not quite that "stranger walks into a bar" scene mentioned in Val's howto. But it's frequent enough that I bet it discourages women newbies.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, based on the state of model airplane magazines, which are still stuck at that pleistocene "Each month's cover shows a different scantily clad bimbo with big tits and lots of lipstick, posing with an airplane" stage from which most other male-dominated hobbies graduated ten or fifteen years ago, or longer.

I was thinking about that today after class when, as I was getting ready to ride home, a woman walking to her car hailed me with some bike questions, and we had a nice talk about motorcycling.

She said her boyfriend thought she might be too short to ride (she was about my height, possibly a little shorter) but she'd seen a Rebel at a Honda dealer and was pretty sure she could ride that. I assured her a Rebel should be no problem, nor should a small sportbike like a Ninja 250. I offered to let her try straddling my CB-1 (about the same height as a Ninja 250), but she declined -- on her way somewhere, and perhaps nervous about sitting on someone else's bike.

Anyway, she had already decided to take the MSF course and get all the safety gear before buying a bike -- she'd obviously thought it through, and had come to all the right conclusions on her own. You go, girl!

(I probably should have thought to tell her about the Short Bike List FAQ.)

Tags: chix, planes
[ 22:40 Mar 15, 2005    More misc | permalink to this entry ]

Predators and Flocks

I've always read that the reason that animals congregate in flocks, schools, and swarms is that it's more difficult for a predator to attack an animal in a swarm. The predator goes for one animal, gets confused and veers off after another animal, veers after a third, and ends up catching none at all.

Today, I experienced this effect more directly, from the vantage point of both predator and prey.

We were flying model airplanes with the folks at Baylands. We brought the Pocket Combat Wings out of retirement, because there's been chatter on BayRC about people dogfighting Mini Speedwings, and we wanted to try dogfighting with more than just the two of us in the air.

We hit the jackpot today! The combat session had seven planes in the air at once, though it seemed like twice that as they twisted and twined and screamed and whined and tried to hit each other. Beautiful!

There's been some talk about rules and engine classes and that sort of thing. Speaking as a pilot of the smallest and least powerful plane there (I think I was the only one with a stock IPS motor), it doesn't matter a bit whether some planes are faster than others, or slightly bigger. Nobody can make contact anyway.

In some twenty minutes of intense dogfighting (and sore hands and raw thumbs!) there were maybe four hits total (and no kills -- in every case both wings continued flying). People tried different strategies: pick out one target and follow it (invariably to lose it quickly in the melee), fly straight and let everyone else attack you (except mini wings don't fly straight all that well, especially in high winds), fly straight back and forth through the center of the bait-ball, fly into the bait-ball and start doing tight loops, fly above the bait-ball and spin down through it ...

Didn't matter. It turned out to be impossible to aim for a particular plane as they all swarmed and twisted, and impossible to pick one and follow it. Life in a swarm is chaos, and all you can do is join in the chaotic dance.

Tags: nature, planes
[ 21:21 Dec 04, 2004    More misc | permalink to this entry ]