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The People's Liberation Army Air Force aerobatic demonstration team "August 1st" (*breath*) is re-equipping with J-10s this year, finally retiring the J-7s they've used for decades. Partly because of the embrace of new ideas, and partly because of the poor public reaction to the initial paint scheme shown on scale models at the first press release of the news, the PLAAF is holding a popularity contest to choose the new paint scheme from four candidates.




The scheme that was rejected (called the "White Rabbit Candy Wrapper" by wags):


PS: Also this month, the PLAAF retired the last unit of J-6s (MiG-19 "Farmer") they had in service. They'd been flying them for fifty years--and the planes had allegedly been obsolete for forty of them depending on who you asked.
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1) I wish I could afford to travel by air. In addition;

2) I don't have any portable Internet systems.

3) If I had any portable Internet systems, I wouldn't necessarily use them because...

4) I'd sooner be AIRCREW than a passenger. Can't afford to get distracted when at the controls. Kills people, you know.
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From China )

Documentary On The Development of the J-7.

Th!s Week:

Apr. 5th, 2010 03:34 pm
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Was flipping stations on TV after seeing the weather forecast...clicked to Th!s Network and saw the day's schedule: Starflight 1: The Plane That Couldn't Land, followed by The Panic In The Year Zero.

Starflight was the logical end of the Airport series but made by other hands, it might have been called Airport '83 and nobody other than Arthur Hailey would have cared. The plot: the first hypersonic passenger jet is forced to boost into low-Earth orbit to avoid debris from a failed satellite launch and is stranded in space. Lee Majors is the captain of the flight, Hal Linden is the mission control chief leading the response and rescue effort. The effects were fairly top-notch for the time. Looks like the cut Th!s is using is much shorter than the premiere version, tho'.

The Panic In The Year Zero is about a family struggling to survive in an America that had just suffered nuclear weapons strikes. It came out roughly the same time as the Cuban Missile Crisis and so probably got marks for its topicality. But what I think is strange about it...a while after I had seen it, I got a copy of the Robert Heinlein anthology The Menace From Earth which includes the story "The Year Of The Jackpot". Reading that, I realized that much of it was copied, nearly verbatim, into The Panic In The Year Zero. Which makes me wonder if Heinlein was plagiarized or if he consented and allowed his work to be used. Heinlein's story was first published nine years earlier, so the timing isn't unclear.

These movies will probably be shown again in their usual rotations. If your curious, check your local listings.
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Beauty Shots From AIRPORT 1975 )
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(I think [personal profile] theidolhands might want to hear about this little "space oddity".)

Today, my buddy Paul gave me an audio CD copy of content he acquired though his Disney contacts...

...Soundtracks from the Moonliner and Mission To Mars attractions at the Disney theme parks.

Listening to them threw me back thirty-one years to the first time I visited Florida and Walt Disney World. Mission To Mars was my favorite of the attractions then. The concept was a flight-simulation theater that took the crowd on a semi-realistic journey to the Red Planet, with rudimentary motion seating and panoramic projection screens of the spacecraft's external views. Before entering the theater itself, the crowd would go through a "Mission Control Brief" led by an audio-anamatronic character, who stood in front of banks of NASA-variety high-tech consoles "manned" by other robotic mannekins. The far wall of the room had large screen video and movie projectors. Going through that was, to a twelve-year-old kid, like living the future.

This disk had all fifteen minutes of audio from that attraction, and now my imagination can flit back there and remember it all. Three other tracks were from the earlier Moonliner incarnation of the ride, with public address chatter of a ("transistor-punk"?) aerospace passenger terminal, engine noise from a George Pal-era spaceship, and overture music from when it was 100% acoustic orchestral hardware. No better evidence of how much the world has changed...and also, how much the world's future avoided what we thought we wanted, back in those decades after WW2.

I'll go back to Florida, but I'm not sure I'll go back to Walt Disney World. Mission To Mars was replaced before I finished my flight training around 1990, and space tourism is either alive and well, or about to be swept aside by history, depending on who you ask. In the meantime, I'm the Dork Who Fell To Earth, looking for the next hyperspace portal and saving up for a ticket to Anthea. Hope you'll be on the flight with me. I could always use a travelling companion.

PS: Thanks to www.lunar.org...some visuals of what space tourism looked like to Disney from the outside: Read more... )

And from www.davelandweb.com...Mission Control: Read more... )
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Getting my Pilot's License and in so doing my College Degree. Of course, it's meant next to nothing ever since.
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This Place would be near the top of my list for places to go.

I found an old catalog of theirs while looking for something else and had to see if they're still in business. So they are.

I may not be able to look like Tom Cruise or Jason Gedrick or Jan-Michael Vincent, but I could DRESS like they did when they were in the Pilot's Seat!
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I didn't get my license till well after I turned 18, so I don't count. Of course, at 16 I was starting airplane pilot lessons, so I don't count that way either. Fewer things to run into above the traffic pattern, you know.
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In the book "The Future of Flight", which was written at about the time I left High School, the writers Ing and Myrabo included designs of aircraft that could use laser light to generate thrust, giving them the capability of flying anywhere in the atmosphere, at nearly any airspeed--from hovering off the surface to orbit velocity. A single-stage to orbit vehicle has always been a dream of aerospace engineers--especially an efficient one that didn't need such a huge fuel tank. (And yes, a nice jetpack is possible from the technology...but remember, you'd still have to be pretty physically fit to use one!)

Now, the ideal machine? A flying ship, big enough to live in, with all the comforts of home and the massive operational envelope above. Capable of going everywhere worth going to. And not having to want of anything when you're there. That's the way to travel!

Till then, Moonshine (my Chevy Prizm) will have to do.
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...As It Was... )

And As It Is )

The second video is a teaser for this weekend's RBAR in Portugal.

PS: It has come to my attention that if an ordinary LJ reader accesses my page he/she will see advertising on the sides. I find that deplorable, as I don't get any benefit from LJ for the advertising, beyond my free hosting. If I switched to Plus, then I'd get more features but have to condone seeing ads myself. As I don't think I can afford a Paid account at the moment, it's something I can do nothing about. Pardon my venting...I just found it a nasty surprise. I apologize to all my regular readers and ask them to bear with me.
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Wanted to be an airplane pilot nearly from birth. Decided on it for a career thirty years ago, when the airline industry was at its height and even the military looked good. Went to flight school as early as I could, junior in High School. Went to college and got an Associate Degree in Aviation Management--and never got a job in my field. Haven't even sat in an operational plane...since the day I passed my final checkride and got my license. That answer your question?

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