Through The Mist Darkly

The Wright brothers arrive at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to begin test of their 1st powered aircraft.

EyeNo aviation history

French engineer, Henri Giffard, flies the 1st powered, manned airship. Powered by a steam engine and propeller, the airship flies at about 5-mph and covers 17 miles from Paris to Trappes, France. The craft marks the beginning of the practical airship.

EyeNo aviation history

Earle Lewis Ovington carries the first US AirMail in a Bleriot XI  from Garden City to Mineola, New York.  640 letters and 1,280 postcards in a sack were tossed over the side as he flew over Mineola.  The sack burst on impact scattering the mail.

EyeNo aviation history

Grazing through the inbox at work, I came across this intriguing proposition

Hi Sir,

How are you.

I make a new bollywood movie and I want a actor. If r u interested please reply me immediately.

Regards

Dany

An actor?  Sounds interesting.  Tell me more Dany!

EyeNo general

The Learjet 45, built by Bombardier received FAA certification.

EyeNo aviation history

Smithsonian.com has incredible pictures from the last 10 years of space missions.  This picture, for example, was taken by the Cassini spacecraft while orbiting Saturn.

EyeNo Space

According to this website, there’s a pretty darn good chance that the world is going to experience the Rapture some time today.  What’s the Rapture?  That’s when God takes all the believers up to Heaven and leaves the rest of us sinners, Jews, Muslims and general scoundrels to live in eternal damnation.

Do you need proof?  Just look at the colours they used to show how important the warning is:

I mean, it’s hard to argue when you have bold text highlighted by both Red and Yellow.  I’m screwed and I’m also out of bacon.  Oh the horror!!  On the bright side, they use a lot of question marks – guess they’re just covering their bases in case the Hairy Thunderer has better things to do today.

EyeNo general

Frenchman Andre-Jacques Garnerin makes the 1^st parachute descent in England, jumping from a balloon over London.

EyeNo aviation history

Transport Canada’s Civil Aviation division maintains a listing of all the bad things that happen in the skies or on or around the nation’s airports.  CADORS  Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System.  I like to look at them once in a while and today I came across this one:

Click on the picture to enlarge it.  Basically, a pilot reported dead birds on the runaway.  All bird strikes must be reported and you’re supposed to find out what type of bird was involved.  This CADOR doesn’t follow the normal dry reporting style.  For those that are having trouble reading it, here’s the relevant text:

Aerodrome Safety reported that airside operations personnel recovered and removed two Ross’s Geese (smaller version of a snow goose) and then found a third one knock knock knocking on heaven’s door.

I imagine the chap who wrote this will be in some trouble.

EyeNo Flying Is Fun

Things are very interesting at the moment at the museum.  Fully half of the Directors resigned last week at a very spirited meeting.  The reasons for their departure should remain confidential but it’s enough to say that they represented the “new” museum. 

Over the last year, the museum has been moving in a direction that did not sit very well with a large proportion of the membership.  I’d hazard a guess that it was the majority.  This new direction involved changing the name from “Toronto Aerospace Museum” to “Canadian Air & Space Museum”.  What’s in a name?  Other than pissing off the Canadian Aviation Museum in Ottawa, it represented a fundamental change in the philosophy in where the organization was going and a wholesale devaluation of all the work that went into getting where we were.

A couple of weeks ago I resigned as Chair of the Wings and Wheels Heritage Festival committee citing my displeasure in the heavy handed control by the museum Executive Group and a general distrust of the ulterior motives behind this control.  Essentially, we were being tasked to design, plan and the show with one hand tied behind our backs.  All the work and very little of the important decision making authority.

To give you an idea of how bad things had gotten, take a look at this picture.

Beautiful isn’t it?  The museum’s CF-105 Arrow replica and the Canadian Forces Snowbirds.  A one in a million picture.  I’d love to say that I took it but I didn’t.  Ken Swartz from the museum Board took it.  I would have loved to have been there to grab my own shots but I wasn’t.  Why not?  Museum staff were forbidden to let any of the volunteers know that the event was taking place. A tangible example of how bad things had gotten over the last few months.  Even those of us who put in hundreds of hours a year (or more) are not considered worthy enough to know when something as important as this happens.  Things had to change!!

So now the museum sits at the crossroads. Most of those who represented the new direction are gone and the “old” timers are left to pick up the pieces.  We’re broke, we don’t really have a good idea of what certain members of the Board were doing and a lot of decisions have to be made in a very short period of time.

I’ve let it be known that I’m still committed to the museum and what it represents.  I’ll work on Wings & Wheels again.  I’ll continue to support with my time and my donations.  I’ll fight to keep the Canadian Air & Space Museum alive.  It’s too important to just let die.  There are too many stories to tell, history to celebrate and pioneers to honour.  It must survive.

EyeNo "Canadian Air & Space Museum"