Through The Mist Darkly

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger returns to active duty tomorrow as he and his First Officer Jeffrey Skiles once again board US Airways flight 1549 from New York’s La Guardia airport to Charlotte North Carolina.  This will be Sully’s first revenue flight since landing his A320 in the Hudson River back in January.

This clip from the Jimmy Kimmel show suggests that any Canadian geese in the area better beware.

Welcome back Captain!

Guy Laliberte, founder of Cirque du Soleil blasted into orbit today on a Russian rocket as the first Canadian civilian to pay to travel in space.  He’ll spend over a week on the Space Station and promises to bring some fun to the normally serious proceedings.

The 1^st round-the-world flight in a helicopter is completed as the Bell Long Ranger II, flown by Americans H. Ross Perot Jr. and Jay Coburn, lands safely.  The entire flight took 29 days with 56 refueling stops.

The aircraft, shown above, is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

Something to remember as the bastards try to grind you down.  The little guy sometimes DOES win.

The Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) XC-142 experimental tiltwing aircraft completes its first flight.

The project never developed commericall but NASA used it for research testing from May 1966 to May 1970.

Canadair in Canada developed something along the same lines, the CL-84 “Dynavert”

This one is on display at the Canadian Aviation Museum in Ottawa.  Like the XC-142, the CL-84 could not attract much interest and was quietly shelved.

Lufthansa, Germany’s national airline flies its millionth customer.  It was probably in a Junkers like the one above.

Dr. Albert Taylor and Leo Young, scientists at the US Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory, make the 1^st successful detections of objects by "radio observation". They use wireless waves to detect objects not visible due to weather or darkness. This insight leads to the advent of radar.

The theory behind radar was first put forward by Christian Hulsmeyer in 1904 and famed inventory Nikola Tesla worked to develop a system of detection in 1917.

The British were the first to fully exploit radar as a defence against aircraft.  Robert Watson-Watt demonstrated a working prototype in 1935.

Sydney and parts of Australia have been hit with horrible dust storms over the last few days.  Some incredible images show exactly how bad things were at the height of the storms.

First up, a YouTube video of the sky going completely black as the dust blocks out the sun.

And this shot of the iconic Sydney Opera House almost completely obscured in the eerie red glow of the storm.

See this and other pictures at Boston.com’s Big Picture.

(thanks to J-Walk for pointing me to the YouTube video)

The governments of France, West Germany, and Britain sign a memorandum that calls for the development of the Airbus A300 wide-bodied jet airliner.

Huge Monty Python fan so I don’t know how I missed this one.  Welcome to the Verrifast Plaine Co. Ltd.