Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Pakistan's only female fighter pilot

Pakistan's only female fighter pilot becomes role model for millions of girls.

If border sniping should ever descend into all-out war between India and Pakistan, Ayesha Farooq will be one of the first pilots into the air.

Ayesha Farooq, 26, Pakistan's only female war-ready fighter pilot
Ayesha Farooq completed her training to become Pakistan's first war-ready female fighter pilot, flying the F7-PG, a Chinese version of the MiG 21 jet Photo: REUTERS

By , Islamabad
5:13PM BST 01 Sep 2013

She has already made history by becoming the first woman assigned to one of Pakistan's front line dogfighting squadrons. Now at the age of 26 Flight Lieutenant Farooq says she is ready for the ultimate test.
 
"If war breaks out, I will be flying on my senior's wing as his wingman, well, wingwoman," she said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph at the headquarters of the Pakistan Air Force in Islamabad.
 
India and Pakistan remain locked in a stand-off over the disputed territory of Kashmir. It has twice since partition been the cause of all-out wars and the dispute is flaring once again. Both sides have claimed they have been attacked with artillery and small arms. Last month, India accused Pakistani forces of killing five of its soldiers, stoking anger among Hindu nationalists of the BJP, although the killings were denied by Islamabad   Read more...

Rosie the Riveter

At 93, this Rosie is still riveting


   Elinor Otto, 93, in the living room of her home in Long Beach. If she were younger, she jokes, she would look at herself now and wonder, "What's that old bag still doing here?" (Genaro Molina, Los Angeles Times)
 
Elinor Otto picked up a riveting gun in World War II, joining the wave of women taking what had been men's jobs. These days she's building the C-17.          
Boom, boom, boom.

She leans back as the gun's hammer quickly smacks the fasteners into place.  Read more... 

Rosie on YouTube

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Giant Concrete Arrows

Giant Concrete Arrows...
 
This Really Exists:
Giant Concrete Arrows That
Point Your Way Across America...
 
 

Every so often, usually in the vast deserts of the American Southwest,
a hiker or a backpacker will run across something puzzling:
a large concrete arrow, as much as seventy feet in length,
sitting in the middle of scrub-covered nowhere.  Read more...

Monday, August 5, 2013

Low and Slow - Asiana Airlines Flight 214

This is one of the first and most important things you learn in flight training when learning to land - don't get low and slow!


Asiana Airlines Flight 214 was a scheduled transpacific passenger flight from Incheon, South Korea, that crashed on final approach to San Francisco International Airport in the United States on July 6, 2013. Of the 307 people aboard the Boeing 777, two passengers died at the crash scene (one from being run over by an airport crash tender), and a third died in a hospital several days later. One hundred and eighty-one others were injured, 12 of them critically. Among the injured were three flight attendants who were thrown onto the runway while still strapped in their seats when the tail section broke off after striking the seawall short of the runway.
Neither the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) nor the South Korean Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board has issued a preliminary report; both have held multiple press briefings to provide facts.
Read more...

Video:  Animated reconstruction of Asiana Flight 214
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10179596/Animated-reconstruction-of-Asiana-flight-214-crash-at-San-Francisco-Airport.html

Be sure to view this:
New Runway Approach Lights at SFO

Amelia Earhart namesake to re-create famed pilot's final flight

Amelia Rose Earhart, a namesake and distant relative of the famed aviator plans to re-create Earhart's attempted flight around the world next summer.

Earhart, an anchor for KUSA-TV in Denver, made the announcement Wednesday at an experimental aircraft show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the station reported.

"One year from now I will be completing, symbolically completing, and recreating Amelia Earhart's historic flight around the world. It's a dream that I've had since I was about 18 years old," Earhart said.

Mystery has surrounded Amelia Earhart's fate since her plane went missing in 1937 in the South Pacific during her quest to become the first woman to fly around the world.

Earhart told KUSA-TV she plans to retrace her distant relative's exact flight path in a Pilatus PC-12 NG, a single-engine turbine aircraft.  Read more...



Nadezhda Popova, WWII ‘Night Witch,’ Dies at 91

The Nazis called them “Night Witches” because the whooshing noise their plywood and canvas airplanes made reminded the Germans of the sound of a witch’s broomstick.

The Russian women who piloted those planes, onetime crop dusters, took it as a compliment. In 30,000 missions over four years, they dumped 23,000 tons of bombs on the German invaders, ultimately helping to chase them back to Berlin. Any German pilot who downed a “witch” was awarded an Iron Cross.

These young heroines, all volunteers and most in their teens and early 20s, became legends of World War II but are now largely forgotten. Flying only in the dark, they had no parachutes, guns, radios or radar, only maps and compasses. If hit by tracer bullets, their planes would burn like sheets of paper. Read more...

Landing on the Nose Wheel

Lift that nose up and flare!!!

NTSB Investigating 737 Nose-Gear Failure

NTSB photo
The nose landing gear collapsed as a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700 was landing at New York's LaGuardia Airport at 5:45 p.m. on Monday. The gear failed rearward and upward, the NTSB said on Tuesday afternoon, damaging the electronics bay. The exterior fuselage also was damaged from sliding 2,175 feet on its nose along Runway 4 before coming to rest off the right side of the runway. All 150 on board evacuated the airplane. Three passengers and five crew were taken to local hospitals, where they were treated and released, according to Southwest. The runway was closed for over an hour.  Read more and watch the video...