Model Airplanes

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

The nation’s efforts to advance technologically need to be supplemented with a positive attitude toward hands-on experimentation and the spirit of craftsmanship, Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology president Gao Chung-hsing (杲中興) said.

As an engineer, Gao worked in the institute’s missile and rocket systems division, which has designed some of the military’s most important weapons: the Tien Kung III, Hsiung Feng III and Hsiung Feng IIE missile systems. In May last year, Gao took the helm of the institute.

Aptitude for engineering and tinkering should be nurtured at home and in schools, as it would foster problem-solving skills and attention to detail, he said.

Born into a family of government functionaries in Nantou County’s Jhongsing New Village (中興新村), Gao said his interest in rocketry and tinkering started at an early age.

His public servant parents both paint, but his mother also enjoyed carpentry and made all her son’s toys and furniture for the family home, he said.

However, Gao said he was fascinated by aerial vehicles, especially rockets, a love partly inspired by aerial firework displays.

By age eight, he was making his own rockets, everything from the propulsion vehicle to the gunpowder, he said, adding that he started manufacturing gunpowder after discovering that commercially available fireworks contained too little gunpowder for his purposes.

Undeterred, he procured potassium perchlorate from a chemist in Taichung, mixing the salt with ground charcoal to make gunpowder and experimenting with various ratios to perfect his formula.

Graduating to homemade bombs, he filled an empty powdered milk container and fit it with

Article source: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2018/01/07/2003685338

Decades ago across the ocean, Roald Dahl introduced children to the whimsical world of an unusual chocolate factory, a big friendly giant, witches that turn into mice, a girl with magical powers, a giant peach and more.

Now his son Theo and Theo’s wife, Maddie, are spreading that joy of reading and imagination here in Southwest Florida while raising money for several worthy causes. Theo, Maddie and their daughter, Alexa, 12, live in North Naples and enjoy overseeing the Roald Dahl Day festival each year. This is the ninth year of the event, which takes place at Royal Palm Academy in Naples and raises money for the school. 

“The library there was hit by the hurricane,” Maddie says. Some 1,500 books were destroyed. “When I heard that, I knew we had to step up our game for Dahl Day. It breaks your heart to think of a library not having books because of a hurricane.”

Theo and Maddie will be at the event to autograph books. They are also giving every child at the school, all 260 students, an autographed copy of one of Dahl’s books. This year it will be “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.”

“The head of school always thought it was an unread book and

Article source: http://www.news-press.com/story/life/style/grandeur/2018/01/06/big-friendly-family/999848001/

As Mr. Crippen put it: “It’s rare when an individual comes along that actually personifies his chosen profession, but rare is what John Young is.”

After serving as a Navy test pilot, Mr. Young joined NASA in 1962 at the outset of the Gemini program, a bridge between the missions of the original Mercury 7 astronauts and the Apollo program, which sent men to the moon.

Mr. Young flew twice in Gemini spaceships, commanded the Apollo mission that preceded Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s landing on the lunar surface and later drove a rover vehicle through the moon’s highlands. He closed out his explorations of space by flying on two shuttle missions.

Mr. Young had a mischievous side and something of a rebellious streak. He smuggled a corned beef sandwich aboard Gemini 3 to the consternation of NASA officials, who feared that crumbs could have damaged the spacecraft’s systems, though that did not happen.