FanFacts W
elcome back! To paraphrase the lyrics of an old song: “What a long, strange month it’s been”. Nationwide, June saw heat,
heat, and … oh yeah, heat! What is discon- certing is what hot, dry, windy weather can do to an otherwise manageable fire. Since we all fly with things that are capable of cre- ating the aforementioned “f-word” (don’t go getting huffy, every battery pack can short and burn, regardless of chemistry, with the correct impact) I’m going to digress a tiny bit and hopefully engage your thought process- es in a positive manner. Here in the West, we are tinder dry. We are
all aware of the horrible fires that swept Texas last year, and Arizona and New Mexi- co the year before. Well, it’s interesting when they are only a few hours from your front door (an on-going fire in New Mexico has con- sumed 300,000 acres and is still growing), but when they occur less than six miles away, eat up two subdivisions (thankfully only 350 homes were lost due to the tremendous work of the Forest Service’s Hotshot crews and the Colorado Springs Fire Department) and af- fect friends and colleagues, preparedness does get one’s attention. It seems like every year, we witness hur-
ricane evacuations with eight lanes of In- terstate highway turned into a parking lot, towns blown away (literally) by tornados, and huge swaths of the East Coast para- lyzed by power outages from fallen trees, but we don’t think about how we can “get out of Dodge”, nor what is important to be able to grab.
When the Waldo Canyon fire jumped an
entire canyon/ravine and flew over the sec- ond crest, then down the hill into Colorado Springs it was moving at 65 mph. That area of town essentially has one road in, and one road out of each of the three valleys leading to the subdivisions … sounds like a lot of towns in your neck of the woods, doesn’t it? While the area had been on “pre-evacuation alert” the speed of the firestorm (the Class 1 firefighting brass literally had their jaws drop open on camera) caught everyone by surprise, and resulted in a frighteningly slow crawl away from the very fast flames.
by greg moore You can reach Greg Moore via e-mail at
jetflyr@comcast.net
PHOTO: ANDY ZANER
Andy Zaner poses with his all foam 144-inch long T-38 last April. Andy, at 6 feet, 2 inches tall, makes it obvious that this is a largeairplane. Links to the maiden flight video can be found in the text.
Well, that’s fine and good (I hear some of
you saying), what does that have to do with me? Well, catastrophic events can happen anywhere, and involve acts of nature or man, and none of us are immune, as we dis- covered here. Since I have discussed pre-flight lists, loading the car lists, and other lists as well for our models, let me make yet another list, as this has been a topic of conversation everywhere I go for the last two weeks … and since the preparations you make might be important. 1. Can you lay your hands on your wallet, Passport, Social Security Card and other es- sential paperwork in 30 seconds, or is it scattered all over the house? 2. Are your necessary prescription drugs
all in one place so you can grab them in 30 seconds? Additionally, are your eyeglasses and contacts in the same location so you can grab them easily? 3. Do you have some cash hidden away (numbers I have heard recommended by dis- aster-folks in the last week are $500–1,000)
since if the electricity is out, so are credit card processing machines and ATM ma- chines, and if the armored car company is lo- cated in a mandatory evacuation area (it was), there are no deliveries, so no cash for you and me. 4. Have you photographed or videotaped
the contents of your house lately, showing the silverware, coin collection (or in our cas- es: transmitters and engines)? With all of the available online, free sites, they can eas- ily be stored “in the cloud” so that your com- puter is not cluttered up, and are safe from catastrophe. 5. Have you backed up your computer to
an external hard drive or other device … (or the cloud) and made sure they really did back things up (don’t ask …) so you can grab this small box and run? 6. Have you got a place to go and plans to
get there … ahead of the crush? No one wants to leave their home, but do we want to get caught in the gridlock leaving Hous- ton we saw several years ago, or the fear as the inferno nipped on peoples heels here in
PHOTOS: JIM GARCIA
Floridian, Jim Garcia shared a shot of his Modellbau-USA F-86D Sabredog (above left) prior to its maiden flight. At sea level, even a small engine flies her like a dream. Jim decided that Greg’s version of the ejection seat (above right)
50
needed to be improved upon, so with miscellaneous pieces of this and that he did just that coming up with a very nice looking, and scale seat for his Sabre Jock pilot figure, available from Jet Hangar Hobbies
www.jethangar.com.
SEPTEMBER 2012
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68