Originally posted by SOC
Ah, but do you feel like a criminal when you are fingerprinted and photographed to get your ID card? 😀

That’s a whole different situation. When you arrive in a foreign country you expect to be welcome, not to be taken to a special room by a FBI agent to be fingerprinted and photographed with those numbers in the front of your chest. 😉

Regards,
Primer

Originally posted by SOC
As far as taking Brazil off the list of VISA-required countries, I wouldn’t know anything about that since I have no clue what drives the placement of a country on that list :confused:

What our government wants isn’t to take Brazil off the list of VISA-required countries, but that our citizens don’t need to be fingerprinted and photographed when arriving in the US.

Originally posted by Vortex
Does Brazilian ID cards (or driver’s license, don’t know what you guys have) have finger prints or do you need to get scanned when you get one? What’s the big deal anyways with finger prints? Many countries require it for VISAs…

Yes, our ID cards have finger prints. And BTW, we have thousands of document cards down here: driver’s license, ID card, Army’s reservist card, physical person signing, voter card, etc… The deal about being fingerprinted and photographed when you are arriving in one country is that this make you make feel that you are being treated like a criminal. 😉

Regards,
Primer

Hi guys,

I’ve just watched the news and they were showing the Americans that are arriving here and being fingerprinted and photographed are reacting with good humor. They don’t like it, but they do understand what this is all about. Their only complaining is that they do have to wait a bit too much to leave the airport.

SOC, I do agree that commentary was absolutely unnecessary but I don’t see any reason to not let Brazilians out of this once there aren’t terrorist groups in Brazil. It’s a lot easier to find an American fighting for Al-Qaeda than a Brazilian (we have a lot of other things to worry about than how to bomb a US target).

Regards,
Primer

Here in Brazil we are still almost 3 years from the day that we are going to celebrate the 100 years of aviation. That’s because we don’t consider the Wright Brothers the airplane’s inventors. We consider Santos Dummont the true inventor of the airplane. Here goes a text about his life:

Alberto Santos-Dumont, aviation pioneer born in Brazil was educated in France, where he spent most of his life. He was born in July 20, 1873, in the city of João Aires, present Santos Dumont, in the state of Minas Gerais. He grew up in a coffee plantation owned by his family in Ribeirão Preto, in the state of São Paulo.

Fascinated by machinery since he was young, he learned to drive the farm steam tractors as child. Alberto was also a big fan of Jules Verne and had read all his books before tenth birthday. He says in his autobiography that it was ccontemplating the beautiful skies of Brazil at his plantations in the long sunny afternoons that made his first dream of flying in airships and flying machines.

In 1891, the engineer Henrique Dumont, Alberto’s father, fell from his horse and became a paraplegic. He decided then to sell the plantation and move to Europe with his wife and his youngest son. At the age of seventeen, Santos Dummont had money and a lot of interest in mechanics and machines, and later, he found himself a tutor in physics, chemistry, mechanics and electricity and pursued these studies. But his greatest dream and objective was to fly.

Very interested in aerial flight, he made a ballon ascent in 1898. It was round and unusually small and he called it Brésil. He then began to construct dirigible airships. Between 1898 and 1905 he build and flew 11 dirigibles. After many failures he built one that in 1901 won the Deutsch Prize and a prize from the Brazilian government for the first flight in a given time (30 minutes) from the Saint-Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and return. On board of Santos Dummont n° 6, the Brazilian inventor was the one to make this flight receiving the prize which he shared with his mechanics and auxiliaries, and the rest was given to the chief of police of Paris to be donated to unemployed workers.

In addition, he received a telegram with a compliment for such a deed, from that he considered the greatest genius of all times: Thomas Edison.

Santos Dummont continued to work on dirigibles, but finally achieved his dream of flying in a heavier-than-air craft in October 1906, when the 14-Bis, a machine on the principle of the box kite, took off in Paris using only its own motor, without any other help to make it take off, flying a distance of 60 meters.

As far as the world knew, it was the first airplane ever created which could really fly and Santos Dummont became a hero to the world press.

At that time, the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright said that they had secretly made short flights in 1903 before Santos Dummont started making his own flights. As there were no records of the Wright bothers’ flights, what could prove if there lying or not, Santos Dummont was credited with the glory of the first flight.

The Wrights’ stories of flights at Kitty Hawk and later near Dayton, Ohio, were not believed, even in the US at the time. But, after much controversy, the Americans and the world – even though it remains a sore spot for Brazilians, to whom Santos Dummont is know as the “Father of Aviation” – accepted the rumors that the Wright Brothers had flown a heavier-than-air craft just shortly before Santos Dummont.

Today, the Wrights, are credited as being the inventors of the airplane and unfortunately many people do not even know about Santos Dummont. But, although the world credits the Wright brothers as the inventors, the idea of adding the first ailerons to the extremities of the wings was undoubtedly Santos Dummont’s. And what is also very important, is that Santos Dummont never used any contraption or catapult or wooden tracks to push his aircrafts or to help in taking off, as the Wright Brothers did. In fact, in 1909, the Wrights presented a more developed model of airplane, but the first real airplane flight using a motor and without any external help to take off was really made by the Brazilian Santos Dummont.

Santos Dummont had became a celebrity in Europe and had won several prizes and he was a friend of millionaires and royalty. Santos Dummont and the Wright brothers never met, even though they had heard of each other’s work.

In 1909, Santos Dummont presented another airplane, the Demoiselle, eight times smaller than the 14-Bis, and capable of flying at a faster speed.

The automobile was also another great passion of Santos Dummont, who took part in various races in Paris. He was also the inventor of the wrist watch, in a demand of Cartier.

Santos Dummont continued to build and fly airplanes until he fell ill in 1910, with what was later diagnosed as multiple sclerosis. He never took out patents of his inventions. In an interview to “Le Matin”, on October 17, 1909, Dummont declared that he did not constructed airplanes for sale. His intention was to develop airplanes to the world and that he would provide all informations needed to anyone who wished to construct airplanes identical to his own creations without charging anything for that.

When Santos Dummont went back to Brazil in 1918, he bought a small lot on the side of a hill in the city of Petrópolis, in the mountains near Rio de Janeiro, and designed this small house full of tricks and imaginative details. The stairs, for instance, are built in such a way that the visitors can only start climbing stairs with their right foot. It was a place of rest and calm for Santos Dummont. Today, his house, know as “A Encantada” (The Enchanted), is a museum.

Alberto Santos Dummont, seriously ill and despondent, became depressed over the use of aircraft in warfare. He could not cope with the fact that his creation was used as the most lethal weapon of the time. On July 9, 1932, a revolution in São Paulo (“Revolução Constitucionalista”) had begun.

On July 23, in the city of Guarujá in São Paulo, he saw federal airplanes that were going to bombard the port in Santos. It was Brazilians bombarding Brazilians. The inventor of the airplane felt guilty and later that night he commited suicide. His numerous and decisive contributions to aviation are his legacy to manking and his name must always be remembered.

Regards,
Primer

Ariel,

GE has a subsidiary company in Brazil which is called Celma, so once the Volvo RM-12 is basec in a General Electric’s power plant (F-114-400?) this would an advantage. Ohh.. and by the way, today it was published an article which says that FAB is negociating with SNECMA, Volvo and Pratt-Whitney a licensed production of motor´s parts here in Brazil.
When you refer to off-sets you are hardly mistaken: Dassault hasnt offered any off-sets (apparently the French company believes that its association with Embraer makes off-sets deals unnecessary). The Swedish promissed US$2,1 billions in off-sets and the Russians, US$1,4 billions.

F6F,

Why do we need technology to build supersonic fighters if we’ll never have enough money to develop one on our own? Embraer won’t anything more than assembling parts that will come from France and maybe integrating some systems. The most interesting thing that can be offered by Dassault, in my opinion, is technology for system engineering and this is also being offered by Saab. Saab´s proposal also incluse the construction of a Systems Development Center.

Regards,
Primer