Model Airplanes

Liz Varnedoe remembers her father, Bill Brooks, flying her Barbies in his radio-controlled, yellow model airplane growing up.

“I want a new Barbie out of this,” she recalled telling him.

Brooks, a 74-year-old Huntersville resident who grew up watching fleets of WWII airplanes soar over his Tennessee home, loves flying.

More than that, he always flies safely.

“He’s not a risk taker,” said his son Werner Brooks. “He always knows what he’s doing.”

In honor of his 50-year error-free flight record, Bill Brooks was awarded Monday morning with the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award – a rare feat – from the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Transportation.

“To fly that long without incident is really something,” Mark Kramer, manager of the Charlotte district office of the FAA, told friends and family during the ceremony.

Brooks’ daughter and both his sons, their wives and five grandchildren lined the conference room of the FAA’s district office during the ceremony.

Steve and Katie Wallace, the children of NASCAR driver Rusty Wallace – who Bill flew as his chief pilot – were also among attendees.

Brooks didn’t expect everyone that came, and if it were up to him, Liz said he probably wouldn’t have told anyone. But she wanted him to be recognized.

“I didn’t want to inconvenience people,” he said to guests before the ceremony started.

A self-proclaimed shy guy, Brooks thanked his wife Heide, his family and the FAA for their support.

“It’s a real honor,” he said. “It’s a milestone, I know that.”

Brooks received his private pilot certificate on February

Article source: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article25198372.html

Malcolm Swinbanks recalls the night that he set up instruments to take measurements inside a home near a wind turbine in Ubly, Michigan.

The air was calm and the sunset impressive, but after three hours, Swinbanks grew nauseous and had struggled to concentrate.

After five hours, he felt seasick.

When he left the house, he had trouble driving, and he didn’t feel normal for another five hours.

While living near wind farms like one proposed for Buck Mountain in Schuylkill and Columbia counties, some people have been reporting symptoms like sleep disturbance, headaches and dizziness. They suspect that their problems could be due to low-frequency noise they hear or from emissions called infrasound that fall below what humans normally hear.

Wind turbines do emit low-frequency noise and infrasound, especially when the wind is turbulent near the ground, but the scientific community disagrees about whether the turbines affect health.

Swinbanks, who started studying the health effects of low-frequency noise with airplane engines 40 years ago, presented a paper about what happened to him in Ubly during the Sixth International Meeting on Wind Turbine Noise in Glasgow, Scotland, April 20 to 23.

Ed Palubinsky of North Union Township received a copy of Swinbanks’ paper and related information after he expressed reservations in a Standard-Speaker article on April 5 about wind turbines proposed for Buck Mountain near his home.

Along Buck Mountain, a company called Pattern Development wants to build 30 wind turbines in Schuylkill and Columbia counties and a transmission line in Black Creek Township, Luzerne County.

When talking about the

Article source: http://standardspeaker.com/news/wind-turbines-have-noisy-drawbacks-1.1901201

Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia

Sergeant Janick Gilbert was in the frigid waters of Fury and Hecla Strait, north of the Arctic Circle, for five hours before a CH-149 Cormorant search-and-rescue helicopter arrived. The search-and-rescue technician had parachuted from a CC-130 Hercules airplane in attempt to reach two Inuit hunters whose small boat had become lodged in sea ice. But winds had blown him off course, his survival suit had malfunctioned and he desperately needed to be winched to safety.

The Cormorant that eventually arrived was based 2,700 km away in Gander, Newfoundland. Originally dispatched to retrieve the hunters, its flight north took 13 hours. By the time it arrived, Sgt. Gilbert had succumbed to hypothermia. His tragic death in 2011 is a reflection of Canada’s outdated search-and-rescue system.

The parachuting model of search and rescue dates back to the Second World War, when the rapid extraction of accident victims was rarely an option. Instead, the priority was to provide lifesaving support on scene.

This model has since been rendered obsolete by the development of fast, long-range helicopters, able to winch victims to safety as soon as they arrive. First responders remain connected with the aircraft through its hoist cable, so they too can be extracted quickly.

The U.S. Coast Guard, which provides search and rescue along the coasts of

Article source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/rescues-require-helicopters-not-parachutes/article25042329/

The draw of buying a franchise is the chance to run your own business without having to build one from scratch. It’s like making a model airplane from a kit, instead of having to cast your own plastic pieces. To a lot of American business owners that kind of plug-and-play approach sounds pretty good. According to a forecast by IHS IHS Economics for trade group the International Franchise Association, the total number of U.S. franchises this year will grow by 1.6% to 781,794. The IFA reckons those businesses — selling everything from beer to auto parts to insurance to haircuts and massages – will employ 8.8 million people and generate GDP of $521 billion this year, about 3% of total nominal US GDP.

If you’re thinking of buying a franchise yourself, you’ve got a lot of things to decide like, for instance, where to put it and how to pay for it. But your most important choice is which franchiser to sign on with. Some are great sponsors and cheerleaders who will support you with strong brands, innovative product pipelines, and creative marketing ideas. Others, not so much. The meh ones just leave their franchisees to sink or swim on their own. And the bad ones have been accused of actually making it impossible for their franchisees to succeed.

To help you avoid that fate, we’ve put together, with key information and analysis from franchise industry research firm FRANdata, our second annual list of best and worst franchises

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercarbonara/2015/06/17/americas-best-and-worst-franchises-to-buy/