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birdguy

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About birdguy

  • Rank
    Member - 3,000+
  • Birthday 12/25/1933

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Roswell New Mexico
  • Interests
    Flight Simming, Train Simming, Bird Photography, Fly Fishing.

Flight Sim Profile

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    No
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    IVAO
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About Me

  • About Me
    Retired military after 26 years of service including serving with the US Marine Corps during the Korean War, the US Air Force in Vietnam, and as an Air Force weather forecaster assigned to a US Army armored cavalry regiment.

    My wife and I have 4 children, three grand children, and four great grandchildren.

    Am a rated commercial pilot with about 400 hours of flying time mostly in Piper Cherokees and a Piper Aztec. Had to give it up when my medical was pulled because of glaucoma.

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  1. One of the advantages here in the warehouse with having virtually nothing to do is watching old TV series and movies. While gunsmoke is my favorite I had a real treat this afternoon watching and old 1941 movie titled 'Dive Bomber' starring Fred MacMurray and Errol Flynn. It was fun to watch and had some laughable moments that weren't intended to be funny. The plot of picture is the Navy is trying to find ways to fly at high altitudes. They start out by pressurizing the cabin of a Lockheed Electra and flying it to 41,000 feet on it's two reciprocatng engines. Then, at 41,000 feet in clear air it starts icing up. Great shots of the Electra's icing boots cracking a thick layer of ice off the leading edge of the wing. They scrap that idea and finally come up with flight suits with deep sea diving helmets mounted on them. That works! Ya gotta love what Hollywood came up with in those days. But how they got that Electra and those pre WW2 dive bombers got up to 40,000 feet still eludes me. Another gaff are is the footage of the Electra in flight. Sometimes it's bare metal and they switch to the cockpit and some dialog and when they go back to the outside view the aircraft is painted olive drab. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dive_Bomber_(film) Noel
  2. Having crossed the Pacific Ocean three times on troop ships and being bored silly most of the time I would think on-line boredom would be more than I would care for unless the sim included pornographic novels to read while cruising the ocean blue. Noel
  3. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/12/feels-like-the-enemy-is-within-boeing-airplanes-says-pilot-who-flew-for-the-air-force-during-operation-desert-storm.html Noel
  4. Especially during rush hour in Los Angeles. Noel
  5. I think the significance of the occasion has been lost over the years. I was 12 years old on VJ Day and recall what a momentous occasion it was. More than a victory it was so many loved ones coming back home. The sailor in that photo wasn't going to be sent into harms way anymore and was going to shed that uniform and go home to his family and perhaps his wife or girl friend. Time has a way of diluting memories and those of us who still have them are replaced by those who don't. Words and pictures are all we have left of WW2. Very few who lived through it and still feel the memories of it are left. Not just the fighting men who were over there, but those left behind on the 'home front'. It was called the 'home front' with gasoline and meat and sugar rationing. The paper and scrap metal drives. Once a month my Boy Scout Troop went from door to door collecting tin cans for the war effort. We were made to feel a part of the war unlike today when few us know what wars were fighting and who is out there fighting them. Walking down the street and seeing the little flags with blue or perhaps gold stars on them signifying one or members of that household were out there in harms way or, if the star was gold, had been killed in action. I suppose the memories die away as those of us who remember die away until all we left have are pictures and printed words. Like the picture of the flag raising on Iwo Jima the picture of the sailor kissing a young woman in Times Square on VJ day. Please leave those to our children and grand children and great grand children to remember the huge sacrifices those who fought made and the lesser sacrifices those of us left behind on the 'home front' made. Noel
  6. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/03/05/va-order-remove-iconic-world-war-ii-kiss-photo-facilities-reversed-secretary-mcdonough.html Noel
  7. Retiring Lufthansa performs a wing salute on his last flight in an Airbus A380 at KLAX. https://supercarblondie.com/lufthansa-airbus-a380-wing-wave/ Noel
  8. Shows how behind the times I am Bob. Even more so now that I am almost sequestered in an old folks home. Noel
  9. Ride along with a current day training flight in a B-52 which made it's first flight in 1952, 72 years ago. https://www.militarytimes.com/video/2024/03/04/ride-along-for-a-simulated-bombing-run-in-a-b-52-stratofortress/ One thing in the video disturbed me. Is 1st Lt Hulgren's haircut in compliance with current Air Force grooming standards. In my day if one of my troops showed up to work with a hair looking like that I would have have sent him home and told him not to come back until he got a haircut in compliance with AFR 35-10 (Air Force grooming standards). Have things changed that much? Noel
  10. Agreed. But there are some that pique my interest. Like the Unknown hosted by Captain Kirk. Noel
  11. It played fine here in Roswell. Noel
  12. The following was written by the wife of a man who worked at White Sands in New Mexico in the early days of rocketry. It was the Unidentified Flying Objects that seemed to confirm to us that something important was going on. UFO’s — and whoever or whatever was inside — were apparently fascinated by the events underway at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico during the 1950s and ‘60s. For those of us who lived and worked there, it was business as usual, as we got used to the fact that our everyday visitors seemed to be more than passive observers. They were there every morning as commuters came across the Organ Mountains heading to work from Las Cruces and Alamogordo. A headline in the Alamogordo Daily News on Nov. 5, 1957 reads “Car stalled by UFO.” This nearly everyday experience didn’t even rate much notice. Frequently, as the UFOs appeared over The Organ Mountains, they seemed to stall the cars of commuters. The cars just stopped as if the batteries were drained while the space ships — or whatever they were — hovered above. There was nothing to do but wait until the flying objects zipped away, and the cars automatically started up again. One theory was that these were visitors from outer space and they were as fascinated as the rest of us with the events going on around us at the installation that has been called “the launching pad for the space age.” We got used to names like Athena and Nike Zeus, but in later years it was the more down to earth Honest John. The families never guessed at the nuclear capabilities of these missiles. So you see, Martin, this nothing new. It has been going on for more than 70 years. Some of us here on the forum might remember the names Athena and Nike and Honest John and, like myself, might have even seen them (Honest Johns...not UFOs).. Noel.
  13. In other words dedicated engineers and managers replaced by bean counters. Noel
  14. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/26/former-boeing-employee-speaks-out-00142948 Noel
  15. Define 'Star Trek style existence'. Having been retired for almost 30 years now and living on a basic income that provides a comfortable, if not extravagant, lifestyle, I can tell you it's not all that grand as time goes on. Not being a productive person has many drawbacks. What do you do with your time? I was attempting an around the world flight and about two or three weeks ago I just got burned out on flight simming and removed the simulator from my computer. I have a hard time finding things to do except as noted near the end of this reply. I do not want to be entertained all the time. I ask myself, "Why am I still here?" I don't fit anywhere anymore and people like me are warehoused in retirement homes until we die. You get a feeling of uselessness and disconnected from the active world and in a society that looks strange to you. Retirement is nice for the first decade when you do all the things you dreamed of doing when you were working and wished you had more time. But then it becomes redundant. That is followed by a sense of uselessness. If I die tomorrow that's OK. If I live another 5 or 10 years that's OK too, sort of, from where I sit today. But what will my attitude be next year and the year after? I am in excellent health for my age. Physical limitations due to aging prevent me from doing things I did when I was more active but unless those things have meaning you are just passing time. Robots doing mundane jobs and probably not so mundane jobs and getting a universal basic income I think would cause many mental health problems unless some form of productive work, even mundane work, for your universal basic income were required. A person needs to have a purpose for living to have a sense of value and worth. Not many of us here have that. I'm one of the lucky few. I have a talent for writing and story telling. So I am writing stories about my life for my heirs to read. A lady comes in once a week and I am telling her my life history bit by bit, and hour at a time, as I remember it, which she is taping and then transcribing into book form. She does this for several residents here. But most eat, sleep, watch television and play BINGO every afternoon. Not much more than that. It's a step down from living. It's simply existing. It's waiting to die. Noel
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