Flying-ALadies and Gentlemen, I present to you (cue drumroll)……..
GM’s new Chairman of the Board (“I don’t know anything about cars”):
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aQ._YJhEj_Jo
and……
The White House official who is the de facto boss of GM – a 31-year old law school dropout with no experience in any business:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/business/01deese.html
No wonder I keep hearing moans from my Chevy Malibu.
Flying-ALadies and Gentlemen, I present to you (cue drumroll)……..
GM’s new Chairman of the Board (“I don’t know anything about cars”):
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aQ._YJhEj_Jo
and……
The White House official who is the de facto boss of GM – a 31-year old law school dropout with no experience in any business:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/business/01deese.html
No wonder I keep hearing moans from my Chevy Malibu.
Flying-AA story so grimly ironic that it made the Drudge Report:
Times (London) Online
June 11, 2009
Woman who missed Flight 447 is killed in car crash
Philippe Naughton
An Italian woman who arrived late for the Air France plane flight that crashed in the Atlantic last week has been killed in a car accident.
Johanna Ganthaler, a pensioner from Bolzano-Bozen province, had been on holiday in Brazil with her husband Kurt and missed Air France Flight 447 after turning up late at Rio de Janeiro airport on May 31.
All 228 people aboard lost their lives after the plane crashed into the Atlantic four hours into its flight to Paris.
The ANSA news agency reported that the couple had managed to pick up a flight from Rio the following day.
It said that Ms Ganthaler died when their car veered across a road in Kufstein, Austria, and swerved into an oncoming truck. Her husband was seriously injured.
Flying-AFor what’s worth, I heard an air safety expert (I didn’t catch his name) state on the PBS program The News Hour that the noise unit on the black box has a range of about 2 miles and that its battery has a life of about a month.
Flying-AGlad your found it interesting, Scotavia. Here is some more information from another obit:
Local novelist Jack D. Hunter has died at age 87
He wrote numerous books, best known for “The Blue Max.”* By Charlie Patton
* Story updated at 11:27 AM on Tuesday, Apr. 14, 2009BOB SELF/The Times-Union
Jack D. Hunter, a novelist and artist who was a long-time St. Augustine resident, died Monday morning after a battle with cancer. He was 87.
Mr. Hunter, who was honored as a “Literary Legend” by the Florida Heritage Book Festival last summer, published his first novel, “The Blue Max,” in 1964.
That tale of a German flying ace during World War I was made into a popular movie in 1966 and put the phrase Blue Max into the American lexicon.
“A fast-food joint in Grand Central used to advertise a blue cheeseburger called the Blue Max,” book critic Peter Prescott told the Times-Union in 1986. “I always thought Jack should have a penny for each sold.”
Prescott, who served as Mr. Hunter’s editor at Dutton and later as book critic for Newsweek, called the story of an ambitious but morally flawed pilot “a really good novel.”
Mr. Hunter went on to write 16 more novels, coming full circle in his last, “The Ace,” published this fall. “The Ace” is about American pilots in World War I.
Both novels were inspired by Mr. Hunter’s love of World War I aviation, which he traced to his fascination as a small boy sitting in a darkened movie theater, watching the silent movie epic Wings.
Mr. Hunter learned German because he wanted to read the autobiography of Manfred von Richthofen, the famed German aviator known as the Red Baron.
Mr. Hunter’s own dreams of flying were thwarted by the fact he was color-blind. But his fluency in German led the Army to send him to post-war Germany as a counter-intelligence agent, an experience that became the basis of his second novel, The Expendable Spy.
After his military service, Mr. Hunter went to work in Wilmington, Del., as a newspaper and radio reporter and later as a congressional aide. Eventually he joined DuPont, the Delaware-based industrial conglomerate, in public relations.
He quickly rose through the corporate ranks. But he wasn’t happy, he told the Times-Union in 1986: “I was being groomed. But yet I kept seeing what was ahead and it disturbed me.”
In 1961, the year he turned 40, he picked up a pen and started writing, pouring his frustrations into the internal turmoil of his protagonist, Bruno Stachel. (His e-mail address later was [email]brunostachel@aol.com[/email].)
In 1980, he and his wife, Shirley, whom everybody called Tommy, moved to St. Augustine. While she operated a gift shop named The Blue Max, he wrote novels, served as the writing coach at the Times-Union for more than a decade, and eventually turned his hobby of sketching vintage aircraft into a successful second career. He liked to call himself “Grandma Moses of aviation art.”
Mr. Hunter had put himself through Penn State [Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania] before World War II by playing piano in a Dixieland band, despite never having any musical training.
“I’m a self-taught everything,” he told the Times-Union last summer. “I feel like an impostor in every field I’m involved in.”
Tommie Hunter died in November 2006. To help get himself through a “terrible mourning period,” Mr. Hunter turned to old enthusiasms and wrote The Ace. He also started a regular blog on his Web site, http://www.jackhunter.com.
It was on his blog that his fans tracked the progress of his illness.
The last blog entry, on April 8, was posted by Jonni Anderson, his executive assistant and close friend, who told fans that Mr. Hunter was fading fast.
“Rejoice with me that we had the great good fortune to know him, to sit at his feet and learn, to groan over the awful puns, to grimace or grin at the way he twisted the English language to his own purposes,” she wrote. “He changed an awful lot of lives, and we’ll never know just how many.”
He is survived by four children: Jack Hunter Jr. and Jill Hunter of St. Augustine, Lee Higgins of Middletown, Del., and Lyn Cannon, of Solomons, Md.; three grandchildren; and his brother, Robert L. Hunter of Jacksonville.
Plans for a memorial service in Jacksonville are incomplete. The funeral will be private.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions be made in Mr. Hunter’s name at the Community Hospice of Northeast Florida, 4266 Sunbeam Road, Jacksonville , Fl. 32257.
Flying-AA fascinating commentary on BHO’s royal progress thru Europe:
G-20 Outtakes
Victor Davis Hanson, April 1, 2009
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/g-20-outtakes/
Poodle Redux. Blair was denigrated as Bush’s poodle, although his eloquence and influence over Bush were clear to all. In contrast, Gordon Brown is embarrassingly obsequious to Obama, in a way Blair never was around Bush. And in further contrast, Obama shows an airy, polite disdain at being courted in such grubby fashion—while Bush was downright magnanimous in taking advice from Blair. Didn’t Brown get the message with the unviewable DVDs, the return of the Churchill bust, the ‘UK size of Oregon’ analogies? And will the press do a Brit “poodle” story?
Rich Rioters. Odd to see anarchists trying to burn and loot while some are text messaging and cell-phoning in the news clips—as if such ignoramuses can’t grasp that nihilism and anti-capitalist angst lose their authenticity when they depend on the trademarks of the global corporate world. Spoiled Westerners tried to riot on TV before texting each other to meet for latte (no doubt at Starbucks); those in Peru or Chad are happy enough to have access to Amoxicillin via globalization.
Europe Out-europed. There is a certain sort of irony in London. Bush was so easily caricatured as the right-wing Texas-slanging cowboy that Euros found it easy to pose as progressive utopian antitheses. (Never mind that Bush in his second term was good to Europe, or that his positions on immigration, spending, new federal programs, etc. were hardly conservative.) Now Obama is trumping them all as a far more genuine leftist than any in Berlin or Paris. The President wants far bigger deficits than they do, wants more trade protectionism to protect domestic unions, wants to embrace cap and trade whole hog, is more eager to engage radical regimes abroad, and will pay for his socialism with big cuts in defense that will make it harder to protect socialist unarmed Europe.
All sorts of ironies arise: is all this sort of a ‘be careful what you wish for’ nemesis that Europe deserves? (I wrote about this for this week’s TMS column). A sort of Obama doing a Nixon to China that everyone can take an odd delight in? (no liberal will dare suggest he is being rude to the Brits or having trouble connecting with our allies). Or is Obama reflecting new realities that the US is now a revolutionary society whose immigration the last 50 years has come from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, that in turn better warrant our attention? Hussein is not the middle name of most European ministers (nor are many of African heritages), and Obama reminds Europe that we too were a colony without much of a colonialist history. All so strange.
Debt, debt, debt everywhere. The backdrop behind the entire scene is that Obama is borrowing $1.7 trillion, and with future projected budgets that require perhaps another ca. $10 trillion over the next possible eight years. The message seems to be that we Americans need new entitlements that we cannot pay for, nor have we earned them with goods and services, but we want all of you abroad to lend us the cash nonetheless. Odd, as was pointed out a few posts ago, that we will have cradle-to-grave health care due to borrowed Chinese dollars that didn’t go to basic cancer treatment to millions of Chinese who toil at factories.
And Apologies Too! Obama apologized for American culpability for the meltdown. But wait: Iceland melted without us. No American forced Austrian banks to lend 100% plus of their worth to eastern Europe. What did Wall Street have to do with the crazy Spanish or Aegean real estate market, or the nutty spending habits of oil-drunk Russians and Middle Easterners? If he wants to apologize (this is going to be a long Carter/Clinton “I’m sorry” Presidency), then, for God’s sake apologize for the new borrowing, and draining the world’s available capital to finance our out of control budgets.
Re: the new relations with Russia. I hope all the happy talk leads to less tensions. But it is easy to sort of promise to be nice, to push the “reset” button, or to talk grandly of new protocols; but the fact is that all this rhetoric means nothing.
What Obama must answer is to what degree is he going to turn Ukraine, Georgia, and other former Soviet republics back over to Russian influence, to what degree is he going to ignore Russian gas/oil blackmail over energy-hungry Western Europe, to what degree is he going to tsk tsk Russian complicity in Iran’s nuclear program, to what degree is he going to drop talk of protecting eastern Europe (and Western) with an anti-ballistic system aimed at Iranian missiles, etc. If those really are issues, then we will have problems with an authoritarian and dictatorial Russia bent on restoring former grandeur.
Hope and Change. In every case, a democratic Russia, integrated within the West, could solve such tensions fairly easily. But I fear now that all of them are challenges that Putin, Inc. will see as means to an end, such as restoring domestic pride, restoring Russian hegemony in areas encroaching upon Eastern Europe, and creating more problems for the US that will check our power.
I fear that the Russians will leave praising Obama to the skies, while delighted that Iran’s new bomb will cause us problems untold, that those in the East cannot trust us in a crisis, that Europe will learn to respect Russia if their flats are to stay warm—and that a rogue’s gallery of global fascists will begin to look to Russia, in Cold War fashion, to deal with us to further their aims.
Bottom line: this is the first global summit that I can remember in which the United States is occupying a position to the left of all our allies, and, in our fiscal promiscuity, to the left of our left-wing rivals as well.
Flying-AA fascinating commentary on BHO’s royal progress thru Europe:
G-20 Outtakes
Victor Davis Hanson, April 1, 2009
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/g-20-outtakes/
Poodle Redux. Blair was denigrated as Bush’s poodle, although his eloquence and influence over Bush were clear to all. In contrast, Gordon Brown is embarrassingly obsequious to Obama, in a way Blair never was around Bush. And in further contrast, Obama shows an airy, polite disdain at being courted in such grubby fashion—while Bush was downright magnanimous in taking advice from Blair. Didn’t Brown get the message with the unviewable DVDs, the return of the Churchill bust, the ‘UK size of Oregon’ analogies? And will the press do a Brit “poodle” story?
Rich Rioters. Odd to see anarchists trying to burn and loot while some are text messaging and cell-phoning in the news clips—as if such ignoramuses can’t grasp that nihilism and anti-capitalist angst lose their authenticity when they depend on the trademarks of the global corporate world. Spoiled Westerners tried to riot on TV before texting each other to meet for latte (no doubt at Starbucks); those in Peru or Chad are happy enough to have access to Amoxicillin via globalization.
Europe Out-europed. There is a certain sort of irony in London. Bush was so easily caricatured as the right-wing Texas-slanging cowboy that Euros found it easy to pose as progressive utopian antitheses. (Never mind that Bush in his second term was good to Europe, or that his positions on immigration, spending, new federal programs, etc. were hardly conservative.) Now Obama is trumping them all as a far more genuine leftist than any in Berlin or Paris. The President wants far bigger deficits than they do, wants more trade protectionism to protect domestic unions, wants to embrace cap and trade whole hog, is more eager to engage radical regimes abroad, and will pay for his socialism with big cuts in defense that will make it harder to protect socialist unarmed Europe.
All sorts of ironies arise: is all this sort of a ‘be careful what you wish for’ nemesis that Europe deserves? (I wrote about this for this week’s TMS column). A sort of Obama doing a Nixon to China that everyone can take an odd delight in? (no liberal will dare suggest he is being rude to the Brits or having trouble connecting with our allies). Or is Obama reflecting new realities that the US is now a revolutionary society whose immigration the last 50 years has come from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, that in turn better warrant our attention? Hussein is not the middle name of most European ministers (nor are many of African heritages), and Obama reminds Europe that we too were a colony without much of a colonialist history. All so strange.
Debt, debt, debt everywhere. The backdrop behind the entire scene is that Obama is borrowing $1.7 trillion, and with future projected budgets that require perhaps another ca. $10 trillion over the next possible eight years. The message seems to be that we Americans need new entitlements that we cannot pay for, nor have we earned them with goods and services, but we want all of you abroad to lend us the cash nonetheless. Odd, as was pointed out a few posts ago, that we will have cradle-to-grave health care due to borrowed Chinese dollars that didn’t go to basic cancer treatment to millions of Chinese who toil at factories.
And Apologies Too! Obama apologized for American culpability for the meltdown. But wait: Iceland melted without us. No American forced Austrian banks to lend 100% plus of their worth to eastern Europe. What did Wall Street have to do with the crazy Spanish or Aegean real estate market, or the nutty spending habits of oil-drunk Russians and Middle Easterners? If he wants to apologize (this is going to be a long Carter/Clinton “I’m sorry” Presidency), then, for God’s sake apologize for the new borrowing, and draining the world’s available capital to finance our out of control budgets.
Re: the new relations with Russia. I hope all the happy talk leads to less tensions. But it is easy to sort of promise to be nice, to push the “reset” button, or to talk grandly of new protocols; but the fact is that all this rhetoric means nothing.
What Obama must answer is to what degree is he going to turn Ukraine, Georgia, and other former Soviet republics back over to Russian influence, to what degree is he going to ignore Russian gas/oil blackmail over energy-hungry Western Europe, to what degree is he going to tsk tsk Russian complicity in Iran’s nuclear program, to what degree is he going to drop talk of protecting eastern Europe (and Western) with an anti-ballistic system aimed at Iranian missiles, etc. If those really are issues, then we will have problems with an authoritarian and dictatorial Russia bent on restoring former grandeur.
Hope and Change. In every case, a democratic Russia, integrated within the West, could solve such tensions fairly easily. But I fear now that all of them are challenges that Putin, Inc. will see as means to an end, such as restoring domestic pride, restoring Russian hegemony in areas encroaching upon Eastern Europe, and creating more problems for the US that will check our power.
I fear that the Russians will leave praising Obama to the skies, while delighted that Iran’s new bomb will cause us problems untold, that those in the East cannot trust us in a crisis, that Europe will learn to respect Russia if their flats are to stay warm—and that a rogue’s gallery of global fascists will begin to look to Russia, in Cold War fashion, to deal with us to further their aims.
Bottom line: this is the first global summit that I can remember in which the United States is occupying a position to the left of all our allies, and, in our fiscal promiscuity, to the left of our left-wing rivals as well.
Flying-ABull sharks in Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin — no joke:
http://surferjerry.com/uncategorized/sharks-in-minnisota-and-wisconsin/
Including an attack in Lake Michigan near Chicago in 1955 that resulted in a man’s loss of a leg.
Flying-ABull sharks in Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin — no joke:
http://surferjerry.com/uncategorized/sharks-in-minnisota-and-wisconsin/
Including an attack in Lake Michigan near Chicago in 1955 that resulted in a man’s loss of a leg.
Flying-AI believe that the Swift owners club followed a similar course some years ago.
Intellectual Property Is Eclipse 500 Goal
Mar 11, 2009
Aviation Week (via AOPA)
Fred George
Tuesday evening [10 March 2009], David Green, president of the Eclipse 500 Owners Club, initiated a conference call to as many as 150 Eclipse jet owners during which he and a core group of supporters proposed formation of “NewCo”, a non-profit cooperative venture that would bid on the intellectual property of Eclipse Aviation at the upcoming Chapter 7 auction sale of the company’s assets.Green’s group believes it would be impossible to support the aircraft without rights to the aircraft Type Certificate, computer software and other proprietary data. By acquiring such intellectual property, NewCo would be able to provide ongoing support for the aircraft at the lowest possible cost, Green’s group claims. If a for-profit company were to acquire the intellectual property, it could charge “exorbitant fees for access to service and upgrades.” Such fees would decrease the resale of the aircraft dollar for dollar, Green claims.
If NewCo were to succeed in buying Eclipse’s intellectual property, it would partner with an outside aviation firm to perform work on the aircraft, charging labor at going market rates, but providing parts at cost. Green’s group believes it must raise $10- to $20-million to be a viable bidder, requiring an initial investment of $150,000 per airplane on the part of each owner who choses to participate in the cooperative. In addition, another $12- to $14-million would be required to support the organization’s engineering activities during the first year, if an MRO partner cannot be found. The total first year investment could be in the range of $35-million.
Flying-AAnother VH-71 story:
Report: Pennsylvania Company Discovers Marine One Security Breach
Sensitive information about Marine One was reportedly found by Tiversa employees at an IP address in Tehran, Iran.
FOXNews.com
Sunday, March 01, 2009
A Pennsylvania company that monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks discovered a potentially serious security breach involving President Obama’s helicopter, Marine One, NBC affiliate WPXI in Pittsburgh reported.
Sensitive information about Marine One was reportedly found by Tiversa employees at an IP address in Tehran.
Tiversa CEO Bob Boback said a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file sharing program on one of their systems that contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One and financial information about the cost of the helicopter.
“We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One,” Boback said.
Boback said the issue most likely stemmed from someone downloading the file-sharing program without realizing the problems that could result.
“When downloading one of these file-sharing programs, you are effectively allowing others around the world to access your hard drive,” Boback told WPXI.
“We found where this information came from. We know exactly what computer it came from. I’m sure that person is embarrassed and may even lose their job, but we know where it came from and we know where it went,” Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, an adviser to Tiversa, told WPXI.
Flying-AAnother VH-71 story:
Report: Pennsylvania Company Discovers Marine One Security Breach
Sensitive information about Marine One was reportedly found by Tiversa employees at an IP address in Tehran, Iran.
FOXNews.com
Sunday, March 01, 2009
A Pennsylvania company that monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks discovered a potentially serious security breach involving President Obama’s helicopter, Marine One, NBC affiliate WPXI in Pittsburgh reported.
Sensitive information about Marine One was reportedly found by Tiversa employees at an IP address in Tehran.
Tiversa CEO Bob Boback said a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file sharing program on one of their systems that contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One and financial information about the cost of the helicopter.
“We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One,” Boback said.
Boback said the issue most likely stemmed from someone downloading the file-sharing program without realizing the problems that could result.
“When downloading one of these file-sharing programs, you are effectively allowing others around the world to access your hard drive,” Boback told WPXI.
“We found where this information came from. We know exactly what computer it came from. I’m sure that person is embarrassed and may even lose their job, but we know where it came from and we know where it went,” Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, an adviser to Tiversa, told WPXI.
Flying-AI just ran a Google search using the phrases “police helicopter” and “laser.”
About 18,400 results!
Flying-AA white knight rides in — on an uphill path:
‘New Eclipse’ Aims To Rebuild Brand, VLJs
Aero-News Network (via AOPA)
Fri, 27 Feb ’09
Analysts Doubtful That Can Happen
As ANN reported, a Tuesday memo from Eclipse Aviation execs to remaining employees informing them that the company’s bankruptcy was moving from Chapter 11 reorganization to Chapter 7 liquidation, noted that the move had the approval of the company’s directors. A later press release confirmed the company would not fight the change.
Albuquerque business bankruptcy attorney Bill Davis tells the Houston Chronicle that makes approval of the move to liquidation a near certainty. “When there’s a motion to convert and the company is not contesting, it’s 99 percent certain the case will be converted.”
Reaction to the news of Eclipse’s demise has been mixed. Economic development officials in New Mexico and general aviation industry groups are understandably disappointed. But Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia, a consistent critic of the Eclipse business plan, was blunt.
“There are a lot of people who choose to believe in Santa Claus at a surprisingly advanced age,” he said. “There’s a great chance that people will learn from this and there will never be such an awful program again. That’s the only up side.”
Despite Aboulafia’s comments — or perhaps because of them — there appears to be at least one entity willing to attempt to bring Eclipse back from the ashes of its own demise. On Thursday, aerospace executive Phil Friedman announced his plans to bid for the assets of the defunct company, under the auspices of his company New Eclipse Acquisition LLC.
“I have been studying the Eclipse situation for over a year,” said Friedman, currently CEO of Harlow Aerostructures LLC in Wichita, KS. “It is sad that the company has ended up in bankruptcy, but I believe there is an excellent business opportunity going forward if managed correctly.”
If awarded Eclipse’s assets, Friedman says he plans to spend the first two years updating the existing active fleet of 259 Eclipse 500s to current type-certification levels, in order to optimize service and support and to “restore the brand.” Friedman also hinted at plans to upgrade the Avio NG avionics suite, and reducing manufacturing costs.
“We will be charging customers to bring their aircraft up to the latest certification level,” he continued. “Our business plan assumes some of the customers will not be able to afford the upgrade. Our sales representatives will work with these customers at no charge to find new buyers who will have the means to pay for the upgrades. In providing this service, and with a business plan that translates into the New Eclipse becoming a company with a profitable long term future, we will be supporting the investment that the existing owners have made in their aircraft.”
Friedman says it is his objective to bring the aftermarket price of the Eclipse up to the $2 million range. New Eclipse also plans to finish and sell seven new aircraft on the production line that are about 95% complete, though he did not elaborate on how 21 other planes now sitting on the assembly line — in various states of completion, and with deposit money already collected from customers — would be distributed.
Peter Reed, a former Chief Financial Officer at Eclipse for seven years, is part of Friedman’s team and has actively participated in developing the New Eclipse business plan over the past several months.
One thing seems certain: Friedman — and anyone else who may attempt to rescue Eclipse — has an uphill fight ahead of them.
Doug Royce is an analyst for Forecast International Incorporated, who last year predicted Eclipse’s collapse and even the timing with considerable precision. He observes, “There are too many better investment options than investing in business aircraft when there’s a major downturn in the business climate.”
Flying-AThey recently sentenced a guy in Cleveland for doing that.
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009…into_airp.html
Of course he was not just stupid enough to shoot the laser at 2 airliners and a medical helicopter but also the police helicopter dispatched to investigate. When they went to his house they found drugs so he got those charges thrown in for free. Awesome.
Take a good look at his mug shot. Shine his laser into one of his ears and the beam will come out the other.
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