Model Airplanes

HTP Ostrava has introduced a new dual full-crew helicopter simulator at its newly opened tactical centre for helicopter crews, the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic announced on 18 September.

The HTP tactical simulator enables basic and advanced tactical training for helicopter crew. It allows realistic and immersive flying in both urban and rural environments, in any weather, day/night and environmental (limited visibility/dust/snow) conditions.

Each simulator is equipped with advanced graphics and a flight model complete with a cabin containing two door-gunner stations with machine guns which use virtual reality visual systems and a ballistic weapon system that correspond to real-life systems.

HTP has already begun providing training on the new simulator, with pre-deployment training of the combined Czech, Hungarian and Croatian Air Advisory Team. Later in 2018, the focus will shift to tactical refresher courses for the Czech Air Force to ensure capabilities are kept updated and standardised.

The tactical training will consist of three main parts: mission planning using adequate planning cells and tools; mission execution with actual missions flown in the simulator and mission de-briefing using a dedicated communications playback capability.

Article source: https://www.shephardmedia.com/news/training-simulation/htp-ostrava-introduces-new-tactical-helicopter-sim/

MBF’s HM9 ‘Flow’ looking resplendent on the wristMBF

This timepiece is anything other than traditional – in fact MBF’s entire collection of wristwatches has been anything other than traditional since the boutique brand’s inception in 2005. Yet, somehow, this watch even sets itself apart from the rest of Maximilian Büsser’s collection. Except for the HM4 – which, unlike its predecessors, their derivatives and the majority of what came after – actually looks like its inspiration was taken from a concrete object. Nicknamed the Thunderbolt, the HM4’s sleek aerodynamic titanium-and-sapphire-crystal case was inspired directly by aviation. This form’s roots could be found in Büsser’s childhood passion for assembling model airplane kits (though certainly none of those looked remotely as futuristic as the HM4). And neither does any other watch on the market, really. Büsser conceptualized the look of the HM4 Thunderbolt, while well-known watch designer Eric Giroud was responsible for its final industrial design.

MBF HM9 ‘Flow’ Air editionMBF

Büsser and Giroud teamed up again to determine the look of the HM9, which is not terribly far from the ideas of HM4, though it is taken further into the idea of being futuristic while also offering inspiration from mid-century automotive and aviation concepts. Its look is solidly reminiscent of a jet engine, successfully failing to reveal at first glance how complex the titanium case is with alternate polished and satin finishes, five panes of impossible-to-machine sapphire crystal in varying sizes and shapes, and an

Article source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethdoerr/2018/09/24/horological-machine-9-flow-represents-mbfs-second-foray-into-visual-aviation-for-the-wrist/

For those outside the fold, the Rubik’s cube is cognitive kryptonite. Until this week, I’d certainly never solved one. Even now, saying that I solved a Rubik’s cube feels like a grievous overstatement of my accomplishments. The truth is that we—a patient pre-teen “cuber” whose solve time is 47 seconds, her slightly-less-patient middle school teacher (whose solve time, she’s embarrassed to admit, is closer to a minute and a half), and me—completed a cube together. Our collective solve time? One stressful hour.

The site of my public humiliation could not have been more incongruous with the task at hand. This week, the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted groups of elite, would-be, and reluctant cubers for oohs, ahhs, personal guidance, and the gospel of the Rubik’s cube.

Scrunched into a private dining room at the museum’s incomprehensibly fancy Michelin-starred restaurant, observers and acolytes alternated between trying to convince a chunk of colored plastic to give up its closely-guarded secrets, and sitting briefly at the knee of its reclusive inventor. Hungarian professor Ernő Rubik developed the confounding game in 1974, largely for his own intellectual amusement. Not one for public appearances, his presence at the event was the central draw. In our brief two-question conversation, Rubik’s eyes, which were bluer than the blue of his cube, pierced my puzzle-hating soul, but he spoke softly about art, the struggle between man and nature, and the horrors of too much success.

He would know. At the outset, Rubik’s cube looked like another ‘80s

Article source: https://www.popsci.com/rubiks-cube-inventor

VILNIUS, Lithuania
– 
Pope Francis urged Lithuanians to use their decades of suffering under Soviet and Nazi occupations to become models of tolerance in an intolerant world as he began a three-nation tour of the Baltics on Saturday amid renewed alarm over their giant neighbor Russia.

Francis was greeted by Lithuanian President Dalia Grybuskaiteova at the airport and immediately launched into a hectic schedule of political meetings and visits with Lutheran and Russian Orthodox leaders and ordinary Catholics, who are a majority in Lithuania but minorities in Latvia and Estonia.

Speaking outside the presidential palace in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, Francis recalled that until the arrival of “totalitarian ideologies” in the 20th century, Lithuania had peacefully been home to a variety of ethnic and religious groups, including Christians, Jews and Muslims.

He said the world today is marked by political forces that exploit fear to justify violence and intolerance of others, “proclaiming that the only way possible to guarantee security and the continued existence of a culture is to try to eliminate, cancel or expel others.”

In a reference to the spread of anti-immigrant, populist forces in Europe and beyond, Francis said Lithuania could be a model of openness, understanding, tolerance and solidarity.

“You have suffered ‘in the flesh’ those efforts to impose a single model that would annul differences under the pretense of believing that the privileges of a few are more important than the dignity of others or the common good,” he said.

Francis was travelling to the region to

Article source: https://www.krmg.com/news/pope-begins-baltics-pilgrimage-with-plea-for-tolerance/hInslb3wCD0wgTbq6NggnJ/

TEMPLE, Texas (KWTX) The recent discovery of three old Navy and Marine warplanes in a field in Temple created quite a stir over the past few days, but the fighters have been there more than 20 years and how they got there is no secret, at all.

The Department of Defense says they should have been dismantled and recycled years ago but that just didn’t happen.

So how did they ended up in the field, and who put them there?

The “who” is David C. Nemen (or Neman, or Neiman, depending upon which agency is reporting, but the FBI calls him Nemen), the former owner of Temple Iron Metal, a family business started by his father in 1946, who arranged to have the planes moved by truck to Temple after he was awarded a government contract to dismantle and recycle the old birds.

Nemen sold the business to Billy and Jessica Bachmayer in 2003 and the couple operates the business today.

Bachmayer said in a recent telephone interview the whole thing and all the attention it generated is wearing on his good nature.

“You wouldn’t believe how hard it is dealing with all of this,” he said.

“Today’s Temple Iron Metal had nothing to do with this.”

The two Navy F-14 Tomcats and one Marine McDonnell F-4 Phantom II, model F-4B-22-MC last were officially assigned to Naval Air Station Dallas, a base which was decommissioned in December 1998 after in a base reduction and consolidation move.

Nemen, a Navy Reserve veteran, was assigned to that station.

At

Article source: https://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Mystery-of-fighter-jets-abandoned-in-area-field-is-no-mystery-at-all-494000401.html