Model Airplanes

SACRAMENTO — With U.S. tensions rising with Iran, the Department of Defense is investing a lot to ensure the U.S. military is up to any task — and an important part of that effort is training.

Some of the tools for that is built in Sacramento.

Kratos Defense and Security Solutions started out as a small specialty composite shop that made mostly medical prosthetics, but it switched to making aircraft parts in the mid-90s.

Kratos has been building drones used by the Air Force and Navy for target practice since they bought their factory 10 years ago.

Weapons are constantly changing in modern warfare. Soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen still need to keep doing one thing: target practice. That’s why the Sacramento based company received several government contracts to build even more drones.

That’s where Kratos’ Unmanned Systems Division comes in.

“A possible threat which could be an aircraft. It could be a cruise missile,” said Steve Fendley, president Kratos’ Unmanned Systems Division. “And our systems, our jet unmanned aircrafts are designed to replicate those particular threats in a variety of conditions and configurations.”

Fendley gave FOX40 a tour of his factory near McClellan airport.

“This airplane can actually take a missile shot that destroys the outboard wing section and the rest of the airplane is fine,” he described.

Building more than 100 of their different model drones a year, Fendley says business is booming.

“We basically have doubled our footprint in the Sacramento area in the last 12 months.”

Last month the

Article source: https://fox40.com/2019/07/26/sacramento-based-company-builds-drones-u-s-military-uses-for-target-practice/

By: John Carlson—

As a person known for being an energetic “go-getter,” I have very little spare time.

OK, that’s not true. Actually, as a non-energetic retiree pretty much known for being a human lump, about 99.9 percent of my time is spare. But sometimes, when I am looking to fill that time with something besides recounting the lines between the bricks in our fireplace, I consider building a plastic model airplane.

Then I hesitate. Is model-building even a thing anymore?

About everything else we once held near and dear seems to have been flushed down life’s commode. Models? In popularity they have probably long since been replaced in favor of exciting new computer apps like “Guess What’s Next For Extinction?”

But when I was a kid back in Abraham Lincoln’s day, models ruled.

Lots of them were car models. For me, car models lost their appeal the day I brought a Ford Edsel kit home to my Dad, a career General Motors guy, and he locked me out of our house for a week. Just kidding. Still, he convinced me if I wanted to keep receiving my allowance, I’d better switch to less offensive models like airplanes.

In no time, model airplanes consumed my waking hours. For birthdays, Christmas and such, I’d receive models made by companies like Revell, outlandishly expensive kits that could cost upwards of three and even four bucks. Up at The Corner Store, meanwhile, not only were there vanilla Cokes, candy cigarettes and a trove of girlie magazines available for kids’ edification,

Article source: http://munciejournal.com/2019/07/john-carlson-a-model-upbringing/

We’re pleased to bring you “While You Were Out”—Verily quick takes on the happenings of this week.

Google Settles $13 Million Privacy Lawsuit

Silicon Valley giant Google is preparing to settle a class-action lawsuit related to privacy intrusions resulting from its Street View program.

Street View allows users to zero in on maps to see panoramic images that approximate how locations would look if the user was standing on the street. To gather these images, Google sends cars mounted with specially designed cameras down streets around the world. It turns out, however, that along with photos, the cars were collecting information like emails and passwords from unsuspecting residents’ Wi-Fi networks. Investigators discovered that Google engineers had designed the software to do this intentionally.

When severe weather hits this area, we can get inundated with heavy rains— rains that can wash out roads and bridges.

In most cases, the NCDOT pays for those emergency road repairs and some repairs take longer than others for a variety of reasons.

Record rains washed out part of Highway 401 on the Wake/Franklin County line last month requiring emergency repairs.

When a road washes out, it takes more than just replacing the dirt and putting a new layer of blacktop over it to fix it.

“Our engineers go out and assess the situation and determine if we have materials in stock to make the repair or if we have to order a new culvert and wait for it to be fabricated,” said NCDOT’s Marty Holman.

In the case of Highway 401, where it crosses the Little River, the washout created a frustratingly long detour since it is the main route into and out of southeastern Franklin County.

The detour made model airplane enthusiast Dennis Penny wish he could climb aboard his little radio controlled aircraft and fly over the washed out road.

Penny says, “The detour put more cars into a town that has two lights and backed it up—especially in the morning when people tried to get to work.”

Initially, NCDOT thought that repair might not be finished until the end of July — but luck was with them in the form of a road widening project that was already happening there.

“We had a contractor in place because we were

Article source: https://www.cbs17.com/news/investigators/ncdot-repairs-washed-out-roads-bridges-after-heavy-storms/