Air Zoo: World War 2 Aviation Display

Leaving the Guadalcanal exhibit, the museum takes you to the excellent display of multiple World War Two aircraft in their collection.

The Grumman FM-2 Wildcat, a higher-performance and the most numerous variant of the F4F Wildcat.

 The F6F Hellcat, the sucessor to the Wildcat on the Navy's larger aircraft carriers, whike the FM-2 and other Wildcats continued serving on the light and escort carriers:

 The FG-1D Corsair

The Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless

The Slow-But-Deadly dive bomber that hammered the Japanese aircraft carriers at Midway.

There's also trainers from the period, including the first aircraft acquired for the museum, a Boeing Stearman:

There's not only Naval and Pacific theater aircraft, there's lots more on display, including a rare  original WACO CG-4 Hadrian Glider, a displayed in the colors of one of the four that was sponsored by the Greenville Schools in Michigan from student funding during World War 2 and built by the Gibson Refrigerator Company of Greenville.  

The Glider it is painted in the colors of the 45th glider that landed during the Normandy invasion.

There's a also a C-47 on display and interestingly, some of the dummy paratroops that were dropped to confuse the Germans during the early hours of D-Day:

It's a Bird, It's A Plane, It's A Decoy!

Rather neat.

Tons of things to see in that room alone.

When Good GFCIs Go Bad

A couple weeks ago after a big storm came through, I found a circuit breaker had popped on the panel.  Reset it and it did not fix the problem - the lights in the guest bathroom, laundry room, hallway, and garage were all non-functional, as were al the plugs on the other side of that wall including the printer, and cable modem. Much fun.

Happily, the fridge, washer, and dryer in the laundry room still worked as did the garage door itself.

Clearly beyond my limited capabilities, I moved the modem via an extension cord to a working plug, and I sought an electrician to further diagnose and fix the issue.

Sadly, finding an electrician willing to work was hard. 

Finally found one and had an appointment set for last Thursday at 9:15 am, about a week after the outage, but it was the earliest I could get someone there.

So last Thursday 9:15 rolled around; then 10:15; then 11:15, and  no call -- no show.  I then called and got voicemail followed by a text message that he would call me right back.

As you might guess, no, no, he did not bother calling back at all.

Nor was there any response to my follow-up text asking if maybe he was too busy to come that day and if we could reschedule.

Then, since he clearly didn't want the work, I started looking for an alternate electrician.  Hard to get people to want to work today I suppose. Got a name from another friend yesterday, called him today, and he came over this afternoon right after finishing another job.

He then started diagnosing it and traced the cause to the GFCI outlet in the garage.  

There were three hot wires connected to the GFCI. One had gotten just loose enough to knock out that part of the circuit while leaving the rest of the circuit on the same breaker, including the Garage door working.  Rather tricky.

So wires got stripped, re-connected, and re-wired, and as a precaution we installed a nice fresh GFCI there as the old one was looking kinda dodgy, and it all works now.

The Air Zoo: Find The Sniper!

The Air Zoo is not solely dedicated to Aviation.

It also has a detailed exhibit regarding the Campaign at Guadalcanal.

Why?  Because the founder of the museum, Preston "Pete" Parish served as a Marine Lieutenant during the campaign, and his best friend was killed there. 

There are detailed dioramas of the naval battles around Guadalcanal, exhibits of uniforms and many other  informational items that make the past come alive.

 

 

The museum has the only extant piece of the USS Juneau, part of Task Force 67 and sunk by a Japanese submarine during the campaign.  The five Sullivan brothers died in the sinking of USS Juneau:

As to spotting the sniper:

Can you find him before he gets you?

 

He's right there somewhere.

 

He's right there.

He's There!

 

A very impressive and educational (good addition juvat) exhibit about one of the most hard-fought battles and pivotal campaigns in the Pacific in World War II.

Sunday USPSA Day

So today I headed to Brighton this morning for a USPSA match,

Turnout was impressively small - just one squad worth of all of seven shooters but the match went on anyways.  It appears another club just started matches on the same day close by, which is pulling shooters away from the Brighton match.  It's also nearing the end of the competition season here in Michigan, so turnout is low because of that as well.

On the plus side, we had a lot of fun with just one squad moving through all five stages.  A good bunch of people indeed, and I was the secondary RSO so I got to run about half the small squad while the primary did the other half. That way we weren't being ROs when in the hole or on deck to shoot.

I'm overall quite happy with my performance - certainly I've gotten better at stage planning and my shooting is definitely showing improvement.   Had a couple magazine feeding issues that slowed me down, which was weird, and the first time that has happened.  It started in the later half of the match and was rather annoying.  Time to tear down and clean everything.

On the one classifier stage, I was the only one to shoot it clean and hit all Alphas, including 4 head-shot Alphas.  This classifier might not be actually used for classification - it's on trial at various clubs and is a lot of fun it's Classifier 22-04 "Calm Before The Storm".  You start seated outside the shooting box, with toes touching the shooting box.  You then get up at the beep, get your gun off the table in front of the shooting box then shoot 4 rounds at two targets of your choice, and then do a mandatory reload from the table and do 4 rounds on each of the remaining two targets. 

Each outside target has hardcover diagonally through it, and the center third and fourth target are one above the other with a no-shoot target in the middle.  Oh, the 4th and topmost target has a no-shoot covering the lower A-Zone, thus my 4 head-shot alphas. 

Quite a bit of fun to shoot, and I hope it does become an official classifier.

Still waiting for the result but I had a good time, and my speed and accuracy have both improved. I had some rather good runs with decent hit factors and not a single missed target nor missed shot in the entire match, which is happy-making.  

Update: Results sorta came in.  I can't see it on the Practiscore site that gives overall rankings, but only on a site that gives it by division.  So out of three Carry Optics Shooters, I came in 2nd, not bad considering the guy who came in first was really, really, good. I also had zero misses, no Deltas, 93 Alphas and 17 Charlies. Not too bad, and had I not had the malfunctions the times would have been better.  

Pretty happy with my performance at this match and it was a lot of fun.

Air Zoo - That Looks Just Like A Messerschmitt

It looks at first glance just like a Messerschmitt BF-109.

 

So much so that this very aircraft even stood in for a BF-109 in the classic film Battle of Britain starring Michael Caine, Sir Laurence Olivier and many others:

It's not a BF-109, it's a Buchon HA-1112, a copy of the Messerschmitt BF-109 produced under license in Spain.

It is now back in Spanish Air Force Livery and on display at the museum, after originally being displayed in it's Luftwaffe paint job it wore during the film.

The Buchon had a different engine than the original due to German inability to supply sufficient Daimler Benz engines and instead used the Hispano-Suiza engine which gave the aircraft a major right turning tendency on takeoff as it has a counter-clockwise propeller rotation, compared to the Daimler-Benz's clockwise rotation that the airframew was designed to handle.  

This last variant of the Buchon uses a 1,600 hp Rolls-Royce Merlin 500-45 engine rather than the 1,300HP Hispano-Suiza and has two 20 mm Hispano-Suiza 404/408 cannons and the Buchons served in the Spanish Air Force until December 1965.

Some Jets From The Air Zoo

The Air Zoo main hall has quite a few notable jets:

An F-14 Tomcat

 

 

An F-8 Crusader, the last gunfighter. 

An F-18

An A-4 Skyhawk in Australian livery:

These are just the jets in the main hall.

There's also one of the world's earliest jet propelled devices on display:  The V-1 Dooodlebug".

Air Zoo - Another Rare Bird - The SR-71B

The largest bird on display in the Kalamazoo Air museum is the SR-71B.

This is the last surviving original SR-71B two-seat trainer.

After It served with the Air Force, it was transferred to NASA before being was used for research by NASA until 1997 when it was retired. The aircraft was then transferred back to the Air Force and then has been with the Air Zoo since 2003 and is now in the newer main building.

It is an impressively large aircraft. Unfortunately given the way it is placed in the museum, you can't get a decent shot of the front of it.

The refueling area is visible from a platform designed to give viewing access to the top of the plane.

Both cockpits are rather cramped and laden with instruments.

 

 

The rear cockpit is similarly cramped.

Even on display, and even knowing she will not fly again, she still looks fast.

Running At Police With A Knife Tends To Lead To A Predictable Outcome

So a fellow, Porter Burks, with known mental issues, and prior run-ins with police, takes a knife and slashes his brother's car tires in Detroit and is roaming around the street.

Brother concerned for safety of Porter and the public considering that Porter  is out wandering the street with a knife and acting psycho, calls the police.

Police then confront the fellow who refuses to drop the knife and who then decides to run towards the officers while still holding the knife and gets to within 6 feet of the nearest officer before being dropped by police, and he dies soon thereafter after being shot multiple times. Most of the incident video available at the link above with the Detroit News, but not the entire event.

So of course Attorney Geoffrey Fieger is suing on behalf of the family. 

The mentally-ill attacker is now, of course, being described as a happy straight-A student that liked to sing and dance (and apparently liked to stab people and things with knives, but that part is being left unsaid, natch).

Fieger is actually and rather very disingenuously suggesting that the police should have let themselves be stabbed rather than stopping the threat:

"Why you can’t figure out a better way to deal with him than executing him by firing squad?” Fieger asked at Thursday's news conference.

"You have all sorts of equipment, all that body armor that police have," he said. "They have helmets, they have arm and chest armor. They have bulletproof vests everywhere. Are you telling me that today, you don't have sufficient equipment to send an officer toward somebody with a 3-inch knife and instead you have to execute him?

"If that’s crisis intervention, God help us all.”

That actually is an effective crisis intervention when dealing with a person psychotically waving a knife around in public that decides to run towards someone with knife in hand after ignoring repeated requests and commands to drop the knife.

It's true that  mental health care services suck and are overwhelmed, and we lack enough in-patient hospital beds to handle all the mentally ill in Michigan and the US for that matter. That was a choice made by politicians to both save money and the quaint idea that the dangerously mentally-ill were just seeing the world different and it was fine for them to be out and about until they kill someone, then politicians act all surprised that that occurred. So the police and jail become the first line of treatment for mentally ill individuals that choose to act out violently.

But, one could still ask why the family didn't have the fellow getting in-patient treatment or at least regular out-patient treatment, considering he had stabbed at least one family member previously (report is unclear if it was multiple family members or multiple incidents), and was known to have what have been described by the family as "psychotic breaks", but that wouldn't help with the chances for winning the ghetto lottery, now would it?

Yom Kippur

Today is the holiest day on the Jewish Calendar.

A day for introspection, fasting, atonement, and repentance towards both G_d and man.

גמר חתימה טובה
Gmar Chatimah Tova 

May all my friends and readers be sealed in the Book of Life for a happy and healthy New Year.

The Air Zoo - Rare Bird

There's a very rare bird at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo.

Looking like something out of Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow, this futuristic-looking aircraft was a flying flop.

It was quite simply more a danger to its pilots than the enemy, having really vicious stall characteristics.  Then the coming of the jet age ended the development of this pusher-prop design.

It is the Curtis-Wright XP-55 Ascender.

Of the three prototypes, two aircraft crashed with both aircraft being completely totaled, with one of the two crashes killing the pilot flying it.

This Curtis-Wright XP-55 Ascender, is the only one left in existence, and happens to be prototype number two, as prototypes one and three were both destroyed in crashes.

Currently on long-term loan from the National Air and Space Museum, you can find it now on display in Kalamazoo where it was sent to be restored, and very nicely restored it was.

The Kalamazoo Air Zoo has a very well-deserved reputation for aircraft restoration work.

To No One's Surprise, Democrats' Stock Trade Ban Bill Is Deader Than A Doornail

If you haven't guessed by now, it's dead because the Democrats in Congress killed it.

Rather funny how that happens, especially when the Democrat leadership is making millions off of their insider trading information in stocks.

The Intercept:  House Democratic Leadership Designed Stock Trade Ban to Fail, Negotiators Say

Democrat House Majority Leader Sten Hoyer announced there would be no vote on the bill before the midterms.

 Funny that, isn't it?  The Democrats have a clear majority in the House and could pass this legislation without any Republicans at all if they wanted to do so (as flawed as it is with many seemingly deliberate openings to still permit insider trading among Congressional members).  

But they don't, because that would cut off a major opportunity they have to enrich themselves at our expense, all the while claiming they're "for the little people" and against the rich, while becoming very rich themselves based off stock trades from insider information.

The Air Zoo - The Original Angry Birds

So I took the shuttle to the Flight Innovation Center which is now the main museum.  The Flight Discovery Center is where you park the plane and is where the original museum was until it expanded, and its where they do restorations - much more on that later.

 After you pay your admission fee, you walk in the Flight Innovation Center.

There as you walk in, you can see the original Angry Birds:

A P-38 Lightning.  Hanging from the roof, this twin engine fork-tailed devil struck fear into its enemies' hearts and had such storied missions as the interception and shoot-down of Admiral Yamamoto,

A Bell P-39Q Airacobra.  

Not having a turbo-charged engine hampered its high-altitude performance and it was not liked by US pilots. But, the Soviets in World War 2 on the other hand loved them for low-level fighting and ground attack missions that were common on the Eastern front, and over 60% of P-39s were sent to the USSR.

A B-25J Mitchell.  Because you can never have enough .50 caliber machine guns. This one, part of the 498th Bomber Squadron  (the "Fighting Falcons") was setup as a strafing attack bomber and has 18 fifty cals mounted, with 14 of them facing forward to fire on strafing runs.  Note the P-40 angry bird to the side as well.

Then there was much more to see in just the first room of the museum.

Flying - To The Air Zoo!

I had the day all to myself so I decided after taking car of the dogs to take flight.

I had never gone to the Kalmazoo Air Zoo at KAZO, so I decided to fly there today.

Wind was kinda gusty and strong from 040 so I took off in the Archer (Dakota was booked by someone else for the weekend) from Runway 9L and headed on my way.

I got flight following which was helpful as there was parachute jumping activity and glider activity that I was routed around, which was rather nice.

Climbed to 6,500, and with a nice tailwind was doing 123 knots ground speed.

Overflew Battle Creek on the way.  Need to stop there soon as the food at the restaurant there is supposed to be amazing, and the WACO aircraft factory is there.

Then coming in to Kalamazoo, I got to choose if I wanted Rwy 5, the shorter Runway or Runway 35, the longer one with a major crosswind.  Since the wind was blowing 040-050, Runway 5 was the right choice for me.

So, I entered the right downwind for it and then made a very nice landing. The wind remained gusty but kindly settled on 050 right during my landing which made it rather nice indeed.

Then Kalamazoo Ground most helpfully gave me progressive taxi to the museum airplane parking area.

You can see the flag whipping in the wind.

I then parked in the visitor area.

One other plane, another Piper Archer, was there when I got there so I parked nicely beside it.

And then I headed into the Museum.

Pilots and their passengers get their own entrance into the museum, at the restoration area, and then I get a shuttle to the main museum.  We also get to sign in with our plane info as well and get a sticker badge with our N-number on it to wear to show we flew in (and probably to find us if they need us to move the planes around I suppose).   I had a great chat with one of the docents on the way to the main museum, and then paid my entrance fee and went in then off to explore.

That's 1.3, 1.3 cross-country, and 1 rather nice landing. 

Long After The Horses Have Already Bolted And The Pigs Have Fed At The Trough

Democrats are beginning to realize their Marie Antoinette approach hasn't been a hit with most Americans.

The Detroit News: Democrats unveil bill to restrict trading by lawmakers, presidents

This is of course, long after the Nancy Pelosi stock picking method, and the wealth she has amassed from it, has become legendary, and long after she;s moved to block prior bans.

Interestingly, and not surprisingly, there's lots of push-back from the Democrats in the House and Senate who want to keep on insider trading.

Unsurprisingly, the bill itself has apparently a huge loophole to keep insider trading alive.

Hilariously, the Detroit News article states that:

Forcing a vote now has the added bonus of putting Republicans on the spot, they said.

So, the Democrats themselves are conflicted with many against the bill as it harms their economic self-interest and opportunity to make millions insider trading, yet somehow bringing it up to vote will be "putting Republicans on the spot".

Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.

That Subsidy Could Have Bought An Awful Lot of New Power Plants

The Detroit News: Germany to spend billions to tackle high energy prices

Green dreams tend to end up in power supply nightmares, don't they?

Germany plans to spend up to 200 billion euros ($195 billion) helping consumers and businesses cope with surging energy prices, particularly for natural gas, due to the war in Ukraine.

Note this doesn't actually tackle high energy prices and does nothing to address the supply issue, it merely papers over it for consumers and has the government pay for the increase that is due to lousy planning on the German government's part when it comes to energy.  It's just a lot of spent money to kick the can down the road and not address the problem.

At approximately $4 Billion per reactor in construction costs (Nuclear power plants apparently are very expensive to build but relatively inexpensive to run), that money could have built 48 Nuclear plants and had money left over for operations of them.

Pity Germany embraced outsourcing its power generation and power supplies to a rather unreliable supplier in Russia.  

Even better, remember how they smirked and outright laughed at Trump when he noted their reliance on Russian gas was a bad idea. Who is laughing now?

Putting The Mental in Judgmental

Ah, Detroit is a place that is run in a demonstrably poor fashion by Democrats, and its 36th District Court is even worse, which is why I try to avoid practicing there as much as possible. 

The Detroit News: 36th District judge 'unfit,' should be removed from bench, state commission says

The commission determined each of 36th District Court Judge Kahlilia Davis's multiple acts of misconduct are "egregious in their own right," according to the organization's decision and recommendation for discipline that was released Friday night. Davis was accused of failing to record court proceedings, refusing to abide by a performance plan the court set up for her and blanketly dismissing cases from a specific process server because she did not trust him.

Of course she then attempted to sue playing the race card.  The hard part about playing the race card in Detroit, however, is most of her superiors are Black themselves, and her many egregious mistakes were rather prominent, and the case was dismissed.

As for the mental part, she:

Routinely showed up late, missed days of work and performed the job poorly, according to the report. The State Court Administrative Office stepped in to make a performance plan for her, in which Davis refused to participate. Instead, she attacked the people assigned to help her "with discourteous and unprofessional written threats and barbs, including biblical quotes insinuating that her colleagues and the administrators should or would go to Hell."

Not exactly showing a proper judicial temperament there at all.

Happy Rosh HaShanah 5783 / 2022

Happy Rosh Hashannah!

Services get to be live this year, which is a welcome improvement over the Zoom of the past couple years.

May my readers and friends have a good and sweet new year, and be inscribed in the Book of Life.

שנה טובה ומתוקה

Sunday Match Day

This morning I headed out to a match, in the rain.

Luckily, the rain subsided as I signed in and got ready. I was in a good squad of 11 shooters and we had a good time.

The morning went quite well, and thanks to the class I took last weekend, I was measurably more accurate and quicker shooting, and had better stage planning and was more aware of where the targets were.

Overall pretty happy with my performance, but, of course, there's plenty of room for improvement.  

I did not fail to engage a single target the entire match, compared to my normally sailing past at least one hidden one per match. Even better I did not engage any targets twice either. Better stage planning certainly helped, especially with the confusing stages where some target could only be seen form certain angles or were viewable from multiple locations.

Got the match results, and it turns out I shot one stage with a B-Class percentage, and the rest with mid to high C-class scores, with the overall percentage within 7% of a B-Class score, so that's a nice start to some improvement.

Since We're Already in One, I'd Say The Odds Are Pretty Good

The Detroit Free Press, ever covering for the Democrats had the following article: What are the odds of a U.S. recession in 2023?

Since we're already in one I'd say the odds are pretty much 100%.

Indeed, now Federal Reserve Chairman Powell is backing away from his statement of just 11 days ago that higher rates likely won't cause a deep recession, it doesn't look good.

Fox Business: Fed's Powell abandons promise of 'soft landing' amid inflation fight

Given Powell's previous wrong statements that inflation frrm his and Biden's monetary policies would be merely tranistory, and that he;s now abandoning his promise that he can controlinflation while creating a "soft landing", I'd say that economic reality that their actions are goign to cvause a deep recession is pretty much spot on.

Inflation and flooding the economy with dollars may make you feel pretty good initially, and Biden is trying to keep the bender going by continuing spending under the "Inflation Reduction Act" that will actually increase inflation, and spending over half a trillion in forgiving his supporters' student loans.  

But, the hangover is going to suck - and its going to hurt those of us who weren't even drinking the Democrat's Modern Monetary Theory Kool-Aid.

The Case of The Dyslexic Who Married an Insomniac Atheist

Had a weird one in court today.

Friend of mine had called me that he got a notice to appear in court for a crime he did not recall committing, nor did he recall even getting a ticket for it.

He apparently got ticketed for not having a licensed dog.  This is a misdemeanor in Michigan.

The problem is he does not have any dog -- licensed or otherwise.

Turns out there were census workers going around his neighborhood, knocking on doors and if they heard a dog they told police who then wrote the owner of the house a ticket.

Somehow they wrote him up for one and we're not sure how it happened.

Managed to talk with the prosecutors prior to the hearing today, and had to go in and put on the record that he does not own a dog, and the ticket was then dismissed.

Quite a waste of time for all involved.

So what happens when a dyslexic marries an insomniac atheist?

You get a bunch of kids running around in the middle of the night saying:

"There is no Dog."

In this case, there really is no dog.