Fokker F26

 aircraft, drawings, history, projects  9 Responses »
Oct 102010
 

An immediate post-war design, the Dutch Fokker F26 “Phantom” was an early conceptual design for a jetliner. Not intended to be built, but just to test the waters as far as engineering practicality and airline interest, the F26 design was displayed at the Paris Air Show of November, 1946.

Span was to be 18.2 meters, length 15.4 meters, propulsion provided by two underslung Rolls-Royce Nene RB. Mk.41 turbojets, sure to make the ride in the cockpit “whisper-quiet.” Cruise speed was to be 800 kph for a range of 1000 km.


fokker-f26-phantom-color-artwork.jpg

fokker-f26-phantom.jpg

 Posted by at 8:54 pm

About the “CAD prints” idea…

 AARRRGH, blather, drawings, new products  7 Responses »
Oct 102010
 

The thing I’ve found in my several years of trying to sell stuff… the first weekend pretty much tells the story about how sales are going to go. Roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of all the sales I’m ever going to have for an item happen within the first week, and the bulk of those during the first weekend. I was hoping for forty buyers of the CAD drawings. I got 4. The idea would seem to not warrant any further effort. Remaining grasping-at-straws notions include selling them as digital drawings, and selling them aimed specifically at modelers, with the drawings resized for standard scales, perhaps with several versions of the same drawing on the same sheet, but at different scales (1/144, 1/72, 1/48, etc) . That seems like a pretty dry hole too, though.

 Anybody have any ideas, I’m open to suggestions.

 Posted by at 8:33 pm

Teachers Gone Wild

 AARRRGH, blather, dumbassery, Gah., I'm from the government, politics  12 Responses »
Oct 102010
 

A cell phone video of a teacher having a violent mental breakdown in class:

http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=13294058

The teachers career is almost certainly over. I’ve no idea if, before this, he was a good teacher or bad, popular or unpopular, skilled or incompetant. But going violent is unacceptible.

However, there is another side to this story. Along with the teacher going gonzo… there are the students in the video who are clearly uncivilized. My suspicion is that years of being forced to deal with the worthless detritus of society, with no practical means of enforcing discipline, led the teacher to his breakdown.

As I’ve mentioned before, in my view compulsory education should not be through 12th grade, but only through 6th grade or so. The jackholes shown in this video are precisely the kind of students who would be happier out of school. The jackholes shown in this video are precisely the kinds of students who would make the *other* students happier if they were out of school.

The dirtmonsters who seem to have driven this teacher over the edge have not only ruined the teacher life, they’ve done pretty good damage to their own, and have probably made a sizable dent in the lives of the kids in the class who might’ve actually been able to benefit from the education they might have otherwise received. The teacher, students and school would all have been much better off if the teacher had had the ability to fill out a slip of paper and have troublemaking students simply ejected from the school grounds, via either “bouncer” or “catapult.”

 Posted by at 11:47 am

“Airplane!” without the jokes

 aircraft, blather, humor  1 Response »
Oct 092010
 

Turns out the movie gets cut down to 14 minutes when you remove the humor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jam3918fGuw

Oddly enough, the plot actually holds together reasonably well.

There is one running gag that carries over, though. Since the video was created by simply editting out jokes, rather than reworking the soundtrack, the sound of the airliner (a jetliner, but with the sound of a piston-engined prop job) carries though.

 Posted by at 9:59 pm

Staged Rage

 blather, dumbassery, news, politics, religion  5 Responses »
Oct 092010
 

Palestinian boy run over by Jewish settler in East Jerusalem

Tensions are running high in East Jerusalem after a young Palestinian boy was hit by a car thought to be driven by an Israeli.

Video footage showed the car colliding with the boys, hitting one boy on the side and another full on with the front of car, flinging him into the air.

Just on that description, it sounds kinda tragic. But watch the video. It’s not a case of some jackhole running down innocent children, or even of someone negligently hitting kids… it’s a case of a lot of kids acting like criminals and actively *trying* to get hit by the car. The car swerves all over everywhere to avoid a collision. And since the car is surrounded by criminals who are showing every sign of wanting to kill the driver *before* the “accident” takes place, it’s hardly surprising that the driver didn’t stop.

Note also the rather large number of cameras that are on scene and rolling when this takes place. The “Palestinians” were actively seeking an incident like this. That they are willing to use their own children in the manner is rather apalling.

There is an obvious response to this.

deathrace2000.jpg

 Posted by at 11:08 am

Whoops! No 3D for Harry Potter

 blather  13 Responses »
Oct 092010
 

This to me is a good thing:

Harry Potter 3D release cancelled, says Warner Bros

The studio said it could not complete the 3D conversion of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 in time for its 19 November UK and US release date.

Note: “3D conversion.” Which means the movie was not meant to be 3D in the first place. Personally I’ve little enough use for 3D; I’ve seena  number of movies in both 3D and 2D, and honestly can’t really see much value in the 3D versions. Might be a matter of taste, or it might be a matter of depth perception, I can’t say. But as minimally beneficial as 3D was to movies like Avatar which were meant from the beginning to be 3D, the 3D in movies like “Clash of the Titans” which were 3D conversions of standard 2D movies was just a complete waste of effort, time and money, IMO.

 Posted by at 9:48 am

World’s Fastest Helicopter

 aircraft, awesomeness, history, news  3 Responses »
Oct 082010
 

Video of the Sikorsky X2 busting the world speed record for helicopters:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK7ktLXhq88

Notice that there are points in the video where the rotation rate of the rotors synchs up well with the video frame rate, leading to the appearance that the rotors are turning *really* slow.

262 knots in a shallow dive, 250 knots in level flight. And they hadn’t even turned the engine up to “11” yet, so reportedly Sikorsky wants to go for 265 knots in level flight. That’s about 305 mph/491 kph. The previous record holder was the Westland Lynx, which got about 401 kph back in 1986.

 Posted by at 7:49 pm
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