Disaster Area

Airplane of the Day

A classic DC-2. Picture from last June.

Wow, seems like forever since I've seen blue skies here.

Reno to Seattle

Premiere of a New Airplane

It's not often that new airplanes (and employees) get the red carpet treatment, and today was no exception. Sure, my employer of record premiered the new 787 with all the fanfare of, well, not exactly a rock star or a new movie. Despite the good intentions, it ended up more along the lines of a fringe film festival. With 20,000 people arriving, somehow the powers that be decided that it needed to bus everyone half a mile to the hangar where the event would take place. It took an hour of standing in line (in the baking heat) for Sue and I to finally make it the half mile on the hired school bus. Coming out it took us ten minutes to walk it.

For the main event we were in plastic seats pushed way too close together in a darkened hangar. We had Jim McNerney, our CEO, Tom Brokaw, retired NBC news guy, Scot Carson our  Boeing Commercial Chief, and Mike Bair the program manager.  Was anything ground breaking said? Not really. We sat through an hour of  yakking and speeches from around the world (some were quite good - the guy in Italy said they'd been partying all day, and was quite believably tipsy, especially as it was around midnight there).

Finally, the hangar doors parted to... a view of the trees across the way. But soon, the first 787 hove into sight, pulled by an airplane tug, to sit majestically just outside the doors. Allegedly, we were then allowed to go and swarm around it, but the same genius that went into planning the bus debacle had apparently also been involved in planning the access from the hangar to the apron where the plane was. As you can see from the picture, some people made it out there, but after half an hour of inching towards the fresh air and the airplane, we gave up and headed home, walking all the way in ten minutes, as noted above.

Man, have we got a lot to learn from the Oscars...   

Triumph and Woe

I've been helping teach the Senior Airplane Design Class at the University of Washington for the past two quarters. Today, the valiant class took their radio control model of their class project to Whidbey Island to fly it for the first time. They have designed it, tested it in the wind tunnel and today was time to savor the results.

Well, it was a fabulous day, but without the totally fabulous ending.

Here's the critical video:

Now, this was a difficult design - very squirrely and even in the hands of an expert RC pilot, it was going to be difficult to get the thing in the air and back safely on the ground. The pitch up that led to the crash was somewhat predictable from the wind tunnel data.

Still, it was a great achievement...

When Good Rockets Go Bad

Well, not everything can go right for us, I guess...

See it all on Youtube

Then again, what's not to like overall?

More UK Adventures

Once again I am in the beautiful, busy city of Cambridge in England for a technical meeting with a whole raft of people working on the Silent Aircraft Initiative. I've never been much of a fan of traveling alone, and this is my first trip alone since the last time I was here back in June 2005.

The flight over was fun - it's always fun being pampered in business class - especially on the incomparable British Airways. This time around I had a rear facing window seat, which allowed me to snap a few pictures of Mt. Rainier to the south after we took off. Here's one:

Mt Rainier is that fuzzy dark grey blob to the left in the layer just under the pink.

Anyway, it was also the most perfect way to see the wing of the 747 do its thing.

An added bonus of this trip is that I get to meet Maggi Dawn again. If everything works out OK, we're having lunch today. Then this evening it's off to dinner at Magdalene College, followed by the all day meeting on Friday at, of all places, Robinson College, which is where Maggi hangs her professional hat.

I'm hoping to get to The Imperial War Museum at Duxford again, as their fantastic remodel of their old main hangar, "Airspace", is now open, although not totally complete. I may get there today or possibly Saturday on the way back to Heathrow.

A Tale of Fifi

I have no idea how I missed this, but  here's to rectifying an oversight, even if it is a couple of months late..

Somewhat riffing off Maggi's recent post about the status of women in blogging, church blogging and society in general, and especially following up on this ancient (2 year old) post by Aussie Dan McCredden about gender and church and blogging, I thought I'd pass this little tidbit along.

First, check out the 2006 US Air Force Thunderbirds air display team. Take a look at the face second from right on the upper side. Click the picture...

Maj. Nicole Malachowski, 31, in her first season with the U.S. Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, “Thunderbirds”, flies the No. 3 jet as the right wing pilot in the diamond formation.
Major Malachowski entered the Air Force in 1996 upon graduation from the U.S. Air Force Academy. Before her assignment to the team, Major Malachowski served as an F-15E Instructor Pilot and Flight Commander with the 494th Fighter Squadron, Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England. She has logged more than 1,300 hours as an Air Force pilot, with more than 1,000 hours in the F-15E.
Major Malachowski calls Las Vegas, Nevada home. She is married to Maj. Paul Malachowski of Buffalo, N.Y.

And just in case you're not catching the significance, maybe this will help...

The Thunderbirds, the crack flight demonstration team for the U.S. Air Force, is about to kick off the 2006 season with their first show at Ft. Smith, Ark. The team features the first woman pilot to ever fly for either the Thunderbirds or the Navy's Blue Angels.

Oh, "What's with Fifi?", you might ask.

Check out Wikipedia...

Remembrance Wall at Duxford, Cambridge

Duxford, Cambridge, is the home of the aviation wing of the Imperial War Museum. Recently they added the American Air Museum featuring American combat aircraft through the ages.

The American museum is a tribute to the 30,000 Americans who died flying from the UK in World War 2. This picture shows the etched glass panels depicting each American airplane shot down in WW2, by squadron and type. I had heard about it before I got there and thought it would be interesting, but it is very moving to see it and walk by it in person.

Here's a close up of one panel:

High Tech Sleeper Cabins in the Sky

For those of you that have flown long distances, especially on a Boeing 747, you might be interested in a short video Boeing has just released of the interior of the new, revamped 747-8 Intercontinental (due in a few years.)

One of the really cool features is the creative use of the space overhead in the upper area behind the "hump". There's room up there for what Boeing calls Sky Suites. The video shows you what they could be like. That space is unusable for regular seats because passengers need to be seated properly for takeoff and landing, but the space is usable during the bulk of the flight. (If the space were usbale for more seats it would already have them...)

Shuttleworth Collection

One of the fun parts of being on a work trip to the UK was taking some colleagues to see the vintage airplanes at the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden near Bedford.

Lots and lots of aeroplanes (there, i used the English terminology) from WW2 and before, including a couple used in the movie Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines. Here's the aptly named Bristol Boxkite:

The cool think about Shutttleworth is that everything works and flies. Well, with one notable death-trap exception. Rumor has it that the Boxkite gets to fly only in perfect weather with winds under 2 mph.

Very cool place.

Update: Added a few pictures in a photo album (see right)