Up, Up, and Away

critters, photography

Apr 252011

Photos taken on April 22 in Virginia Beach, VA (same place as the disturbing monkeyride). Temperature: friggen’ cold.

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The Unwanted Blog

1/72 Max Valier Racketenschiff October 27, 2025
My 3D printed scaleup of the model I created for Fantastic Plastic is coming along. I’m approaching this as more of an art project than engineering… partially because I think it better fits the aesthetics of a 1920’s “project” by painting it with rattlecans and pens rather than an airbrush, partially because I just want […]
When did the “Star Trek” timeline diverge from ours? September 23, 2025
The people running present-day Star Trek have tried desperately to tinker with the Trek backstory so that it can be “our” future. But the past as revealed by canon Star Trek, from TOS through TNG, DS9, Voy and Ent, is clearly NOT our future. Fifty years have passed since the advent of TOS, decades which […]
Ryan COIN September 17, 2025
Ryan art of a Counter Insurgency (COIN) concept from the 1960s. This aircraft is somewhat similar to the OV-10 Bronco but with the important distinction of having a rotor for VTOL capability. For forward flight the 3-bladed rotor would largely stow within a large saucer-shaped rotor hub to decrease drag. Unfortunately, this is all I […]
The limits of gloating September 16, 2025
In the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, a LOT of people found themselves with exciting opportunities to explore new career options after posting gleeful nonsense online that their employers didn’t like or were downright horrified by. And while I’ve long been opposed to “cancel culture,” this simply doesn’t bother me. If you found that […]
Great great great grandfather August 9, 2025
So a very distant relation in Sweden is working on fleshing out his family history and managed to get in touch with my mother regarding my mothers fathers fathers father, who left Sweden in 1852 and came to Illinois. Included in what we have so far is a translation of a letter the guy sent […]
July 2025 APR Rewards August 1, 2025
Rewards for July, 2025 have been released. These include: Document: “GETOL Technical Merits & Status,” General Dynamics/Convair, AD-VTOL-41, February, 1963. Report on Ground Effect Take off and Landing studies. Document: “Flying Cranes,” Sikorsky, 1959. Brochure describing and illustrating heavy lift helicopters built and projected. Document: “Nova and Post-Nova Propulsion Summary,” Rocketdyne presentation, 1962, describing extremely […]
Class Y Courier July 25, 2025
A fan concept of a Star Wars Y-wing but brought into the Star Trek universe as a courier. Only the one view, but to me it looks awesome. It’d make a neat model. It certainly seems to make sense from an aesthetic standpoint, looking like something that might serve the Runabout role during the TOS […]
Forgotten dead, remembered again July 18, 2025
A Tweet about the Pixar movie “Coco,” which I have not seen, got me thinking (and I think re-iterating an idea I blathered about on this blog years ago but can’t be bothered to look up again). https://x.com/cirsova/status/1945885686768230903 An interesting theology: you continue to exist in some form so long as someone remembers you, then […]
Buttons & Abby June 28, 2025
Buttons is about 16. While nowhere near the oldest a cat can get, it is, sad to say, old for a cat. All my prior cats made it to 10 or at best 11, so Buttons has outlasted them all. And sadder to say, he has some medical issues that, left unchecked, will end him […]
Ebay is getting expensive June 23, 2025
For about 20 years I’ve been buying aerospace documentation on ebay. For a good chunk of those I’ve crowdfunded the purchases of really expensive stuff. And by “really expensive” I’ve meant something like “hundreds of dollars for a single report.” Split the purchase price between one or two dozen people, send all of them high-rez […]