Pullo! Formation!

Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus
(Ray Stevenson and Kevin McKidd)
Source

One of my favorite series, ever, is Rome, which came out on HBO, in the US, and BBC2, in the UK. With twenty-two episodes overall, the series began in 2005 and ended after the second season in 2007. I understand there was to be a third season but the cost of the thing was just too high to get anyone to sign off on that. Pity, considering the garbage which comes out of Hollywood these days.

An outstanding cast, a well-told story, and very high production values, I daresay, they just don't make them like this anymore. More's the pity.

If you haven't watched it, you should. It's entertaining and doesn't stray all that far from the historical record.

Caesar commands it!

The superb Irish actor, Ciarán Hinds, as ...
Gaius Julius Caesar
Source

Really, you should make the time to watch this. I've watched all 22 episodes three times and am about to embark upon a fourth viewing. It is really good.

Trust me.

Barn Find!

YouTube

Many are the hours I spend looking for, finding, and watching cool videos on YouTube. With all of the crap that is on the internet in these modern times, YouTube still has some good stuff.

The Australian Armour & Artillery Museum has a number of really great videos on YouTube. They restore and display some of the most iconic vehicles of the World Wars. The Grant tank being one of them. If you chase that link under the opening photo you can watch an hour and a half long video of the restoration of a Grant tank.

While working on that vehicle they had teams looking for parts to restore it, amazingly enough, they found another Grant tank.

A barn find!

Their Workshop Wednesday videos are awesome, I learn something every time I watch one.  Here's a taste of those videos ...

Great stuff.

I spend a lot of time on their page, if you like armor and artillery, you should too.

Enjoy!

Back Home, Lots of Snow. Yay ...

Chez Tuttle et Nuke, Monday 02 Feb 26
OAFS Photo

Okay, last weather post ...

Maybe.

We departed Maryland on Monday morning at approximately 0833 local. Weather was CAVU and bloody cold, roughly 15 (sit down you Northern tier types, we don't want to hear how farking cold it is up there, we're glad it's up there, and not down here). Vehicle was fully fueled and all that was required was a coffee and ration stop (Dunkin').

Once that was done, we set a course for Little Rhody via the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (not to be confused with the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, which is much further south). We wanted to avoid Baltimore's rush hour (we did) and the Eastern Shore side of Maryland is pretty, much prettier than the environs of Baltimore. It's very rural, lots of farms and open fields.

As you can see in the opening photo, Annapolis has snow, rather a lot. Thing is though, it's about four inches of packed snow, almost a solid, topped by three to five inches of ice. The stuff is impenetrable, except by anti-tank ammo. Seriously, the stuff is solid and hard as a rock.

The further north we traveled the fluffier the snow got. The quantity varied from perhaps six inches in some areas to one to two feet in Little Rhody. Seriously, we got pounded last weekend. But it was nice light snow, easy to shovel.

How do I know you might ask?

Well, our next door neighbors cleared the driveway for us, which was awesome pulling up to a nice clean driveway after driving 425 miles. As we prepared for extra-vehicular activity, i.e. unloading the car and moving stuff into the house, I noted that the path to the deck and the deck itself were still piled high with virgin snow. Maybe a foot? Maybe less? But there it was.

Fortunately I keep a shovel handy at the back of the deck and within minutes a path was cleared.

OAFS Photo

More will be cleared on the morrow (today as you read this) but after 7.5 hours behind the wheel with a semi-busted up knee, I was in no mood for further physical activity. So I left it, it will still be there when I get up.

Unless it melts.

Fat chance of that happening, seems the polar vortex is planning an extended stay for the month of February.

So it's winter, real winter, like when I was nobbut a lad.

But back then Dad did the shoveling, now I am the Dad.

Bummer.

OAFS Photo

Gotta admit though, the stuff is pretty when viewed in the right light.

From a distance.

Watching someone else shovel.

Sigh ...

Manic Monday, what else?

Well, the weather down here hasn't been as bad as a lot of other places, Temperatures right at freezing when we wake up.  Been topping out in the high 40's .  Forecast for this week is highs in the 60's and 70's and lows in the 30's and 40'.  Had icy roads when this front first came through, but they cleared up by lunch. So not a really big deal, most people stayed home for a day or at least a morning. Not a lot of meat in that for a posting.

So, anyhow I re-posted a tale from 5 years ago, flying related.  Hope you enjoy it.

...Abundance of Caution

 Abundance of Caution.  I've only spoken those words once in my life.  I was a student pilot early in the T-37 phase of pilot training.  The syllabus for the ride I was scheduled to fly that day included "Introduction to Spins and Spin Recovery."  This was generally considered the least favorite mission in the entire syllabus.  One would take an airplane up and intentionally put it out of control, spinning in flat circles with unexpected pitch up and down moments all the while falling out of the sky.  Literally, the  aircraft was no longer flying.  On this flight, I was scheduled with an IP whose callsign was IronMan.  He had been an F-105 pilot with a couple of tours you know where.  

Been there, done that, got all the respect that he deserved.  But...He didn't put up with much BS, you either knew your S*** and executed it properly or you didn't pass the ride.  And...

You re-flew it with him!

So, we're in the briefing for the mission.  He asks me to recite the bold faced Emergency Procedure for Spin Recovery.  

Bold Faced procedures are required to be memorized perfectly, down to the punctuation and spacing.  Students would be selected at the Flight Briefing at the start of the flying period (as opposed to academic period) and given a hypothetical flying situation.  Most required bold face.  If the bold face was incorrect (e.g. not perfect), the student would be told "Sit Down!" and he'd be grounded for the day.  

That tended to mark you for further inquiry if you actually "Knew your S***" or were just bluffing.

I manage to recite the spin recovery procedure to IronMan successfully.

Throttles – Idle

Rudder and Ailerons – Neutral

Stick – Abruptly full aft and hold

Rudder – Abruptly apply full rudder opposite spin direction (opposite turn needle) and hold

Stick – Abruptly full forward one turn after applying rudder

Controls – Neutral after spinning stops and recover from dive

Yes, 47 years after the fact, I did that from memory.  Although I confirmed the accuracy here.  (A short post with some additional entertaining commentary, go read it.  I'll wait.)

So, IronMan and I start to talk about the mission and how we'll go about it.  He'll demonstrate the first spin and recovery then it'll be me.

Suffice it to say, I'm nervous.

You might understand why.

Airborne, we set up for the spin.  Ironman has the throttles at about 80% and the nose about 45^o high.  The stall warning horn is going off like crazy, the airplane is shaking and finally stalls.  Ironman then steps on a rudder as it stalls to induce yaw.  

My eyes are about as big as basketballs now.

He holds the controls as they are for three complete turns.  

I now have a good idea how long eternity is.

He executes the bold face, the aircraft recovers in a dive and he smoothly pulls it out of that.  Hands it over to me.  We climb back up

I pull the throttles back, nose up, it stalls and pitches down.  I immediately do the bold face and recover.

He snatches the aircraft from me asks me "WTF was that?"  I said, "out of an abundance of caution I thought I'd try an easy one first."

He replied "My Aircraft".  We flew home and landed.  I've busted my first & last ride in UPT.

He said a pilot can and must use caution in performing the mission.  However, accomplishing the mission is his first priority and too much caution is not acceptable.  One is always at risk when flying.

He then went and scratched out the student he was flying with that afternoon and wrote my name in.  

I was peeved.  I'll show this SOB!  We get up in the air.  He asks if I want him to demo another one. 

"NO, sir"

I entered the spin, held it for four turns (I'll show him!) executed the bold face and even managed to recover from the dive without exiting the bottom of the airspace.  Which would have been an automatic Flight Safety Bust.  

Got back on the ground.  Got an excellent on the ride.  Found out later that he'd been key to my getting a fighter out of Pilot Training.

We flew a lot more together in the program.  I learned a lot from him but having an "Abundance of Caution" was not on the curriculum.

Here's a longer version of Spin Training, but does include what it looks like from another airplane.

So, what brought this up, juvat? Got a little bit behind the power curve on the posting timeline, so had to publish a replay. Why you ask?

Did a walk through of our property Friday with the Builder.  He's got the property clearing team ready with the dozers and stuff.  They're going to take down a limited number of mature trees and virtually all the undergrowth. 

Just a tad bit of pruning needed.  Let's get started!

 

Oh yeah, he's also going to take down the old house and cart that debris away also. 

so...just another Manic Monday! 

 

So it begins.

Cheers to all y'all.

juvat 

A Week After

The Ice Monolith
OAFS Photo

Tuttle pointed out that block of ice out by the street the other day. Later on, when The Nuke and Your Humble Scribe went out to fetch BBQ for the tribe, there were a lot of those ice monoliths everywhere.

Last Sunday we started with snow, by the time I got up (9-ish) it was sleet, around noon it was light rain and as it was still very cold, that drizzly rain froze when it landed. By sunset we had a thin glaze of ice on everything. Fortunately there wasn't much of that.

But the parts of streets, roads, driveways, and so forth that hadn't been plowed (or treated) wound up with a good inch or two of ice on top of the snow. So when the town (and state) got out from under all the snow on the main roads and came back to plow the neighborhoods once more, the plows were lifting up those frozen monoliths depicted above.

The Nuke went into work on Wednesday and saw that someone had collected a number of those ice blocks and had built an igloo! I'm guessing it was kids and not that the Inuit were tracking polar bears and seals this far south.

But ya never know!

The knee is better, gets a bit better every day and I'm happy with that. I have avoided walking on ice since then. Should have avoided it altogether but my attention wandered and BAM, next thing you know I'm on the ground wondering just what I was thinking.

I mean, I grew up in this stuff, walking on (as is driving on) ice is not possible without special equipment. Armored fighting vehicles weighing in at nearly 70 tons will slide on that slippery stuff.

Par exemple ...

I mean I'm fairly hefty but nowhere near as hefty as an Abrams, those bad boys slide on ice too. But they don't tip over like I did ...

There's a lesson there, somewhere.

Anybody Seen Murphy Out There?

It's been that kind of week ...
Source

It's the end of January, nearly the beginning of February, so ...

At first the weather report said multiple inches of snow in the Annapolis area (I don't remember the exact amount, might have been six inches) and about the same up in Little Rhody. Perhaps more. Also high winds, 20 sustained with gusts up to fifty or sixty mph.

The Missus Herself overheard Tuttle and Your Humble Scribe discussing the weather possibilities ...

"We shall leave on Friday!"

"But honey ..."

"I have spoken."

I waited a while, then pointed out that upon arrival in Little Rhody on Friday it was forecast to be below zero. A chance of heavy snow and high winds on Sunday.

"We don't have a generator. dear."

"I know that."

"Chez Tuttle et Nuke has a generator."

"And ..."

"If we lose power ..."

"We lost power before, three days."

"The outside temperature was in the low 30s. It's going to be subzero during this storm, possibly. The indoor temperature dropped to the low 40s during that storm. Tolerable with a coat or a blanket. This time it's going to be colder if we lose power. Much colder."

"Hhmm, maybe we can stay until later then."

"Yes, like maybe Monday."

I got a dirty look, but it was followed by a thoughtful one.

Friday dawns and the weather says no snow in Annapolis, no snow to maybe an inch in our area of Little Rhody. Supposed to be a bit windy on Sunday, that's it. In other words, a normal winter day on the coast.

So yeah, we're leaving Sunday, as originally planned.

If the weather changes?

I don't care, we'll go where we need to go.

As for the knee? Still sore as hell but getting better. It doesn't ache constantly, which it did yesterday, even with Advil onboard. So things are looking up.

As my old sergeant used to say, "I wonder what will go wrong next?"

Murphy, he's out there.

No, Really, I'm Fine ...

Source

It's sore, but there's no swelling. A single Advil and I'm good to go.

Really looking forward to sitting behind the wheel for seven to eight hours today.

But The Missus Herself has spoken and I must bend the knee.

Ah, Hell no.

(I can bend it, would just rather not.)

See you on the flip side.

Update:

Return to base has been postponed due to possibility of a nor'easter on Sunday. Nothing predicted for Maryland, but Little Rhody might see snow and high winds. I'd rather be south with a generator than north without one.

Departure day depends on the forecast, after all, it ain't like I have to go to work, right?