Model Airplanes

At first glance, Rockford doesn’t seem like a place where aerospace would spring up.  Yes, it has an airport, but what morphed this northern Illinois city into a hub for critical aircraft components? 

  In this case, it was a matter of having the right equipment.  

“The machine tool businesses that were here at the time then helped grow that industry, helped enable us to manufacture those kinds of parts here.” 

That’s Robert Guirl, a Strategy and Development Director at UTC Aerospace Systems, known to longtime Rockfordians as Hamilton-Sundstrand — or simply Sundstrand.  He says that, in their case, switching to aerospace was a matter of finding a new use for their tools.  

“We converted the hydraulic motor transmission devices that were the power systems on machine tools into the constant-speed transmissions that were used in the very early long-range bomber programs and at the onset of the commercial aviation program,” he said.

Even though Sundstrand merged with Goodrich in 2012 to form UTAS, Vice President Stan Kottke says the Rockford operation remains focused on energy. 

“They design, develop, and manufacture electric power systems for military, commercial and small

Article source: http://northernpublicradio.org/post/rockford-skies-power-behind-planes

Most of us boomers and beyond were raised with dial phones, Kodak film cameras, stick shifts, TV antennas and Encyclopedia Britannica.

But just looky now. Today, even the most revolutionary technologies become obsolete soon after they appear.

A recent Internet article by Dr. Robert Goldman, “Predictions in Technology and Health,” predicts some truly radical changes.

Dr. Ronald Klatz wrote that essay’s introduction, saying: “We live in a miraculous time, due to the rapid growth of new technology … life expectancy is increasing by three months per year. People utilizing the anti-aging tenets for health are seeing a life expectancy of 94, and that rate is also growing. Just as we predicted 25 years ago, medicine is now at last finally transforming from the treatment of illness and disease into preventative measures and the extension of the human lifespan.”

Goldman predicts what we can expect and the impact on our lives, noting that in 1998, Kodak, with 170,000 employees, sold 85 percent of all photo paper worldwide, but within a few years it went bankrupt. Goldman believes Kodak’s woes will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years.

“Did you think in 1998 that three years later you would never take pictures on paper film again?” he writes. “Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975.” That first model, he said, only had 10,000 pixels and was disappointing, but over time its quality surpassed film.

There’s lots to come, Goldman says: “It

Article source: http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2016/jul/02/look-what-lies-ahead-20160702/

Shunpiking is “use of a side road to avoid the toll on (or the speed and traffic of) a superhighway,” according to Merriam-Webster. To fans of road trips, shunpiking is a celebration of the joy of driving – and of cars themselves, getting out into the countryside to explore interesting sights often missed while whizzing along the interstate.

For car enthusiasts, Pennsylvania offers an opportunity to shunpike around the state while visiting some of the finest automobile museums in America. Most of these museums are tucked away in unlikely locations, yet

Article source: http://www.philly.com/philly/living/travel/20160703__Shunpike__to_see_Tuckers__Rolls-Royces_and_Camaros_at_car_museums_in_Central_Pennsylvania.html

Data from one of the black boxes of a crashed EgyptAir plane showed smoke alarms had sounded on board, while soot was found on the wreckage, an Egyptian-led investigative committee has said.

The black box had been retrieved from the bottom of the Mediterranean after the Airbus A320 with 66 people on board plunged into the sea on 19 May while heading to Cairo from Paris.

It had recorded the data of flight MS804 from its departure until it “stopped at an altitude of 37,000 feet [11,250 metres]”, the committee said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Recorded data is showing a consistency with Acars [aircraft communications addressing and reporting system] messages of lavatory smoke and avionics smoke,” it said, two days after the damaged recorder was repaired in France.

Investigators had previously announced that the plane’s automated Acars sent signals indicating smoke alarms on board the plane before it went down.

“Parts of the front section of the aircraft showed signs of high temperature damage and soot,” the committee statement added.

The repair work of the cockpit voice recorder, the second black box, had also begun.

The plane was carrying 40 Egyptians, 15 French, two Iraqis, two Canadians and one passenger each from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Chad, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

Article source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/29/black-box-data-from-egyptair-flight-ms804-shows-smoke-alarms-sounded

More than 675 people turned out for the meeting Wednesday night of The Select Committee on South Bay Arrivals, which is comprised of county and city officials from the San Francisco Peninsula and tasked with addressing the airplane noise issue and reviewing a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposal to change flight routes, altitude and other local flight procedures.

The Select Committee does not have any power, but it could potentially support the FAA’s Northern California Initiative Feasibility Study or provide other recommendations for cutting airplane noise. The problem of increased noise began in 2015 after the FAA rolled out its NextGen program to modernize the nation’s air-traffic system.

The FAA proposal came out of recommendations from local airplane-noise groups and incorporates recommendations the agency deems feasible. The study analyzed six categories: airspace design and airspace; adjusting arrival procedures; nighttime departure operations; developing new departure transit points for some nighttime flights; evaluating Oakland and San Francisco departures and improving management of aircraft by flight control.

Packing the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, residents told the committee about hundreds of low-flying planes and the impact the noise has daily and at all hours on their health and mental well-being. While residents from as far away as Santa Cruz and from up and down the Midpeninsula agreed that increased airplane noise has made their lives miserable, they were not united in how the problem should be fixed.

Residents from Santa Cruz and the mountains want a flight path that was

Article source: http://almanacnews.com/news/2016/07/01/advocates-sharply-disagree-on-solutions-to-airplane-noise

EVERETT, Wash.—After a year of meetings with potential customers, Boeing Co. is advancing toward developing an all-new jetliner with up to 270 seats that would target midrange flights of up to 10 hours.

The proposed plane would enter service around the middle of the next decade, but first Boeing executives must secure board approval by demonstrating that it can be built at a price acceptable to airlines and leasing companies.

…

Article source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-advancing-toward-developing-new-midsize-jetliner-1467345660