Posts Tagged ‘aviation’
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page”*…
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Welcome to travelbydrone.com! We want to give you the chance to discover the world from the perspective of drones. The video footage of the area you are most interested in is as accessible as never before.
On this site, everyone can share YouTube videos and add the corresponding location. It will appear on the map with a pin where the video footage has been recorded. After submitting a request to share a video, a dedicated team will review the material before validating the request. As soon as the request has been validated, the shared video will be visible on the map.
For a share request to be validated, the video needs to be taken by a drone (not of a drone), be of good quality and clearly show the area in which the drone flies. A video will not be accepted if it is taken indoors, is from a military drone or is of promotional nature (promoting a product or has a political, religious or other personal message)…
Around the world in 80 clicks at Travel By Drone.
* Augustine of Hippo
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As we rename our index finger “Phileas,” we might spare a thought for Paul MacCready; he died on this date in 2007. An accomplished meteorologist, a world-class glider pilot, and a respected aeronautical engineer trained at California Institute of Technology, MacCready’s many accomplishments ranged from developments in cloud seeding to the creation of a full-sized flying replica of a pterosaur (Quetzalcoatlus) for the Smithsonian Institution. (The model can be seen in flight in the Smithsonian’s 1986 IMAX film On the Wing.) But MacCready is surely best remembered as the designer of the “Gossamer Condor,” the first successful human-powered aircraft (and thus, winner of the first Kremer Prize in 1977), and of the first viable solar-powered aircraft. The Gossamer Condor hangs in the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum.
Highway to the Danger Zone…
Some readers will know of your correspondent’s special affection for Top Gun (the effects for which were done by Colossal Pictures/USFX). So it will come as no surprise that he’s delighted to share this homemade homage, a shot-for-shot re-creation of the films heart-pounding climax…
email readers click here for video
Cinefix has created a homemade remake of Maverick’s final dogfight scene in the 1986 action drama film Top Gun. The new episode of Homemade Movies was directed by Pasadena, California-based animator and musician Dustin McLean of DustFilms….
Read more at Laughing Squid; then see a side-by-side comparison, a behind the scenes video, and check out Dustin’s ongoing homemade remake series.
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As we ruminate on the right stuff, we might recall that it was on this date in 1958 that the last Fokker CX in military service, the Finnish Air Force FK-111, crashed. Having served first the Dutch, then the Finns primarily as a scout plane and light bomber since 1933, the last of the FK-111’s was in service as a target tow-plane when it crashed into a forest, killing the pilot (Second Lieutenant Aimo Allinen) and the winch-operator (Second Lieutenant Antti Kukkonen).
The FK-111 (The swastika was used as the official national marking of the Finnish Defense Forces between 1918 and 1945, and remains part of the insignia of the Finnish Air Force.)
This way…
In the 1920s, America began coast-to-coast Airmail service, but the pioneer pilots had trouble navigating the route, since navigation charts of the day were fugazi and you couldn’t exactly pull over to ask a farmer for directions. And traveling at night, when it would have been most efficient, or in bad weather was impossible. To solve this Congress then funded these gi-normous arrow-shaped Airmail Beacons, some up to 70 feet long, to trace a route across the country.
The arrows were painted bright yellow and each was accompanied by a tower up to 50 feet in height. At the top of each tower was a powerful gas-powered light, and at the bottom of the tower, a shed to hold the gas.
The easily-discernible design made the arrows visible from a distance of ten miles, and each arrow pointed the way towards the next, some three miles distant. That’s according to the Postal Museum; however, this blog claims the towers were 10 miles apart with a 40-mile visibility. It’s possible the former is describing the earlier towers and the latter is describing updated versions.
What’s not in dispute is that the beacon towers are all gone, the steel having been broken up and recycled for America’s World War II effort. But the no-longer-used arrows remain, their paint long since worn off by the elements, the arrows themselves too difficult to make breaking them up worthwhile. And unless Omer Haciomeroglu sends his Concrete Recycling Robots into the American hinterlands, they’ll likely be there forever.
From the always fascinating Core77.
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As we imagine Horace Greeley’s smile, we might recall that it was on this date in 1860 that James Wallace Black, a painter who had turned to photography (his daguerreotype of abolitionist John Brown hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery), took the first aerial photography captured in the U.S.
Black went up with balloonist Samuel Archer King in King’s hot-air balloon, the Queen of the Air, shooting Boston at 1,200 feet (8 plates of glass negative; 10 1/16 x 7 15/16 in). One good print resulted, which Black entitled “Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It”– the first clear aerial image of a city anywhere.
“Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It”
From Black’s obit in “Wilsons Photographic Magazine,” March 1896
Up, Up, and Away…
Your correspondent is headed behind the Great Firewall of China, which has been especially well-fortified for this week’s 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, proceedings which will feature the once-a-decade change in Party (thus, national) leadership; connectivity to the freer precincts of the outside world will, therefore, be challenged. Regular service should resume on or around November 12…
click here for interactive version
The Brookings Institute presents an interactive graphic that…
… provides first-of-its kind data on the flow of international passengers in and out of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. It features data describing the scale of these flows and it calls out the international markets where these ties are particularly strong. What’s more, this tool goes beyond describing where passengers are going and tells us how they get there. Using data on transfer points and a map that visualizes each leg of each international route, it paints a portrait of how our global aviation infrastructure rises to meet the demand of international passengers.
Watch the flow at “Global Gateways: International Aviation in Metropolitan America.”
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As we check to confirm that our passports are still current, we might recall that it was on this date (the wedding anniversary of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln) in 2008 that Barak Obama was elected the first African-American President of the United States.
The Fruits of Secondary Education (“It was a dark and stormy essay…”)
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
–Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)
Long-time (pre-blog) readers will recall the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Thanks to friends MKM and PH, your correspondent was gifted with, and hereby shares, this year’s High School Essay winners in the “Analogies and Metaphors” category:
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20.. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
As we reach for our thesauri, we might recall that it was on this date in 1911 that Eugene Ely made the first successful aircraft landing on the deck of a ship. Two months earlier, Ely had successfully taken off in a Curtiss pusher from a temporary platform erected over the bow of the light cruiser USS Birmingham.
Then, on January 18, 1911, Ely landed his plane on a platform on the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania anchored in San Francisco Bay. He used the first ever tailhook system, which was designed and built by Hugh Robinson, a fellow aviator– and experienced circus performer.
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