Groundhog Day

Thanks to not a cent @ Daily Kos:

This year, both Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address fall on the same day.

It is an interesting juxtaposition: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involves a Groundhog

Cheers,

Sean

My New Business Plan...

I've been thinking of how to make it ahead in this dog-eat-dog world, and my advisors and I have developed a new business plan:

1. Drink Beer


2. ???


3. Profit

The money should start rolling in...

Cheers,

Sean

Frak Me...

I can't wait until Season 4 starts (March/April), I just hope that the Writer's Strike is over soon enough to finish the Season and the Series:

Looking Good.

Sean

This is just wrong...

Via smintheus @ DailyKos:

Boss in an IT company fired three non-smokers because they'd requested a smoke-free workplace.

"I can't be bothered with trouble-makers... Everyone picks on smokers these days. It's time for revenge. I'm only going to hire smokers from now on."

Hello? Rights? Sheesh.

Sean

Updated 01-11-08 12:59 ~ Well, I beat least year's number of entries. Yayy me!

I Should've added this LAST Year....

I got my first submission to the Aircraft Resource Center posted on November 27, 2007:

Sean Campbell has been busy wandering down memory lane as he built his award winning 1/48 Academy Mirage IIIR. Sean scratchbuilt the cockpit and other areas of his Mirage with very good effect. He also tells the very heart warming and amusing tale of building this kit as a young lad with his Dad. Nice one Sean.....thanks for the memory.

I was pretty jazzed about that--doesn't hurt that the model was a fine piece of work if I do say so myself ;)

Cheers,

Sean

Old Engines Never Die... (They Just Blow a Gasket)

Hrmm .... looking back on my blog, I realize I made exactly two entries last year. Not good. Sure I have excuses (My old ecto didn't work with Blogger's new API; I was busy; I was uninspired), but I don't believe in excuses, so here's my New Years Resolution for 2008: write more.

I'm starting the year with some babble about a subject I have a fondness for: engines.

Now the real irony is that although I've always had a love for the mechanical--engines in particular--I've never actually worked on a real one (my mother thought advanced math was a better waste of my time in high school than motor vehicle repair). Instead I work on miniature model engines--usually 72 times smaller than the real ones.

While doing some research on WW2 armoured vehicles several years ago I learned a neat fact: the first versions of the Sherman tank were powered by an aircraft engine.

The Wright J-6 (also known as a R-975; a Radial engine with 975 cubic inches displacement) was a radial engine first designed for use with early aircraft. IKt first flew in the R-975, 9-Cylinder configuration in 1930. The J-6 was in fact used by the Curtis F9C Sparrowhawk, a biplane used with US Navy's rigid airships USS Macon and USS Akron. The J-6 and the aircraft is was designed to be used with were all inter-war types, most of which had disappeared by the time Europe exploded again in the late 30's.

During that second conflict--around 1942--Wright licensed Continental Motors to build a version of the R-975 as a power plant for medium tanks and tank destroyers. The M3 Grant/Lee, M4 and M4A1 Sherman and the M18 Hellcat were all powered by the Continental R-975, which proved fairly reliable and easy to maintain in field conditions. It produced some 400 horsepower, which could power a 30 ton tank up to 24 mph for brief periods. Though the Shermans were hardly the best tank in the war, their shear numbers and ease of deployment made them arguably one of the key factors to the Allies victory.

Post-war, the R-975 found itself in another niche--helicopters. Although the world of short/vertical takeoff wasn't new to this Continental engine (the J-6 had powered the Pitcairn-Cierva PCA-2 autogyro years before) the use of the helicopter as a naval and army asset had entered its own in the mid-to-late 1940s. The Piasecki HUP Retriever and H-25 Army Mule helicopters were used by the US, Canadian and French navies as well as the US Army for search and rescue work as well as moving men and material. The HUP-2 was used in the Canadian Arctic during the navigation of the North-West Passage by the HMCS Labrador in the 50's. The last HUP/H-25 was retired in 1964, over thirty years since the J-6 first flew on a biplane.

Fascinated by this tale of engine history, I decided to do more than just write about it--I'm currently building a collection of F9C, M4A1 and HUP-2 all in 1/72 scale. Each model will show it's J-6/R-975 in some way and in addition I'll have a 1/72 scale R-975 mounted on a test stand. I hope to have this done for the Western Canadian Regionals in May. I'm already well on in the construction of the HUP-2 and Sherman.

In other modeling news, I just received the Alliance Models 1/9600 Battlestar Galactica model--and it's one sweet chunk of resin. It's worth every penny (even if I did get it on sale before Christmas).

Well, I guess that's it for now--I hope to keep some sort of regular bloggin schedule this year, but as the old saying goes: hoping is like farting--everyone does it, and most times the results stink.

Cheers,

Sean