One-Eye

 AARRRGH, blather, cats, photography  4 Responses »
Jul 202011
 

One of the cats that hangs around my house is this poor scrawny unfortunate critter. Some months back she showed up with an eye that looked like something out of a zombie movie; over time it has faded to… this. She’s deathly afraid of me, so there’d be no grabbing her and hauling her to the vet even if I had the funds to do something. Sadly for her, I suspect that if she fell into The System, they’d probably just put her down. Being both disfigured and feral would probably not put her at the top of the adoption lists. So, I give her food when I can. I’ve tried to keep Scruffy from hogging it all, but he’s figured out that if he hangs out with her, then food will sooner or later be made available. And since he is *not* afraid of me (lil’ bastard tried to bite me tonight), he gets at it fust with the most.

Tonight for the first time I saw a couple of black kittens hanging out with her, so she’s a mommacat.

A few names present themselves as obvious… “Leela,” of course, and “Franky” (you might have to put some thought into that… and, no, it’s nothing to do with “Frankenstein”). However, naming a cat creates, or at least acknowledges, an emotional attachment. And this poor critter… well, realistically she probably ain’t long for the world. I’m surprised she’s done this well, even though in recent months she has lost a whole lot of weight. Due in no small part to loss of hunting abilities, I’d expect.

 Posted by at 10:40 pm

Whispercraft Revival

 aircraft, models, new products, science fiction  10 Responses »
Jul 202011
 

One of the models I made master parts for Fantastic Plastic models was the 1/72 scale “Whispercraft” helicopter from the movie “The Sixth Day.” This was, IMO, one of my more entertainingly engineered kits, with lots of movable parts and options. Due to financial restrictions, it had no cockpit innards. And due to something happening with the molds and/or the master parts, it had a very limited production run and has been unavailable for some time.

There has apparently been enough interest shown that we are looking at re-releasing the kit, this time with full cockpit details. Also of *potential* interest is releasing a few extra parts to make a military variant. This would be invented out of whole cloth. I created a few clay “mockups” of potential alternate forward fuselage configurations, shown below. These are not meant to be the final designs, but instead are simply quickly-sculpted “sketches” to show possibilities.

If you are interested in a Whispercraft model, let me know via comments. Also, if you are interested in a Whispercraft and find one or another of the “alternate configurations” appealing, let me know that, too. if there is enough interest shown, the project will go forward, and probably with the alternate configuration that there is the most interest in.

First: a “conventional” configuration

Second: a “duck nose” configuration

Third: a tandem-seater like the Mil-24 “Hind”

Fourth: an asymmetrical configuration, like the Boeing AAH entry.

Fifth: a faceted “stealth configuration

 Posted by at 10:17 pm

“From RAINBOW to GUSTO:” A-6-9 configuration

 aircraft, books, drawings, history, projects, RAINBOW to GUSTO  2 Responses »
Jul 202011
 

Eighteenth in the series of reconstructed drawings from Paul Suhler’s book “From RAINBOW to GUSTO.” This is the Lockheed A-6-9 design as drawn by Dan Zuck in January 1959. This particular drawing has a Source Grade of four:

“RAINBOW to GUSTO” is available from Amazon:

To download the high-rez version of the A-6-9 drawing, simply click THIS LINK. You will be prompted for a username and a password. For the A-6-9 drawing, use these:

Username: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 136

Password: the LAST word in the body of the text on page 136

(Remember: Case Sensitive!)

ALSO NOTE: if all you get is a “red X,” that means the image is too large for your browser to display (I’ve not had a problem with Firefox, but have had with IE). In that event, simply hit the Back button to this page, and right click on the link above and save the image directly to your computer and view from there.

Up next: A-7-2 configuration

 Posted by at 6:07 pm

Where have I heard this before…

 blather, news  No Responses »
Jul 192011
 

Congressman’s Twitter account hacked

It is claimed that a hacker replaced the Congresscritter’s photo with a  “lewd” one and started sending out “unauthorized tweets.” Given that politicians seem genetically incapable of learning from the mistakes of others, my first though would be that this is Yet Another Weinerish Dumbass. There is, however,a  *major* point of difference:

We are currently working with U.S. Capitol Police, House Information Security and Twitter to resolve this matter.”… and they are all treating the breach as a serious matter.

Well, sure. Hacking a government officials computer system, even something as basically innocuous as Twitter, should be a source of concern.

 Posted by at 1:20 pm

Super-Hustler Cockpit

 aircraft, contest, photography, projects  2 Responses »
Jul 192011
 

The Super-Hustler was a Convair design for a three-stage manned vehicle capable of Mach 4. The first stage was a Convair B-58 bomber; the second stage was an unmanned and expendable ramjet powered booster; the third stage was a two-man, one- or two-engined ramjet vehicle that could do recon, bombardment or both.

The design got fairly far along, including detailed design drawings and mockups. The cockpit mockup was an important item, as it helped the engineers to determine the feasibility of the concept. Due to the high speeds and relatively small size of the vehicle, it was not practical to equip it with a conventional canopy which would provide useful forward vision. This would of course be a serious issue during landing, so the design was fitted with a television camera in the extreme nose.

Several photos of the Super Hustler cockpit mockup have come to light. Below are three that show the instruments in some detail, while still managing to be really quite awful in quality.

 Posted by at 11:58 am

“From RAINBOW to GUSTO:” A-6-6 configuration

 aircraft, awesomeness, drawings, history, projects, RAINBOW to GUSTO  No Responses »
Jul 182011
 

Seventeenth in the series of reconstructed drawings from Paul Suhler’s book “From RAINBOW to GUSTO.” This is the Lockheed A-6-6 design as drawn by Dan Zuck in January 1959. This particular drawing has a Source Grade of four:

“RAINBOW to GUSTO” is available from Amazon:

To download the high-rez version of the A-6-6 drawing, simply click THIS LINK. You will be prompted for a username and a password. For the A-6-6 drawing, use these:

Username: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 135

Password: the LAST word in the body of the text on page 132

(Remember: Case Sensitive!)

ALSO NOTE: if all you get is a “red X,” that means the image is too large for your browser to display (I’ve not ahd a problem with Firefox, but have had with IE). In that event, simply hit the Back button to this page, and right click on the link above and save the image directly to your computer and view from there.

Up next: A-6-9 configuration

 Posted by at 10:48 pm
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