HumanDrone

Not as well as we do!

Well, since I'm in Montevideo, Uruguay right now (for work) I just have to find a thread to hang a post off of, and I like this one - I was following along to see how BH and his lot made it through Issac, glad to hear that you "got off easy", BH! Now none of those things in your "required equipment" post apply to me at home in western Pennsyl-tucky, but since I have a little bit of land, I do have a good chainsaw with 20 & 24 in bars, my Jeep Grand Cherokee has that pretty nice 5.7L Hemi and the Class 4 tow package, and I do have a 4WD diesel compact utility tractor with a 60" belly mower, box blade, back blade, lawn roller, front loader, and a loader frame for whatever you want to build on it, and a trailer to haul it all in (and get mulch, and rock, and stuff like that...). I'm storing my son-in-law's 35 tom wood splitter for him (for fair use!). My garage wall looks like a hardware store -since my wife always worked alongside me, we have two of many things like shovels and iron rakes, and of course my come-along, and 1.5 ton rope haul, a huge coil of 3/4" nylon rope, wire rope chokers, chain, my trusty double-bit ax, etc... My father-in-law has the gas welding/cutting set (oxyacetylene). I probably could use a shotgun, though you're not allowed to discharge firearms in the boro - we cheat a bit on that one when it comes to ground hogs, a safe shot with the hill behind the little critter with a .22 is almost indistinguishable from a firecracker anyway. But we're still lightweights compared to BH's bayou - criminee, I just saw my first rattlesnake in the wild a couple of weeks ago, and he was just a little fellow, maybe 24-30" most - and I'm 56 years young! So that's my little post from the Southern Hemisphere. At 5407 miles by "Great Circle" routing, it's the farthest from home I've ever been. It's interesting seeing the sun in the northern sky, stuff like that. Good day y'all. Glad to see BH is okay, and apparently Missouri finally got a bit of rain. Send it our way, if you could, please, my spring is slower than I've seen it in years, just a drip according to my Wing Commander! Best, Tom

Hoping you are well and that no one gets killed! Be careful, BH! Tom

I read a quote of his from a rare public appearance in 2000: "I am, and will ever be, a white-socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow." I humbly propose that Friday, the day of his funeral, all who desire wear white socks and, if you don't have a pocket protector, at least shove your shirt pocket full of mechanical pencils or pens and a shorty slider rule, machinist's scale, etc.! Here is the full resolution scan of Buzz Aldrin's picture of Neil after he became the first man to walk on the moon. The exhilaration and exhaustion show on his face.

Neil, rest in peace and rise in glory. I was 14 when it happened, and I thought how neat it would be to do that. I had the 3 ft tall Saturn V model, the larger scale CSM/LM models, the whole lot. It wasn't until I got much older that I realized what tremendous courage it took to do what these men did. You talk about nerves of steel! So many things that cold go wrong, so far from Earth that radio waves take measurable time to reach you! Just the three of you; then just the two of you, in this spindly little lightweight craft that's hardly bigger than the cubicle I'm siting in! Yow! We need a "21-gun salute" smiley!

You know, these are some beautiful old instruments. And it's amazing what they did with them. I recall working for several days on a fancy computer analysis (when I was new at this), only to have my boss review my work and utterly demolish it in two minutes - with a plastic 6" slide rule! I just got a Droid Razr Maxx as my new company phone the other day. Of course, I immediately downloaded a slide rule for it! Thanks for the purr-ty pictures!

Welcome back, sir! I couldn't answer your question, but let me tell you that, with a new rig, you should by all means start scraping pennies together for TrackIR, or something similar! As a lousy combat pilot myself (hence my screen name, a doofus just flying along sure to be shot down sooner or later), well, I don't know how I could be without TrackIR. It gives your poor hands a lot less stuff to do, as well as increases immersion to an incredible degree. If I had to do all that CTRL/Shift/<whatever> stuff, I'd be taking the dirt nap even more frequently than I do now! What kind of a dream computer did you build? For what I spent on mine last fall, TrackIR wasn't that much more. My specs are in my sig. Hope you enjoy the forums, this is a great group of people - note too the official OBD forums are now at SimQH. But most of us still keep up with both fora (or is it fori? or forumses?) To many, this feels too much like "home"! But for quicker tech support, SimQH is the place. Best, Tom

Sweet! And I echo what BH and Olham have said - criminee, drivers in Pittsburgh can't even handle acceleration ramps! When I was young, it was assumed that general aviation would continue to grow, with visions of housing plans that faced streets on one side and a runway on the other - I think one was actually built not far from here, but is no longer in existence. But then came the 70's, increased fuel costs and regulation going hogwild, and my dreams of eventually hauling the family around in a Cessna Skymaster (turbo, with retracts), and a BD-5 Micro for me, were hopelessly dashed - well, that and I didn't have any money... But it seems to me that general aviation costs have grown all out of proportion to inflation - I may be wrong... (cross-posted with Jim Miller, & he's right, too. I wanna be the only one to fly above the traffic!)

And well I know! I recall when you "landed" here! My problem, of course, is that even when I have the wheels pointed toward the ground I often end up "Wheels up!" (Tom wanders away muttering "Must've hit some soft dirt..")

Here's one for you. Actually flying! And with my commute, I could use one of these...

I absolutely object, Herr Olham! We can see the difference and still be hopeless cases!

Ah, but no! A speedometer (Tachometer to you, Olham) gets it's speed from the output shaft of the transmission, as the rpm's of the motor can be the same at different speeds depending on what gear you are in! It's amazing the things I learn on this forum... no doubt my favorite!

I wonder if that's because they are past the "eye candy" part (yeah, I love it, too!) and well into the loads of code optimization and generation of all the historical information... Now for me, I'm willing to wait, as I don't get a lot of "stick time" in the summer, but I imagine you more active flyers are getting mighty itchy!

No, that would be my West Virginian grand-pappy...

Now there's something that never even crossed my feeble little cortex! & just to show you that, to some extent, I share your "disorder", while all the other kids were pretending their bikes were various types of cars and motorcycles, mine was dressed sup with extra decals from my airplane kits - it was (to me) a P-51D Mustang! & yes, these are indeed just replicas, not full scale.

It's no wonder these early aviators called their aircraft "kites"! There's nothing to them! And you're up 5,000 or 10,000 ft or more! ~ulp~ Look a that fellow holding the tail up with one hand! Yowsir! Thanks, Olham - those are nice shots! And yes, Panama Red's avatar comes from a little later in Snoopy's encounter with the Baron. Here is a collage I made up for the wall in my office/"cockpit": Best, Tom

You know, Olham, I was just going to post that I'd seen them there! I went through San Francisco on my way to Reno twice this summer. I felt bad that I didn't have a good camera with me to take pictures of them. That said, the tail region on that thing looks a little odd. Is it accurate? I wasn't sure that these were actual aircraft. And I checked the link- They aren't full scale. But very impressive nonetheless.

Yeah, but you need at least one lightweight in the BOC to fall under the table and make a complete fool of himself after 2 O'Doul's!

I'm okay now on both Firefox and IE9. BH, you ok now?

Ok, that's cool! But what really makes me want to crank down on my privacy settings... The "Ads by Google" bar at the bottom of your post is for "Grief Counseling!" As for me, I don't do anything, as I don't get the much stick time, particularly in the summer. 2nd Lt. Thomas Dirtdigger is still laying on my hard drive platter, drumming his fingers and looking wistfully skywards... And if I took two shots of whisky quick like that, it'd be bedtime for me, or I'd kill my next pilot for sure - I'm a bit of a lightweight that way!

Well, at home on IE 9.0.8 it is fine! I'll check Firefox at work in the morning! Best, Tom

Running Firefox 14.0.1 on W7 64 bit Pro, and yes, that is what I have - ever so slightly cut off. Have a look: Thanks for all your work, Tom

Indeed! Funny, isn't it - if you sort through all the 66 books of Scripture, you find only a few things we are really commanded to do: Take care of the planet Be fruitful and multiply (I like that part! ) Love God and love your neighbor as yourself Now I understand not everyone believes in a deity, that's not my point. My point is that we've know this all along; we just don't do it!