Model Airplanes

They arrived in St. John the Baptist Parish at the Port of South Louisiana’s regional airport on Thursday (April 26) drawn by curiosity and excitement. They came to ride the “Tin Goose,” one of the model planes that birthed modern commercial air transportation in the United States.

“I won’t have another chance to do this,” said Bruce Shockley of Baton Rouge, who brought his daughter, Rachael along for the ride. “It’s unique, very rare. And it’s affordable!”

Greg Breaux of Kenner treated his aviation enthusiast cousin Brent LeBlanc of Breaux Bridge to a flight.

“I’ve always wanted to fly in one of these,” said LeBlanc, who has a pilot license and builds experimental aircrafts as a hobby.  “This will be new.”

Growing up, Breaux recalls washing a friend’s airplane in exchange for rides.

“I’ve just always loved to fly,” he said. “It’s just something about being off the ground.”

The Ford Tri-Motor plane, dubbed the “Tin Goose” because it is made of corrugated metal, will be on display and available for flights through Sunday as part of the Experimental Aircraft Association’s traveling museum tour.

“What we do is give people a trip back in time. It’s really living history,” pilot Cody Welch said. “A lot of museums have captured and immortalized airplanes, but they hang from wire or they sit there static. Our museum has a commitment to a traveling outreach. It’s a rare opportunity.”

Welch, a retired airline pilot, said the Tri-Motor plane was first manufactured in 1929 by Henry Ford and only 199 were made. Currently

Article source: http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/04/vintage_ford_plane_tin_goose_l.html

CLOSE

Sacramento police believe they have caught the ‘Golden State Killer’. The serial killer is blamed for 12 murders and 45 rapes over 30 years.
USA TODAY

Former police officer Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested by Sacramento police Wednesday as the suspected Golden State Killer, accused of a series of rapes and murders that terrorized California communities in the 1970s and 1980s.

The break came after FBI and California officials in 2016 renewed their investigation and offered a $50,000 reward for an arrest and conviction. A task force was set up to crack one of the state’s coldest cases.

“For over 40 years, countless victims have waited for justice,” Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said at the news conference Wednesday. “We found the needle in the haystack and

Article source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/04/26/joseph-james-deangelo-golden-state-killer/553070002/

Sierra Sagebrush Flyers, Inc., is the Academy of Model Aeronautics Club No. 2649 Region. It is a nonprofit group of radio-controlled model airplane flying enthusiasts who meet at 7 p.m. on the first Thursday of the month at club president Jim Kelso’s home in Minden. Anyone interested in finding out more about the hobby is invited to join them.

The group usually flies at the Douglas County model airplane Field on Pine Nut Road in southeast Gardnerville (next to the Douglas Disposal transfer station). A couple of times a year they also have what they’ve dubbed “Hickey Day.” Such was the case on a perfect day last October when I had the opportunity to join them and other local radio control model plane groups for their bi-annual “Fly Fun Days” out in the fields below Genoa. Everyone is invited to bring their friends and family and some visitors come from as far away as Reno. The group especially encourages young people interested in learning to fly radio-controlled model airplanes to attend.

The Gardnerville region was started in the 1980s by locals, many of whom (such as the Hickey brothers) have been flying R-C models since childhood. Private, commercial and former military pilots also make up the membership and love to share their experience and adventures with both model and full-size crafts.

Before each bi-annual “Hickey Day,” club members come out during the week with riding mowers to prepare the field. It is mowed several

Article source: https://www.recordcourier.com/entertainment/entertainment-briefs/r-c-aircraft-club-flying-high/

I fell in love with flying more than 50 years ago. I had just graduated with a degree in mathematics from Dartmouth College, and had a summer job in Phoenix, Arizona, prior to starting work on my Ph.D. at Princeton University. As a kid, my dad introduced me to free-flight model airplanes, in high school I toyed with piston-powered control-line models, and I had occasional fantasies about flying real airplanes. So, when I found myself in Phoenix that summer where the weather is CAVU about 360 days per year, I figured it would be a great time to learn to fly. I drove to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport one afternoon, walked into the offices of Sawyer Aviation, and signed up for my first introductory flight in a 1959 straight-tail no-rear-window Cessna 150. I was hooked and never looked back.

When the summer was over, the ink still wet on my private pilot certificate, I joined the Princeton Flying Club and started flying rental airplanes. Over the next few years, I earned my commercial and instrument rating and flew all over the eastern United States. After a few years of graduate studies at Princeton and Columbia, I moved to California to start my first full-time job as a computer scientist with a Fortune 500 company headquartered just south of LAX. That’s when I bought my first airplane.

N42648 was a brand-new 1968 Cessna 182L that I picked up at the Cessna factory in Wichita, Kansas, and flew home to California. That was heady

Article source: https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2018/04/26/generation-three/