Model Airplanes

Question: Battery issues on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner were in the news a few years ago, but there has been little information on the changes that were made and why Boeing now feels the problems have been addressed. What are your thoughts on the safety of the lithium battery and the Boeing Dreamliner?

— submitted by reader Rob C., Mich.

Answer: Boeing, working with the NTSB and safety certification firm UL, did extensive testing on the Dreamliner battery. Many changes were made in the manufacturing process in an effort to improve reliability and safety of the battery.

Boeing, wisely, decided to improve the failure tolerance of a battery in thermal runaway in the 787, in addition to the improvements in the battery manufacturing. If a battery thermal runaway does occur, it is contained within the battery box and the vapor is vented overboard.

Lithium batteries provide a lot of power for their weight; consequently, they are the battery used in most electronic devices. The 787 uses lithium batteries for the same reason.

But Lithium batteries can spontaneously overheat and have a thermal runaway. This is not common but does happen. This requires safety mitigations to bring the risk to an acceptable level. Boeing’s improvements to the 787 appear to have been successful, although there was another battery event in November 2017.

Lithium batteries present a risk. We are going to have to monitor them very carefully to maintain the necessary level of safety. Keeping them out of the cargo holds is a good idea.

As for the

Article source: http://www.wkyc.com/article/news/nation-now/ask-the-captain-safety-risks-from-lithium-ion-batteries/465-29bf13a5-2429-4190-b12d-ce73d5573e8c

By Marwa Eltagouri | Washington Post

It was Aug. 13, 1945, four days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Japan had suffered unimaginable destruction, but Emperor Hirohito refused to surrender.

Capt. Jerry Yellin, an American fighter pilot, was ordered to fly a combat mission the next day over the Japanese city of Nagoya, where his 16-plane squadron would strike targets from the air. As his military unit was briefed on its assignment, Yellin’s wing man, a 19-year-old named Phil Schlamberg, leaned over and told Yellin he had an inexplicable feeling he was going to die.

“If we go on this mission, I’m not coming back,” Yellin recalls his friend saying.

Despite those doubts — and no matter how close the end of war seemed — Schlamberg refused to abandon the mission. He packed his clothes, paid his debts and wrote to his family, Yellin said.

The next morning, on Aug. 14, 1945, Yellin told Schlamberg to fly alongside the wing of his P-51 Mustang fighter plane. He gave Schlamberg a thumbs-up. Schlamberg returned the gesture. Together they entered the blustery clouds.

It wasn’t until eight hours later, after Yellin landed back on Iwo Jima and exited his cockpit, that he learned he had just flown the final combat mission of World War II. The news was a bitter relief: Japan had surrendered and the war was over. But the surrender was announced three hours

Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/10/this-fighter-pilot-flew-the-last-mission-over-japan-in-wwii-then-he-learned-to-love-his-enemy/

Scott Calzolaio MetroWest Daily News @scottcaz

MILFORD – On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the Davey household on Ford Island in Hawaii smelled of fresh waffles accompanied by the light laughter of Thomas and his brother playing innocently in their bedroom before breakfast.

The islet in the center of Pearl Harbor, Oahu, was always quiet on Sunday mornings, so when the sound of low-flying airplanes caught the attention of the young Davey brothers, they rushed outside to see what the commotion was.

“When the planes came in to drop the torpedoes, they had to come right over my house,” said Thomas Davey, 85, of Milford. “A couple came close to the trees they were flying so low.”

Sitting on his couch in a Milford apartment, surrounded by photos and model airplanes, Davey recalled the day he witnessed the Pearl Harbor attacks from his own backyard with the same intense clarity of the tragedy 76 years ago.

When the boys saw the planes, they knew they weren’t American.

“I ran inside and told my mother, ‘those are Japanese planes, wake daddy up,”’ he said.

Davey’s father, Thomas Davey Sr., was a Public Works Officer in the Civil Engineer Corps who was stationed on the island two years prior, in 1939.

The younger Thomas then ran back outside and the brothers watched while the first bombs were dropped; the attack had begun. American forces soon fired back, woken by explosions and gunfire.

“It got very scary,” Davey said. “My father came out

Article source: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/20171207/milford-pearl-harbor-survivor-recalls-planes-waffles

He photographed Janis Joplin wearing nothing but beads. He also once captured the members of the Grateful Dead looking jaunty in black as they stood in front of a row of cookie-cutter houses in a Bay Area suburb.

Bob Seidemann, a photographer and art director known for his iconic images of ‘60s era rock stars, and for producing a controversial album cover featuring a partially nude pubescent girl for the band Blind Faith, died at his Bay Area home on Mare Island on Nov. 27. He was 75.

The cause was Parkinson’s disease, according to Belinda Seidemann, his wife of more than 30 years.

“The graphics of the era were framed by the photos Bob took,” says Douglas Brian Martin, a photographer and longtime friend of Seidermann’s who has shot album covers for record labels including Virgin and AM Records. “He gave a regal purity to hippies like the Grateful Dead. He made it look natural. They weren’t posing.”

The natural quality of Seidermann’s images could be attributed to the bond with his subjects — he was simply photographing his friends.

Drawn to San Francisco from his native New York in the 1960s by the burgeoning beatnik scene, Seidemann befriended the poets, artists, writers and musicians of the city’s North Beach neighborhood. Those acquaintances included

Article source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-me-bob-seidemann-20171209-htmlstory.html