Apollo Leader

When the payload section landed on the rocky side of a nearby mountain near the Black Rock Desert, it was going about 80 to 100 mph (it used a small parachute). The force bent the steel tip of the nosecone.

A closeup of the paint job. Almost all of the black paint burnt off from the rocket reaching a peak speed of over Mach 5.5

I'm three weeks late with this post, but better late then never. A month before Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne became the first manned civilan aircraft to reach space, Ky Michaelson's CSXT became the first unmanned civilian rocket to reach space. One of the CSXT team members was Bruce W. Lee who just also happens to head up our model/high power rocketry group here in southeast Nebraska. Since Bruce has been good friends with Ky for a while now, Ky has let Bruce borrow the payload/nosecone section for the past month. The fin canister/motor section has yet to be found though it's presumed to have buried itself deep underground. At our monthly meeting back on July 6th, Bruce brought it in for all to see. First of all, here's me holding it... I believe the whole package here was about 85 pounds so it's a little on the heavy side.

How about this Herc? http://www.cnn.com/US/9703/03/iran.hostage/ plane.lift.lg

Here's the real story: A simulated dogfight training took place between two F-15D's and four A-4N Skyhawks over the skies of the Negev, Israel. The F-15D #957, (nicknamed 'Markia Shchakim', 5 killmarks) was used for the conversion of a new pilot in the squadron. Here is the description of the event as described in "Pressure suit": "At some point I collided with one of the Skyhawks, at first I didn't realize it. I felt a big strike, and I thought we passed through the jet stream of one of the other aircraft. Before I could react, I saw the big fire ball created by the explosion of the Skyhawk. The radio started to deliver calls saying that the Skyhawk pilot has ejected, and I understood that the fireball was the Skyhawk, that exploded, and the pilot was ejected automatically. There was a tremendous fuel stream going out of my wing, and I understood it was badly damaged. The aircraft flew without control in a strange spiral. I reconnected the electric control to the control surfaces, and slowly gained control of the aircraft until I was straight and level again. It was clear to me that I had to eject. When I gained control I said : "Hey, wait, don't eject yet!" No warning light was on and the navigation computer worked as usual; (I just needed a warning light in my panel to indicate that I missed a wing...)." My instructor pilot ordered me to eject. The wing is a fuel tank, and the fuel indicator showed 0.000 so I assumed that the jet stream sucked all the fuel out of the other tanks. However, I remembered that the valves operate only in one direction, so that I might have enough fuel to get to the nearest airfield and land. I worked like a machine, wasn't scared and didn't worry. All I knew was as long as the sucker flies, I'm gonna stay inside. I started to decrease the airsp! eed, but at that point one wing was not enough. So I went into a spin down and to the right. A second before I decided to eject, I pushed the throttle and lit the afterburner. I gained speed and thus got control of the aircraft again. Next thing I did was lower the arresting hook. A few seconds later I touched the runway at 260 knots, about twice the recommended speed, and called the tower to erect the emergency recovery net. The hook was torn away from the fuselage because of the high speed, but I managed to stop 10 meters before the net. I turned back to shake the hand of my instructor, who had urged me to eject, and then I saw it for the first time - no wing !!! The IAF (Israeli Air Force) contacted McDonnell Douglas and asked for information about possibility to land an F-15 with one wing. MD replied that this is aerodynamically impossible, as confirmed by computer simulations... Then they received the photo.... After two months the same F-15 got a new wing and returned to action. Special thanks to Tsahi Ben Ami. This is what "Flight international" wrote about the incident: "The most outstanding Eagle save was by a pilot from a foreign Air Force". During air combat training his two-seater F-15 was involved in a mid air collision with an A-4 Skyhawk. The A-4 crashed, and the Eagle lost its right wing from about 2 ft. outboard. After some confusion between the instructor who said eject, and the student who outranked his instructor and said no, the F-15 was landed at it's desert base. Touching down at 290 knots, the hook was dropped for an approach end engagement. This slowed the F-15 to 100 knots, when the hook weak link sheared, and the aircraft was then braked conventionally. It is said that the student was later demoted for disobeying his instructor, then promoted for saving the aircraft. McDonnell Douglas attributes the saving of this aircraft to the amount of lift generated by the engine intake/body and "a hell of a good pilot".

You were a lot more generous then EGM was... 3.5, 3.0, and 2.5 (out of ten). Ouch!

All 25 GI Joe PSA's by Eric Fensler are up for viewing! http://www.fenslerfilm.com/?sec=video

That would pretty sweet if after it lost to the F-22 over 13 years ago, the F-23 ends up getting a second lease on life. IMHO, though, the best solution for filling this bomber role is to make some more B-2's... proven several times in combat now, best range, and best payload.

If my memory serves me, it wasn't until the second or third season that the Rolling Stone's Fade to Black was used for the opening credits. The music used for the end credits was used for the opening credits of the first season. After reading that the video wasn't cleaned up/remastered, I'm not sure if I'll get Tour of Duty on DVD...

Thanks for the pictures of the Alpha and the MWC 2004, Kevin! Wish I could have been there...

Don't get me started on the Democrats, dude. Stick to the subject matter. From all the prodding I can do, there would be room for Yamato and others to deal depending on if Big West would allow it.

What was announced at Anime Expo is that Tatsunoko had a deal with Big West for INTERNATIONAL merchandising rights associated with Macross DYRL going back to 1984. This is ENTIRELY SEPARATE from all the licensing and merchandising controversies going back to the original TV series. Anyway, either Harmony Gold or Tatsunoko figured this out recently and I guess you can say the rest is history. That is why Big West has down nothing to stop what Harmony Gold has been doing these last few months. Hopefuly, Big West will not be a bunch of dicks and they will allow Yamato and others to deal with Harmony Gold. I want to be able to buy a few affordable VF-1's before I have complete burnout...

For those with robotech.com membership, go to robotech.com and go to "Coming Soon".

Saw the movie a few hours ago. Loved it! Hope to see it again in the next week or so.

That's some mad piano skillz. I like how he does Mario's theme blind folded.

I say it's time we shake the tree we know as "Graham" for some news.

Just saw the segment on Comedy Central a few seconds ago. I thought it was funny.

Congratulations, Graham! So have you got your son any Valkyries for his future birthdays? I'm planning on giving my two nephews (the one was born to my sister a few weeks ago and the other will be born to my brother's wife in a few more weeks) some Macross and Gundam goodies when they're old enough.

Very impressive! I wonder what console system ranks #2? It's probably either the NES/Famicom or SNES/Super Famicom.

Ronald Reagan will most definitely go down in the history books as one of the great US presidents of the 20th century if not of all of US history. It was tragic that he had to spend the last decade of his life having his mind slowly destroyed by alzheimers, but considering he endured the disease for so long is a testament to how strong of a spirit he had. God bless Ronald Reagan!

I saw it this evening with all the other Pot(ter)heads in a packed theater. I enjoyed it.

Harmony Gold has also had the domain name of http://www.mospeada.com/ set to take you to robotech.com for the longest time. But now when you go to that address, HG now has a fully developed Mospeada website in the works! As for HG and www.macross7.com, I wonder if this has anything to do with the aborted Macross 7 Trash? Anyway the next few weeks leading up to the Anime Expo are going to be interesting.

With a little digging, it is safe for me to confirm that Harmony Gold currently does NOT have the rights to DYRL as in the movie. Though it sounds like they are trying to snag it as we speak. Harmony Gold currently has DYRL merchandising rights. We'll be finding out more by the time the Anime Expo rolls around.

Well if the B-1 survied the axe, the F-14 just might get a ressurection too... A bunch of B-1B's (about 30 meaning only 60 or so are in service) are needlessly sitting out at Davis Monthan as we speak. The events of the last few years have proven the dire need for long range bombers... you can't always trust on "ally" countries to let you use their airfields to fly short range fighters and attack aircraft from.

When Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense (late 80's, early 90's), the Navy's next "big" fighter" was supposed to be a navalized F-22 or F-23 (I'm approaching this from a pre June 1991 perspective). It was Slick Willy, Les Aspen, Richard Cohen, et al that gave us a Naval aviation program solely relying on the stop-gap Super Hornet and the JSF. The F-14's basic design is now 35+ years old. Instead of investing money in a tired old design, a navalized F-22 should have been fielded. I think some of you guys are blinded by some sort of nostalgia when it comes to the Tomcat. For example, I'm a HUGE F-15 Eagle fan, but it's now time for the Raptor to become the king of the skies for the next several decades.