Touring Machine Company

An interesting collection of aviation-themed stamps from around the world.

I get a kick out of interesting numbers. I stopped to take a picture of the odometer when my first car ticked over 100,000 miles and even take pictures of interesting street addresses. I haven’t participated in Aviation Stack Exchange for a while but I got an interesting number of votes today. I’m JScarry.

I ran across this in the files of an old pilot. For context, I was working in my first job out of college as an insurance underwriter around this time and making $205 per week. http://touringmachine.com/images/%20Rental_Rates_1979.jpeg

We had a guy from CalFire give a talk about their airplanes at our EAA meeting. One of the videos he showed was a drop from their S2T. Notice how the pilot grabs the yoke when he drops his load. Cal Fire S2T Hollister Base Maintenance base at McClellan Taxi and takeoff at PRB

Click to embiggen.

Steve Kahn did a series of shows for ABC in the late 1980s called “ABCs Wide World of Flying”. He then made a few more and sold the series as DVDs. They are now up on YouTube on his channel. I’ve linked to many of them in previous posts and found this list of what […]

I recently updated the time tracking spreadsheet from my logbook and noticed that I have a lot of flights with “Birthday Present” or “Christmas Present” in the remarks section. My parents and in-laws know that the only thing I ever want is gas money. Here’s the most recent. Flying DME arcs around a VOR using […]

Interesting article about drone research being done at WSU. The article mentions a couple of things drones can do for farmers much more cheaply than existing methods. Blow the rain off of cherries – instead of using helicopters. (Who knew there even was such a thing as cherry blower?) Chase birds. Monitor disease over acres […]

I found a link to this video and ended up spending Sunday evening watching WWII videos. Arthur Godfrey It’s amazing how much thought went into packing up the airplanes. I thought it was interesting that the only required equipment was “standard mechanics tools… and 50 men”.

 Sonic Boom  Rainbow Boom You’ve probably seen the sonic boom and vortices before, but this is the first time I’ve seen a rainbow boom.

Tons of videos at Public Resource.org’s YouTube channel. Coolest Flying Machine Ever! Arthur Godfrey Assembling a 737? Sonic Booms Flying Car An ASOS you won’t forget. STS-131.

Automotive engines have been tried in several airplanes but with the possible exception of the Mercedes-Benz diesel engines manufactured by Thielert they haven’t been successful in production aircraft. The experimental market is a different story, This article in Ridelust talks about engines by Porsche (unsuccessful), Subaru (successful), Mazda (successful) and others. Designers have experimented with […]

I’m compiling word lists for another project and ran across Webster’s 1913 dictionary. It’s interesting which words have survived and which have fallen by the wayside. I don’t recall ever seeing someone referred to as an “aeroplanist”. I hadn’t heard of an “aerostat” either, but balloonists use the word—there are several sight-seeing companies with aerostat […]

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