Model Airplanes

(CNN)One day after reporter Alison Parker, 24, and her cameraman, Adam Ward, 27, were gunned down on live television in Roanoke, Virginia, Parker’s boyfriend said merely remembering their lives is not enough.

“There needs to be some action that is taken out of an event like this — out of an event like Sandy Hook, like Charleston, like Aurora, Colorado… where these things just don’t occur anymore,” Chris Hurst told CNN on Thursday, citing a litany of American gun violence.

“We need to have a substantive conversation on what is going on in America that is allowing evil to continue to crop up over love? Is it because we are in the media? And the attacker knew this was going to get a lot of play, and here we are again, another mushroom cloud of coverage over gun violence?”

On Wednesday, Vester Lee Flanagan II produced a real-time murder show that he choreographed in detail.

In a ranting note sent to ABC News before his death, Flanagan blamed his misery on black men and white women and said he was “somewhat racist against whites, blacks and Latinos.”

He said he admired the shooters who massacred students at Columbine High School and at Virginia Tech, which lies about 25 miles away from Roanoke. He decided to buy a gun days after the Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting in June, he said.

Flanagan shot dead Parker and

Article source: http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/27/us/virginia-shooting-wdbj-bryce-williams-parker-adams/

For Matt Mikko, flying his remote-controlled aircraft has been a part of his life for the last 42 years.

The 48-year-old got involved with the Radio Aero Modelers Club of Seattle (RAMS) when he was 6. The club is made up of members from all over East Pierce County and parts of King County.

“My dad and I still talk about (remote-controlled aircraft) every day,” said the Puyallup resident. “We never run out of things to talk about with the hobby. It’s a bit of an addiction.”

The RAMS are the oldest Radio Aero Modelers club in the state, touting a more than 65-year history as providing a family oriented hobby of flying radio-controlled aircraft. Club members fly their aircraft remotely on the ground, using a hand-held radio transmitter. Drivers passing through the industrial business parks off West Valley Highway in Sumner can often see remote-controlled helicopters and planes buzzing through the airspace above the club’s private field.

While all 81 members come from various walks of life, they all have one thing in common: If it’s a radio-operated aircraft — a helicopter or an airplane — they will fly it.

Bill Westerlund, vice president of the club, joined 14 years ago to keep himself occupied after he retired as a diesel mechanic. It’s the members of the group that keeps him coming out to the field, he said.

“Just the guys I get to hang around with,” Westerlund said. “It’s a fun group.”

Club members range from kids to adults —

Article source: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/community/puyallup-herald/ph-sumner/article32428797.html

HELENA – His eyes gazing high above the Helena Valley, 17-year-old Jon Garber banked his sailplane into an updraft. The plane made turn after smooth turn, gradually climbing higher in the air before he pulled it from the spin and brought it back to Earth.

Garber is currently the No. 1-ranked competitor and recent winner of the national championships of the Altitude Limited Electric Soaring League. Nearly 300 pilots compete in the league flying sailplanes, radio-controlled aircraft that depend on the natural thermals of the Earth to stay aloft.

At the Academy of Model Aeronautics national championships held Aug. 1 in Indiana, Garber was half the age of the next-youngest competitor, including sponsored pilots and aeronautical engineers making their living in aviation.

“It means a lot to me because the guys are really supportive,” he said. “But it was a little nerve wracking because it’s the (nationals) and it’s a big deal.”

The rules of the ALES league are simple. Launch the sailplane by hand into the air, where a motorized propeller takes it high into the sky. Once there, the electronic propulsion shuts off and the pilot must control the plane from the ground, searching for natural updrafts called thermals to keep the plane in flight. During competitions, pilots must fly the plane for a designated time, and when the time is up, land the plane as close as possible to the end of a measuring tape.

The sport is scored by how close the plane lands to the designated time and how close to

Article source: http://missoulian.com/lifestyles/recreation/helena-student-flying-high-in-sport-of-sailplanes/article_a26cab42-cb8e-5253-b9d7-f7ab8727194a.html

Norwegian Air’s bid to gain more access to airports in the U.S. and European Union was the talk of the aviation industry in 2014, but it appears to have stalled this year.

The company is attempting to gain access to airports covered under the U.S. and EU’s Open Skies agreement by establishing a subsidiary company that would be based in Ireland, a member of the EU. 

The Scandinavian company has said it will be able to offer transatlantic flights for as low as $150 each way if its effort is approved by the Department of Transportation, where it has been pending since last year.

But the agency has been quiet on the issue this year, and attention in Washington has turned to a fight over international flight subsidies between U.S. and Middle Eastern airlines. 

Transportation department officials say the Norwegian Air application is still under review, but airline industry observers say the company may be experiencing the equivalent of a pocket veto by Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. 

“I have no inside info, but the possibility exists that this could sit for quite awhile longer,” AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department President Ed Wytkind, who has opposed Norwegian Air’s application, told The Hill in an interview on Tuesday. 

Wytkind said the transportation department should still weigh in on the fight over Norwegian Air’s Open Skies bid, even if the attention of the aviation industry has seemingly moved on to the battle between U.S. and Gulf carriers.  

“We still think it’s important to reject this thing, as it’s

Article source: http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/251954-what-ever-happened-to-norwegian-airs-open-skies-bid

The boarding procedure has barely started at Chicago O’Hare airport and Ben Schlappig has already taken over the first-class cabin. It’s Valentine’s Day and, on Cathay Pacific Flight 807 bound for Hong Kong from the United States, he’s passing out designer chocolates to a small swarm of giggling flight attendants. The six suites in this leather-bound playpen of faux mahogany and fresh-cut flowers comprise the inner sanctum of commercial flight that few ever witness. They’re mostly empty now, save for two men in their 20s who seem even giddier than the flight attendants. The two stand to greet him. “This is so cool!” exclaims one, and soon Schlappig is ordering champagne for everyone.

This sort of thing happens to Schlappig nearly everywhere he goes. On this trip, his fans will witness Schlappig’s latest mission: a weekend jaunt that will slingshoot him across East Asia – Hong Kong, Jakarta, Tokyo – and back to New York, in 69 hours. He’ll rarely leave the airports and when he does he’ll rest his head only in luxury hotels. With wide ears, Buddy Holly glasses and a shock of strawberry-blond hair, Schlappig resembles Ralphie from A Christmas Story, if he’d grown up to become a J.Crew model. Back beyond the curtain, in business class, a dozen jowly faces cast a stony gaze on the crescendos of laughter and spilled champagne – another spoiled trust-fund kid, they’ve judged, living off his parents’

Article source: http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1851035/travel-hacking-game-how-fly-first-class-every-trip