Pilot's Log

My boredom and Research Addiction is trying to fill in the blanks on my Hackett Continuum history and world setting. The results so far...

INCLUDED
* Firefox and Firefox Down
* The Hunt For Red October
* First Blood and Rambo: First Blood Part II
* Missing In Action
* Uncommon Valor
* Blue Thunder (the movie AND the TV series)
* Airwolf (through the second season)
* Deal Of The Century
* Team Yankee
* 007: For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, Never Say Never Again and View To A Kill

I think I want to include Best Defense as well, but want to see it again first.

EXCLUDED
* Commando
* Iron Eagle
* Top Gun
* Red Dawn
* Invasion U.S.A.
* Spies Like Us
* The Fourth Protocol

I'm on the fence about some "properties" simply because of their relevance or timeframes.

Factional Insignia for some of my wargame armies in the making:



I reserve the right to return to this entry and explain these and add context. Needless to say, this doesn't reflect real-world politics or my personal philosophies.

Overday I bought a copy (to replace one I gave my brother) and binge read it. The reason I bought it (again) was to see if it could mesh with the existing Hackett Continuum...and so far so good, even though World War Three lasts a little longer in Tom Clancy's version of events. Two things that had been lacking in Gen. Hackett's vision were the political and economic causes of the War and Clancy's novel fills in some of that dimension. But beyond that I can shift the dates six weeks and most of it matches.

Meanwhile, I've noticed that the Date/Day of the Week patterns for 1984 and 1985 match those for 2012 and 2013, so for planning and reality checking in that regard, I can simply use my current date book (which has calendars for both '12 & '13).

And I have robotech_master to thank:

The NEW HOME PAGE for The Hackett Continuum on Facebook! Since I didn't believe I could accomplish the storyline all by myself, I'm taking the concept to hyperfiction to see if I can get other voices to work with mine in chorus.

I feel like Dr. Frankenstein. Will it live, or just lay on the table?

Yes, bombs. The kind they drop from warplanes. Nothing actually exploded, but I did get some exercize defusing a dilemma.

In my research addiction Google-roaming, I came upon an article about the IML Group (a team of aircraft designers in New Zealand at the end of the Seventies) who had created a set of warplane proposals under the name ADDAX. None of these were able to get funding for construction (one [happy or unhappy, depending on where you are in the world] fact about New Zealand is that it's too far away from the population pressure of conflict rampant elsewhere on Planet Earth and is surrounded by good-buddy nations that will never threaten it). But I did find scaled drawings for some of them. The Addax-S strike fighter is a wild blended-body design, almost like the Captain Power or Buck Rogers fighters from their respective TVB series. I wanted to figure statistics from the drawing...but the article where I found it had no further information.

And then I noticed that the drawing had the plane armed with BOMBS.

The U.S. standardized its bomb design in the 1950s after years of chaotic development programs and the ultimate obsolescence of the WW2 "box-tail" bomb...which was okay for B-17 and B-29 internal bays but getting to be a problem with delivery from high-performance jets. The central figure was Ed Heinemann, the chief designer for Douglas Aircraft. The shape was the same basic slim teardrop he was using for auxillary tanks on the A-4 Skyhawk and F-6 Skyray. It was easily scalable, and easily adaptible. And, in the case of those into scale models, a workable yardstick.

I go into my spare parts boxes and find a box of add-on armament parts and their instruction sheets. I compare what I have to my printout and decide that the plane in the picture has 1000 lb bombs strapped to the underside. I measure my 1/72nd scale 1000 lb bomb: 37mm. Bombs on drawing: 26mm. Scale of drawing printout: about 1/100. Made sense because of the size of the engines and the cockpit relative to it all.

While it's impossible to learn everything about something from just one feature, there are ways to learn quite a lot.

“Last four.”

“750-1.”

The man at the desk punched a few keys of his board and waited. Once the screen refreshed on his monitor, he pressed another key and a screen lit up behind him. “Is that information correct?”, he asked, pointing back without looking—and keeping his sight on the youth he addressed.

“It is.”

“Hmm.” There was a heavy but not-very-tense moment. The man said, “You’ve been excused.”( Read more... )

The Hackett Continuum, as said before, is more than a series of ficlets...I want it to be a role-playing storytelling game, played in a tag-team fashion. If you want to participate, either reply here or e-mail me c/o sbierce AT hotmail DOT com.

FP

From the current Air Force Magazine--If the Cold War went "Hot" in Europe...

Hey.

I've done some substantial research into the time of my proposed dunno-what-to-call-it. It's bizarre that I've found so much on the web. I have a list of all the pop songs of the 80s, title and artist. I have a list of the prime-time TV shows. I have a list of the hit movies (so I can name drop on what was playing at the local theater). And on the Vanderbilt University website, I can even watch network TV newscasts from back then, day by day.

So I didn't need a personal diary from back then, if I ever kept one. Sure it would have helped a great deal, but the lack of one hasn't been a dealbreaker.

I wonder, if blogs had been around back then, if I would have blogged. I know it's doing its part to keep me sane now. Perhaps I could have used it then.

FP