Wind Tunnel to the Rescue

Remember the F-18 I posted about earlier? The C-130 that came in to rescue it? Well, they needed help getting the jackstands out of the back of the C-130 to get the F-18 off the ground so they could fix a problem with the front landing gear steering mechanism. The forklift at the airport wasn't man enough to handle the pallet in the aircraft so they came over to us for one of ours. This would be yours truly driving over to help along with a couple other folks from the wind tunnel. Funny thing is, the Air Force and Army are here too working on their aircraft. We were all waiting for the Navy and the Coast Guard to stop by with a busted aircraft and we would have everyone covered.

BATF&E&RBF Shotgun Shenanigans

Well, it looks like the BATF&E&RBF is acting on their shotgun "study" that they published back in January this year that I wrote about back then. Study is actually here. They are looking to ban importation of shotguns that they deem not for sporting purposes despite their popularity in the shooting SPORT of IPSC and other action shooting SPORTS. Likely this will be followed by a reclassification of these as destructive devices requiring a $200 tax stamp and BATF&E&RBF approval for ownership and any future transfer just like a machine gun.

So, now is the time to comment to shotgunstudy@atf.gov and let the BATF&E&RBF know that they need to stop this reclassification and accept the fact that IPSC and other action shooting SPORTS are in fact SPORTS and these shotguns are part of that. They need to stop trying to classify shotgun sports as only trap and skeet. Really, they need to drop the whole sporting purposes test but that is another battle for another day.

Reinforcements Arrive

Well, reinforcements have arrived to rescue the F-18 I wrote about Monday. This C-130 arrived with maintenance crew and equipment to fix the F-18 and get it on it's way. Not sure why there is a Blackhawk on the ramp off to the south of these two though. It came in yesterday afternoon and is still sitting out there this morning along with a Biz jet with it's covers on. This would be unusual since that is the helipad area and not used for parking fixed wings.

And to clarify, the plane was ID's as definitely a D model from VMFA (AW)-121 out of Miramar, CA. By someone who would know. Thanks Colin and Fly Safe!

UPDATE: The crew is pounding away on the F-18 and there is a crew here from the Army now for the Blackhawk.

Personal Defense Class FTW

Yesterday Evening misbeHaven and I presented at an overview self defense class to a sorority here on campus. misbeHaven had been invited to present to them and drug me along as a prop. I know, me and 90 sorority girls in a room for the evening, it was tough work but someone had to do it. It was interesting to just sit back and watch the reactions as she spoke. There were a few times where it was real obvious that the light had gone on for some of these ladies. The surprise for me was when asking about how many of them had smoke alarms, had checked and or changed the batteries, had fire extinguishers and first aid kits and had gotten training in first aid and CPR. An overwhelming majority raised their hands. Restores my faith in future generations. These ladies took personal responsibility seriously and it showed. It was a genuine delight to have made the all too short presentation and I expect to see some of them in upcoming training classes.

Overall a big win all the way around.

Weekend aircraft sighting

So this lonely F/A-18 B+ or D model showed up this weekend and is still here. Don't know the story behind it if there are maintenance issues of what. Have to try and make time to check in with the guys over on the ramp and see what the skinny is.

Todays Guest

This would be a Grumman HU-16b Albatross. Of the 19 and 59 vintage. Almost as old as our facility and still running strong. I was outside in the shop and heard the unmistakable rumbling of the radials running up. Had to run to catch it as it was taking the active for take off. Slow, loud lumbering and still pretty cool to see flying.

Glow Ammo

This weekend was a long training class Saturday. We ran Basic Pistol 2, Defensive Pistol Skills 1 and Low Light Skills 1A. Hsoi posted on his FB page on it being a long day. What people may or may not understand is that we instructors were out there Early to get things setup then after the night shoot finishes at 10PM we still have to tear down and clean up. Makes for a long day.

Anyway, at the end of night shooting, I broke out a box of tracers I had loaded using Glow Ammo dots from Glow Ammo. I had gotten a sample from my neighbor and friend who runs Brass Valley Shooters range. I loaded up 50 rounds with my practice load for 9mm and had them waiting for this class. The idea is that you place this stickers that weigh about 1 grain on the base of your own bullet and reload with you standard mix so they shoot to the same point of aim as your regular load. They are also a non incendiary load so no danger of starting a grass fire from them. Also, they start to glow as soon as the charge in the case fires so you get a trace from the barrel all the way instead of needing some time or distance to get the trace charge lit and burning.

Impressions, I'll let Hsoi chime in as he got to see them as well but between the instructors we pretty much agreed that while you can see the trace yourself as the shooter, they are much better as seen from an observers position. Much better to diagnose where shots are going in the dark. They shot to the same place as standard loads and are just downright kinda fun to shoot. I will likely pick some more up to play with and use at some of the future night classes and may even let some of the students shoot some. I will reserve doing that a lot mainly because these are my handloads. They are not commercially loaded ammo. I do not load for anyone other than myself or my wife and I don't sell my ammo. I really don't want the liability of someone else using my ammo.

Overall, I would say I like the Glow Ammo and as a training aide found that it could in fact have a use in training.


FTC DISCLAIMER: I got the sample as a gift from a friend who has no financial interest in Glow Ammo and have received no compensation from Glow Ammo or anyone else for my time trouble or expense in testing.

Japan Quakes

Well, this has hit a little closer to home than I am comfortable with. A college room mate is working over there and he and his wife are there in the middle of it. He did post on FB that they made it through "the big one". However, there have been aftershocks in the 6+ range and that's nothing to sneeze at.

These Strange Days

So we are going through some pretty major upheaval at work. Have to see where it leads but things are interesting and may go good or bad depending on all people involved and their reactions. Have to see how things play out over the next few months.

May you live in interesting times. Damn I hate ancient Chinese proverbs/curses.

Todays visitors

So we had these visitors today to Easterwood Airport. I do not know what the "FAST Demonstration Team" is but there were two A-10's with pods on them that said just that on them. Anyone out there know about them? I was leaving work as they were spooling up so I stopped to take a couple pictures and shot some video of them taking off ever so slowly. I wish I could of caught them just after landing so I could have talked to the pilots and found out just who they were. But, Alas I have to work on occasion and today was one of those days.

Whataweek

Friday a week ago after working late I went out to the wife's truck to drive over and pick her up. Why the wife's truck you ask? That would be because my truck was parked in teh driveway waiting for the temps to get out of the teens so I could get under it and replace the drive shaft carrier bearing that had shelled out on it and taken the transfer case rear output shaft seal with it. Well, the truck started OK but would not move at all. There was a trail leading to the parking space and when it was running there was a stream of transmission fluid pouring out of the bell housing. So, much gymnastics later we were finally on our way home but her truck was sitting in the parking lot pissing ATF all over the ground. We got home and I climbed under my truck and went to work on pulling the drive shaft. I figured while it was cold out it was not as cold as the morning would be. Saturday morning I put the front half of my drive shaft in a hydraulic press trying to get what was left of the carrier bearing off. Well that was a dismal failure. I ended up having to cut the inner race off the drive shaft and then polish up the surface that the bearing mounted on before pressing the new bearing on. Of course the part listed for the rear output shaft seal was wrong and I had to go to the dealer for that not cheap part. Chimera gave me a ride home so I could put my truck back together and he pointed out a down tree near our south property line on the way home. I got my truck fixed and when Chimera left he stopped and had a closer look at the tree down. Well, it had fallen along the fence line and taken out some forty feet or so of fence behind the south tank. Sunday we went out to work on the fence and had to cut the pieces of the tree and vines to get to the fence and rebuild it. Unfortunately, misbeHaven got into some serious poison ivy or sumac and a week later she is still paying for it. Prednisone helps but it has gone so systemic that her elbow is swollen and she is running a fever.
So the official week started with some regular customers who I commented about earlier and me trying to get a shop that can work on Allison transmissions and getting a hook to pick the wife's truck up and haul it to the shop. Thursday I had an out of town trip that went pretty well and I have a geek post about it but after picking the wife up and getting take out dinner, my body decided that food was the enemy. Two exits, no waiting. Spent Thursday night up getting rid of everything in my body. That led to not going to work Friday. I hadn't slept and had no energy. At least there were deer in the yard when I went out to get some tea.
Late Friday the shop called and the wifes truck was ready. $65 for the seal, $16 to put the seal in and a little over $1000 to get the transmission out of the truck and put it back in.

So, it's been a long week and it is far from over. Friday was supposed to be the arrival of Twilight, not the movie or series but misbeHavens horse. Unfortunately, he is under quarantine at the moment at the ranch where he is currently located. Something about a rabid skunk, feral cat and ranch dog. The skunk and cat bodies are at TAMU for necropsy, the dog is under quarantine, ranch mom is having to undergo rabies shots and all the animals at the ranch are on lock down. Nothing in or out.

misbeHaven is also still fighting the itches. I'm eating again and the deer were out in force, like a herd of 8 of them in the west pasture. Not very conductive to much fence building getting done around here.

Standards and Repeatability

So there is this one customer of ours who comes by the tunnel couple times a year at least. They have a "standard" test article that they bring every time and have been for at least the past 4 years. We put this test article in and set it up to the same configuration for them to judge comparability of the data from that test to previous tests on other test articles. We are talking about 250Lbs in one force and 1100Lbs in another force. Well, they came in and put the standard in and we ran the first test run of the day. The reading repeated in two runs but we were about 2 and 1o Lbs off in the two forces of interest. So they checked setup and determined that there was something that was not right with the standards setup and changed it to make it correct and ran the next two runs.

Think about that for a second, an aerodynamic test article that the test mounting system is removed and reinstalled each time and the test article that has been transported back and forth for each test and the fact that we were off 2 in 250 Lbs and 10 in 1100Lbs was found to be a setup in the test article and the numbers repeat over a 4 year period with all the setup changes. OK, maybe I'm just geeking out a bit about the repeatability of the test article considering that we see much larger differences between supposedly identical articles brought in for test.

Besides, this crew is a pleasure to work with. I wish I could say more about who they are and what they do as more people would be able to identify with them and what we are testing. Unfortunately I have to stay in generalities when talking about this particular series of tests. That's more than I can even say about others. Like last week when we tested something really cool that can't be talked about. Then we get tests in for NASA that is all public domain so we can talk about them. Just google NASA Jumbo Dart if you want to see some really cool videos of 80K pounds being pushed out of the back of a C-17 at 35K feet altitude. Can you say world record for heaviest highest drop? We had a hand in the testing that preceded that drop and have the model, CAD drawings, pictures and videos to prove it.

Chuy's College Station

So to celebrate my birthday, Chuy's opened a new restaurant in College Station. For those of you not in central Texas, or never having been here and had the chance to experience Chuy's, You have my sympathy. I on the other hand grew up in the birthplace of Chuy's and the first place I lived outside the folks was 100 yards down Barton Springs from the original Chuy's. So it was with much delight that I saw a Chuy's was coming to College Station Texas. Since this was my birthday and I got to choose where lunch would be had, it was an obvious choice since Chuy's just opened a couple days ago.

As is normal for Chuy's there was a crowd outside waiting to get a table when we arrived about 11:30. They just opened at 11 so there had to be a pretty big rush first thing. We got signed in and I started people watching.

I'm one of those people on Homeland Security's watchlist because I can sit outside of pretty much any public venue for hours and just watch peoples coming and goings. Usually laughing the whole time. The crowd was even typical for Chuy's, with people my age who were actually adults when the music playing on the PA was new to kids (did I just call them kids?) who were not even alive back then but are in college now. There was even a good representation of families out for lunch.

The time went by quick enough and we were seated. I gave the hostess the menu back and told her I didn't need it and we had a chat about her having come over from the shop on Barton Springs. Our waitress, Steph, came over and got our drink orders and gave misbeHaven some more time to decide what she wanted. She had not been around Chuy's like I had. I had my usual "I'm Hungry" order, the Elvis Presley Memorial Combo and misbeHaven ordered the Chicka-chicka-boom-boom chicken enchilada's. Chips and salsa were brought and we started in on our dining experience. misbeHaven REALLY liked creamy jalapeno sauce. Our food arrived and we dug in. Now, one of my judgements of service is how full/empty our tea glasses get. Despite having a table of 12 seated next to us at the same time, Steph managed to keep our glasses happy and keep our chips and salsa full as we snacked waiting for the main food. She also kept up with when we finished various plates of food and needed more napkins. (common at Chuy's, the more napkins part) The food was Chuy's, it was wonderful and hot and all that is right with the world, as it usually is in the Austin locations. As we wound down, Steph stepped in to ask if we would like desert or if we were ready for the check or just wanted to let food settle. No rush. We settled up and left to walk some of lunch off. When we left town a couple hours alter after picking a few things up there was still a crowd outside waiting to get in! They are going to have a very good opening weekend.

Overall I would give it a 9 out of 10. I reserve 10's for when something stupendous happens at a meal and besides, Chuy's did this to themselves by setting the bar so high from their outstanding service and food for years in Austin. I came to expect the best in service, flavor and presentation from them because that is what they consistently delivered.

So, if you are in Austin, College Station, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio or Waco, you owe it to yourself to experience Tex-Mex the way only Chuy's can serve it. If you are going to make it by the College Station location, let me know as it might just be enough of an excuse for us to stop by that day.

SPOOKY UPDATE:
So, I just chatted with my Nephew who happened to be born on Feb 6th though admittedly many years after me. Guess where he went and what he ate for lunch? Chuy's and Elvis Presley Memorial Combo would be the correct answers. Great minds think alike.

Another day, Another year

It's that time again that most people dread. BDay time. My cat must have known because he was up all morning wanting in or out to help celebrate.

Freudian Typo?

Just in case you can't read the screen cap, "T&A Says Airport Officers Can Unionize..." Me thinks someone made a booboo when they typed this one in over at Drudge Report. I had to laugh!