Through The Mist Darkly

With everything that’s gone on lately I’m definitely ready for a little personal time.  What better way to relax and think about other things than to watch planes go fast? 

I’m currently in Belleville Ontario and it’s 6am.  In two hours I hop on a school bus for the short trip to CFB Trenton for the Anniversary Weekend Air Display put on by 8 Wing.

Yesterday, I spent the day at the Canadian Aviation Historical Society meetings where we listened to a number of very interesting speakers talk about Canadian aviation.  Topics ranged from training in the 20’s to the CC-177 Globemaster III, the newest and largest addition to the Canadian forces inventory.  We had some fun and learned a few things and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Today I’ll be loaded down with 3 cameras ready to shoot my brains out.  The last time I got close to airplanes was at Wings & Wheels and I was far too busy to really enjoy myself so I’m really looking forward to today.

On the agenda:

• 60 year Memorial Gates rededication
• Parade
• Fly past
• bands and colours presentation
• Skyhawks parachute team
• Snowbirds and the Hawk One F86 Sabre
• Griffon Search and Rescue Demonstration
• Hercules Para Drop
• CF-18 demo team
• Centennial flight
• CC-150 Polaris / CF-18 air-to-air refuelling demo
• CC-177 Globemaster III

Oh yes, there will be pictures later.

EyeNo general aviation

There it is.  A life in 5 lines.  Hurt a whole lot to see this when I opened the paper today even though I knew it would be there. Part of the process.  Now that life is over the paperwork goes on.

EyeNo general

EyeNo fun

Sunday June 28 – 10 pm

A candle is flickering in the dark.  It burns too quickly.  It burns too slowly.  The candle has shone brightly for generations and soon the supply of life will be exhausted.  And all I can do is wait and watch.

My mother is dying.  In pain that I can only imagine.   She can no longer tell me how she feels but I can hear the agony in every tortured breath.  She squeezes my hand with an iron grip that once – only months ago – wielded a tennis racquet with power and grace.

Tonight I went outside the hospital.  The sun was setting, lighting the clouds with a golden, fiery glow.  I cried.  Not the first time in the last few days and surely not the last in the next few hours and days.  I cried for the beauty of nature that can be seen in the sunset and I cried for the cruelty of nature that takes a life with such ferocity.

The candle dims, then brightens and then dims once again.  Each time the darkness creeps a little closer.

Monday June 29 – 1:13 pm

My mother passes quietly.  The rattling congested breathing silences and within two minutes she is gone.  With her sisters on each side holding her hands in love and with friends and other family close by, she stops fighting and lets the darkness wash away her pain.

The flame is gone.  The warmth will last forever.

EyeNo general

Surfing through all the updates on Twitter under the #IRANELECTION hashtag and a user name caught my eye.  @michael_crook.  Could it be?  No, it couldn’t be.  Dam, it is!

This waste of air threatened to sue me (and many others) for posting entries about what an unsufferable prick he was when he (and I’m paraphrasing heavily here) went ballastic because a screenshot from a news network was being used without his “permission”.  The long and the short of it is that I caved and took down the posts.  Not long after he got busted.

Well Michael has resurfaced on Twitter to throw his lunatic 2 cents into the ongoing coverage and debate of the unrest in Iran in response to the “fair” elections.

Recent gems:

“You CLAIM you were raped, but like all women, you asked for it in some way or another”

“I support Basij more than I support the protesters. “ (The Basij being state supported thugs)

“No one determines the fate of their humanity but they themselves. If they obey their government, all will be well.”

Ah, Michael, I really missed you.

EyeNo politics

Toto was an American rock band founded in 1977 by some of the most popular and experienced session musicians of the era. The band enjoyed great commercial success in the 1980s, beginning with the band’s self-titled debut, released during 1978. Continuing with 1982’s critically acclaimed and commercially successful Toto IV, Toto became one of the best selling music groups of their era.

One of their hits, Africa, is performed by a choir in a most innovative style.  Turn the sound way up for the beginning as they simulate a storm on the Serengeti plains.

Definitely the coolest thing I’ve seen today. (found at metafilter)

EyeNo music

All day long they’d been saying that the first Airbus A380 to land in Toronto would be coming in from the East to land on runway 24L.  I just happened to be outside the office when I noticed that the wind had shifted.  Grabbing the camera I was lucky enough to get a few shots as Emirates flight UAE241 came in on approach to 6L.

To all the thousands of photographers who were left scrambling at the change of runway, all I can say is HA HA!

EyeNo Flying Is Fun, aviation, photo Toronto

Terrible quality and too much wind noise but here it is.  A flyby of the Corsair and P51 Mustang from Vintage Wings of Canada as they departed from Downsview Airport during Wings & Wheels last Sunday.

EyeNo Wings & Wheels Canada

Loaded most of the pictures from the event in a photoset on Flickr.  You can see others at the Festival website.

Still lots of things to do to close off the 2009 gathering – like all that nasty accounting stuff.  We’re already starting to work out the dates for 2010!

EyeNo Wings & Wheels Toronto

Back at work.  The Wings and Wheels Heritage Festival took place last weekend.  Now I’ve got to sift through all my pictures and videos to see what I got.  I was so busy all weekend that I never got a chance to take a break and work on getting anything posted.

Here’s a couple of teaser shots until I can get all the post-processing completed.

All in all, it went off pretty smoothly.

EyeNo Wings & Wheels

I feel like Jack Bauer in 24.  I want to shout “WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME"!  Wings and Wheels starts in less than 48 hours and there’s so much more to do.

Today we got a little taste of what’s to come when the Lockheed 10A Electra flew in a day early.

A good start!

EyeNo "Canadian Air & Space Museum", Wings & Wheels

Yesterday, my mother “celebrated" her 80th birthday.  The quotes signify exactly how bittersweet the day was.

Maxine spent 2 weeks in hospital up in Midland Ontario and was finally released yesterday.  Her life is changing dramatically as a result of the tests that were run with not all the questions yet answered.  But we won’t dwell on that now.

Mary Maxine Gorman was a young woman in Peterborough when Ted Mist swept her off her feet.  They married and 2 years later I came into the world.  Susan arrived 3 years later.  The next few decades flew by as the family moved from place to place all across Canada driven by a man who was never really content with his lot and was always looking for that one big move that was going to make everything just right.  Maxine followed dutifully bringing up the kids and experiencing all the highs and lows of this nomadic existence.  There were good times and a whole lot of bad times but she’s always been the stoic one.  She made the best of what we had.

She’s been through the death of a husband, a daughter and a partner.  She put up with me in my wild teen years and all the hell that I dished out.  She’s proud of how I turned out.

Years ago she supervised the building of a house outside of Wasaga Beach and she came into her own as it was constructed.  Maxine blossomed.  She became an accomplished artist, she rediscovered her love of tennis.  New friends, new travels, a new woman.

The first day I visited her in hospital, one of the nurses thought I was her husband.  Even in extreme pain that’s how good she looks.

So she’s back home with David and the zoo – Alex, Nicky, Patrick and Fancy.  Now we have to get her back on her feet and ready to face the challenges to come.

Happy Birthday Maxine.  My mother, my love.

EyeNo general Canada, Travel

What?  Did I say it wrong?

EyeNo general

Three days fighting some bug.  I’d probably feel better if it wasn’t for the news about this new evil influenza strain coming out of Mexico.  A combination of swine, avian and some other variety flu have come together into some sort of unholy trinity of nastiness. 

I had to take Thursday and Friday off work and I missed a Wings & Wheels meeting this morning over at the museum.  My body is revolting and I didn’t even need to look into a mirror to know it.  Achy, stuffy and just generally miserable.  It’s an incredible 26C outside and I should be out cleaning up the lawns and soaking in the glorious sunshine trying to put some colour into this pasty Canadian winter “tan”.

A day and half to get rid of this thing so I can get back to work on both jobs.  Lots to do for my paying job and twice as much to do for the museum. 

EyeNo general

Checking the Gmail spam bucket for mislabelled messages you once in a while come across a classic.  Today’s gem:

She will learn once and for all that your pork steeple is the best!

I doubt that Shakespeare could have said it better.

EyeNo fun

Some milestones in the last week or so.

6000th 737

The 737 has been in production for 40 years and on April 16th the 6,000 airframe was delivered to Norwegian Air Shuttle.  That’s a lot of airplanes!

777th 777

From first delivery in 1982 to 777th on April 10.  Air France shows off the new livery on a 777-300ER.

End of the line for 747-400

The very last 747-400 rolls off the line on April 16th. 1,419th in the series. Boeing continues the ‘47 family with the new 8F freighter. Sad to say that due to the economy this one might head straight to the desert for storage.

EyeNo aviation

I don’t often get too “geeky”.  Although I have been in the IT business for over 20 years, I try not to slip into propeller head mode.  Sometimes, however, you just have to vent.

Every couple of years I have to replace the router on the home network.  Why?

/NERD MODE ON

There are a couple of ways to connect to the internet from home.  The most basic is “dial-up”.  As it sounds, it’s just a phone connection that allows you to dial a specific number and connect through a ISP (Internet Service Provider) server.  Very slow and I left that behind years ago.

Cable companies started providing “Broadband” service and it was good.  Piggybacking on the basic cable signal, broadband opened new worlds of speed and reliability.  I was hooked!

Starting off with a direct connection from the cable modem to the PC, everything was great until I started to need to connect multiple machines at the same time.  Along comes the router.  Descriptive name – it takes the single connection from the cable company and routes or splits it to more than one computer. Relatively cheap and simple to set up (well, they weren’t cheap or easy in the beginning but now they are).  It’s the “cheap” that is the problem.  They’re not very reliable and are prone to screw up or “brick” as they say.  Yes, they essentially turn into a brick on your desk.  Useless, unfixable and ready for the trash.

On Thursday I purchased my 4th router.  Another $100.  Setup – simple – in 5 minutes and off we go!  Well……we sort of got going.  Access a website once, no problem.  Try it again, no luck.  My Vista laptop would connect on a hit or miss basis and the only way to correct it was to reset the router which would give you a whole 10 minutes of surfing before it would get stupid again. Hmmmmm.  My work laptop wasn’t having the same problem.  After scratching my head for a while I figured out that I had a DNS problem.  The work machine had no problem because I use a VPN tunnel.  VPN – Virtual Private Network.  It creates a secure “tunnel” though the net to allow me to connect to our private systems.  AND it uses different DNS connections.

DNS – Domain Name Server.  Specific servers out on the ‘Net that resolve IP addresses.  When you go to my site www.eyeno.net, the request has to be translated into 208.109.14.24 .  DNS is a wonderful thing and it makes the internet a much friendlier place.  So what was my problem?

The new router is a Linksys WRT160Nv2.  Very sleek and modern.  It came loaded with firmware 2.0.2 build 11.  Completely up-to-date and completely pooched.  Searching a few forums I find that everyone is having problems with this version.  Solution?  “Downgrade” to an earlier version (2.0.2 build 8).  Pretty simple to install and everything now works just fine.

NERD MODE OFF/

So Linksys, owned by networking giant Cisco Systems, is selling a product that they know has a serious flaw in its software and has done nothing to correct it!  If it wasn’t for the dedicated nerds who inhabit networking forums I would be throwing a brand new piece of hardware against a wall.  And spending more money.  Or spending hours talking to a call centre in India.  Thank you anonymous geeks.  Have a Jolt Cola and bag of Cheetos on me!

EyeNo Geek Stuff

Lockheed 10A “Electra” registration CF-TCC.

From their website:

On September 1, 1937, Trans Canada Airlines (the forerunner of Air Canada) operated its first scheduled passenger flight – a fifty minute trip from Vancouver to Seattle.
The route had been acquired from Canadian Airways Ltd. along with two ten seat Lockheed 10A "Electra" aircraft. Shortly after, TCA bought three other LI0As, all brand new, direct from Lockheed’s plant, at a purchase price of  $73,000 each. They were dubbed the "three sisters" and bore the registration letters of CF-TCA, CF-TCB and CF-TCC.
After flying for a couple of years for TCA, CF-TCC was sold in 1939 to the Canadian Government, who turned it over to the RCAF as part of the war effort. Then it was sold again, and went from owner to owner during some forty years. One day in 1975, a retired Air Canada employee recognized it at a Texas Air Show when he saw the faded shadow of the registration letters, CF-TCC,  through the paint work.
Air Canada kept track of the aircraft and finally re-purchased it in 1983. The plane was flown to the Airline’s Winnipeg maintenance base where it was rejuvenated and refurbished. Pratt & Whitney Canada arranged for the complete overhaul of its two engines and for furnishing accessories and spares.
In 1986 Air Canada flew the aircraft on a fifty stop "sentimental journey" across Canada with CF-TCC arriving in Vancouver in time for Expo "86.  It was on display there at the Air Canada pavilion complete with sound effects as the engines cranked over.
Today, CF-TCC participates in diverse promotional activities, including conducting flights to raise funds for charitable organizations. It has flown across Canada in the last few years raising money for "Dreams Take Flight".
The aircraft weights 4724 kilos (10,500lbs) with a full payload including fuel. It has a cruising speed of 256 KPH (160 mph) and a cruising altitude of 4,800 meters (16,000 ft).

 

A beautiful memory of times gone by.  Great to see her return to Wings & Wheels.

EyeNo Wings & Wheels Canada, vancouver

The CF-18 Hornet.  Canada’s fighter.  From the 425 Squadron in Bagotville Quebec, the Hornet is a regular visitor at Wings & Wheels.  Pilots and spectators alike love coming to Downsview Airport every year.

One of the highlights of past shows has been the opportunities to see the CF-18 beside the museum’s CF-105 Arrow replica.  Separated by nearly 50 years, both aircraft represent the apex of aviation technology for their respective times.

CF-18s have served in the first Gulf War as well as in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.  Approximately 80 still serve in an air defence role across Canada and the fleet is undergoing a modernization project.

Wings & Wheels provides an opportunity to get very close to both the aircraft and their crews.  “Cherry”, standing, was extremely friendly and great with the hundreds of kids who got a cockpit view during the 2008 event.  His arrival and departure was a real treat (especially the special manoeuvres on arrival).

At least one CF-18 will be at the 2009 Wings & Wheels Heritage Festival.

(BTW, the plane in my masthead picture is Cherry’s Hornet performing a “runway check” last year)

EyeNo Wings & Wheels aviation, Canada

Douglas DC-3,  C-47, Dakota, “Gooney Bird”.  No matter what you call it, the shape is unmistakable.  The Dakota was a workhorse of both civil and military aviation.

From the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, this fine example is sure to be a crowd pleaser.

EyeNo Wings & Wheels aviation