Model Airplanes

FAIRBANKS — At East Ramp Wood-fired Pizza, you can watch planes taxi down the runway and meet local aviators, all while enjoying a customized pizza. 

The pizza joint is appropriately airplane themed given its location next to the East Ramp’s air traffic control tower. Walk in and you will see airplane parts and aviation photos adorning the walls. You can even sit on a row of airplane seats. The customized pizza place allows you to choose everything — the sauce, cheese, meat and vegetables. Customers simply check off what they want on an order form. The pizzas are cooked at 700 degrees in a wood-fired pizza oven, and that only takes 90 seconds. 

The pizza place has only been open four months, and business is booming. It’s not hard to understand why. It offers a quality pizza can in a unique setting — it’s on the second story above a mechanics hangar, with large windows overlooking the Fairbanks International Airport’s East Ramp. The marketing cliche “atmosphere is everything” comes to mind. 

“People love watching planes,” owner Wendy Ehnert said. “There’s no place to eat down here, so pilots have made this their place to have coffee, pizza and watch each other’s landing.” 

East Ramp Wood-fired Pizza’s roots go back to Ehnert’s backyard. The retired science teacher had a brick oven built in her backyard. For a couple of years, Ehnert would host pizza parties.

“Typically what happened is my friends made their own pizzas,” Ehnert said. “We used the same dough and same sauce. They’re pretty much

Article source: http://www.newsminer.com/features/food/fairbanks-pizza-joint-gets-fired-up-over-planes-and-pies/article_f44f5e34-f644-11e7-96f9-f388466e76f8.html

It’s the kind of trip any busy CEO dreads—a “quick” round trip from HQ in Denver to a key client at a remote facility in Montana without a major commercial airport nearby, then a visit to another client in the region before heading back home. Rob Holland, CEO of Denver-based Flagship Foods, figures that when you throw in ground transportation, travel would be 30 hours over five days.

He had a better plan: His company’s Eclipse 550 jet. “That’s six-and-a-half hours of travel as opposed to 30-plus hours over five days, and I’ve seen twice the number of customers in one-fifth the time,” he says. In addition to the productivity boost, the actual costs, factoring hotels, rental cars, meals and other expenses, come out in business aviation’s favor. “It’s real easy [to justify], whether it’s for the CFO or the IRS,” Holland, a former investment banker, says. “We do this [cost analysis] for every flight.”

Corporate jets routinely come under fire as playthings for the rich and powerful rather than an efficient use of capital. Yet a new study suggests that Holland is not alone—the use of business aircraft plays a significant role in enhancing an enterprise’s value. A report by investment research firm Nexa Advisors, Business Aviation and Top Performing Companies 2017, caps two decades of studies that consistently find “companies that have business aircraft at their disposal outperform those

Article source: https://chiefexecutive.net/corporate-aircraft-tools-competitive-advantage-not-toys/

For some people, locking the front door just isn’t enough to feel fully safe at home. Maybe they set up a home security system. Maybe they go out and buy a fancy smart home hub with a security camera. Or maybe they spend six years and $30 million to build a veritable fortress mansion, as one guy in Atlanta did. That house, called the Rice House and referred to as one of the safest homes in America, is now up for sale for $14.7 million.

Built by an entrepreneur who hired a security architect with a background designing Justice Department buildings (and his own bunker/house), the Rice House is billed as a “modern fortress” in the real estate listing.

For its owner, creating an impenetrable home was more of a personal challenge than a real security need, according to Bloomberg. But by its features, you’d think it was built for a Bond super-villain or a head of state, not a businessman in a wealthy Atlanta neighborhood.

It has its own water and power supply, a 5000-square-foot command center hidden behind a waterfall, a vault, and doors capable of withstanding machine gun fire. There’s an indoor gun range, in case you need some target practice. There’s enough room in the garage for 30 cars, in case you have a few dozen Batmobiles—or you want to invite friends to hunker down with you during the apocalypse.

And since anyone who lives there might be more invested

Article source: http://mentalfloss.com/article/524361/artists-boeing-777-paper-airplane-took-decade-build

NOAA’s combined weather and climate supercomputing system will be among the 30 fastest in the world, with the ability to process 8 quadrillion calculations per second, when two Dell systems are added to the IBMs and Crays at data centers in Reston, Virginia, and Orlando, Florida, later this month.

“NOAA’s supercomputers play a vital role in monitoring numerous weather events from blizzards to hurricanes,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “These latest updates will further enhance NOAA’s abilities to predict and warn American communities of destructive weather.”

This upgrade completes phase three of a multiyear effort to build more powerful supercomputers that make complex calculations faster to improve weather, water and climate forecast models. It adds 2.8 petaflops of speed at both data centers combined, increasing NOAA’s total operational computing speed to 8.4 petaflops — or 4.2 petaflops per site.

The upgrade also adds 60 percent more storage capacity, allowing NOAA to collect and process more weather, water and climate observations used by all the models than ever before.

“NOAA’s supercomputers ingest and analyze billions of data points taken from satellites, weather balloons, airplanes, buoys and ground observing stations around the world each day,” said retired Navy Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet, Ph.D., acting NOAA administrator. “Having more computing speed and capacity positions us to collect and process even more data from our newest satellites — GOES-East, NOAA-20 and GOES-S — to meet the growing information and decision-support needs of our emergency management partners, the weather industry and the public.”

With this upgrade, U.S. weather supercomputing

Article source: http://www.kbtx.com/content/news/Faster-computers-will-boost-efficiency-of-US-weather-models-468459043.html

CHEYENNE – It was a historic day for the Wyoming Air National Guard on Saturday as a modernized C-130H Hercules aircraft flew into Cheyenne for the first time.

The H model C-130s are considered “legacy” airplanes in the Air National Guard, crafted about 30 years ago. Newer J model aircraft are still being manufactured, but cost taxpayers a pretty penny. By making three separate engine-related modifications to improve the performance of the legacy models, the military is able to make good use of its budget, improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its missions and better ensure the safety of men and women in uniform.

“It’s a culmination of years of effort for the (153rd Airlift Wing based in Cheyenne) and for the Wyoming Air National Guard,” said Col. Paul Lyman, Wyoming Air National Guard commander. “It started as a vision of senior leadership and partnering with industry … to improve on a plane we already had.”

The upgrades include:

• Installation of four Rolls-Royce T56 series 3.5 engines to improve aircraft performance, fuel efficiency and reliability through the use of redesigned air inlet housing, updated turbine and improved compressor blades and seals.
• Implementing digitally-controlled Hamilton Sundstrand Corporation modular and composite eight-bladed propeller systems to replace four metal propellers and provide increased low-speed operational performance and decrease propeller maintenance time.
• Replacing advanced electronic propeller control systems with hydraulic controls to increase propeller acceleration response while an in-flight propeller balancing system decreases maintenance down-time.

Many airmen witnessing the modified C-130 land Saturday commented not only on the eight-blade propellers, but

Article source: https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/upgraded-c--h-legacy-aircraft-stops-in-cheyenne/article_c509cc14-f37d-11e7-add8-5396cdd35125.html