Model Airplanes | Even older kids like to fly

Newser experiences moment satellite MAVEN enters Mars orbit while on tour of …

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Writer

Rocket scientist Nick Schneider was excited to snap a selfie with Chase.

I had just finished animating a GIF of NeNe Leakes on my tumblr page. It was 3 a.m. and I started my social media shutdown for the night.

I scanned my Twitter feed and saw a post by NASA asking for followers to join them for a NASA Social event in Colorado. They would be celebrating the satellite MAVEN’s insertion into orbit around Mars.

The satellite, launched in November 2013, would complete its hundreds-of-millions-of-miles journey to study the upper atmosphere of the red planet.

I love Mars. I love Colorado. And I love NASA.

I was excited, but quickly realized they probably wouldn’t be looking for sarcastic twits to represent their event.

I took a chance and submitted my information and statistics about my followers and monthly notes on tumblr, Twitter and Instagram.

On the surface, my social media landscape screams NeNe! Bravo TV! “Daria”! Snark! Sarcasm! But peel back that thin layer and you’ve got a nerdy, thoughtful science dude.

Since only 1% of my posts are related to science, you’d think I was hardly what NASA wanted, right? Wrong.

The next week was a whirlwind. I received e-mails from NASA and Lockheed Martin. I got in! (At the time, I wasn’t told why; I was just told I was accepted. Later, I deduced

Article source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/newser-visits-nasa-satellite-maven-mission-control-colorado-article-1.1951773

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The FAA’s slow move to regulate domestic drones

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Writer

The existing legal landscape for drone use reflects a crazy quilt of regulations, policy pronouncements and state laws, with many significant pieces missing. To introduce some structure into the conversation and explain the current state of the law, we’ll lay out each of the three sources of existing domestic drone regulation in this post and in our forthcoming posts:

Federal policy, including FAA regulations, federal legislation, and recent litigation;
State legislation focused on private drone use; and
Laws of general applicability that affect private drone use.

Any summary of drone regulation must begin with the Federal Aviation Administration. Safety is central to the FAA’s existence. The agency was established in 1958 when Congress enacted the Federal Aviation Act, which tasked the agency with “develop[ing] plans and policy for the use of the navigable airspace and assign by regulation or order the use of the airspace necessary to ensure the safety of aircraft and the efficient use of airspace.” The 1958 Act was passed in the aftermath of a tragic midair collision between a Trans World Airlines Super Constellation and a United Air Lines DC-7 over the Grand Canyon, which killed all 128 people on board the planes.

In keeping with its mandate, the FAA began implementing rules to help aircraft safely navigate the skies. Simultaneously, people began to build and use model airplanes as a hobby. With this hobby literally taking off, in 1981 the FAA issued Advisory Circular 91-57 to promote the safe use of model airplanes. That Advisory Circular asks hobbyists

Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/09/24/the-faas-slow-move-to-regulate-domestic-drones/

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Bigger Than Saturn, Bound for Deep Space

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Writer

Article source: http://www.airspacemag.com/space/bigger-saturn-bound-deep-space-180952802/

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For Paul Allen and Peter Jackson, Dogfight Over Vintage Warplanes

Posted on September 24, 2014 by Writer

A Grumman F6F Hellcat, its dark-blue wings glistening in the sun, banks sharply to evade a pursuing Japanese Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero. The planes pull out of their steep descent and accelerate, the roar of their engines rattling the heavens.

Battles like this played out numerous times in the skies above the central Pacific in late November 1943 as the U.S. Navy launched its carrier-borne Hellcats into action against the Japanese. Only this particular dogfight happened not in 1943 but in June 2013 over Paine Field, a former U.S. Air Force base outside Seattle, Bloomberg Pursuits magazine will report in its Autumn 2014 issue.

More from Bloomberg Pursuits:

That’s where Paul Allen, the Microsoft Corp. multibillionaire, keeps his Flying Heritage Collection — more than 20 vintage World War II fighter planes, all in working condition — of which both the Hellcat and the Zero are a part. Meanwhile, on the underside of the globe, visitors to Hood Aerodrome, near Masterton, New Zealand, could be forgiven for thinking they’ve been transported to northern France, circa 1918. There, the skies fill with British Sopwith Camels and brightly colored German Fokker Dr.I Dreideckers, for which enthralled spectators can thank another wealthy aviation enthusiast and amateur pilot: Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson. The filmmaker, who has amassed more

Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-22/for-paul-allen-and-peter-jackson-dogfight-over-warbirds.html

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Remote control air show at Elkhart Municipal Airport first of two big weekends

Posted on September 24, 2014 by Writer

ELKHART — This weekend’s remote control model airplane air show at Elkhart’s Municipal Airport is all about history and evolution.

The second annual three-day event, known as “Air Supremacy over Elkhart,” will feature upward of 150 large-scale remote control model airplanes that are much more sophisticated than the traditional crafty items that were popular in previous decades.

While the show highlights major eras of aviation history, it’s being done with some of the same technology used in military drones from the first Iraq War, according to Chuck Hamilton, who is co-sponsoring the air show alongside RJ Monroe.

Some of the model planes have switched from gas engines to batteries, making it much more quiet. Some also feature custom built engines and landing gear, Hamilton said.

“This is not your grandfather’s model airplane,” Hamilton said. “This is high technology, high fabrication, but yet we’re going back to yesteryear, flying these aircraft in the prototypical manner of a P-40 or a Piper Cub and reliving those glory days through model aviation.”

Unlike modern drones, the planes featured in the show remain visible to the controller.

The show runs Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The event is much more established than its first year, and organizers think the show could become a popular tradition.

Last year, they had less than 80 planes. The goal was to double the participation this year, Monroe said.

Pleasant weather forecasted for the weekend could push participation even higher.

“We’ve gone from a

Article source: http://www.elkharttruth.com/hometown/elkhart/2014/09/17/Remote-control-air-show-at-Elkhart-Municipal-Airport-first-of-two-big-weekends.html

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How ISIS Ripped Off ?Natural Born Killers’

Posted on September 24, 2014 by Writer

The propagandists of the self-styled Islamic State, known for their exploitation of social media to lure recruits, are now experimenting with editing techniques that draw on Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers and genre films like Saw and The Evil Dead to represent their fighters as heroic warriors in a world of horrors.

The latest propaganda video posted online last weekend by the media arm of ISIS, as the group is commonly known, is a 55-minute documentary called The Flames of War. It employs scenes of stylized violence “manipulated to augment the violence of the [ISIS] fighters” and to paint their combat in mythic colors, says film studies professor Margaret Bruder, the author of several works on the aesthetics of violence.

The documentary is the longest video produced by ISIS so far. A trailer for the film was released last week, timed, analysts suspect, as a response to remarks by General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee that confronting ISIS, or ISIL as the U.S. government calls it, may require American ground troops if President Barack Obama’s strategy of using U.S.-led strikes from the air and proxy forces on the land should fail.

U.S. intelligence officials are scrutinizing the propaganda video featuring close-up battle scenes and special-effects-enhanced footage. Of most interest are the English-speaking narrator and a masked American-accented combatant featured in the film. The fighter talks directly to the camera as he oversees the execution

Article source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/23/how-isis-ripped-off-natural-born-killers.html

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Model aircraft club provides members opportunity to bond over aviation

Posted on September 23, 2014 by Writer

When Arbutus dentist Dr. Art Vail, 55, isn’t seeing patients, chances are you can find him flying one of his remote controlled airplanes at Southwest Area Park in Baltimore Highlands with fellow members of the Southwest Area Park Modelers club.

He got into the hobby of flying remote controlled aircraft 27 years ago when he picked up a modeling magazine.

“It was something that I always wanted to do when I was a kid but never had the money for and as I was older I had a little extra free cash,” said Vail, treasurer of the club.

Related
VIDEO: model airplane crash in Baltimore Highlands
Remote controlled airplane
Flying remote-control planes provides a sense of community
Southwest Area Park Modelers [Pictures]
VIDEO: A flight with the Southwest Area Park Modelers

Last Friday afternoon, Vail was among a group of men controlling different model airplanes that whizzed and dove through the air.

The planes took off from a 275-foot paved runway at the park, soaring hundreds of feet through the cloudy sky on Sept. 19.

“It’s sort of like a brotherhood here,” said Nick Coggiano, 56, of Linthincum Heights. “Everybody helps each other and we’re always learning new things.”

The hobbyists,

Article source: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/arbutus-lansdowne/ph-at-southwest-modelers-0924-20140923,0,4864498.story

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