They're Made Out Of Meat!

Sorry bacon lovers, this is a little SciFi movie that I've always liked.
At times, I think they're talking about the heads of the current "administration" in D.C., but then that's demeaning to real, genuine, tasty meat.
Enjoy!

FOUR MILLION Visitors!

No, not here.
Probably take me about 10e6 years to get there!
Drop by fellow blogger Brigid's site and give her some kudos for running one of the classiest places on the Net!

Basic Radio Bookshelf

One of the things about being prepared is making sure you can communicate to your loved ones when the SHTF. You can use anything from tin-cans-and-string, to CB radios, the little walkie-talkies they sell everywhere, Amateur Radio, and for the big spenders, satellite phones. Getting started in this can be quite daunting, but if you want something more than the range a CB or a $30 hand-held from WalMart can give you, you're going to either have to have a "Radio Guy" in your group, or learn about it yourself. Most of these books deal with Amateur Radio, but the principles and methods explained in them are applicable to all forms of radio communications. So, here's a minor selection from my bookshelf, in no particular order:

The ARRL Handbook for Radio Amateurs
The ARRL Antenna Book
The ARRL FCC Rulebook
The ARRL Operating Guide
RF Components and Circuits by Joe Carr
Practical Radio Frequency Test and Measurement by Joe Carr
Handbook of Electronics Tables and Formulas by SAMS Publishing

I've got dozens more on topics from Satellites to DSP, published by the ARRL and the RSGB, but the ones I've listed are what I consider to be a minimum to have.

Have An Accident, PAY A FEE!

Ouch! The city of Huntington Beach is going to implement a "Pay As You Crash" tax for non residents involved in traffic accidents within the city's boundaries. They're doing this under the guise of a "Cost Recovery Program", but I wonder just how long it will be before they start charging residents.
Here's the link to the article in the OC Register.

Basic Rules of Flying

Way back when, in another life, I used to fly what the guys in the Controlled Airspace Towers called "FLIBS", basically little planes that want to come land where the big planes do. If you know what it means, then you're probably a GA pilot, too.
Anyway, a friend of mine sent me these, and I thought I'd share them, as some are new to me.
Enjoy!

* Takeoff's are optional. Landings are mandatory.

* If you push the stick forward, the houses get bigger, if you pull the stick back they get smaller. Unless you keep pulling the stick back...then they get bigger again.

* Flying is not dangerous; crashing is dangerous.

* The propeller is just a big fan in the front of the plane to keep the pilot cool. Want proof? Make it stop; then watch the pilot break out into a sweat.

* The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

* Every one already knows the definition of a 'good' landing is one from which you can walk away. But very few know the definition of a 'great landing.' It's one after which you can use the airplane another time.

* The probability of survival is equal to the angle of arrival.

* A helicopter is a collection of rotating parts going round and round and reciprocating parts going up and down -- all of them trying to become random in motion. Helicopters can't really fly -- they're just so ugly that the earth immediately repels them.

* Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make all of them yourself.

* There are three simple rules for making a smooth landing. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

* The only thing worse than a captain who never flew as co-pilot is a co-pilot who once was a captain.

* It's easy to make a small fortune in aviation. You just start with a large fortune.

* A male pilot is a confused soul who talks about women when he's flying, and about flying when he's with a woman.

* Try to keep the number of your landings equal to the number of your takeoffs.

* Asking what a pilot thinks about the FAA is like asking a fire hydrant what it thinks about dogs.

NEW Uniden Scanner Makes It Almost TOO Easy!

I'm a regular scanner user, and I have several scanners and receivers for listening to all kinds of radio traffic, almost from "DC-to-Daylight". I get quite a kick out of listening to the local airport traffic (LGB has a real honey for one of their ATC's!), and it's nice to be able to punch up the frequencies (I actually have them programmed) for my local PD/FD so when I hear sirens, I can find out what's going on. I firmly believe that we have a right to know what our local agencies are doing, and that includes monitoring their radio traffic. Now I don't mind their using encrypted transmissions for *some* activities, but regular radio traffic should be in-the-clear.
There have been many evolutions of public agency communications, starting with one-way broadcasts from Police HQ at one end of the AM radio dial ("Calling all cars!"), to simplex repeater systems, and on to trunked systems. Trunked Radio Systems are complex computer-controlled entities, somewhat similar to our current "Packet Switched" telephone network. They operate on multiple frequencies/channels, with one called the "Control Channel", which listens for a radio to start transmitting, analyzes the information, and automatically sends commands back to the radio telling it the correct channel it should switch to in order to communicate communicate with other radios in its "Talk Group". It gets quite complicated, so I'll let the reader follow the links to read more about it. Its main advantage is that it allows many users to share a common radio system, conserving the limited radio spectrum available in most metro areas. It's expensive, and has had more than it's share of developmental problems during the early days.
Later came APCO-25, also known as P-25, for "Project 25", which was a switch from analog to digital modulation. Although APCO-25 can operate perfectly well in simplex and repeater operation, combining it with trunking brought us to the current systems widely deployed here in the US.
When the big local agencies (LAPD, LASD) out here went to trunking, I wasn't too involved in scanner-listening, the city I lived in at the time kept their conventional radio system, and the big agencies kept a lot of their radio traffic operating "in parallel" on conventional non-trunked systems for interoperability reasons, and so I never bought a dedicated scanner that could deal with trunked systems. I just confined my listening to conventional radio systems in my area. When they went digital, I had to buy a new scanner that could handle the P-25 systems. My new scanner not only did P-25, but also conventional trunked systems, so by waiting, I got a "twofer".
One of the things about scanning is learning how to use your equipment, and getting a trunking-capable scanner taught me lot, including what a PITA it is to manually enter all the frequencies, talk groups, control channels, is it Motorola, EDACS, LTR, conventional trunked, all digital, analog, or mixed, or etc, etc, etc. The scanner itself could recognize and remember distinct individual systems, but it was still up to me to add the alphanumeric tags so I'd know *what* I was listening to. Fortunately, the scanner has a serial port on the back, and with the aid of a program for my PC, I was able to copy the frequency databases from the Internet, convert them to a form the radio could use, and upload them to the radio. Still, it took time to ferret out current, correct databases (Radio Reference is THE best!), grab them from the 'Net, paste them into the program, and upload them to the radio.
Now Uniden has come out with a new model that's made just for people who want to know what's going on, but don't have the time, inclination, or technical knowledge to get a digital-mode trunked radio system scanner up and running. Called the "Home Patrol", it comes pre-programmed with most major cities by zip code, touch screen display, GPS and USB ports, and has a removable memory card that can be used to load a new database, or to RECORD what you hear.
Availability should be September 2010, and the price is guesstimated at around $600.
Man, we never had it this easy when I got started in radio!

The Geography of a Recession

At what point does it become a "Depression", though? I've embedded the YouTube version, but if it doesn't work for you, or you'd prefer to see it bigger, here's the main page.

Emergency Visit to the Vet This Morning

And it wasn't pretty! We had our little one Coco spayed on Tuesday, and she was doing pretty well. She's a very active pup, though, even with her "comfy cone" on, and by Thursday I noticed she'd popped one of the surgical staples out. We were keeping it clean with Peroxide and applying a bit of Neosporin, but last night when we got home from dinner (Lucille's BBQ!) and a movie ("The Other Guys". Can I get my money back?) with the YF's brother and his wife, I noticed she'd popped another one out, and looking at her incision made us realize we'd better get her in ASAP. So we took her in this morning, and our Vet cleaned it, and put some new staples back in. He gave us some antibiotics to give her twice a day, and said to keep the cone on her all the time, and watch her to make sure she doesn't get dirt into the incision.
So now she's just laying around relaxing (it's a dog's life, huh?) and enjoying all the attention.

Harbor Freight Tool Box Combo

I have to admit to buying stuff at Harbor Freight. I consider (or did) most of their tools to be of the "One Use Throw Away" type, although they've gotten much better over the years, and some tools, like a hammer, are pretty hard to screw up!
I've wanted to get another rolling tool box to keep my power tools and bigger hand tools in for some time now, but going to Sears to get another $300 rolling cab like tha one I bought last year just didn't appeal to me. The quality of Craftsman-branded toolboxes has gone WAY down the last 10 years, and the ones that are in my price range are pretty cheaply made. Very flexible (they "oil can" a lot), the "ball bearing" slides feel like they been lube with sand-laced grease, and even the paint is pretty hit-or-miss. So when I got this ad in the email for Harbor Freight for a the set for $150, I figured what the heck. It's a complete 3-piece box combo for about HALF of what I paid for the last roller I bought at Sears. I didn't expect too much, so I was pleasantly surprised when I started to put it together. It has threaded inserts for the casters on the roller, and the side handles on the top chest. It's not a "Flexi-Flyer" like the last thing I bought from Sears (BTW...whatever happen to Roebuck?), and although I could have painted it better here at home, at least the paint has a good thickness and fairly uniform appearance. And as a nice touch, they included drawer liners of a somewhat spongy nature that will at least keep the tools from rattling around when you open and close the drawers. No, it doesn't have ball-bearing slides, but for $150 I can afford to buy a can of white Lithium grease and keep the slides lubed!
I won't go into where they source all their stuff. I used to be against sending money to to the ChiComs, but considering who's in the current "administration" I think the point is moot.....

UPDATE

ARRRRGH! Went to roll it around in the garage this morning, and realized I have the casters on the wrong end!
Oh, well.....at least I didn't have it full of stuff yet!

Boeing, Boeing, Boeing, GONE!

Well the wonderful, business friendly climate provided by our brave and forward thinking "leaders" up in Sacramento has resulted in another business leaving the state.
Boeing has announced that they're moving the C-130 Avionics and B-1B Modernization Programs from Long Beach to Oklahoma City.
Citing a shrinking Pentagon budget, and requests from the Military to reduce costs, the programs are moving.
This would leave the C-17 as the only major project Boeing still has out here, and that's hanging by a thread.
Oh, but we have nice weather, beaches, and lots of sunshine!
More here at the L.A. Times website.

Antenna Maintenance

Been pretty busy rebuilding my "M2" VHF/UHF antennas. When I pulled them off the roof of my bachelor pad, they'd been up there for almost ten years. I hung them in the rafters here at the house when I moved in, and finally got around to taking them down to check them out, and hooo-boy, were they ever crusty! Basically, I'm taking them apart, sanding all the corrosion off the aluminum parts with 150-grit "Wet or Dry", cleaning them good with denatured alcohol to get any skin oils and other "organic" gunk off them, and painting them with a self-etching primer made for bare aluminum. After the primer sets up nice and hard, which seems to take about THREE DAYS in the sun ( ! ), I'll give them a top coat of a low-reflectance flat gray-blue so they blend in with the sky, and hoist them up on the tower I'm extending.
I'm also making up new baluns for them, as the old ones were hard and brittle from being outdoors all these years. I'll be using much higher quality coax, better connectors, and checking them on my network analyzer set to make sure they're 1/4-wavelength at the center of the frequency bands I'll be using. And I'll be sealing them on their mating connectors with some good heat-shrink tubing that has the meltable inner liner so they're sealed up from the stuff we call "weather" out here in SoCal.
I'm about 90% finished with the UHF antenna, and about half finished with the VHF antenna. The UHF one was pretty easy to do as the elements are only about 8" long, but the ones on the VHF are about 24" long and get kind of "whippy" when you try and sand them.
And yes, I'm taking pictures of the whole project, so get ready to be bored by another one of my Radio Adventures!
On the 2A side of things, I snuk out to the range today, renewed my membership, and blasted off about 100 rounds of 45ACP.
And I can still get them all in the black at 25 feet!

T-99 Days....And Counting!

In 99 days, Americans will have a chance to vote out *some* of the IDIOTS that are currently in power, and screwing up our American way of life.

So here's our battle cry:

REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER!

Let's all pray we can turn our Ship Of State around in time to prevent it from becoming another third world country!

The Sack Lunches

I don't know if this is true or not, but it's definitely a Feel Good story.
Several times (back when I had a job!) I donated to one of the organizations that sends goodie packages to our fighting men and women. Since I wasn't able to serve our country, and I remember my Dad telling me about how great it was to get stuff from home when he was in the South Pacific during WWII, it seemed the right thing to do.
I got several letters from the troops that received my packages, and I cherish them still.
Enjoy the following little story....


The Sack Lunches

I put my carry-on in the luggage compartment and sat down in my assigned seat. It was going to be a long flight. 'I'm glad I have a good book to read. Perhaps I will get a short nap, I thought.

Just before take-off, a line of soldiers came down the aisle and filled all the vacant seats, totally surrounding me. I decided to start a conversation.

'Where are you headed?' I asked the soldier seated nearest to me.
'Petawawa. We'll be there for two weeks for special training, and then we're being deployed to Afghanistan .'

After flying for about an hour, an announcement was made that sack lunches were available for five dollars. It would be several hours before we reached the east, and I quickly decided a lunch would help pass the time...

As I reached for my wallet, I overheard a soldier ask his buddy if he planned to buy lunch. 'No, that seems like a lot of money for just a sack lunch. Probably wouldn't be worth five bucks. I'll wait till we get to base.'

His friend agreed.

I looked around at the other soldiers. None were buying lunch I walked to the back of the plane and handed the flight attendant a fifty dollar bill. 'Take a lunch to all those soldiers.' She grabbed my arms and squeezed tightly. Her eyes wet with tears, she thanked me. 'My son was a soldier in Iraq ; it's almost like you are doing it for him.'

Picking up ten sacks, she headed up the aisle to where the soldiers were seated. She stopped at my seat and asked, 'Which do you like best - beef or chicken?'
'Chicken,' I replied, wondering why she asked. She turned and went to the front of plane, returning a minute later with a dinner plate from first class.

'This is your thanks..'

After we finished eating, I went again to the back of the plane, heading for the rest room.. A man stopped me. 'I saw what you did.. I want to be part of it. Here, take this.' He handed me twenty-five dollars.

Soon after I returned to my seat, I saw the Flight Captain coming down the aisle, looking at the aisle numbers as he walked, I hoped he was not looking for me, but noticed he was looking at the numbers only on my side of the plane. When he got to my row he stopped, smiled, held out his hand and said, 'I want to shake your hand.' Quickly unfastening my seatbelt I stood and took the Captain's hand. With a booming voice he said, 'I was a soldier and I was a military pilot. Once, someone bought me a lunch. It was an act of kindness I never forgot.' I was embarrassed when applause was heard from all of the passengers.

Later I walked to the front of the plane so I could stretch my legs. A man who was seated about six rows in front of me reached out his hand, wanting to shake mine. He left another twenty-five dollars in my palm.

When we landed I gathered my belongings and started to deplane. Waiting just inside the airplane door was a man who stopped me, put something in my shirt pocket, turned, and walked away without saying a word. Another twenty-five dollars!

Upon entering the terminal, I saw the soldiers gathering for their trip to the base. I walked over to them and handed them seventy-five dollars. 'It will take you some time to reach the base... It will be about time for a sandwich. God Bless You.'

Ten young men left that flight feeling the love and respect of their fellow travelers.

As I walked briskly to my car, I whispered a prayer for their safe return. These soldiers were giving their all for our country. I could only give them a couple of meals. It seemed so little...

Thermal Imaging On A "Budget"

$2500 is really out of my territory, but then so was Night Vision a not-so-many years ago.
Don't know how well this would work for "Civilian" use, but it's interesting.
Since it's made by Fluke, I'd suspect it's pretty well-made.
More info is here.

What Kind Of Conservative Are You?

A neat find, courtesy of good old Jeffro over at The Poor Farm.

My Conservative Identity:

You are an Anti-government Gunslinger, also known as a libertarian conservative or Tea Partier. You believe in smaller government, states’ rights, gun rights, and that, as Reagan once said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’"

Take the quiz at
About.com Political Humor

**NEW** Obama Bumper Sticker Removal Kit!!!

This is just TOO funny!
And here's what's in the kit.....

Internation Space Station

Just had a wonderful 80 degree pass of the ISS. It came up out of the Northwest, and set in the Southeast. Brighter than Venus, which is the bright "star" by the Moon, and always fun to see go over.
If you're interested in how you can see it yourself, AMSAT has a very nice Web application where you can enter your Longitude and Latitude, and get real-time pass prediction. Keep in mind it's only visible when in the sun, you passes that occur around dusk are just beautiful to watch.
Real Time Pass Predictions by AMSAT.
Use the drop-down box ("Show predictions for") to select the ISS (it defaults to AO-51) and enjoy!
And if you're curious about the history of Amateur Radio Satellites, there's an excellent story to be read over at Space Today Online.

Weirdness in the Gulf

Haven't checked this out yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was true......

The Gulf Smells (This will give you something to think about for a while.)

1. 4 Weeks before the BP blowout Obama builds an alibi---“I am opening offshore drilling off of all the Coastal U.S.” Goldman Sachs dumps nearly all of its stock 40%+ in BP, a profitable winner. Days before they dump the rest.

2. BP ignores the advice of all the drilling contractors on making the well safe. British Petroleum had a manager directing drilling who had never been on an offshore rig before, that purposely ignored all safety warnings. BP ignores TransOceanic warnings about a problem with the blowout preventers. BP ignores repeated warnings on numerous problems from numerous sub-contractors.

3. The well explodes under suspicious circumstances, but BP does nothing immediately to control it. Why? The Dutch offer to have it controlled in 48 hours. They are ignored.

4. Obama sacks his National Intelligence Director (a Navy Admiral) who cannot comment on intelligence, or the reasons he was sacked because of Federal Laws.

5. BP top fills the well but it fails as predicted in advance by numerous oil professionals causing downhole damage to the well which has caused a massive pollution of the southern U.S. The way they bungled everything, the Gulf will be dead for decades!

6. Obama now declares ALL drilling is suspended in the Gulf and makes numerous PR trips to the Gulf to look like he is outraged.

7. John Podesta is Obama’s man that built his cabinet, and all his Czars

8. John Podesta is also head of George Soros ‘Center for American Progress’ (a socialist organization dedicated to killing capitalism in America and for building according to Soros “A New World Order”)

9. John Podesta’s brother is the lead lobbyist for British Petroleum, whose services are now in huge demand.

10. Soros was a huge contributor to Obama’s campaign

11. Soros invested $900 million in Petrobras, the Brazilian government controlled oil company that plans on drilling offshore in Brazil, yet cannot get the deepwater rigs operating in the Gulf

12.Days after Soros investment, Obama grants $2 billion to Petrobras of U.S. taxpayers dollars to drill offshore in Brazil….the company nets over $15 Billion annually

13.U.S. drilling companies must do something with their now idled rigs and are planning on moving them off to South America----to Petrobras which will supply the oil to the U.S. as an Import

14.Obama gives a patsy White House Oval Office speech on the disaster, but also during the speech he states the need for Carbon Taxes…Cap and Trade.

15. The carbon tax exchange will be based in…You guessed it…….Chicago….and called the CCX…..The CHICAGO Climate Exchange

New T-Shirt!

Shamelessly swiped from a buddy on a forum I frequent.

Clean-Up Time

Well, the YF (ham-speak for "wife") and I started a "little" project last Saturday morning that's still going on. We have an enclosed are at the back of our garage, about 4' wide, that runs the width of the garage. The roof of the garage was extended, a concrete pad was poured, some 4x4's anchored to the pad with 2x4's to tie them together, and sheets of corrugated fiberglas nailed to the studs and stringers. One end has a discarded door from somewhere, and the other is blocked off with some large wood planking. Voila! Instant storage area that's out of the rain and sun, and fairly secure because of the location. It hadn't been cleaned out, sorted, or organized in at least 7 years, and going in beyond the first couple of feet got pretty scary. It looked like something from a Wes Craven movie, and the further in you went, the worse it got. As we pulled things out, I'd go in with my shop vacuum and remove all the cobwebs, dead bugs, and other debris. When we finally had the movable stuff out, I went in and pulled out the shelving that was in there, and then we cleaned the concrete pad and walls. One of the shelf units is really sturdy wood, so we kept it, and the better of the three metal shelf units. Two of the three metal shelves were *really* cheap, and bent up as I was moving them! I picked up some Plano plastic snap-together shelves on sale at Lowe's, and then we reloaded the storage "shed", setting aside all the worn out and broken things that were in there. We wound up with so much nicely organized extra space back there, that I was able to move some of the larger items I had in the garage into it, along with a ton of smaller rarely-used items.
Then I attacked the garage!
The first thing I did was to hang two new shop lights, and move the existing light to over the work bench. I'm still running them off an assortment of extension cords (yes, I really do know better!), and now there's more than enough light to work out there after dark. I had dozens of large, medium, and small boxes full of stuff that are now sorted, stored, or tossed out. Weird stuff, like serial cables with one end cut off (wonder what I used it for?), dozens of old Ethernet cables ("Cat5 Network Cables" for the non-geeks), half-boxes of hardware (I had SIX boxes of 1/4-20; now I have ONE!), broken stuff that people had given me ("If you fix it, you can HAVE it!"...uhhh...then if I can't fix it, you want it back broken??), obsolete stuff good only for the salvage value of the metal, HUNDREDS of old software CD's that came with long-gone hardware, dead motherboards, bad CPU's and CPU's out of machines I upgraded for people, a HUGE box of old memory ranging from 1-Meg 30-pin SIMMS to high-end server memory, and on, and on, and on.
And that was just MY stuff!
Then we spent a couple of pleasant afternoons going through all the boxes, milk-crates, and old, rusty tool-boxes from her oldest son and deceased husband. I still don't know why they needed TWENTY-FIVE staple guns, multiple sets of El-Cheapo sockets and screwdrivers, and other assorted "Harbor Freight Quality" tools, but there they were.
We now have a huge pile of "stuff" stacked up in the driveway to get rid of, and a reasonably clean and organized garage. We're still not finished, but it's much better than it was.
The next big project will be to organize the dozen or so boxes of Star Trek, Star Wars, TMNT, and various Action Figures to list on eBay so we can get rid of them.
And we haven't even started on the TWO THOUSAND comic books her husband had acquired over the years......

Field Day 2010 Pictures!

Finally had time for a breather here. Got busy this morning cleaning out the storage area behind our garage (a.k.a "The Shed"), and it wound up taking almost all day. And we stacked a whole pile of bent up metal shelving, an old wet/dry vac, some hedge trimmers and weed-eaters, and a bunch of PVC/ABS pipe in various sizes.
I bet it'll be gone by tomorrow afternoon!
Enjoy the photos. They were taken at the K6AA 2010 Field Day operation at Angel's Gate Park in San Pedro. We had a ball, and I made thirty-five ( ! ! ! ) satellite contacts this year!

The Iceberg

Go read this now.
Please.
It's a most excellent viewpoint of our current times, and with some REAL hope for a real change.
And Happy Birthday, America!

Field Day Fun and Other Thoughts

Well, our annual Field Day event is over for another year. Nobody was injured (it's happened), no major equipment problems at any of the stations on site (a few "nail-biters", though), we all had a great time, and my friend The Wandering Minstrel even stopped by Friday while I was setting up. We had several elected representatives of local government show up, and the Police as usual stopped by to see how we were doing this year. One of our club members is retired LAPD, so we always have both the LAPD and Port of Los Angeles Police drop by to say hi. Our "Get On The Air" (GOTA) station was a huge hit this year, due to us having it on the grounds of the Fort MacArthur Military Museum, and a lot of the visitors there took the short walk "up the hill" to drop by and see some serious Amateur Radio operations. We previously had to have the GOTA station in the immediate vicinity of the other stations to be inside the 1000' diameter circle the rules specify, but this year, due to some construction at the North end of the area we use, we had to move the entire operation several hundred feet to the South, which put Fort Mac inside the circle, and they graciously allowed us to operate there.
BTW, if you live in the Los Angeles area and like Military historical things, please drop by and visit the Fort MacArthur Military Museum. It's a trip though the history of the defense of the Port of Los Angeles, from 1910 through the Nike missile era. And if your historical bent runs more to things nautical, please drop by the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, another time capsule of POLA history, and the host of my radio club
We ran class 4A this year, which means up to 4 simultaneous transmitters, and running without "commercial" power. I don't have the final number of contacts made, or the total score, but I made 35 satellite contacts, an all-time record for me on Field Day. You get a 100-point bonus for making the first contact, and then any other contacts count as 1 point each. My previous "best" was 5 contacts, so I kind of ground my previous performances into dust! This was the first year that everything I used worked "As Advertised", so it was well worth the time I spent on it since June 1st to hammer out all the bugs I've experienced the last several years, and really learn how to use the equipment I have, both the stuff I've had for years, and the stuff I just built. Just having all the right "Black Boxes", cables, and software doesn't mean you know how to use them, and how they interact with each other. You might be well-versed in theory, and be able to explain exactly what all your gear does, but until you've used it on a regular basis, you don't really grok it. Just like I know people with $3000 "Race Guns" that can barely hit a target at 10 yards with them, and I've seen people in some of the training classes I've taken who had old, well-used, out-of-favor firearms, and they could work magic with them, I know people with the latest $10,000 Amateur Radio rigs who can barely turn them on, and people with gear made from cast-off and WWII surplus parts that are superb operators.
So now is it time to put the gear away for another year? Nope, I'm going to weather-proof what needs protecting, replace a few connectors on some control cables with better quality ones so they don't cause the random, hard to trace down 'weirdness' I had Saturday morning, and leave most of it set up for continued use.
Oh, and I'm going to spend more time at the range. Pounding away for the last month on this particular radio setup made me realize that unless I train with and use my defensive firearms on a regular basis, those skills, too, will atrophy.
And I don't want that.

Loaded Up and Ready to Go!

Well, the Jeep is about 80% loaded and ready to take off for the Field Day site Friday morning. I can't believe how organized I managed to get this year, but then I guess that's what happens when you start planning and testing 4 weeks before. I got tired of making multiple trips to my car dragging one or two small items every year, so I bought some good sized plastic tote bins at Lowe's. The radio, power supply, rotator controller and PC interface, along with all the manuals, fit in one tote box. The other one has some of my tools and supplies (soldering iron, heat gun, heat-shrink tubing, cable ties, crimpers, connectors, etc, etc), and the third one has all the rest. I also shortened up most of the cables this year. I just couldn't see having 75' of rotator cable when 30' was plenty. Same with the coax; the cables I made years ago were about 50' long, so I made some new ones this year that are 30', like the rotator cable. Saves a bunch of space, and a LOT of weight.
All I have to load Friday morning is the mast with elevation rotator, the cross-boom (with the preamps already mounted), the antenna, my 5' tripod/8' mast for my GPS antenna, and then slide the ladder in last.
In the meantime, feel free to check out some pix from our past Field Day events.

Awwwww.....RATS! One O' THEM daze....

Woke up today and when I started this PC it gave me an unending string of errors as it booted up. Tried to repair the file system by booting a Live-CD, unmounting the disks, and running fsck on them, but no dice...the main disk was hammered with corrupted files. Spent the morning installing a new hard disk and reinstalling OpenSUSE 11.2. Probably take me the rest of the week to get it tweaked back to how I like it.
Then I went out to fill my new gas can for my generator, and the first place I stopped at wouldn't let me! "Sorry, we don't allow gas cans to be filled here". DUH! Well, I'll never fill my Jeep up there again, either! The next two places had some newer type of Kaliforniastan-approved anti-smog pump nozzle, and I couldn't get either one of them to seal well enough to the little 2-gallon gas can to put any fuel in it! I finally gave up and came home. I think I'll just siphon a couple of gallons out of the Jeep to fill it with.
Ran the generator with a 1200 Watt load on it until it ran out of gas, and then changed the oil in it. As I was pouring the new oil in, the puppy came out and stuck her nose right in the drained oil!
Ever try and get used motor oil off your dog's snout? Yeah, I didn't think so. At least she didn't step in it and then run back in the house. I could just imagine my wife's expression if she came home and saw little oily puppy paw prints through the house. Yeah, that would have gone over *real* well.
I just home Tuesday is a "better" day, although I have to admit the things I'm griping about are really pretty trivial compared to all the other $h1t that's going on in the world.........

Happy Father's Day!

To all the Dads out here.
I'm out on the porch playing radio. My satellite station is working better than it *ever* has; the program I use to run the radio and antenna controller interface is doing everything it should, and over the last several days I've made in excess of 50 contacts using the Amateur Radio Satellites AO-7, FO-29, VO-52, and HO-68. Field Day should be quite good this year, and I'm tempted to set it back up in the driveway after Field Day is over. I have a few things to do before I take it all apart and load it in the Jeep Thursday night, like change the oil in my generator
Oh, and the wife is taking me to the local Outback tonight for dinner.

Apollo XI Lift-Off In Super Slow Motion

Stumbled across this while looking for something else. The film was shot at 500 frames-per-second, and when played back at normal 24 frames-per-second, it stretches about 30 seconds of time out to around 9 minutes.
I've got a bunch of video like this from my former employer, as we used to make a "Mission DVD" for the customers and Launch Crew. You'll hear the guy talk about the ablative coating used on some of the equipment, and how it's supposed to burn off to protect the equipment under the coating. One of my jobs on the Range Team was to maintain all the launch cameras and housings. The ablative coating is a bear to work with. Really messy, and toxic stuff requiring special handling. At one time we recoated the camera enclosures (they're made of 1/2" thick steel plate!) every mission. Stripping the stuff off and reapplying it got to be such a PITA that we talked to some of the Range people down at Cape Canaveral. They told us to just wire brush the charred areas, and recoat the places where the coating was getting thin. It saved us HOURS of back breaking labor. The fused quartz camera windows also got replaced every mission. They were a double layer design, and about half the time the outer window would shatter. One time we lost both windows, and the exhaust plume took out the camera in that position. We were able to save the film, but the camera was pretty blasted!
Enjoy the video!

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

A Gunblogger's Glossary

A good read of terms commonly used in the blogosphere and elsewhere. Sure wish I had this when I got started. I asked some pretty lame questions!
Shamelessly borrowed from The World's Most Dangerous Librarian.

I'm Tired

Good read from Dennis Miller radio:
I'M 63 AND I'M TIRED

By Robert A. Hall
Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate
Dennis Miller Radio

I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.

I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.

I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them with their own money.

I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood Entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Christian people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela.

I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor;" of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers;" of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery;" of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.

I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the post-racial world of Obama, when it's all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of U.S. Senators from Illinois. I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less arrogantly of an all-knowing government.

I'm tired of a news media that thinks Bush's fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama's, at triple the cost, were wonderful; that thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control weight and stress; that picked over every line of Bush's military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his; that slammed Palin, with two years as Governor, for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever. Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004.

I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and mandrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America, while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.

I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore's, and if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough.

I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don't think Gay people choose to be Gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.

I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers," especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on welfare or crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, "Undocumented Pharmacists"? And, no, I'm not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic, and it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I'm willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person, who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military...Those are the citizens we need.

I'm tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life-and-death circumstances, and bad mouth better people than themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years and still are? Not even close. So here's the deal. I'll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims, who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we'll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear.

I'm tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers; bums are bipartisan. And I'm tired of people telling me we need bipartisanship. I live in Illinois , where the "Illinois Combine" of Democrats has worked to loot the public for years. Not to mention the tax cheats in Obama's cabinet.

I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

Speaking of poor, I'm tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn't have that in 1970, but we didn't know we were "poor." The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing.

I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.

Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughter.

Say, WHAT?!?

I simply can't believe this.....a warning label on printed copies of our Constituion?
The inmates are running the asylum!

Radio Daze.....

Sorry for not posting lately, but I've been getting ready for the ARRL Field Day event at the end of June. I run the Satellite Station each year, and I always assemble the complete station and test it out well before the end of June.
Well, at least I have the last two years!
Prior to that, when I was in my little bachelor flat, I at least made the attempt to have everything in one big pile ready to transport to the site we use, the Lower Reservation at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro. That didn't always work so well, and I've lost track of the number of trips I made back to my place, or my favorite little electronics emporium, to get stuff I either forgot to buy, or just plain forgot to bring.
This year, the only snags I've hit (so far!) have been not being able to find the Comet Antenna diplexer I use for a 70cm filter that I bought last year (bought another one at HRO this morning), ordering some "wrong" parts from DX Engineering (they'll go in the 'junque' box and eventually get used), and not being able to find the wiring diagram I made about 5 years ago when I tried to use a certain type of rotor controller to make the rotors follow my tracking program. Last year I (finally!) had full control of my radio to correct for the Doppler shift of fast moving objects in Low Earth Orbit, and it made operating MUCH easier. This year, I built a neat little kit from Fox Delta that accepts data from the tracking program over a serial port, and make the Azimuth and Elevation rotors follow a specified satellite. I need the correct pinout of the 8-pin DIN "remote" connector on the back of the rotor control box to interface it to the ST3. The problem I had before with the "Brand-X" rotor controller, besides the fact that the supplied "documentation" was sparse and poorly written, was that there are several sources of what the pinout is, and they're mostly WRONG! The pin numbering on DIN plugs/jacks is pretty arcane as it is, and the drawings in the Yaesu manual don't indicate if you're looking at the plug (front *or* back of it??) or the socket (same-o, same-o), and until you've done it once or twice, and had that "ah-HA!" moment, it'll drive you absolutely bonkers. I spent the better part of the weekend one year figuring out what pin on the rotor box had what input or output, and how to connect it to the other PC interface, and I *know* I wrote it down, but that sheet of paper has disappeared somewhere. Having several more years of experience and experimentation under my belt, it'll be a lot easier to document it this time. I'm quite familiar with the Yaesu G-5500 series now, and all I'll do is take the cover off the control box, plug in the 8-pin DIN cable, and buzz-out the leads on the cable to the corresponding points on the PC board for the inputs and outputs, and write it down. Preferably in several places, along with creating a drawing that *I* understand, and saving it on my PC in multiple places and on multiple hard drives!
So, anyway......hopefully by tomorrow afternoon I'll have all the wiring documented, the antenna-to-cross-boom mounting plate turned 90*, and the ST3 controller connected to my laptop and tracking satellites.

Oh, and it's the wife's birthday tomorrow.

Don't worry, ProFlowers (WAY better than FTD!) is dropping off a nice big arrangement before she gets home, and I've got two tickets in very good seats to take her to see "A Chorus Line" at the Pantages on Friday night. Still don't know what we'll do for dinner, though.....

Remember In November To Vote The IDIOTS Out!

Got this from a fellow Tea Partier, and thought I'd pass it on to you all.

Feel free to spread it around!

Memorial Day

Thank you to all those (and their families) who have paid the ultimate price for our freedom.
And thank you to all those currently serving in our Armed Forces. May you complete your tours safely, and return whole to your loved ones.
My parent's always called it "Decoration Day", as we'd go to the cemetery in the morning and put flowers on the graves of our family members. I always helped Dad put up the flag in the morning, and take it down at dusk.

Busy with PC Maintenance

Getting a new PC ready for the living room. It's the one my wife uses, and the Windows XP Media Center installation on the big Dell Dimension E510 she bought several years ago has gotten rather "constipated" with sludge, as Windows has a tendency to do. It's had so much stuff installed and then uninstalled, that the Windows Registry is gunked up, and all the utilities I have can't get it clean again. Sad, but true, the only way to get it running smoothly again will be to do a complete wipe of the hard disk, and reinstall Windoze. Such is life in the Windoze Universe!
BUT...my son the budding Photojournalist has decided to go 100% Apple Mac, as all the specialized software he uses for photo editing, video editing, and publication runs much better on the Mac, and since he's been doing this since high-school on Macs, it makes perfect sense for him to go this route.
Two years ago, I built him a Bleeding Edge PC, that was right at, or slightly beyond, State Of The Art, and ran rings around any "Store Bought" PC system, even the high-end ones like Alienware and VoodooPC build. He pulled the hard drives out of it as they have all his work product, and dropped it off here last night.
I pulled it apart, cleaned all the dust out of it, pulled the heatsink/fan off the processor and cleaned the original thermal grease off, and put some Arctic Silver 5 on it. I also neatened up the wiring, and installed a new 300GB Western Digital 10,000 RPM "Velociraptor" hard disk.
I put Windows 7 Professional on it this morning, installed the latest versions of the drivers for the motherboard and video card, and installed all the programs my wife uses a lot, like Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, and a few others. I'm just finishing up getting the drivers for our printer and other devices, and so far so good. It's scoring a resounding 7.5 on the Windows Experience Index, quite amazing for a two-year old PC, but then I put the best available parts in it when I built it. And with the type of computing we'll be doing with this PC, it will run as cool as the proverbial cucumber. Her Dell blows HOT air out of the vents when we start cranking it up, so this one should use less power, and save a few bucks on the electric bill.
Oh, well....time to get back to "work" here!

**UPDATE** Best Buddy's Murdered Brother

They caught one of the dirtbags.
Here's hoping she rolls on her partner.

WLS-TV has some video, and a print story about my buddy's brother, along with an interview with his daughter.
Interesting.

Meet "Coco"!

Well, after a suitable time of mournng, and watching our other dog and my wife mope around, her son and I decided it was time to welcome a new puppy into our home. He's been looking for a while, so I told him when he found one he thought was good, let me know, and I'd give him half the cash.
Thursday night, he and his girlfriend drove up to see the dogs, and brought home this little girl. My wife named her "Coco" because of her color, and she's a sweetie. Very good disposition, and our other dog, Diamond, has taken to her like we couldn't believe. She watches over the pup like a mother hen, and they play together all the time. It's fun to watch, but Diamond weighs about 80 pounds, and when she's tearing around with Coco, it's best to keep out of the way!
We're still working on getting her trained to go outside when she needs to, but so far the 'accidents' have been few.

Jeff Cooper's Birthday

I'm a big fan of Jeff Cooper. He taught us The Modern Technique, and was a skilled writer. My favorite book of his is "To Ride, Shoot Straight, And Speak The Truth", although I have most of his other books. And I have the DVD of his life story, "Jeff Cooper, A Man In Full", which is quite entertaining.
Lt. Col. Cooper would have been 90 years old today.

Very Bad News From A Close Friend -Update-

A few weeks ago I posted about my best buddy's brother who was shot during an armed robbery in that "Brady Paradise" otherwise known as Chicago.

He died today.

My friend's brother wasn't quite as big a sportsman or shooter as his older brothers were, but he did know his way around guns enough that if he would have been able to own one, it might have saved his life, or at least made the robber flee.

He fully complied with the criminal that shot him, and yet he was shot anyway.

So much for going unarmed, and "Give them what they want" as a means of providing for your own "safety".

My thoughts and prayers are with my friend and his family today.

R.I.P. Domino May 1996~May 2010

Today was one of the saddest days I've had in a long time.
Our old dog Domino had to be taken on her last ride to the vet tonight.
She was a few days short of 14 years old, and was just plain tuckered out. The last couple of times I had to take her in, the vet told us it was getting to be her time, and we should get ready for it. She had gone deaf about a year ago, and was diagnosed with progressive congestive heart failure and pulmonary edema a couple of years ago. Her lungs kept getting full of fluid, and the meds we were giving her just weren't working anymore. Over the weekend we think she had a stroke, as she was having trouble walking, her tail was always between her legs, and her left eye was pointed up and fixed, while her right eye was normal. Even our young dog Diamond knew something wasn't right, as she was being very protective of Domino, and was licking her face a lot. Last night she started gasping for breath, and was wandering around all confused. She seemed better this morning, and was enjoying the sunshine outdoors while I was doing yard work, but by the time my wife got home from work, she had taken a turn for the worse, and was gasping, wheezing, and "gurgling". These were the extreme symptoms the vet told us would be very evident when it was her time, so we called him, and he said to bring her in. He has a separate room for this, and we went in there and got her up on the table. He gave her the shot, and I held her until she passed on very quietly. We said our goodbyes to her, and came home in tears. This was especially hard on my wife, as she'd raised Domino from a pup, along with Domino's mother, who we had to have put to sleep a couple of years ago.
Goodbye, my friend. I hope to see you on the other side.

Citizen / Soldier

I have to admit the first time I saw this at the theater, it brought a tear to my eye. 3 Doors Down has been a band I've enjoyed listening to since they hit it big with "Kryptonite".
The video for "Citizen/Soldier" was shot mostly at Camp Roberts, using active Guard members as the actors.
God bless and protect all our military personnel.
Enjoy!

Please Sign The "I Support Arizona" Petition

Minstrel had this on his blog, so h/t!
Please Sign The "I Support The New Arizona Immigration Law".
'Nuff said!

L.A. Times QOTW

This one really busted me up, but I'm laughing tears of sorrow because it's so true.

Quote of the Week - L.A. Times

"Frankly, I don't know what it is about California , but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine , even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington , we're number one. There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on 'Macbeth'. The three of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words."

--Columnist: Burt Prelutsky , LA Times

And here's a link to his blog.

Maybe we have a least a *little* sanity left out here on The Left Coast!

They Live.....

I was going through our collection of DVD's to cull the herd a bit, and came across "They Live", one of my personal faves. I know Roddy Piper has been is a bunch of movies, but this is one moviedom's all-time great quotes.

Enjoy!

My Dogs........

This has probably been around quite a while, but it made me chuckle, so I though I'd pass it on.


This morning I went to sign my dogs up for welfare. At first the lady said, "Dogs are not eligible to draw welfare". So I explained to her that my dogs are mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can't speak English and have no clue who their daddies are. They expect me to feed them, provide them with housing and medical care, and feel guilty because they are dogs.

So she looked in her policy book to see what it takes to qualify. My dogs get their first checks Friday.

Miami Vice

"Miami Vice" is one of my favorite TV programs. It was really ahead of its time, and set new standards for TV production with its innovative blending of video action and popular music.
I've been wanting to buy the complete boxed set for sometime now since I saw it at Best Buy, but the $150 price put me off a bit. Well, by carefully shopping around, I found the complete set, new in the shrink-wrap, for $55, plus $4 for shipping. Since I have a lot of 'couch time' these days (well, not really, but some people *think* I do), I opened the set and started watching.
The second disk of Season One has an episode called "Calderone's Return, Part II" with an opening sequence that just blew me away. In case you don't remember who Calderone is, he's "The Columbian" who was responsible for the death of Tubbs' older brother back in New York, and is the major player in the drug trade in Southern Florida. They track him down in the Bahamas, and Sonny and Rico take off in Sonny's Cris Craft Stinger 390X to do a little surveillance on him, and maybe get him extradited back to the US. This also the episode where their Captain, Lou Rodriguez (played by Gregory Sierra) dies, to be replaced by Marty Castillo (Edward James Olmos) in the next episode.
Enjoy the opening sequence, it's masterfully done!
The complete, uncut-for-editing song from Russ Ballard is available here.

Very Bad News From A Close Friend

My best buddy from my college days just emailed me. His youngest brother had gone back to Chicago to visit with his daughter and another of the brothers. Saturday night they went out to dinner and had a great time.
On his way back to his hotel room, he was robbed at gunpoint, and then shot in the stomach even though he fully complied with the robber.
The bullet passed through his colon and is lodged in his hip. He's in the ICU, where they're keeping him heavily sedated so he doesn't move around much and damage the repair job they did.
So much for Chicago gun laws, and "Give them what they want" keeping the citizens safe, eh?
We've all read and heard stories like this, but this is the first time it's hit this close to me.

One Six Right

My buddy The Wandering Minstrel has a post about the Aeronca Champ, or as we used to call them, "Air Knockers". In my younger days as a Junior Birdman I had in ride in a Champ, and I still remember it. Never got a ride in a J3 Cub, but maybe one of these days......
Anyway, in remembering the Champ, my mind wandered back to one of my favorite films, called "One Six Right". It's the story of General Aviation, and specifically, the Van Nuys Airport, which is the busiest General Aviation airport in the world.
Now General Aviation airports run the gamut from little out-of-the-way grass strips, to bustling hubs of activity like Van Nuys, and they're wonderful things. They're usually places you can just go and hang out if you love airplanes like I do, although the biggest of them can resemble a full-fledged airport like LAX, ORD, or JFK, with all the attendant security that makes big airports a little harder to just go hang out at.
But back to the film......
"One Six Right" is more a love story than a documentary, written, directed, and produced by a guy who loves aviation, and the thrill of flying. It was originally shot in High Definition, and has been shown on PBS stations, and some of the larger cable networks, and the videography is just absolutely stunning, along with some beautifully done original music. The interviews are great, too, and you'll see some rather famous people talking about their love of flying. And all woven in with these is the history of Van Nuys Airport, from the bean field it stated as to the bustling giant it is today.
It's been released in DVD and HD-DVD formats, but no Blu-Ray. The DVD version is available from Netflix, and the streaming version is available on HULU.
If you love aviation, it's one of those "Must See" movies, especially in High Definition if you can find a showing.

Retro Man Caves

My buddy Jeffro over at The Poor Farm clued me in to a blog with a really nice write-up on "Bullitt", one of my favorite movies, and a bunch about the "Bullitt Mustang". In looking through the blog, I found this article on Retro Man Caves. Some of them look really sweet, like the one with all the clocks and wall maps (I thought it needed some Collins Radio S-Line gear instead of fishing rods!), and the one with the Eames Lounge Chair is *really* schweet, while some of them are rather....uh....shall we say "pimpy"?
Anywhoo....cruise on over the The Selvedge Yard, and check it out. A very interesting and eclectic collection, to say the least!

Reasonable Men

You just GOTTA go read this post over at Eject Eject Eject.
Masterfully written!

New Toy....Marlin 336W-W/S

My most recent acquisition is a scoped Marlin 336 in 30-30, but since I haven't taken her out to the range, I can't report on how well she shoots. Seems to be made very nicely, though, and the walnut stock is one of the nicest pieces of wood I've seen in a long time. I've had furniture that wasn't made as nice! The action is smooth and solid, and it goes to shoulder naturally. I did a complete disassembly and cleaning when I got it, and it seems to be made better than my Marlin 1894CB. I had to stone off a bunch of rough spots on that one, and work the action a whole bunch with some "Gun Slick" to make it nice and smooth. The 336 needed just a good cleaning and lube, although I'm sure it will smooth up even more with some use.
The only decent ranges around here (that *I* know of) are a good hour's drive. So, after the YF gets back from her vacation, we'll be packing up the 336, a big box of ammo, the spotting scope, some targets, a nice picnic lunch and beverages, and heading out to site it in, and see how it handles. The pistol range I go to has some brochures for a place that has hunting weekends not too terribly far from here, and I'm considering going hunting for either a deer, or maybe take one of their "Wild Boar Weekends".
I know a 30-30 is fine for deer, but I'll have to see about using one on wild boar.
Oh, and I'll be taking her S&W TRR8 in 357 mag for my 'backup' gun. Just have to find a holster that fits that bad boy, and get a couple of more speed loaders for it.