FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

True, if you can't take advise or see merit in good advise you will set yourself up to fail. Most great inventions are improvements on something already made. Two good examples are as follows. Howard Hughes father saw the merit of an improved drilling bit for oil exploration and bought it with everything he had then turned into the fortune Howard inherited. Andrew Carnegie realized a system for making large quantities of steel and then expanding production to lower the price would eclipse the iron business business of his day. He found the process bought it, expanded it and in doing so made himself one of the richest men to ever live. In each case they were smart enough to see a good idea and to attract the people who could advise them and make the dream come true.

GallopingGhostler

True, happens even at corporate level. I saw that at McDonnell Douglas Corp in the late 1980's. Management was so stern that it refused anything that [didn't] had a return on investment of less than a year. We proposed using video laser disk technology (then called WORM - write once read many) to store structural test data instead of magnetic tape. Would pay for itself many times over by reducing storage and care requirements for 10,000 reel-to-reel data tapes for one aircraft program down to 30 WORM's on a couple bookshelves instead of an entire storage room and tape care for 20 years.

They embarked on TQM, losing $330 million in a quarter as an acceptable loss for "improvement". They discontinued E-mail service for all engineers and techs, figuring managers needed it, not us. (Yet I found it very useful, didn't have to play phone tag and would get my answer from engineers in another section before the day was out.) I saw Douglas Aircraft Company population quickly dwindle from 55,000 to 29,000 in lay-offs. Our section was a year behind on our test program. MD-11 Flight Test engineers were ahead of schedule and within budget. I thought they would infuse us with some of their best to get us back on track. Instead, they all got their pink slips and were out the door.

Left the company in 1992. A year later they were down to 12,000 employees. Several years later, they were acquired by Boeing.

Super08

My Feedback: (2)

I only recall one of the two seaters being completed by a customer. That thing was like having your own personal fighter jet.

Super08

My Feedback: (2)

There is some interesting into on Wikipedia. They say that 63 deposits were made for kits. These sound like the only ones built.

• N2BD: original prototype, owned by Fuel Fresh in Nevada, unflyable. This original tail number has been reassigned to a Dassault Falcon 900. Original prototype aircraft is currently assigned tail number N98MJ.
• N9WZ: Peregrine's kit, crashed
• N62PJ: Peregrine's kit, crashed
• N700JP: Jim Priebe's kit, sold to Monitor Jet, now privately owned in Canada, unflyable
• N7FF: Frank Everett's kit, crashed

donnyman

The BD-10 ...... I would have put my budget in jeopardy for one of these. None of the crashes involved Bede. but were owned by others.

600+ mph cruise.

donnyman

G Ghostler

On the corporate level. we built some of the fastest computers in the world, but my engineers could not get one for there offices.
by passing all protocalls I acquired the computers from the test models used in our test chambers they were not wanted after the tests were compledted so I got enough to build a super computer and all my engineers decreased the wait time for their test programs to run from a day or two to minutes.

Convincing upper managment to supply us just wasted time so I took matters into my own hands. eventually management got the message.

I used mine to fly f-16 fighter missions against others at the plant...FUN,FUN, FUN!

donnyman

Happy new year

Joe Fisher

My Feedback: (4)

Happy New Year

Telemaster Sales UK

I saw the New Year in at my local model flying club. After a typical French five-course dinner and having drunk more wine and champagne than was good for me, I was asked to get the guitar out. I gave them a song by the Everly Brothers, a couple of Beatles numbers, a Van Morrison, a Billy Joel,a Robbie Williams, two French folk songs and a Jacques Brel. I later found myself dancing till three with a couple of black ladies!

I feel strangely tired today. I'm 68 in March so maybe I'm getting a bit too old for this but it was the best New Year celebration that I can remember!

Happy New Year to everybody!

Super08

My Feedback: (2)

I hope everyone had a great evening, Happy New Year.

We had the most stunning display of Aurora that I had ever seen in all the years I have lived in the north. They were whipping wildly all over the sky. The colors were spectacular. The most vivid hues of red and pink, I just stood outside in awe.

rt3232

My Feedback: (6)

Hi Telemaster Happy New year to you and glad you had a good time, as I am not a musician of any kind, I/we did enjoy dancing when we were 68 all most anything but a shadish (spelling) but as age and arthritis has set in we don't do much celebrating, but except a few drinks.
Its a good thing to know another year is upon us.

Cheers Bob T

donnyman

Happy new year!.............We have a lot of fireworks here but nothing to compare with the display mother nature put on for you! my wife and I enjoyed the picture. thanks

Joe Fisher

My Feedback: (4)

thanks for sharing
Very Cool picture

Telemaster Sales UK

+1 for that.

rt3232

My Feedback: (6)

Hay Super08

You are so right about the Aurora when you get to see the red's & pinks they make it seam like the whole shy lights up and on fire.
We have been lucky to have seen that kind of display several time when traveling north from southern mn to Grand Forks to see my wife's family

just my 2 penny's worth

Cheers Bob T

donnyman

Getting a chance to see the northern portions of the continent would be quite a treat. but it seems I always have other things to do.

I think maybe I will just get up one day and go. North other than New York I have never visited.........I will wait for warmer temperatures.

brner

Indeed a beautiful display that everyone should have the opportunity to see in person. I lived in Juneau, '56-'58, and witnessed the aurora borealis many times. Like colored theater drapes waving in the wind.....Beautiful does not do them justicer....

Don

Super08

My Feedback: (2)

I am waiting on an ARF I ordered from Tower. I think it got caught up between the holidays and then this weekend. It was shipped on the 28th and still hasn't shown up on tracking. Oh well it is another 3 months before I could fly it anyway. I have my bench all cleaned off and ready to start when it does arrive. I have a 4*120 to finish as well. I only have the wings built so far.

acdii

I got all my planes post season maintained today. Takes a bit to get oil into the crankcase. I have some repairs to do on my LT-40 and 4*120 too.

GallopingGhostler

We had Perkin-Elmer 3200 series computers, the test machines were either 3220's or 3230's with a half meg of memory and a 30mb shoe box sized hard drive, 5mb cartridge drive with cartridge the size of a large pie dish. Those were running 1/2 MIP, 3/4 MIP, we thought they were the latest and greatest. We programmed them in FORTRAN-77 and IBM 360J Assembly Language. Still remember subroutine calls as BAL (Branch And Link). Access to task management was through the SVC6 (Supervisor 6) calls, SVC2 (Supervisor 2) was the I/O manager. Working with that was fun.

When I worked with the Public Health Service, I was a micro purchaser with the company credit card. I learned that if I wanted something, to propose it to the boss. If he liked it, he told me to get one for him and the deputy, and then I could get one for myself. It is how I got one of the first CD burners. Because of how we were funded, we didn't get much support from our IT folks in engineering. Thus, my boss had me to put together purchase requests to contracting for PC's for our department, that's why we in facilities management had the latest and greatest PC's.

While at MDC, I had a friend who knew an engineer in the simulations lab, introduced me to him. Sitting in the cockpit, I got to make my first carrier landing in the T-45 Trainer simulator. That was fun, fun, fun.

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

OK for the second day of the new year I got mail guaranteed to make you feel old, the invitation to my 40th HS reunion! I still remember my first PC an IBM PC Jr. my brother in-law gave the family for Christmas. Anyone else here remember DOS 1.0?

donnyman

Ghostler

I do not like bureaucratic situations. we were making our computers less than a hundred yards away from the enigineers that needed them, but we were back ordered for twelve months, yet we had in our test chambers fifty or so different models under going various tests, what got me frustrated these test machines were then scrapped, To me that is a total waste of assets.

WhenThe people designing can't get them and new computers are being scrapped, something is really wrong. I found out that one can do anything he wants if he has the @$%%^ to get the job done. That attitude worked well for me in so. east asia as well. and is still pretty affective today.

donnyman

I was involved in the manufacturing of the PC JR! And got one for my family, cost me 700 bucks. It almost missed the announced ship date due to emission problems but that was easily resolved. my son was about 14 at the time. and became the computer guru at our house.

DOS 1.0? had to use it quite a bit but never got proficient with it. just recently threw the manual away.

FlyerInOKC

My Feedback: (6)

It was a fun little machine but the AT I built with an old flip top IBM case and spare parts was a lot more powerful and useful machine. IBM guilded the lily on the Jr. so it wouldn't compete with their business machines and in doing so really limited an success it might have had.

skylark-flier

Geez, maybe I'm not the only "well seasoned" one here - got my 50th HS reunion invitation just a few weeks ago.

I remember the PC Jr, but I've still got my Apple //c up and working with 5.25" floppys (bought lotsa blank ones a long time ago). Not a whole lot I do on it anymore but my woodshop records started there, and will stay there as long as I can keep them going.

Geez, remember the days - internet was totally unknown (non-existent), 9" green screen, no mouse, no color, pixels the size of my van.

Ahhhh, the good ol' days.