I’ve never gotten into RC aircraft. Partly because I know that I am fated to spend thousands of hours building something only to have it promptly flop over two seconds after I launch the thing. But static display models? All about that. So this electric RC B-1B bomber looks intriguing. At $800, it’s out of my price range and I *certainly* don’t have a place to display it (seems to be about 1/23 scale)… but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s just neato.
I have a *pile* of books to sell; the first of them are now on ebay. More will be added as I get around to it…
I’m selling the blueprints I’ve recently made. I can sign ’em if the buyer wants, front or back…
You can listen to the audio of the Lake Huron shootdown in the video below, via The Drive:
It’s small (the size of a “four wheeler,” probably meaning an ATV), it’s dark metallic and gives a good sun glint, has strings dangling from it, looks like a “container.”
Hmmm.
The government might not be protecting us for Chinese spying, and certainly isn’t protecting us from what might be an industrial/environmental disaster on the scale of Chernobyl, but hey, they’re lashing out at party balloons like there’s no tomorrow.
Pay no attention to the massive chemical release behind the curtain:
THREAD: Photos, videos, and news reports about the train derailment and toxic chemical release in East Palestine, Ohio.
This may be the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.
— kanekoa.substack.com (@KanekoaTheGreat) February 13, 2023
It’s time to post my first batch of cyanotypes to ebay. But I ran into a conundrum… how should I categorize them? I started entering the first one, the Sat Ib, as “collectible-historical memorabilia-astronauts & space travel-etc” but then I realized that these were made by me over the last few weeks. The *sources* for the blueprints are of course historical, but the actual items themselves are brand new, hand made “art” items. Suggestions?
Seems the balloons are coming pretty fast.
The NOTAM over Lake Huron appears to quite large and cover almost 1/4th of the Lake pic.twitter.com/FTfDy0elt0
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) February 12, 2023
🚨#BREAKING: Canada has just Closed a section of Airspace over the Great Lakes and near the U.S/Canadian Border due to an “Active Air Defense Operation”. pic.twitter.com/NFCRR4ACCr
— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) February 12, 2023
Clearly if the Commies are swarming our skies with balloons, they need to be shot down. But while balloons are cheap, AIM-9X missiles are expensive as are F-15 and especially F-22 sorties. Reserving air supremacy fighters for swatting balloons over Canada or Montana means they can’t be deployed elsewhere for roles more requiring their capabilities. The ability to take out balloons *cheaply* is needed. A suggestion: instead of expendable missiles launched from advanced fighters, how about reusable missiles launched from cargo jets, or modified corporate jets? Missiles such as AQM-37C. This missile was a target, and some variants were fitted with a parachute recovery system. The AQM-37C was capable of Mach 4 flight up to 100,000 feet. The AQM-37 series is now long out of production and no longer in service, but the design has worked for fifty years and could be certainly updated. It could be rebuilt for precision command guidance or some onboard guidance; it could be meant to simply dart through the balloons envelope, or blast over it real close while spewing out small submunitions. Build them in vast numbers for economies of scale; build variants for other roles such as surface attack, recon, whatever, to spread the cost and utility around. If you’re *real* good, build them for in-flight snatching; if you are *extremely* good, build them to be snatched by the launch aircraft.
A “high altitude airborne object” shot down by an F-22. This seems like chump work for the F-22, when the F-15 seems perfectly capable of it. it also seems like a dandy way for China and/or Russia to soak up American air defense resources, dollars and time.
But hey, at least Pfizer/Biden/whatever might be off the news cycle hook for a bit.
I’m shocked.
Also, he went into the hospital Wednesday sue to light-headedness. There was some early speculation that it was another stroke, but apparently it wasn’t. It’s being downplayed… but as I understand it he’s *still* hospitalized. For light-headedness. Everything is fine. Nothing to worry about.
I can’t imagine why America’s opponents are seeing us as weak and ineffectual these days. Regarding which:
Another balloon. It’s reportedly smaller than the Chinese spy balloon (with a “car-sized” payload), was flying at about 40,000 feet, and it took an F-22 and an AIM-9X to bring it down. Wreckage crashed onto ice and has been recovered.
… photos taken by high-altitude U-2 planes confirmed the presence of the equipment, including “multiple antennas … likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications” and “solar panels large enough to produce the requisite power to operate multiple active intelligence collection sensors.”
So, it was listening to us. Interesting to ponder just what it was listening *for.* Being a balloon, it would have had only minimal ability to target a specific site; it would have been able to scan a swathe of the country. Was it listening to cell phones? Was it listening for military-type transmissions and where they came from (looking for hidden bases/missiles/whatever)? Is the US going to start taking air defense seriously?
I seem to detect a few flaws in the story of how the US shot down the Chinese spy balloon…
Also to be seen here:
Chinese “version” of what happened with its balloon over US territory https://t.co/pS2GIbVCOy pic.twitter.com/PBckqy95YE
— Samuel Bendett (@SamBendett) February 7, 2023
