in which i geek it up
Beautiful day for flying. Beautiful day period. But I particularly wish I was up there. With someone, looking down at green fields and treetops, tracing Stratford Road as it winds through Clemmons or the sinuous Yadkin River, too curvy to be used as a landmark from the air since you never know which bend in the river is which.
Meeting Jethro for dinner tomorrow evening after he gets off work at 6:30. I’ve gone flying with him a couple of times. He’s an MAI “graduate” (went through a couple of years of the program, got his mechanic’s certification and left) with several hundred hours of flying time under his belt. He’s got his commercial, instrument and multi-engine licenses and is getting his flight instructor ticket next week. He’s a genial guy and we always have a good time. I’m going pick his brain for advice about the next few stages of my training. My job situation has improved a good deal, to the point where I will be able to afford flight training in the fall (or whenever I decide to start) without having to take out student loans, which is a huge, huge answer to prayer. It frees me up in so many ways and keeps me debt-free, a primary goal. More to come on this subject. I don’t want to jump the gun in terms of reporting things before they actually come to pass, but I will share some speculations when I have some more elements firmed up (as much as they can be, at least).
I pilfered some more unwanted magazines from the restroom shelf at the airport. One of them is an issue of Executive Controller, a sort of glossy classified periodical with business jets and turboprops for sale. I wrote a while ago about sexy aircraft and gave a few examples. After thumbing through the magazine, I believe I have another plane to add to the pantheon: The Gulfstream G550. There’s a beautiful purity to its lines that I enjoy. Talk about a sleek executive jet-engined “sports car,” this is it. Yours for the low, low price of only $46 million.
Working on a plastic tray SolidWorks 3D model file here at work, I went looking for a solid model of a recycling symbol I could add to the underside of the tray. The program has a function called “Toolbox,” full of ready-made parts, components and items for placement into a part or assembly. Within Toolbox is a link to a network of other SolidWorks users, for the mutual sharing of premade parts. Thumbing through the directories, the bulk of the parts are of course standard engineering and manufacturing pieces. But among everything, there are a few folders where people have modeled fun things like tanks, sci-fi spaceships (the Enterprise), dinosaurs and airplanes. Looking through the airplane folder, I found an assembly model of a Grumman F-14 Tomcat that I had to download. It’s all free, so that’s a boon.
Just looking at it, there are some discrepancies between the solid model and the actual aircraft. The radome is too bulbous (almost Russian-looking), the canopy is squashed, the wings on the real F-14 have no anhedral and the intakes should be canted out at the bottom. But the level of detail, especially with the Phoenix and Sidewinder missiles and the nose gear bay, is impressive. It’s cool to look at and geek about.
Exactly, my thoughts when I first looked at the picture. The nose/radome/whatever gets a little too big and the cockpit canopy does look smushed. However, the rest of it does look really good. I was very impressed. If I had done it, I’m sure I would have modeled it with the landing gear retracted. Hope everything’s going well!