A380 Virtual Tour Both Amazing and Nauseating

A380 Hi-res Interactive Cockpit

Found this on Flightblogger. I could spend all day twirling around and around in this cockpit. Full screen action makes my eyes cross though.

777F Assembly Starts, while I wonder how to load that thing

Boeing workers in Washington have started major assembly of the first Boeing 777F freighter version of their popular 777 passenber aircaft (pay no attention to the post from Saturday) this week. Scheduled to enter service in 4Q of this year with Air France, the picture depicts a 97' wing spar being assembled. I've yet to figure out how to load this thing from a door immediately aft of the wing. Again, I'm no egineer.

Monty Python video not so p.c. anymore, but still so funny

Saw this when I posted the 405 video and had to load this one as well. Most people will find the subject of this humor to be less than humerous these days, but I still love it. Lighten up folks.

California Commuting

I hadn't seen this in a while, but it always makes me laugh so I thought I'd post it. I think I drove behind this lady before.

2007 Year-In-Review

This is the Year In Review video I made for work. It's a collection of pictures and video clips I took over the last year. I'm awesome.

White Knight 2 far more interesting than SpaceShip 2

Burt Rutan and his crew over at Scaled Composites released concept photos of both SpaceShip 2 and White Knight 2 this week. The duo will be used by Virgin Galactic for commercial space tourism hopefully by the end of the year.

While SS2 seems to only have evolved nominally for increased capacity, it is WK2 that seems to have had a more dramatic transformation over its predecessor.

While a twin boom design is not that dramatic for Scaled, the twin fuselage concept is fairly radical. What I've yet to find out is whether these tandem fuselages will have mirror flight decks.

The other feature that shocked me was the 4 engines. 4 engines? Seems a little overly complicated, doesn't it. Preliminary drawings released last year showed a WK2 with two over-the-wing CF-34 class engines. That design seemed exceptionally reasonable to me. Now they've chosen to go with 4 under-the-wing PW308 engines instead. Interesting. I guess I'm no engineer so I'll save my perplexity for something else.

F-15 Breakup Report Video from AVweb

This well produced video on the F-15 accident report is from the good folks at AVweb.

BA Heathrow Crash Speculation

It's been over a week now since British Airways Flight 38 executed a "Land and Hold Short" at Heathrow Airport in London. Reading briefs from the NTSB (wierd that they're involved) would lead you quite a ways from early speculation the day of and after this accident.

That's what I hate about this industry. Everyone is an expert. Especially those who have little operational knowledge of aviation. Initial reports indicated both engines failed. First of all, those Trent 800s are two of the most reliable engines in the world. Your car engine has a better chacne of shutting down unsuspected than one of these. And both...simultaneously? Fat chance. Then blow harts started throwing around conjecture like fuel starvation and bird strikes. Both of these seemed far fetch for me. I always had a gut feeling something else was going on.

Then, the NTSB indicated through a brief that while established on final, the autothrottle called for an increase in thrust, yet the engines did not respond. The flight crew attempted manual input with nominal thrust increase. Grass field, here we come. This is the type of 'systems' issue I was truly expecting from this incident. Somewhere between autothrottle, fadec, windows vista, and atari is where this took place.

It's the talking heads of the cable news networks that make my head explode when any type of aviation incident occurs. Please, rely on credible sources before you put just any crap on the air!

Midwest Airlines - Still the Best Care in the Air?

Took a trip on Midwest Airlines last week. Omaha to Reagan National, then back a few days later. This was my first flight on a 717. I was pretty stoked about that. Apart from a sweet new flight deck, though, it really didn't feel much different than any of Midwest's old DC-9s. Granted, newer interior and lighting.

But by far, the best thing about flying Midwest is the seating. 2 x 2 leather seating with decent pitch. They also have an extra wide arm rest between connected seats which make sharing with a stranger somewhat reasonable. The last time I flew Midwest was in 2003. Back then they offered free meals, which were extraordinary and with real dinner ware. Now, they charge around $12 for a meal, which though par for the airline course, disappoints me a little. I would think an all business class flight would have meals provided. Of course, they still offer warm chocolate chip cookies on each flight, which in and of itself is enough to keep me coming back.

Granted things have changed for Midwest in the last 5 years since I travelled with them, I would still prefer to fly this airline for the impeccable service and non-stop flights. Best Care in the Air...yeah, I'd still say so. Especially when compared to the level of service offered these days by the legacy carriers.