Liberals Ignore The Wright Brothers

Another thought came to mind, how will _our_ times be judged hundreds
of years from now?


"Flying an aeroplane with only a single propeller to keep you in the air. Can
you imagine that?"
- Captain Picard

and gliders? oh my god! neandertals!

"G.R. Patterson III"
Maule Driver wrote:

But I can recommend a related book, James Bradley's "Flyboys" "A true
story of
courage".

I thought it was great except for two glaring errors. In one sentence he
talks
about the tendency of the big radials to "stall without warning" and in
another
he talks about the WWII carrier decks being very dangerous places with
whirling
props,..., jet fuel,... Jet fuel? In 1943?

Those errors make me wonder about some of the other facts he presents. The
book
does contain an excellent bibliography, however, so I don't think he's
made
anything up, and I hope to find time to check out some of his references.

You know, I think I'll do a fresh post about Flyboys in rap. I'm sick of
the subject line on this one and the presumed jerk behind it. Anyway,
please repost your point there if you like. That's why I'm always careful
about not presuming high levels of accuracy in something that just happens
to appear in hardback as non-fiction.

I don't think that everything inventable has been invented at all. I just
think that there just aren't any really good, original dreams out there
these days. I think many of our modern inventions were inspired by artists
who dreamed up what the future would be like - Van-Gough, Asimov,
Roddenberry, etc. And I haven't seen any truly inspirational, original
ideas from the artists these days. All the sci-fi is the same, and all of
the new ideas are just small modifications of the old ones.

Between the lack of dreams, the lack of investors (ever since the dot-com
crash), and the idea that anyone who is a dreamer must have ADD and should
be put on medication, it seems to me that dreaming and inventing is "out"
right now. It has inspired me to believe that society in the US has to
change before any really ground-breaking inventions show up here...

Of course, things can always change overnight...


Thomas Borchert wrote in
:

Judah,

I think for most people nowadays, there isn't much Magic.


Careful with statements like that. At the end of the 19th century,
common wisdom was that everything inventable had been invented. Things
have changed quite a bit since then...

I started taking my daughter to the airport before she was one. (It was
on the way to mom's work, sort of.) She went for her first ride at 3,
and now, at 6, gets mad if she can't go with me when I go flying. (She
was quite perturbed that I didn't take her to Oshkosh this year.) She
has already requested that I teach her to fly when she's eight. In
addition, she has read many books on airplanes and space, and can tell
you way more about the subjects than I could have imagined at that age.
Of course, she has the benefit of having a dad that flies. But, as
the EAA passes it's 1,000,000 young eagle, I wonder how many of those
kids have now got the yearning to explore flying and airplanes.

Dan (a happily flying dad!)

Earl Grieda wrote:
"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:g8PBb.494967$HS4.3807870@attbi_s01...


Not that K-Mart is indicative of the entire marketplace, but IMHO this
doesn't bode well for the future of general aviation. When kids stop
playing with airplanes, they stop dreaming about flying... :-(
--


Actually, its when kids stop reading they stop dreaming about flying. Toys
R Irrelvant.

Earl G.




--
Remove "2PLANES" to reply.

I thought it was great except for two glaring errors. In one sentence he talks
about the tendency of the big radials to "stall without warning" and in another
he talks about the WWII carrier decks being very dangerous places with whirling
props,..., jet fuel,... Jet fuel? In 1943?

I saw this remarked upon elsewhere--the bit about jet fuel, I mean.
Which leads me to think it's the major howler in the book. One
suspects that it was inserted by a 23-year-old editor.

I had an editor of Air & Space (Air & Space!) ask me what "high
explosives" were.

As for the big radials, well, perhaps they did have a tendency to
stall--which an aviator would describe as quitting. To most
non-pilots, stalling exactly means an engine stopping without warning.

Those errors make me wonder about some of the other facts he presents. The book
does contain an excellent bibliography, however, so I don't think he's made
anything up, and I hope to find time to check out some of his references.

Please post your thoughts. I haven't bought the book; I'm still
inclined to.


all the best -- Dan Ford
email:

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

Some things are worth it.

I forgot to mention: lack of female companionship for months or years
at a time.

And poxy bar-flies at the end of the voyage.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email:

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

Cub Driver wrote:

I saw this remarked upon elsewhere--the bit about jet fuel, I mean.
Which leads me to think it's the major howler in the book. One
suspects that it was inserted by a 23-year-old editor.

I suspected this as well.

As for the big radials, well, perhaps they did have a tendency to
stall--which an aviator would describe as quitting. To most
non-pilots, stalling exactly means an engine stopping without warning.

Well, I didn't. Stalling is an engine quitting because you loaded it down too
much without advancing the throttle. It is a very specific type of quitting, and
it never happens without warning. This is the case even for non-pilots; go to
your mechanic and tell him the engine stalled and it's an entirely different
ball game than if you tell him the engine died. Unless you get a prop strike,
it's impossible to stall an aircraft engine.

Please post your thoughts. I haven't bought the book; I'm still
inclined to.

Like Corky, I've read a good deal about WWII in the last 40 years. It's been
sort of a hobby of mine. I'm not as good as Corky is at dredging up info I read
or remembering where I read it. I also haven't read as much about the Pacific
theatre as perhaps I should. I'm also not familiar with the events in that part
of the world around the end of the 19th century. Still, there were a surprising
number of items in that book of which I had not heard before.

As a result, I was surprised by some of the things presented in the book, but
am not qualified to say they are false. Since it is well written and the author
is reasonable about those things with which I am familiar, I would be surprised
to find any falsehoods with the rest. As I said, the book has an extensive
bibliography. The author has also footnoted things well, which should make it
easy for me to take a look at more primary sources. In my copious free time.

George Patterson
Great discoveries are not announced with "Eureka!". What's usually said is
"Hmmmmm... That's interesting...."

Stalling is an engine quitting because you loaded it down too
much without advancing the throttle. It is a very specific type of quitting,
[...] Unless you get a prop strike,
it's impossible to stall an aircraft engine.


Isn't it an engine stall when you pull the mixture back to idle cutoff? Or
thinking of it another way, if you lean aggressively on the ground, then if you
advance the throttle, the engine will stop. Stall?

Jose


--
(for Email, make the obvious changes in my address)

This is the case even for non-pilots; go to
your mechanic and tell him the engine stalled and it's an entirely different
ball game than if you tell him the engine died

Everyone I know, and that would include the mechanics (perhaps they
are only humoring us idiots), who goes out on a cold morning and has
the engine start and then quit on him, would grouse that it had
stalled.

Among the dictionary definitions of the verb intransitive is: "to come
to a standstill (as from mired wheels or engine failure)". Indeed,
there are only two v.i. definitions, and that one is the first. The
second is "to experience a stall in flying." Since that is obviously
not the case in an automotive engine, the only dictionary
interpretation of "my engine stalled" is that it quit running.

So it's not just a regional thing.


all the best -- Dan Ford
email:

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

In article ,
Cub Driver wrote:

Everyone I know, and that would include the mechanics (perhaps they
are only humoring us idiots), who goes out on a cold morning and has
the engine start and then quit on him, would grouse that it had
stalled.


As someone who's not a mechanic, but who got his first drivers license
in 1945 and was brought up in snow country (Michigan), my understanding
has always been that "stalling" (of an auto engine anyway) refers to the
engine quitting *when a load is first put on it*. (You can't stall an
auto with the gearshift in neutral.)

Stalling was a lot more likely to happen, at least before computer
controlled autos came along, when the engine was just started and still
cold; but cold (and perhaps misadjusted) engines were also prone to
stumble, sputter, and quit on their own (while the driver pushed and
yanked on the choke knob) without any load applied, just out of
orneriness.