Caption Contest #22 - Get Your Thinking Caps On - Ends Wednesday 12.23.09 At 9PM EST

 Strangely, it’s kinda reassuring to know that weird people have been around for a really long time.  Here’s a little proof… DC-2 mechanics wearing prop hub spinners on their head!  Apparently it was the easiest way to carry the rather cumbersome little buggers, and hopefully it’ll make for some fun captions as well.

 So, while you’re getting ready for Christmas, put your thinking hub cap on and throw a funny caption (or 3) at me.  And take comfort in knowing that the last time you put a spinner on your head, no one took a picture of you and put it on the internets : )

 You've got til Wednesday eve at 9pm EST to be funny, and the I’ll pick the 5 best captions and put ’em in a poll for everyone to vote on. The winner will get $20 in AirPigz funny money (as always, more on that later). 

 The Rules:

1) Max of 3 submissions per person

2) Submissions go in the 'comments' area

3) Game ends Wednesday at 9pm EST 

4) Keep it clean!

 Anyone who wants to cast their vote will be able to after the poll goes up around an hour after the 9pm Wednesday submission deadline.

 We'll vote for 24 hours, til 9pm EST on Thursday. Then the winner will be posted Friday (Christmas!) morning.

In A World Gone Crazy... A Moment of Pure Perfection

Cool Video From The 50's - Ryan X-13 Vertijet!

 The Ryan X-13 Vertijet was just pure craziness as a concept considering it was built in the mid to late 1950's... and yet the little bugger actually worked pretty well.  At least well enough that the only two ever built are still intact with one on display at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio and the other at the San Diego Air and Space Museum.

 Old aerospace testing footage like this is simply amazing to watch, especially if you really soak up what these people were doing (and try to imagine what the technology level was like at the time).  If you're like me, one time thru a video like this isn't enough.  Enjoy!

Caption Contest #21 Winner Crushes The Competition!

 I can just see it now… loads of Super Cubs with monster tires crushing Cherokees and 150’s while big crowds sit in the stands spilling popcorn and cheering them on! (TAILDRAGGERS FOREVER - TAILDRAGGERS FOREVER!)

 Congrats go out to twitter follower @s_crawford for coming up with the winning caption for this wacked out photochop.  I’m thinking’ a Monster Cub Rally might be a really cool idea! Thanx to everyone for getting in on the first Caption Contest at AirPigz 2.0 - and watch out for next Monday morning as we give it a go all over again : )

Unbelievable: Privately Owned F-16!

 How can this be?  Not only is this F-16 privately owned, but they’ve even somehow gotten away with painting it in exact Thunderbirds colors!  Either someone has way too much power and money, or they’ve done something really wrong and are gonna be in some heap big trouble when Uncle Sam figures out what’s going on.

 Or, there may be one other option here… maybe this is really just

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The Dream Is A Reality - Boeing 787 Dreamliner Flies!

Prototype Boeing 787 off the ground at Paine Field on its first flight!  photo: Boeing

  After a much longer development delay than anyone wanted, The 787 Dreamliner left the ground for the very first time today at 10:27am local time from Paine Field in Everett, Washington.  The take-off and departure appeared flawless as the airplane looked beautiful, confident and graceful right out of the box.  A crowd of about 12,000 Boeing employees and very interested onlookers lined the runway to watch the historic event.

 The test flight lasted 3 hours and 6 minutes with much of the time spent working scheduled first-flight tasks in and around the need to change direction quite often due to less than perfect weather.  There were no surprises however and the airplane is said to have performed beautifully.  There were two T-33 chase aircraft and one T-38 that was flying ahead of the 787 to provide weather reconnaissance.  Plans to head toward eastern Washington State were changed when

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Caption Contest #21 Ready For Take-Off - Ends Wednesday 12.16.09 At 9PM EST

 With the recent re-launch of AirPigz.com comes the exciting (?) return of the ‘Caption Contest’!  It’s a pretty simple process… you see the funny pic, you think of a funny caption, and then you submit it in the ‘comments’ area.  I’ll pick the 5 best captions Wednesday night and then we’ll have a 24 hour poll set up for the world to decide which caption is best overall.

 The winner will get $20 in AirPigz funny money.  And for those who’ve already won some ‘pig pence’, I promise that we’ll have some actual items for people to spend their winnings on before long. My most recent financial meltdown took the wind out of the sails on all that! 

 The Rules:

1) Max of 3 submissions per person

2) Submissions go in the 'comments' area

3) Game ends Wednesday at 9pm EST 

4) Keep it clean!

 Then, anyone who wants to cast their vote will be able to after the poll goes up around an hour after the 9pm Wednesday submission deadline.  We'll vote for 24 hours, til 9pm EST on Thursday. Then the winner will be posted Friday morning.  Have fun, and watch your toes!

787 Success Poll - What Do YOU Think?

 Despit all of the delays and complications, do you think the Boeing 787 will eventually be a huge success story?

• Yes! As successful as the 747 or even greater.
• Maybe, but it has a long and difficult road ahead.
• Unlikely given the trouble the program had before it ever got off the ground.
• No, I don't see how it can possibly be a success.

view results
Free vote poll

The W8 May Finally Be Over - 787 Scheduled To Fly 12-15-09!

Check out Randy's Journal (VP Boeing Marketing) for great 787 first flight updates

 Word from Boeing is the 787 first flight is scheduled for Tuesday December 15, 2009! (pending weather and any other variables)  Click the picture to see a huge hi-res version of this pic… it’s a great way to get a better feel for how beautiful the Dreamliner is.  photo: (c) Rolls Royce 2009

 My dad put 35 years in at United Air Lines, retiring in 1987 with over 10,000 hours on the 747.  It’s no surprise that he was very interested in the 787 project, and we both sat in front of my computer to watch the 7-8-07 live webcast of the Dreamliner rollout.  He passed away early in 2009, but he had an amazing life in aviation.  Please check out my 70 picture tribute to him to get an idea of how wide and deep his love for flying was.

 Because of his job and his passion for all things aviation, I was very fortunate as a kid to experience a lot of really cool things... like: we drove past Palmdale in November 1970 on the way to the unique California 1000 (1000 mile unlimited air race) and saw the prototype Lockheed L-1011 from the road as we drove by.  It had scaffolds all around it and we even said aloud that it didn’t look like it would be flying anytime soon.  It made its first flight the next day!  Didn’t get to see that one tho.

 But we did see the very first flight of the DC-10 out of Long Beach airport just a few months earlier in August of 1970.  My dad was flying as 727 captain out of LAX at the time so we kept our eyes and ears open to try to catch that first flight.  We were parked along the side of the road with a pretty good view off the departure end of runway 12.  I remember it wasn’t quite the big deal I thought it might be… just a really big, quiet, kinda funny looking airplane slowly disappearing off into the typically smoggish LA morning sky.  But wow, was I ever glad I got to see that, and I’ll never forget it.

 Prototype commercial airliners just don’t come around all that often.  And ones as revolutionary as the fanplastic Boeing 787 are extremely rare indeed.  I really (really!) wish

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Circa 1968: NASA Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (Neil Armstrong Ejection)

 Bell Aerosystems built this fascinating flying simulator for NASA to help them test control and develop pilot skills for the eventual Lunar Modules for the Apollo missions.  Officially named the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, or LLRV, it first flew in 1964.  It was powered by a vertically mounted, gimbaled turbofan with power settings adjusted to carry 5/6ths of the loaded vehicles weight.  The contraption then had an array of hydrogen peroxide rocket thrusters to give full simulated control or the conditions expected in a lunar landing.

 This video is pretty amazing for at least two reasons.  First, the bizarre looking 'flying bedstead' as it was often called, is amazingly stable and controlled considering this was the mid-60's.  But then that leads us to the second reason this is an amazing video... it shows the loss of control and safe ejection by Neil Armstrong!  Fascinating video!