Devastation in Iowa City Tonight

"Jay Honeck" wrote

Strangely, it seems to be working just the opposite -- we are totally
DEAD. I've received a lot of calls from pre-existing reservations,
asking if we're still in business -- and I think a fair number of
people aren't calling, period, because they think Iowa City has been
wiped off the map...

I am totally surprised at that . I would think that there would be plenty
of people who had their houses make uninhabitable, and would be looking for
a place to stay for a couple months.
--
Jim in NC

In article ,
"RST Engineering" wrote:


Nah. the problem with manuals is they're never done. It's rev this
and rev that until you're ready to puke. I did one on an HP
calculator once that I thought I'd never get done with.

That wasn't by some wild chance the HP-35, was it? I can kick myself six
ways from Sunday for tossing mine when the batteries went dead after fifteen
years.

I still have mine. Recommendations for replacement batteries?

On Sat, 15 Apr 2006 08:31:28 -0700, "RST Engineering"
wrote:


That wasn't by some wild chance the HP-35, was it? I can kick myself six
ways from Sunday for tossing mine when the batteries went dead after fifteen
years.

It was some follow-on, circa 1981. HP-Corvallis was still called the
Watch and Calculator Division, and they had calculator variations for
every conceivable job. While the 35 was a K&E log-log duplex
deci-trig that took care of the mantissa for you, the later
calculators were a bundle of RPN keys in search of a function. A
manual comprised endless pages of button sequences. Aaarrrgh!

No, when the 35 came out, I was still in aerospace in LA, writing qual
test reports, and in one amusing moment, explaining the probable
reason the MB antenna for the F-something-or-other failed VSWR testing
in the temperature chamber, even though the company had never had
problems with prior versions of that antenna. After going back
through all the bluelines, I said it was probably because every
generation since the B-58 had been "qualified by similarity" to the
antenna in the Hustler, and that at some point in that evolution, the
cavity and radiator had been shortened to meet some earlier fighter's
form-factor requirement, and a slug-tuned capacitor had been added at
the top of the element to make it tune. The cap, of course, had a
substantial temperature coefficient, so it was no surprise that
resonance varied with temperature. I also asked why a MB antenna
needed a flat 1.1:1 VSWR across any temp range. I don't know how that
came out. I took off for Oregon before it got resolved.

Um ... you come up with a fresh idea, a novel approach, design it, prototype
it, debug it, write it up rough, polish it, take magazine quality photos
and/or engineering drawings, do this every month for twelve years, and then
do it again in 30 days. Don't get me wrong, I love writing for KP, but
every so often I get into a tight little box that doesn't want to let me out
and it is frustrating as hell.

Yes, your situation is different. Coming up with new stuff (and
sometimes making it work before one could write about it) was a trap I
got into when I was writing TAB books under contract. That problem was
complicated by TAB's policy at the time of not sending galley or page
proofs to authors for review. I hate it when the "j"s disappear from
my equations.

I finally fell into the trick of picking the brains of engineers who
are smarter than I am (they're easy to find) and writing about what
they had done better than they could. The engineers got the glory and
the magazines' small honoraria; I got anonymity and substantial checks
from the engineers' employers.

(To the ones who can also write and like to write and have the time, I
say, "Keep this. It's good." I hate it when somebody comes along and
screws up perfectly reasonable copy for no good reason.)

If anyone wants to know whether I ever wrote about aviation -- I once
got a check from Flying because I wrecked a Luscombe. The I Learned
About Flying From That piece was called, "The Judge Was a Pilot." It
does appear in one of the ILAFFT compilations that are now available
from TAB. (Royalties? I don't know. Maybe TAB made an effort to
contact me, but I had too many forwarding addresses. The amount
involved would be too piddly to worry about.)

I'm going on at this length because the subject line is "Writing
Professionally." I see from occasional postings that some people want
to know about that from a career standpoint.

Don

Even though I lived in the Midwest (NW Ohio) for over 25 years, I never saw
anything like this in person. I'm only thankful, for that fact.

I toured Xenia in 1974.
Reminiscent of a bombed out town from WWII.

"Jay Honeck" wrote:


Dang. It really *was* towering over me...

Glad you & yours are ok.

Have the weather boffins assigned an intensity category to this one?

--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

In article om,
"Jay Honeck" wrote:

Any word on what number on the scale this twister was? I'm guessing F-3 or
F-4, from the looks of viewing a portion of the pictures. It could even go
F-5, I suppose.

Actually, they're calling it an F2. Actually, they're calling it TWO
F2s.

Well, I'm sure you will be busy, for a good while. 100% occupancy at the
hotel will be a sure thing, for the foreseeable future, I guess.

Strangely, it seems to be working just the opposite -- we are totally
DEAD. I've received a lot of calls from pre-existing reservations,
asking if we're still in business -- and I think a fair number of
people aren't calling, period, because they think Iowa City has been
wiped off the map...

Start contacting the insurance adjusters and let them know what you have
available.

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
Wow...glad you guys are ok Jay. Thanks for posting the details. I
can't imagine what it must have been like...or is like at the moment
with the cleanup and folks sorting life out.

The Governor has now declared a State of Emergency for Johnson County,
which was actually hit by FIVE tornadoes, two of which hit Iowa City,
according to the newspaper...

To see a bunch of pics, go to
http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage and click on P-C
and user photo galleries.

It's a humbling experience to see neighborhoods that look like they
were bombed...
--

So when is FEMA going to deliver your $6million?

Hi Jay!
That's terrible news! I'm glad to hear you and your family are OK. Sorry
to hear that you and so many of your friends and neighbors were hit so
hard...

Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone there.


"Jay Honeck" wrote in news:1144991211.918555.250210
@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

So I was at our airport commission meeting tonight when the tornado
sirens went off. We had noticed the skies becoming black, but were

snip

Nature is amazing, and we were so very lucky. Our hangar and plane are
unscathed, the hotel was just nicked a glancing blow, and our home is
fine. There's no word on casualties yet, but from the looks of things,
there almost had to be some.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Peter Duniho" wrote in
:

By the way, Mr. English Major:

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
[...]
It took my son and I...

What's up with that?




Hey - I think he earned the right to misuse his pronouns. Or perhaps he
felt more Royal and as such intentionally chose to use the more refined,
but grammatically incorrect, "I" reference.

Either way, the rules of nature undoubtedly trump the rules of grammar!

I am totally surprised at that . I would think that there would be plenty
of people who had their houses make uninhabitable, and would be looking for
a place to stay for a couple months.

Most of the lost housing was student housing. Big, older homes that
have been subdivided, or are rented by 15 college kids.

Since they were already basically mosh pits, the displaced kids simply
all go bed down in the next hovel down... They're not the kind to go
rent an aviation theme suite for a month or two.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"